We Didn't Start The Blog...

That's The Way (uhhuh uhhuh I blog it)

2010-08-27T00:18:00.000-07:00

Suggested Listening: Korobelniki as performed by the Alexandrov Red Army

At least I’m a monthly blog…

No links for this one, the home wi-fi is being wonky.

But anyway, hi. I’m an actor.

This past month has been extra busy. I got tons of offers (er…I asked nicely and they said “sure”) to work on student films at UCLA, and I’ve done 3 so far (4 this Sunday). The first three were done silently, with voiceover added later (their homework assignment was to do a voice over 1 minute film.)

My first film had me as a schizophrenic who was keeping a sleep diary. This one was particularly fun because I got to sit around in my sleep shirt and sweats all day in some dude’s dorm room and lie down. A lot. Thing is with filmmaking is that there’s a lot of waiting while other stuff gets done. A minute long film takes hours to get done. However, when you’re just chilling in this dudes bed…its not that bad. However when you have to do 4 or 5 takes of you taking your “medicine”…and its altoids…

Film no. 2 was a real confidence builder as I played a guy whose wife was just with him because he was rich. This, again, shot around the UCLA area (this girls apartment…across the street from an In-N-Out) (the more I write about this one the more it sounds like bad porn.) (this entry, just for typing “porn” will get at least 10000 hits. Google Analytics, for the win) It was an interesting film when it turned out, but what stuck with me was the bowl of spaghetti I had to eat over

And over

And over

No.3 is probably the reason why I can’t go back to UCLA for a while –heh heh-. Without going into to many details (innocuous film about a guy who loves his personal space) lets just say I kind of got pseudo arrested.

Ok, all I got was “written up” by the fine gentlemen of UC-PD but they didn’t see anything worth involving the LAPD with. One of the officers was really serious about our…infraction? The other 4 he called in for “backup” (like 4 dudes and a camera is really that big a deal) thought it was a joke and rolled their eyes taking down our info. Naturally, I got the serious dude.

So yah if you go to UCLA and want to hang out…sneak me around for a little bit.

On top of that I’m doin an acting class, which has been awesome. Its taught by an active director in the industry and she’s a vivacious New Yorker bent on getting you hired, but also making you better, which I need/want. It’s an awesome group of kids in the class (er most of them older than, uh, me, so not really kids) but they’re at all levels of actorship (word?), meaning some are working and paying their bills by doing it, or some are like me, just starting out. I have a kickass scene I’m working on right now from the play “The Little Dog Laughed.” Theatre nerds, I know you’re reading this. If you’re not a theatre nerd…ask your local theatre nerd. I’m gay…er…a gay actor (and kind of a manwhore if you read the play) who’s under pressure from his agent to keep the gay bits under cover while he breaks into the A-list. The scene is a really screwily (it’s a word now) written almost entirely breaking the 4th wall. We’re taking to the audience while simultaneously trying to sweet talk a playwright into letting us develop it into a film. The class’ feedback has been invaluable and I’m improving really well.

‘Course I haven’t really started working on the singing yet, for some reason. Apparently, I’m alright at it.

Tracy has become my new best friend, largely because I'm about to mooch the hell out of her for her dad's amazing Dodger season tickets. Ok, she's a great person and she's lovely...but these tickets are mindblowing. We went last week to a game (where the Dodgers won, weird right?) with new, at least part-time, Angelinos Will and Alexandra. Will, being my former boss, knows an uncomfortable amount of baseball and its an awesome guy to take in a game with. Tracy and Alex were girls on the other end of the aisle (lovely girls...but...yah me and Will mostly just threw sports at each other for 3 hours. awesome)

Did I mention these seats are sick?

Afterwards, we hit up this pretty hipster -IMEAN- cool bar (for real) themed off of, of all things, big foot. The staff all wear fake boy/girl scout outfits and have wildnerness themed drinks and atmosphere. Pretty groovy.

My mom and I did our annual San Francisco trip over the past weekend and it was a welcome escape, especially for her with the up and coming 5th grade adventure. This time around we visited Alcatraz (along with our usual haunts and exploring habits) which was actually a pretty cool place to hit up. Apparently, the night tour is even better, but the place is so rich in history considering its very brief stint with PEOPLE on the island, let alone as a prison. Cori lives there now, and we hit up this awesome art exhibit entirely on the art and process of filmmaking in Pixar Animation Studios. Incredibly captivating and beautiful. I loved seeing the process, cori seeing the art, mom seeing how it all works together. It should be at the Oakland Museum of California (yes, there actually IS something in Oakland) till...the end of September? Cant remember, but it is a travelling exhibition and if it comes to your place, go see it.

And yes, San Francisco continues to be better than wherever you're reading this (unless, of course, you're in San Francisco. If you are, congratulations! Go have a drink to celebrate)

Ok, seriously, I’ll try and do this more.

But I’ve said this before.

I love you guys, though.

I Could Really Use a Blog Right Now...

2010-07-24T18:28:00.000-07:00

Suggested Listening: Airplanes (Parts 1 and 2) by B.o.B. feat. Hayley Williams off his new album B.o.B. Presents: The Adventures of Bobby Ray.

A month later…

San Francisco, yet again, for pride weekend. I don’t live there, why? I’d keep going but it would be more of the same San Francisco is the best place evaaarrr talk. I went this time with Frannie up in her car, Petunia, and…well more on Petunia later. My friend Cori now lives in San Francisco…so though Frannie now goes to med school in town, I still have a place to crash when I visit SF (which will be frequently, if I have my way with the world), even if it means sleeping on the carpet next to her inflatable mattress (bit snug of an apartment) (love ya, Cori)

I found myself house sitting for friends of ours while they were away on an anniversary cruise.

Their house has 3 stories, with a pool house, HD TV’s, jacuzzi tub, nestled up in the hills…

And a weird ass place to be alone in at night. (Sorry, guys) It’s a big place to have very dark and very quiet. When you live in someone else’s house for that long (two weeks) it’s strange to be surrounded by their stuff and pictures. They’re lovely people, but…in a house that’s not yours are a bit odd.

But living somewhere else than home is pretty awesome.

I slept in the room belong to their youngest son (18) because his bed was immensely plushy. ImmENSELY plushy. I don’t know if he’d be willing to call it plushy since he plays Hockey (now for your University of Alabama Frozen Tide) but it was very…very cushy. The room is very dark as well which helps with sleeping. I feel like I’m writing a 5th grade book report. “I slept in Scott’s bed. It was comfy. I thought his covers were colorful. There is a poster of Luc Robitaille next to his bed. He was a famous Hockey player.”

It wasn’t all fun and games at the house, of course. I mostly watched over their cats, Shammy and Smokey, making sure they didn’t plot to take over the world. Shammy was incredibly affectionate but mostly followed me around wondering where his family was. This was settled by one cat treat or two then he’d just cozy up somewhere while I did some work. Smokey, though, just watched me. They have a weight set in the house, which I used, and there he was…watching. TV? Watching. Breakfast? Watching.

And judging. You know its true.

Petunia is a pastel green Toyota Prius that my friend Frannie drives. Frannie went to Africa for a week to save the world, like she usually does, by working in a clinic. She left me in charge of her stuff, as she didn’t want it just sitting there for a month in a dodgy part of town with no one in the apartment. I hid her gadgets and things in our house and got to bound around in … well… a Prius I come from the Top Gear school of thought which holds that cars like the Prius are not cars at all, but, as professor Jeremy Clarkson points out, are essentially as fun to drive as a microwave oven…or a toaster. Driving Petunia was, for me, pretty enjoyable. It has fun little gadgets and is almost too convenient in terms of amenities. I taught petunia to answer my calls for me on my iPhone. And the fact that I only filled it up –once- while Frannie was gone for a whole month did strengthen its case in the automotive mind of…me. Get it going uphill and it doesn’t want to work, and it’s a bit pissy at how you start the engine, but over all it’s a fun car.

I’ll get one for someone else one day. What, did you think I changed on you? I took ONE quick spin to the store in Izzy, our IS-300 from Lexus, and got a 300 horsepower slap in the face for sleeping with another car who clearly can’t hold her road as well as other gals.

Haven't changed a bit.

Staying at the house gave me a first big gulp of freedom that I found very addicting. Of course, when freedom entails of HD televisions and bathtubs the size of small countries your vision gets a little distorted from the truth, but addicting nonetheless.

I’m at home right now, and from the looks of it will be for a bit longer. 1) the economy. 2) …

Twooooo…

It might not be such a bad idea for what I want to do. That being acting. While living on my own I got a great jump on what I hope to be my future profession. I interviewed actors that our family knows on how to get started, what to expect, what comes first, etc, and I went out and did them.

Except headshots. I don’t know why, but that just hasn’t happened yet. What has happened is an agent workshop, getting signed up for two student films (more on the way) and getting myself into an acting class and workshop out here, all in a weeks time.

What if I took a year, just one year, and sacrificed my dignity to be the guy who “lives with his parents” (I love them to pieces, don't get the wrong idea. They're awesome people) and just worked on performing. Workshops, auditions, work somehow, somewhere, singing, theatre, commericals... After a year I’ll have experience coming out of every crack of my start-up empire while gaining a reputation as being hard working. Every actor friend has said this about LA: most people are lazy in trying to get work, experience is key, and the more effort I can devote to being an actor, the better.

As long as I keep positive, and hard working…

I’m a Sarah Lawrence alum, and I feel like taking over the world.

Narf.

Blog for my Head

2010-06-23T21:51:00.000-07:00

Suggested Listening: A quiet room. all the lights off. eyes closed. ... wait wait wait read THEN do that.

or just put on the title track for this blog in this case: "Place for my Head" by Linkin Park off their album Hybrid Theory

A quick guide to why I turn into the Hulk’s jerky younger brother:

Ever had a migraine before?

I have.

And I’m to the point of where nothing has really worked. So, I’m going to passive aggressively write about them behind their backs.

I hate migraines. Imagine if someone was slowly driving a railroad spike into your head…and then running a train over it.

I’ve had them since I was young. When I was a toddler, after being exposed to some bright light of some sorts, I’d scream in pain, throw up, and pass out.

To counteract the seriousness of that statement, click here

They’re freaky because they’re only on one side, which seems like an annoying way to hurt a head. You’d think that you’d want to hurt the whole of the head, but… instead I get to hold half of my head during one of them.

A migraine starts out, fundamentally, because I didn’t do something right. Either: I watched too much of a screen (at work on a computer, a movie, TV etc), I didn’t eat, I DID eat, or I was underneath a large shift in barometric pressure. Ok, “my fault” is an exaggeration…living in Bronxville gave me hell on that last one. Well, the whole east coast does that to me. It’s the price I paid for living in a place with snow and awesome thunderstorms.

See I can feel one coming on right now. Indicators that … uh… I might have a migraine are as follows:

I think it’s raining. This is called an “aura.” Some people get funky visions and lights and I…think its raining. It looks like it, its really strange.

I turn into a jerk ... well, sort of. My brain starts getting less oxygen in a migraine…I think, and it starts to act funny. One way is that I get really cranky and pessimistic in a hurry.

Other signs: holding my head, wincing in pain, whatever…

So I’ve been trying to get myself off of taking so much pain meds (again, click here to laugh). I’ve found a couple of things: First off, running.

Actually, I’m going to do that right now, be right back.

(something to pass the time)

Alright, back. Awesome. … headache’s still around, on to step two:

Tea! A couple of years ago in order to help myself with --- studying --- I started experimenting with tea. That came out wrong, but now I love tea. Well, along with working out, I noticed that I got a whole lot less migraines. I’m addicted to this stuff called “Vanilla Almond” by … cant remember right now…

See that’s another sign of migraine. Strange losses in brain function. I get…it looks like I’ve had a few too many, except I’m REALLY not having a fun time at this bar.

That made sense in my head

Which hurts

Ow.

Blogging by a Moment

2010-06-05T21:21:00.001-07:00

Suggested Listening: Sky is Falling by Lifehouse off their album Stanley Climbfall

Hello, from the edge of the World.

I’ve been pretty busy lately. First off, I was in a few shows at once, which was wonderful, sure, but meant that any spare time I had went towards either the show or the work I had to make up because of the show.

I was in Into the Woods, which is a pretty popular show as it turns out. I had never heard of it (well, sort of) but it was a pretty fun one to be in. I ended up being the lead, which was a bit of a surprise (seeing that I had never really heard of it before being cast in it.) The play essentially is a mashing together of children's fairy tales. My role, the Baker, is the straight man of the play around which the world slowly crumbles.

Heh.

It was really fun; we had a great cast in it. For what we could pull out of the space (it was really small) it was a good production. Caitie, our director, put the play into a modern New York setting, which gave it a whole new dimension.

Sorry if I’m rushing some of the parts of this entry. There are lots to talk about. I got behind, obviously. This was my last conference work period ever which was mind-blowing. You’d think by this point I’d have been better at it. I was, a little, but still had to spend most of my time working on my projects.

Also because I was in two other shows, song night and comedy night, which meant I got back to my room at around 1030. Not a good time to start working.

Song night was a final project, of sorts, for my class “singers workshop”; a class that works on stage presence and song…interpretation? Sort of a how to sing a song master class: more than just standing up there and singing it. The song class set list was essentially every SLC’s student’s ipod on shuffle. We had Broadway, opera (technically operetta) R&B, 80’s and 90’s pop, Motown, you name it. I wanted to expand my genres of song outside of my usual jazz and blues so I did At Last (originally sung by Etta James) and Prelude --> Let's Get Lifted by John Legend, essentially two R&B tunes.

…Oh and we did a TV medley. My song was Let's Go To The Mall from How I Met Your Mother.

Yup

Comedy night was the final project, so to speak, of comedy class with Christine Farrell. I actually took this class for many reasons. It was mostly to learn how to work an audience as a singer, but also to help me break out of my rather hard shell of introversion (which isn’t fun). Both happened, and apparently I’m pretty funny…or something. People laughed at my stuff, but everyone in the class was violently talented so that was fun.

Dancing around the tooopiiiic I obviously have to cooooverrr in this poooost…

I graduated.

Holy S&@*.

Obviously, I know what all my friends two years ago were going through. All of it. Especially since I was stubborn (or something) and went back to LA with the idea to act or perform or something like that. There are now 5 people I know in the LA area…but that’s another story. Almost everyone is back east, some in the south, some just plain not in the country. In LA? Not that many, and I don’t like starting from scratch again.

Back to topic

I graduated.

Hoooooooly S@$%

So I’m living out here with this bright idea to leave New York. I don’t wanna live in New York, but …

No I don’t want to.

holys@*%

The OCC was helpful, if not a bit confused that the words “I wanna be an actor, but not here in NYC” came out of my mouth. They were actually really enthusiastic that I had said that since it’s apparently impossible to start up as an actor in NYC. Not like LA is a walk in the park.

I feel pressured to feel excited about it, and I did feel excited when I actually got my diploma (I felt like running very fast in one direction before they realized they made a mistake or something.) I guess, though, I'm more nervous than anything else. I’ve been aiming to get more confident about what I do and how I do it. Even buying starbucks.

Starbucks employee: Hi! Welcome to Starbucks, what would you like to get?
We Didn’t Start The Blog: A Tall Hot Cocoa, Surrah!
S.E. : Ah. … ok…
WDSTB: no whipped cream, plz

I was never much for big ceremonies, let alone graduation. Birthdays are small for me, and my high school graduation was 45 minutes long. Yup. So, the two hours under the tent listening to people say its gonna be ok was a bit…off for me. Also I was REALLY sick for some reason.

It’s strange. I feel like I’m …floating or something. I wanna get going but … on what? Acting and Singing? Sure I mean I liiike it but I’m not sold on it.

All I know is:

I really don’t wanna get shot at.

I really, REALLY don’t wanna teach. I’m not a good teacher. No questions about this, ask anyone who’s played video games with me…

WDSTB: Ok so X is crouch, Y is change weapon, left trigger is look at the map, and right trigger is shoot.
Dude: ok.

I’m not organized that way to be a teacher. God knows if you throw me in a classroom with new and excited minds what they’d get of the lesson plan because, well, I just plain forget the important stuff.

(20 minutes later)
WDSTB: Oh! B is Reload! Forgot to tell you…

Just imagine me ‘forgetting’ to tell a bunch of 3rd graders that you cant divide by zero or whatever I learned in 3rd grade… other than that no Katelyn doesn’t have a crush on me.

What I do want to do is pretty straight forward. Travel, have a place in San Francisco (would be really awesome), probably live in LA, awesome if near a beach, travel some more, own a car,

I mean I can sing pretty well, act…okish? I feel like I wanna build those parts of my life.

Im just floating though.

On top of all that, I just don’t wanna let myself down.

Kinda didn’t know where this one was going. Pray, I guess, if you’re into that. If not, send money. I need some.

I’ll be doing something…soon

--Christian

Meanwhile...

2010-05-03T21:12:00.000-07:00

Hey guys,

I'm still here, but buried in work. Those out there who are SLC alums know what I'm going through.

I still love you, but not more than work right now by default.

CJ

The Answer My Friend is Blogging in the Wind

2010-03-21T13:33:00.001-07:00

Suggested Listening: "Come Fly With Me" as performed by Michael Buble off of his self titled album

Granted: I have never seen wind that strong. I mean this stuff was serious. One person tried to get into the airport terminal and it took him 3 minutes and two people to get the door open.

I was stuck in JFK for 12 hours. There’s not much to do in JFK…for 12 hours. I played some peggle and did some reading, and other than that, nothing much…except wait.

Thing is, everyone else airline wise had canceled flights that Saturday night. I don’t blame them. I was getting texts from Sarah Lawrence about how trees were down on campus and power was out. (Apparently a whole damn pole fell down too) Jetblue, Delta, American, United, and Southwest out of LaGuardia had all canceled.

Except terminal 4 airlines were steadfast in their desire to fly that night. El Al was still going to Tel Aviv, Asiana was still going to Seoul, LOT to Warsaw, KLM to Amsterdam, Aer Lingus to Dublin, Qatar to Abu Dhabi, Virgin Atlantic to London-Heathrow…

And Virgin America to Los Angeles and San Francisco. We were the party terminal at the airport that night.

INTERIOR: Party. Several airlines are standing around with various drinks. Jetblue enters with a folded copy of the Wall Street Journal under one arm and a coke in another.

JETBLUE
(in a nice dress shirt, sleeves rolled up)
Guys, I’m not fully sure I can make it out tonight, I think I’m gonna cash it in.

DELTA
(in a fine pressed suit, smoking, conservative haircut)
There’s no chance I could fly tonight

AMERICAN, UNITED, and SOUTHWEST all grunt in approval.

VIRGIN AMERICA
(wearing black cocktail dress, hair disheveled, drink in hand, visibly intoxicated)
Hhhhhhaaaaay guuuuys. So, OH MY GOD its wiiindy, right?! WOOO! But I still wanna Flllllllllyyyyyy! I can fly! I’m an aaaeerrroplaaneeeee (grins wide while stretching out her arms as if wings) wheeeeeeeee

Goes back to making out with AER LINGUS

You get my point. My airline was clearly the woo girl of the airlines. El Al, Asiana, all those international airlines were merely scoffing at American wind in the corner and remarking how us yanks have never seen wind like in Haifa, the Persian Gulf, …errr…Poland…and I think KLM was just off in the corner with Virgin Atlantic having a joint. My friend of mine, Alanna, who just flew El Al on a birthright trip pointed out that El Al wasn’t scared of the weather; it was the weather that was scared of El Al.

But my airline clearly was blitzed on a bit too many vodka-red bulls to think they could fly that night. My flight was supposed to leave at 4, which was delayed to 6 which then was “attention passengers on flight 411 to Los Angeles and flight 25 to San Francisco we have some updates for you…”

My plane was refueling on an airbase in upstate New York. San Francisco’s bird was in Philadelphia. At 8 my flight was still in upstate new york and the SFO flight was in DC. At 10 the SFO plane was on its way and in a holding pattern, our plane was STILL at the base.

SFO’s flight got out at 11 30 pm or so. I finally got on my flight at 3 am. (12 hours = 2 pm to 3 am with daylight savings time taken into account)

I don’t have much of a reason to complain, as this article details what happened on the flight I was supposed to get on.

Well now I’m home and covered in cats. They have a tendency to try and push me off my bed, or at least re arrange me so that they can sleep with me. It doesn’t really work and I largely just end up twisted in knots and a bit too warm. This break has consisted of:

Working on resumes
Working on conference work
Working on lines
Food poisoning on St Patrick’s Day (hence…no real stories from then. Big thanks to Cori and Frannie for taking care of me though. It was pretty impressive what my stomach was doing to me) (by the way, start your shenanigans at least before 9 pm anywhere for st pats. Also no having ice cream before your celebrations)
Petting animals.

Sadie has learned a new…trick. My dad is tremendously focused on trying to get her to stay out of the kitchen, which hasn’t been working. She does, however, gently step out of the kitchen now whenever he says, “get out!” … then she walks back in when he turns his back.

DAD
Get out!

(Sadie exits the kitchen and sits at the door)

(beat)

(the sound of dog steps behind dad is heard)

SADIE
I did it! I got out of the kitchen! I get a cookie now

DAD
NO! Bad dog!

SADIE
I’m sitting. (wags tail)

She looks so pleased to get out of the kitchen but doesn’t exactly get the premise of stay out. She’s still good. Still sleeps by my bed when the parents are out of the house. Guarding me or something. More than I can say about the cats which just try to take over the bed.

Sadie says hi

--me

VIRGIN AMERICA

WOOOOOO!

Tonight, Blog Again

2010-02-22T17:57:00.000-08:00

Suggested Listening: Olympic Fanfare and Theme from the 1984 Olympics by John Williams (off his Greatest Hits album)

I freakin LOVE the Olympics, especially the winter ones. I’m sitting up here in the Pub watching it. The Pub is a student center ish place on campus where you can get food (not that healthy though) and watch TV.

Like the Olympics. Downhill skiing is on, and then later on Bobsled, my favorite. (when I finished this blog: ski jumping, aerials, and ice dancing)

Granted NBC’s coverage is really slanted toward the Americans. According to my brother, CBC, the Canadian broadcasting network provides awesome coverage showing pretty much all the athletes.

So in the past few weeks the following has happened: I got cast in Into the Woods as The Baker, which is a pretty big damn deal, apparently. As I’m sure I’ve told you before I don’t know much about theatre. People are pretty excited to see I’m the baker, but I’m just trying to figure out what happens in the play itself. I haven’t gotten a script yet. That happens here.

I went skiing in Vermont last weekend with my dad and BC. BC is a long time family friend of ours going back to when Dad was in college (so pre my family but you know.)

Waitwaitwiat first off I busted up the shoulder again. I threw a snowball during our first snow day this year. That’s how. I spent my snow day at Lawrence Hospital. Yay.

You know that kinda sucks. I get a snow day and I get to spend it in the hospital. I really, really want the shoulder to start cooperating.

Huff…I did have a concert though. Got a lot of "aww" points for performing with my band in a sling.

It’s difficult to remain on the positive side of things when your shoulder keeps coming out. It’s better to have a positive and proactive attitude but when you keep breaking it’s a bit rough. Also I miss working out.

RIGHT so skiing was great (I used my sports brace). Vermont hills are very gentle-ish and easy to learn on (also pretty powdery). New Zealand hills, by contrast, have one “easy” section and then a various selection of cliffs to choose from if you want to ski with someone other than toddlers. We went to a smaller hill near the big resort of Stowe called Bolton Valley. Since this was Presidents’ Day weekend it was nice to just have locals around instead of the onslaught of New Englanders. This gave us more space to ski, which was good for my dad who fell. A lot. a couple of times directly in front of me giving me an unexpected buckeye to maneuver around. He also ran into me. No, literally.

There’s a battery out in a smoke detector or motion detector somewhere in my house at SLC. Its beeping every 5 minutes or so (for 1 minute between beeps, 3 beep a cycle.) ( it made sense in my head) so sitting in my room reading and all of a sudden –beep………beeeeep…….beeeeep- makes our place sound like a submarine. I sit to myself and giggle between beeps pretending:

Beeeep
“Con, SONAR new contact bearing 070. Designate master 2-8”
“Con- Eye man battle stations torpedo rig for ultra quiet. “ –sirens sound-
Beeeep

I promise you it’s the same beep.

Ow. Shoulder. It still is pretty sore, but I’ll make it work!

Stay Positive, readers,

Chris

Joker and the Blog

2010-02-02T13:02:00.000-08:00

Suggested Listening: She Blinded Me with Science by Thomas Dolby off the album The Golden Age of Wireless.

Sooo I did wait until February to post again, but I’m a busy guy.

This is the last leg of senior year, which means it’s the last leg of Sarah Lawrence all together and I don’t know how to feel. I am anxious, a bit excited, but most of all confused. A lot of me doesn’t feel that prepared for “the world” and despite everyone wiser than me saying I don’t need to feel ready…I’d still like to feel a bit more ready. The thing is I’ve been doing so much work on social interpersonal stuff that I might have missed the whole “what I’m going to do to make money” boat.

Can: Sing, act, drive a car. … give hugs…talk about sports.

Can’t: teach, dance, walk dogs (or maybe that’s just Sadie), sell stuff,

Well you get the idea. A couple of nights ago I had a nightmare where I wasn’t fully capable to be integrated back into the real world (as previously indicated, SLC is anything but the real world) and I had to repeat high school. Still have that sleep problem as well.

But I’ve been making the most out of this year. I’ve been putting this blog post off for a little bit just so I could get the stories in order. First off my friend Beth had a half birthday party. A half birthday, as some of the readers might know, is a birthday that is celebrated at the half way mark between actual birthdays because the day itself might conflict with something bigger (like Christmas.). I’ve had a half birthday for a long time now just because a) when I was little most of my friends were busy doing Christmas stuff and now b) most of my friends were busy with finals and/or out of state. Beth had a half birthday because her actual day is in July and wanted to have her slc people around her for one night.

Theme for the party: half. Half present, half dress, half etc. I got her an itunes thing in a birthday card sliced in half.

I also went with no pants on. (Yeeeesss I had boxers though.)

I don’t know how this happened, me losing clothing, but after I did the no pants subway ride thing I found that I have naturally less inhibitions if I put myself into … well the word I want is uncomfortable but that isn’t right. There’s a sort of rush I get when I am placed into situations I’m not really that acclimated to. It gets me going, but also relaxes me and lets me just have a fun time instead of worrying about how I’m perceived by those around me.

That being said, I danced on a table with two other sophomore girls. The soccer guys approved (loudly). Thanks, guys. There were also other shenanigans, but overall it was just a fun night.

I now feel unnatural to stay in on a weekend night. This past weekend, for some reason, SLC just fell flat and there was nothing to do and it irritated me. I do like being a social animal now. I don’t know if its appropriate to call myself a social scientist, but I like the idea. I’m sort of experimenting with myself and getting the proper mindsets in environments. I’ve done a lot of work on being myself again. Relaxing. Smiling.

Auditions have been going on. I got called back for a couple of shows but no casting yet. I have one more Wednesday for Into The Woods, which is apparently a musical by someone named Stephen Sondheim. I’m not trying to be facetious. That last sentence about Sondheim should have been read with a straight face. The thing is, as per usual, I don’t know a thing about theatre. A lot of people are pretty excited we’re doing Into The Woods and…I’ve never heard about it (outside of Louisville HS (our sister high school at crespi) doing it…sophomore year.). It’s apparently fun, and thank god for my friend Dani lending me the soundtrack.

However, the audition requirements are 16-32 bars from a contemporary musical theatre piece. Problem: I don’t know any contemporary musical theatre.

I’m bending the rules and doing Can You Feel The Love Tonight. We’ll see how that goes.

As always, hang loose

--a social scientist.

Happy Birthday to Blog

2010-01-15T22:23:00.000-08:00

Suggested Listening: I'm Alright by Jo Dee Messina from the album I'm Alright

This is roughly the one year anniversary of the blog (rejoicing). So far the blog has seen two other countries, several cities, a gay bar, a burlesque Broadway show, racecars, animals, trains, an ice bar, and the edge of the world, so to speak. Cook Islands, New Zealand, Vegas, San Francisco, Los Angeles…

Shoulder injury…

Etc.

Not to mention a rather hasty posting schedule (i.e. whenever I remember to do it.) Granted there hasn’t been that much to talk about. Lots of introspective work going on here.

Oh, the car broke down. We put in a new clutch and it was running well…ish until driving uphill and it decided not to go into 2nd, then not into 1st…

Then this:

Heh I love cars. This clutch was brand new too so we didn’t have to pay it to get it fixed. Of course now it barely goes into 3rd.

Lost you yet? Good.

I suppose my new years resolution for this year is to come back with new stories. I’ll be living in some new exotic place (or just back here in LA which is also cool) and traveling places which’ll give me some stories. NZ did. Well I’ll bring some cool ones back for you guys.

Like: I did the pants off subway ride with some friends of mine. I met these guys doing a class over the break and word spread around the group about this thing so we said hey what the hell? The whole event was organized by “improv everywhere” and metro systems all over the world participated like New York, Tokyo, London, and LA. The big difference between NY, Tokyo, London and LA is that the first three actually use their subway systems so the joke would have worked better. Instead it was just a bunch of people in their underwear riding the LA metro. Still a load of fun though. Good to get out and meet people. (another new years resolution. Meet people!)

Hmm…yup another short one. Stories! I do promise.

Love,

Me.

Christmas Blog is Here

2009-12-26T20:42:00.000-08:00

Suggested Listening: Christmas Music, of course.

It’s good to be home.

That’s been one of the major themes of this year. Going abroad and back to Sarah Lawrence was a rough task this time around. … well really for the most part it was rough for the past three years.

This year was rough from start to finish. Usually my luck, or lack thereof, follows the scope of the school year. This year, it was 2009.

Man.

One of those rebuilding years. Sorta feel like there was an earthquake, one big one with a series of smaller aftershocks.

All the while I’m trying to rebuild my house.

Hooah.

Christmas always gives me some space to recover from the past semester and year. December as a whole always gives me time to slow down a bit. On top of Christmas I have a birthday to have. This year I made sure that I did something for it, unlike last year. It was going to be 20 degrees out so I decided to have a hot toddy party. A hot toddy is my favorite drink, created by heating up apple cider (non sparkling or sparkling, whichever you want) and adding about a shot or so of rum. Love it. It was really great to have my friends over, even in conference week time.

Oh speaking of which, conference week. That’s what we have instead of “finals.” Conference projects are one on one independent study projects conducted between the student and professor. Mine this year were on Sex and the bible and World War One fighter pilots. The latter ended up being 25 pages, breaking my old record of 16 or so. It completely caught me by surprise though pushing my other two papers back way into the end of the week. Not good.

But now I’m here, recovering.

Good god that was a rough year. One of those years where I had to work for every inch I gained.

It was, however, a great year. It’s sort of screwy to have such high regard for a year that tore your life apart but sometimes you have to destroy a house to build a better one.

I should make one of those inspiring posters.

Christmas at my house is always really chill. Christmas eve we have an open house with food and cookies. This year a good number of my friends came and we raided the x-box and stumbled around Guitar Hero. I kept getting asked to sing. Yay me. Christmas morning is our present morning, followed by a large breakfast.

Sadie and the cats always get a kick out of opening presents. Ninja has taken to sleeping under the tree, while Sadie would take heaps of wrapping paper in her mouth and bounce around the living room.

…well that’s about it. I’ll keep writing. This is just sort of an extended letter to all of you guys. I guess here’s a thought from 2009 and my experiences. (Christian rant up coming. Skip if you want)

Don’t lose hope. Christmas is about hope, and naturally capitalism has pounced on this human desire in order to score a little more cash. But as a religious holiday, its about God keeping his promise in a typically God sort of way.

As a Christian, God, to me, is a guy who works in a really weird way. When he can, he works small and simple. Christmas is the celebration of something small and simple that blossoms into something great and life changing. A lot of Christians like to put on big displays of faith and evangelization. I like working small. I think God wants us to work small and be ourselves.

I mean, his son was born in a barn in a pretty insignificant town in Israel. God is pretty screwy. The little things in the end are what shape someone through a tough time.

Christmas is much more about a beginning than an end of a year, a chance to regroup and move on.

Keep moving forward, I guess. The good little things of a life always keep reality in focus, and I think there’s always a God behind you and fighting for you.

And there were in the same country Shepherds keeping watch over their flock by night. And lo, and Angel of the Lord came upon them, and the Glory of the Lord shown round about them, and they were so afraid. But the Angel said “fear not, for I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be for all people. For unto you is born this day in the City of David, a savior, ‘tis Christ the Lord, and this shall be a sign unto you. You will find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying “Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth Peace, and goodwill towards men.”

Bit of a scattered entry. My brain has a bunch of advil and cookies in me, interesting combination.

But,

Merry Christmas.

Love,

Me.

There's No Business like Blog Business

2009-12-03T06:54:00.000-08:00

Suggested Listening: Tomorrow Belongs to Me (the London cast I think...the one with the 4 part tenor harmony)

“Hold”

One word has never before stirred such quiet emotion. It’s been tech week here at Sarah Lawrence.

“Hold please.”

Audrey needs to fix something. Her voice comes out of the speakers like a message from God above. Since she is the stage manager after all, it might as well be God.

And this is what’s been going on.

Cabaret is a rather cue intensive show. There are over 400 light and sound moments to be marked out, and we went through them ever so slowly.

It’s not anyone’s fault really. Its just such a big production tech wise that each and every moment had to be plotted out inch by inch. It also means a lot of tired and bored actors. Never a good combination. We try to keep ourselves entertained while we slog through the incredibly dull but necessary tech work.

I have an entrance.

“Do you know what the problem is with English? It is not like German!”

“Hold.”

Aaaaaaaah. Luckily my buddy mike is on stage with me. We start doing the scene as different personalities and accents, such as James Stewart as Cliff and Sean Connery as Ernst while the tech crew match up lights and sounds.

Says Nehemiah: “Sean Connery wouldn’t be a nazi!”

Me, as Sean Connery : “So far as you know.”

What makes the play long for me is that my role is…sort of like the SAS. I come in for a pretty short time but I’m incredibly important to the scene. I’m everywhere in the first act and nearly nowhere in the second one, except my “presence is felt at all times.” … yeah that was a weird note for me too. Ernst is a playboy and a networker. Everyone loves him, which has been a challenge for me because I’m a pretty quiet guy despite working towards being more social. It’s been a lot of fun though. This cast has been the loosest I've been with. Yeah we’re serious about the play, but we can laugh at each other. Of course we have our inside jokes, such as Erin's (as Sally) difficulty in pronouncing Ernst in an English accent and my difficulty saying Sally in a German one, not to mention everyone going around backstage speaking in over the top German accents to begin with.

Our show opens tonight. I’m really trying not to get sick.

More later,

Me

Blog and Back Again

2009-11-06T19:55:00.000-08:00

Suggested Listening: Bananaphone by Raffi off the album Bananaphone

{{Thank you for calling Expedia.com’s customer support line. How may we assist you? Are you calling to book a flight, check on an existing reservation,…}}

I had scheduled my flight home for thanksgiving about a month and a half ago. I had planned to fly out on Tuesday and come back the following Monday, which saves a little money and avoids the big rush for the holiday.

And then I got into Cabaret…which meant that I had to be there on that Monday since it was the Monday before the show.

I’m on the phone with one of those automated systems.

“Existing Reservation”

{{…Thank you. Now, are you calling to change an itinerary, }}

“Yes”

{{ ask about special rates, rent a car}}

“Change an Itinerary.”

{{…one moment please.}}

sigh

“Hi thank you for calling Expedia’s customer service line. My name is Celia, may I have your full name?” Thank god a human. “And what are you calling about today?”

“Well, the thing is something’s come up and I need to change my flight.” I shrug. Nothing I can do about this.

“Lets look at your itinerary…I see you have a flight on the 24th of November from New York- JFK to Los Angeles LAX,”
“Yup”
“And a flight on the 30th of November from Los Angeles LAX to New York JFK.”
“Yesm”
“And what would you like to do?"
“Well I need to cancel the flight on the 30th and possibly change it to an earlier flight.”
“OK so you want to cancel your itinerary.”
“no just the one flight.”
“So you want to cancel the flight on the 24th?”
“30th”
“Ok so you want to cancel your return flight”
There we go. “Yes.”
“Why do you want to cancel this flight?”
“Well I can’t make the flight on the 30th and I need an earlier one.”
“ Are you sure you want to do this? There’ll be a fee for canceling your flight.”
“yup.”
“You want to cancel your flight.”
“Yes.”
“One moment please.”

I’m sure I’m not the only person who’s had to change their flight information. Stuff happens all the time…like getting cast in a play all of the sudden.

Celia comes back. “You want to change your return flight?”
“Still.”
“You understand that there will be a (blaaaaaaaah you’ve said this)”

It’s a pet peeve of mine when customer service people read from a script over and over again…granted that job doesn’t seem that fun so I should go easy on them.

“Yup. Still want to do it.”
“You’re sure?” It’s dissolving into an Abbott and Costello routine.
“Yes. I’m sure.”
“Ok…”

And finally I got my flight changed from Monday to Sunday. However, since I had also switched airlines I had to call the airline on which the ticket was originally purchased to let them know of the cancellation.

Delta.

Delta is…special as an airline

{{Thank you for calling Delta}} oooooh boy {{How may we assist you? Are you calling to make a reservation, ask about a current reservation }}

“Yes”

{{ ask about our travel packages, to hear these options again }}

“CURRENT. RESERVATION.”

-some time later-

“No, I don’t have a confirmation number. I just need to confirm with Delta that I’ve cancelled my flight on the 30th.”
“So you’ve cancelled your flight?”
“Yes”
“You are aware there is a fee for changing your flight. “ uhvwnwdnffgrrn
“It should be…I’m just calling to let you know that…”
“So you wish to cancel your return flight on the 30th.” Some progress.
“Yes.”
“may I have an email address to send the confirmation details?”
“C, the letter C, Jacobson at GM dot SLC dot EDU.”
“…so wait. GM @ SLC.EDU?
“Ah, no. GM dot SLC dot edu.” It is a confusing email address.
“SMC?”
“No no. SLC. Uh…sierra lima Charlie.”
“Ok. … ecu?”
“No. uh…uh emerald, dogma, unicorn?”
“Oh! Education!”
“Yes” he says as he exhales.
“So that’s Cjacobson@gm.saltlakecity.education”
“…yes.”

Well it somehow got sorted out and now everything’s all right. However the following morning I got an email confirming my cancellation with American Airlines for my flight on Tuesday.

{{Welcome to American Airlines. How may we assist you? Are you calling to book a flight, ask about a current itinerary... }}

Still busy as usual, It's been a while I know,

Chris.

p.s. All my flights are sorted now, so no worries people at home.

Closing Listening: Love Song for No One by John Mayer off the album Room for Squares.

You Blog Me 'Round (Like a Record)

2009-10-16T21:41:00.000-07:00

Suggested Listening: Who Says by John Mayer. (Off the album Battle Studies. However, the album isn't released yet. I have the single.)

So I’ve noticed something

I’m not sleeping. It’s gotten to be a problem

It’s more than the usual I’m thinking too much in bed to sleep. It’s just not happening. First off it takes me nearly an hour to actually GET to sleep, and then I’m only actually asleep for 4 hours or so before I just wake up again

I’ve tried everything under the sun, believe me. It’s just not happening. Student health recommended antihistamines.

Meanwhile,

Man I’m just busy. Soccer season in winding down, Cabaret is starting up, Blues ensemble is really great, and life is going all right right now.

There is this great thing coming up called October Study Days. This is where I usually catch on my sleep, especially this time around. Of course, the given point is to study. There are a few different things I’ve done during study days. For instance, I went to Alabama to visit my friend down there and experience that whole scene. That was pretty awesome.

So I’ll make sure to let you know of what goes on. Yes, I'll be studying and researching topics of importance some during the break.

Man I’m tired. I’m sure you guys can read it on here.

Uuuuuuuuuuh, oh! Right! That!

I used to drive the student shuttle around campus. One time I took a couple of people to their dorm and one was talking about being a dancer at SLC. “Essentially, my parents are paying 50,000 dollars for me to roll around on the floor meaningfully.”

I am proud to say that at the moment this class is Comedy Workshop. If my parents watched this class they’d wonder where all their hard earned cash is actually going to if all I’m doing in the workshop is…

Well for instance one of our warm up routines is to walk around the space, point to objects, and then clearly say what they weren’t. This is to free your imagination up and to let your stream of consciousness flow (something I have a pretty hard time with.)

So essentially, mommy and daddy are paying hand over fist to have Chrissy walk around pointing at stage lights and folding chairs calling them such things as “dog” and “vitamin.” This’ll all pay out in the end…I hope.

Thing is I’ve been having a problem with the class because I’m way in my head. That means I’m just checking up on everything I’m doing to make sure it’s the right thing to do in the situation, which is exactly the opposite of what you’re supposed to do in improv.

I’ve been chalking that up to having no real way to unwind so far this year. I still feel like my foot is firmly on the gas pedal and while I’m doing pretty well, I just need a few seconds to stop and…well…relax. I feel like I just can’t relax. Part of it is the sleep and the other thing is…something more.

I don’t know, honestly.

Blogfully yours,

Chris

Shameless Filler

2009-10-12T21:11:00.000-07:00

...

Look I'm really busy, but I still love you guys. So far senior year has been great but really packed. I mean, sure, lots of great stuff has been happening, but I'm coming back from my days just wiped out (plus I'm not sleeping which will be the topic of the next actual entry).

Keeping true to the blog schedule has been daunting. First comes school, then soccer, Cabaret, and then everything else. I'll try to be better about it, but truth is, I got other stuff going on.

Just wanted to say hi.

Love,

me.

The Lion Blogs Tonight

2009-09-28T19:43:00.000-07:00

Suggested Listening: Who Needs Sleep? by the Barenaked Ladies off their album Stunt

Well, where can I begin?

I kind of can’t remember where this lull in time started. I seem to remember something about a rant against Christian music and…I don’t know.

Sarah Lawrence does this to kids. Unless it’s work, you can’t use your brain for it. Right now it is occupied with World War One aircraft. One of my conference projects is looking at the role of airplanes in the Great War and it was a pretty sour idea to take up a project where the topic literally flies circles around my head.

But there’s really not much to write about. My work started this week and its actually really fun. I’m a senior interviewer, which means I interview prospective students applying to SLC. There’s actually not much to the job except stick to the party line and get the student to open up to you about whom they actually are. Then you put in your opinion on if he or she would be a good fit for the school.

I love this job. I have no idea why. I love it. There’s not much I can share about the job because, being in admissions, I cant tell you details of the process or who I talk to.

There have been two principle things that have been keeping me busy. Firstly, SLC. I seemed to decide that having an incredibly busy schedule would be great to have in my last year here. One day runs from 11 am to 10 pm, another from 9 am to 5 pm straight through.

Mom’s about to tell me to make sure I eat and get some rest.

Meanwhile, something much more interesting is soccer. I’m back with the team here and we’re practicing 4 nights a week (3 for me since one night is full up with classes.) It’s intense, actually. The coaches are running us a lot, which I like. I mean, its soccer. However, the league seems to have the idea that we shouldn’t be practicing or playing in the rain. Practice today and our game last Sunday for instance were cancelled because of rain. Its soccer…we should be playing in the rain. The soccer guys are great to hang around. However, it is not suggested you go telling one of them your high school nickname.

Bobby: Hey guys, Chris’s nickname in high school was Tom Cruise.
Guys: Haaaaaaaaa

It’s not just Tom Cruise now however. I wear a SAWA brace that is a…device specifically engineered to lower the chance of me dislocating my shoulder in sports. Its rather big and bulky but in the end just looks awesome. Once again the soccer guys:

Akash: What is that?
Daniel: what are you a cyborg now?
Peter: Yeah, T-1000

New nickname: Terminator, or T-1000 (which is a lot better than Tom Cruise). There’s also Kiwi, which comes from my ability to do a New Zealand accent, which they all demand I speak in.

That’s life for the most part. More later. I have to get back to doing important work.

Chris

p.s. This blog sounds exhausted because I am quite exhausted.

You Are Beautiful, My Sweet, Sweet Blog.

2009-09-15T12:14:00.000-07:00

Suggested Listening: Bridges by Lifehouse off the album Who We Are.

I…

I am really, really sick right now. I mean physically sick. Achoo, gezhunteit sick.

I’m starting out with this just because it’s been a good long time since something has knocked me so off my feet as this bug has.

Last weekend I got back to going to church up here at Trinity Grace. TGC (trinity grace church) is a relatively young community averaging around the 20’s and 30’s age group. It’s mostly college kids and college graduates which I find great because the teachings are always on a level that is easier to understand.

Now, allow me to rant.

Do you know what praise music is? It is probably the most terrifying innovation to happen to church music since the Medieval Church decided to keep things simple and canonical. Thank God for the Renaissance. Quote me on that. Todays new christian music is pretty much constructed as such: basic I-V-ii-IV (variations thereof) chords and just sing "Jesus" or "You are most Holy" every other bar and you're set. Brothers and Sisters in Christ Risen Again we have great music written by some of the best minds in this art: Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Hayden, Handel, Mendelssohn, the list goes on. Why are we listening to this stuff?

(warning, links pertaining to contemporary christian music rant contain really, really sappy songs. Just out to make a point, people. Sadly, my two song links are some of the better of the bulk of christian music out there. It goes very downhill very fast from here.)

There's some pretty good contemporary stuff out there. But for the most part, it’s all pretty dull.

This song, for instance, has one of the best hooks I’ve ever heard in a song written within the past 15 years. When it gets to the verses, however, it just falls apart into repetitive vapidness.

I think its tragic that such an amazing hook got used up in this manner. I know it would be plagiarism, but I want to take "You Are Beautiful, My Sweet, Sweet Song" and give it a proper soul and groove. Such a waste.

It's a fraking killer hook, isn't it?!

Er ok moving on.

After church, I got cupcakes with an old friend of mine from high school. You might recognize this friend of mine as the friend I frequently get into San Francisco vs. New York for “Greatest City in the World” arguments.

(Approximation)
Veronica: Well you know, New York is the greatest city in the
Me: San Francisco (interrupting)
V: How is San Francisco better than New York?
M: Sunshine, weather, happier attitude, and it's not New York.
V: Siiiiiigh. You’re just wrong.
M: You're wrong.

And that’s how it usually ends up. Even more heated are the LA vs. NYC arguments. I actually had not seen Veronica in a very long time and it was great to catch up. I know her from a way back in high school (you know, one of those kids who saw me as “Horton the Elephant”). There were also cupcakes. Magnolia Bakery does something else to their stuff that I can’t begin to explain. Apparently it’s just a lot more sugar in the baking process, but it just tastes so much better than everyone else’s efforts. I mean go figure. The sugar is so strong that you have to stop for 10 minutes sometimes to let your body recover after a few bites. Good times.

This was the first proper week of classes, if you could call it that. The first class of a course is always the “welcome, here are what books you need” talk and then you’re on your way. My classes this year, if I haven’t told you already, are:

History and Literature of the Two World Wars
Early Readings in Christianity
Jazz History 2
Jazz Theory 1
Comedy Workshop
Singers Workshop
Diction for Singers (groooooan)
Voice lesson
The Blues Ensemble

If you couldn’t guess it, I’m a pre-med major.

So far the devil class, i.e., the one responsible for future lamentations of not having a life on this blog will be the Two World Wars class. This week I had to finish a 400-page book and now I have two 100-page things on reserve to read for Wednesday. Meh, not a big deal. I love reading about this stuff. I have strange fascination with non-fiction books.

Reading has always been pretty hard for me, especially in school. I can hardly ever remember something I read if I find it too boring. However, if I’m really into a book, it takes me twice as long to read. This was a big problem sophomore year when we read War and Peace. I loved the book and therefore it took me twice as long to finish. I was supposed to knock it out in a month or so (two classes a week) and I just couldn’t go fast enough.

Soccer practice started this week, and I was in a lot better shape than I thought I was going to be. That is until I got sick. For some reason I got really slow and winded Thursday without doing much work. That night I got a huge cold.

Then a huge fever Friday night. This weekend, sadly, has consisted of me getting what rest I could.

But somehow I still managed to audition for SLC’s theatre department. There are two levels of auditions you have to run through before you’re cast into anything. First is a general audition in which you prepare two minutes of material’ either 2 one minute contrasting (one comedy, one dramatic) monologues or 1 two minute monologue. I performed “On Why Charlie Brown Hates Lunchtime” from You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown because it was a good piece to relate to and share with an audience. Apparently I did pretty well. I did get called back for our musical this year, Cabaret.

God knows how that’s going to turn out. Usually they post the cast lists the night callbacks end (which would have been Sunday.) Alert We Didn’t Start The Blog readers have by now noticed its Tuesday. No cast list. Grah!

I’ll keep you updated. Our first soccer game is this Sunday, against Albany College of Pharmacy. It’s a home game…but I have no idea where our home field is. So, there’s that.

Later,

Chris

p.s. this just in: I'm a Senior Interviewer at the Admissions Office.

(Don't Blog) The Reaper

2009-09-06T20:14:00.000-07:00

Suggested Listening: The Ballroom Blitz by Sweet

Whew

Earlier in the summer my family and I had a discussion regarding moving in. There were two options: with or without parents. I love the parents but I had such a thrill moving in on my own in New Zealand (and it would save us some coin) we decided to let me try this on my own. That meant one thing I wasn’t wholly sure I was able to do:

Drive in NYC. I’m under the family Zipcar plan so I booked myself a Honda Element (named Ellie) for the weekend to help carry around the boxes I sent back east. The Element has an incredible amount of space, which I needed, however it was like driving around in a military pillbox. It was almost too spacious, not too comfortable, and what really sealed the pillbox experience was that you had a 360-degree view from the drivers seat but it was a very narrow strip of window. Since you were pretty high up, it was difficult to see anything lower than about 4 feet high.

Driving in the city didn’t turn out to be all that bad. Just have the radio on to calm yourself down and you’ll be ok. It is like trying to dress yourself in the dark. You know you’re doing something right but when you finally turn on the lights you’re very surprised at the result.

I had a hotel room to myself. Lots of ESPN and baths were had.

Registration at Sarah Lawrence is just a little different than, oh, how everyone else does it. We don’t sign up for classes before we get to campus. We sign up the first week we’re here. All of us SLC kids run around the first week interviewing the professors of the classes we want to take and hoping to God almighty that we get into our classes. This year, for some reason, it seemed much, much more rushed and chaotic. The big reason for this, as my don, or academic advisor, pointed out, is that there is a significantly less number of classes offered this year. More kids fighting for less positions means more crowds and less time to get organized (or your room clean, like mine.) (It’s clean now.)

I got things jumbled up and I forgot to sign up for a required class in the music program. Usually I’m pretty meticulous about my scheduling. Mostly, this is because it’s packed. This year I’ve decided that it’s a fantastic idea to take 4 music classes and 3 theatre classes.

One of these theatre classes I had to audition for. It’s called “singers workshop”, better known with the theatre kids as “song class.” There had to be 30 kids that signed up for 10 slots. I got in. This after I took a REQUEST! I’ve never had to deal with a request at an audition. I had two songs: something Josh Groban sings and something Italian (my future album titles are going to be awesome. “Some songs…by, uh, me. Well I just sing them. Someone else wrote them. Like a couple of Italians and some dude in Westwood”) I was to sing 16 bars of the two songs and then roll along my way when,

“Know any ‘Stones?”

Wait, what?

“Like ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’ “

Uh sure.

I think that sealed the deal. By the way, it turns out I can reach Mick Jagger’s range. Hooray.

Come to think of it, and I’d hate to jinx it by mentioning my thoughts here on the blog, but I’ve had a pretty awesome week. I got into every class I signed up for. Every last one of them.

And they are: a class on Literature of the First Two World Wars, a Religion class examining the letters of Paul and John, Comedy Workshop, Singer’s Workshop, Jazz History 2 and Jazz Theory 1, and a couple of performance based classes as well as voice lessons.

My room is finished and decorated. It’s smaller than the room I had last year (and WAY smaller than my room in Weir House) but I have my huge California flag hanging up on the biggest wall, and a poster of a car next to my closet. It’s clearly my room.

Also my bed is made. I’m going to go sleep in it.

Later,

Chris

Blog On Top

2009-08-29T15:10:00.000-07:00

Suggested Listening: Channel Surfing by Feature Cast off the album Straight Out of the Cat Litter

(beware: surprisingly deep entry ahead)

So, I'm on a plane. Virgin America has WiFi. So at this very moment I'm online writing this. No mid flight shenanigans over the pacific and then writing about it later. No. This blog is LIVE!

Now...what to write about. Many of you know I have a massive west coast bias. I really do love Boston, DC, and many of the East Coast areas I've been...

Man it's just something about New York. (several blog readers just booed me, from the coasts of the Pacific to those green rolling mountains of Vermont. As always, you know who you are.)

My attitudes changed recently. Strangely enough it took a stay in New Zealand to get me to really examine my viewpoints on life. NZ does that to a guy. I used to sulk around just grimacing and avoiding anything NYC oriented . It became sort of a running gag with my friends. However, in truth, I was pretty immature about it. So:

(Big breath) I'm sorry. Most of my ideas and prejudices about the city came from only a few crummy experiences sprinkled in and around a few months in my first year at Sarah Lawrence. I got pretty thick headed and really just expected bad things to happen. Often times I'd just write the good things off as complete flukes.

So whats new? My time in New Zealand made me think about how I approach life and the people around me. I got tired of living in the shadow of a rather fractured and difficult elementary school life. It was almost second nature for me to shut myself away from anything and everythign that can hurt me. Sure, the city didn't hurt me, but at the time the stuff that happened was enough to get me to go back into my childhood and shut myself away from the things I -thought- could get at me. Wellington, and my abroad experience, in essence forced me out of a cave I had made for myself. You cant be too much in your own head and live in New Zealand. Its too active. It's too beautiful. I left challenging myself to break free.

I live with less fear, more action, and better sight now.

Man, this blog entry is getting personal in a hurry. In all honesty it's hard to explain. But, I'm no longer all grumpy about New York.

Last night I felt like a freshman again. Sophomore and Junior year I had similar expectations of how the year would turn out. I wouldn't give them much weight just because I would get down on myself over trivial things. I don't know how to put it. I didn't expect a year to have anything good. Of course there were great things going on but...I was too hidden if that makes sense. Last night I felt excited and scared all over again, eager and impatient to get it going. I walk taller now. Now I'm on a flight to try and renegotiate my experiences in the Big Apple. Its been the first time in a while I've felt like this.

Still, it's no San Francisco (or Los Angeles...Wellington, Chicago, Washington D.C., New Orleans, Seattle, Auckland, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Victoria, London, Paris, Geneva, Lausanne, Bern, Basel, you get the idea. Yes I have a new attitude about NYC, but... I just cant get in its rhythm or god knows what. I never will truly LOVE the city. It's alright, though... It's just not a favorite of mine. God knows what it is. Maybe I am just a west coast guy.) (that and I love my San Francisco and hometown LA.)

So yes, this is a live post from 32,000 ft above NNnnnnnevada? Colorado? One of those. Virgin America is sort of like the strange attempt to make a nightclub into a domestic airline. Its dimly lit with dark purple cabin lights, white LED reading lights, and white plastic seat backs fitted with trim black leatherette. I feel like this is the type of plane I would need to get carded to get into (not like I ever get carded however.) You can order food from your seat, pay for drinks at your seat, play videogames on the tv thing they have set up (they have DOOM. Oh, DOOM. Nostalgia.) Currently I'm waiting for the snacks I ordered to get here watching The Little League World Series. I gotta head on out right now, though. I'm running out of battery. Sorry to run out on you all of a sudden (and getting massively deep on you.)

Talk to you soon,

Chris

Closing Music: Come Fly With Me, as performed by Michael Buble off his self titled album. (I am quietly singing along)

Birdhouse in Your Blog

2009-08-26T23:38:00.000-07:00

BIG props if you know where that title comes from.

Suggested Listening: Carry On Wayward Son by Kansas off their self titled album.

It's my last week in LA...until thanksgiving, Christmas, etc. I've been helping mom move back into her classroom. One big improvement over last year is size. Her previous class was 26 and this years is 20. That doesn't seem that big of a change, but lets look at the 5th grade crowd energy equivalence equation:

Go easy on me, I go to Sarah Lawrence.

let k= Kid energy at a 5th grade level (1 kid energy = 2.5 adult energy), a= normal full grown adult energy, C=Crowd size at an adult energy level.

equation for finding full sized adult energy equivalent found in a group of kids:
a= C(k)

a=26(2.5)

a=65

figure for this year:

a=20(2.5)

a=50

So, losing 6 kids equals a loss of about the energy of 15 grown adults. That's a lot of people to deal with...theoretically.

That equation probably has all sorts of wrong in it.

Ok I promise I will never do that again. You teachers out there know what I'm talking about. Except then there are the parents. (Ominous Music)

Back to the topic. Mom usually uses me to reach the tall places of the class room to staple decorations as well as plug in electronics and carry heavy books. I can't really understand how these guys do it. Their required book load for each day at school has to be...20 pounds at least. That's pretty ridiculous.

I found myself at a couple of concerts this past weekend. My buddy Ian is a rather avid ZZ Top fan. We were originally going to go sunday to the Aerosmith AND ZZ Top concert at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater. Hoooowever (and I think the day Ian got the tickets) Steven Tyler took a nasty fall off a stage and Aerosmith had to cancel their end of the tour. ZZ Top kept on going though, booking smaller venues for their end of the act. In LA, they played the Hollywood House of Blues which is a surprisingly cozy and well put together venue. Its a chain so it's nothing individual about it (i.e. not a cool local spot because its technically not local) but good place to go see a show. ZZ Top is of course one of those old aging rocker groups your dad listens to (and me) but they still have their swagger. They don't really have that many fancy gimmicks, just some solid rock music. Still just as cool as they were at the start of their career too, and any group that does that spot on of a Foxy Lady cover gets major live performance props.

Did I mention their Encore set included Slash and John Mayer? It was that awesome. I'm usually sort of a casual observer type at a concert: arms crossed, tapping my foot, going "Hmm, nice." This made me break out of my shell. When music really moves me I laugh and laugh hard (ok well not like Beethoven but...). It's joyous to me when it really comes together.

I mean it was ZZ Top, Slash, AND John Mayer on stage at the same time! When they announced they'd be coming on stage I didn't believe it. I still can't rightly believe it. It's just too good to be true.

Rock geek out over.

Monday night took me to Spaceland: a club on Silver Lake in Los Angeles. It was good to go because it contains the highest concentration of hipsters in the Greater LA City area, prepping for my return to SLC. I went with my friend Frances for her "Frances is going into surgery tomorrow party."

an aside: Frances was hit by a car and her clavicle was broken pretty badly. Surgery went well but please keep her in your thoughts/prayers.

Only Frances would think to have a party before she goes under the knife. It was pretty laid back with only a few friends (it was monday after all) but pretty nice. The bands were pretty much all Oasis clones which is fine...if you're trying to be an Oasis clone. If you're trying to make it on your own as your own sound, then create your own sound.

Im not sayin, but just sayin, ya know?

I think the animals know I'm moving away again. They were none to happy about the amount of time I spent in New Zealand. They followed me around for a week and a half. All of them. Making sure I wasn't going to disappear again. Well they put two and two together when they saw a bunch of boxes lying around my room and began protesting.

This means sitting on the boxes. Rosie and Ninja do that the most. Ninja also follows me around trying to bite my ankles (but thats not new. He just does it more.) Sadie would find something that would get me to stop paying attention to packing and start paying attention to her.

Sadie: (running through the den) I HAVE YOUR SAANNNDDDLLLEE!
Me: No! Bad!
Sadie: Can I have a cookie now?

Sadie, once she figures out what she did was bad (or something), will lower her head, but not really know what to do so she still holds onto the object, just trying to hide it from us.

Tigger...however...has decided that he rather likes my bed. Newly retired from outdoor work he's been trying to take it over...while I'm sleeping in it. I kept having nightmares of being trapped in an incredibly small space only to wake up with Tigger happily purring sprawled across both of my legs. His two favorite moves to get me to wake up past the point of no return to sleep are to wait till I'm on my back lie on my upper chest inches from my face and purr or slowly take over the pillow. The other day he lay on the open spot of the pillow from where I rolled over and wrapped his body around the back of my head...and purred.

Yes it's cute but I couldn't sleep! It was 6 in the morning! Not like Sadie is helping either at that hour:

Sadie: HEY! People are SLEEPING! I shall protect my people, who are sleeping, from you! Whoever you are! Stay away!

Ninja's clawing at my leg right now. I should sleep.

I keep falling in love with my hometown. This past couple of weeks did it for me again.

Chris

p.s. Now is also a good time to shamelessly plug my twitter page.

www.twitter.com/seajaytogo

I'm a tool. I capitulated. It's fun though.

Closing music: La Grange by ZZ Top. Just imagine this song going on for 7-8 minutes including 2 solos each by Billy Gibbons (lead guitar for ZZ Top) Slash, and John Mayer. Nothing rocked me harder since the 1994 Northridge Earthquake (and I LIVED in Northridge at the time so that's saying something.) ...Ok Rock geek out NOW done.

Hello Seattle, I Am the Crescent Blog

2009-08-19T00:22:00.001-07:00

Suggested Listening: The Bird and the Worm by Owl City off the album Ocean Eyes

Sorry about the wait, guys. This week has been pretty rushed.

There are several perks to being the brother of an airline pilot. I don't know if this is a perk, per se, but knowing what goes on in the airplane can be pretty helpful. Like for instance, the truth about cell phones on the plane.

At least according to Rob.

If, and only if, a majority of the plane's passengers were using their phones, then it would "interfere" with Aircraft systems, but apparently not that much. One cell phone won't down an aircraft (I accidentally proved this when I forgot to turn off my cell on my way back to LA from NYC and got a text message from someone while I was somewhere over Missouri. Whoops) Its mostly because of other reasons that the friendly desks at the FAA tell you to turn off your phones. Firstly, If you're at 35,000 feet above a major metropolitan area, your phone is going to find all the cell towers it can. If you try to make a call, the phone will either not place the call, or place the call and multiply the cost by how ever many cell towers it reaches. Second, yes, if a lot of people are on the phone, the electromagnetic interference will mess with some of the communication equipment a bit. Thirdly, and I think the most obvious benefit of having your phone switched off, do you REALLY want to be sitting next to some guy going on about his summer home in the Hamptons and how he's had to sell one of his maaaaaaaannnnnyyy timeshares around the world because of the tough economic times and Muffy wants a Prius and the kids want a puppy, again, and... for the entire flight? Me neither.

Most of the other reasons are a bit too scary to post on the blog (like the REAL reason you put your seat backs and tray tables in your upright and locked positions for takeoff and landing)

Probably the best benefit of having a pilot brother is the discounts. The airline he flies for will let me use a pass system in which I can take any left over seat on any flight on the airline for a severely discounted price. For instance:

A couple of weekends ago I went to Seattle for 60 dollars round trip. I knew the parents flew for less than that as well. The catch is: you have to fly "
stand by." Usually you have to fly stand by if you miss a flight or offer to give up your seat on your current flight because its oversold. You might think giving up your seat on a flight seems silly but they give you money, usually they try to refund your ticket (as well as put you on the next flight. Essentially, you fly for free). For instance: I gave up my seat coming back from a flight from Chicago to LA and got a voucher for $350 towards my next flight. I visited my friend at the University of Alabama with that money.

er anyway.

Flying standby means that you might not get on a flight at all. As family of an employee we're pretty low on the food chain. First come employees, previous ticket holders, parents, and then pass holders (me. they don't count brothers as "family") (peh). Naturally, we didn't get on the first flight. There was only one flight left after the one we didn't make so...in short things get tight. Flights sell more tickets than seats because they figure many people drop out at the last minute. However...people tend to travel on one flight more than another, like the 8 p.m. out of LAX to Seattle. I barely got on the last one.

Once you get used to the procedures of stand by, it isn't so bad. Usually you just do the same things you do to keep yourself occupied on the flight. I'm re reading the 7th Harry Potter book. (I know a bunch of you just squee'd. you know who you are)

update: finished the book last night. (more squeeing)

Seattle is an interesting town. It's sort of a hipster haven, but that isn't really news. Its one of my favorite places to go. Its quiet, but enthusiastic as a city. It still has the concept of a "neighborhood." Rob, while we were driving around, commented on how he loved that these little neighborhoods just sort of "pop up" on street corners. The primary purpose of this trip was to look at Rob and Keri's new place. They live in "West Seattle" ... wait I think its "North Seattle"... ok look their place is really nice and has a great view of the city. They also have a new dog now. Millie. Millie is named after Aviation Legend and Pioneer (bloggers note: To all my SLC writers out there, are you a pioneer before a legend, or is being a legend more important and therefore comes before pioneer?) She has this...trick she does. She gets enough speed to jump onto the couch, bounce off the seat, onto the back rest, and catapult off of it onto whatever she wants. In this case, me. A hilarious small something whatchamacall it dog with plenty of hair flying towards your face is quite a sight. They also have a Wii which is a hoot. It's a great way to spend time playing video games that pretty much everyone can enjoy. It's also a great way to find out how competitive I am, but thats another story. We only really spent one full day there. Saturday morning we went to this intensely interesting breakfast place. The food was so-so but the restaurant was also an independent record store. So while you're waiting for your food you strolled around looking at the new music. It was pretty awesome. We saw a movie (500 Days of Summer. Possibly the best "break up" movie ever made so far. It really nails the process from the inside out. Plus it two of my favorite young actors in it in Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel.) and ate at this top end restaurant and I promptly got food poisoning.

think I wanted a vacation more than I thought. I had a genuine "wtf?!" moment in my life that week and needed to unwind a bit. Now I'm just packing to go back to SLC. I'll keep writing. I do need a proper word processing program for the newly resurrected laptop though.

--CJ

P.s. New Book: James Michener's "Hawai'i"

Blog No Shadow

2009-08-05T13:47:00.000-07:00

Suggested Listening: Keep the Dream Alive by Oasis off the album Don't Believe the Truth

Yeah it has been...what? Two Weeks? Aaaah haaaaah sorry.

I still don't have a proper writing program on my computer so I'm pulling this one off the top of my head as I go. Admittedly this might be a more amusing approach to blogging.

Golf is a four letter word. Often this four letter word is something along the lines of $@^$, sometimes *^@$, and my favorite: @%)#! I say this because I've been playing a little bit of @&%( er... golf this year. I tend to hit the ball well and well to the right. If you've ever played or watched golf you'll know that the whole point of the game is to hit it straight towards the hole, not hit other people playing on the course, like I usually end up doing. The place I've been playing recently is called Scholl Canyon (not a typo). This course was built on an old landfill which makes things interesting. The terrain is very up and down, not to mention riddled with rattle snakes. My favorite thing about this place though is the sign posts on a couple of the holes that read "Danger: Landfill Gas". Reading that will give you all the confidence you need to get the heck up out of wherever your ball landed.

Which as previously stated, is about 100 yards to my immediate right. It should be noted that on some holes my immediate right is a canyon. I tend to lose my ball a lot. No worries, though. You're supposed to "mark" your golf balls just in case you get one lost or one lands right next to someone elses. In typical SLC kid fashion, I mark my balls in an un-traditional way.

Golfer 1: Lose your ball?
Me: Yup. Its a Nike-1. Is it over there somewhere?
Golfer 1: ... Is it the one with the smiley face winking at me?
Me: Sounds about right.

If you're going to mark your ball, mark your freakin' ball. My friends who golf with me know this all to well.

I've had to delete several sentences in the previous few paragraphs for unintentional "my balls" jokes.

-Seamless transition to...-

Frannie is in town, officially! She got a Dodger hat and USC shirt because, because she knows me, she is now a dodger and usc fan. She's living in downtown near Union Station (sorry i just gave away your address to God and everyone) which, historically (At least in my life) has been a REALLY dodgy area. However, her neighborhood looks pretty safe, is filled with friendly people, and is slowly getting pretty well developed with the addition of the Metro Gold Line east-side extension easily accessible to downtown and Hollywood (even though our light rail and subway systems are still pretty useless. fun though) .

For the past couple of weekends, I've been spending time with Maddie (hey!). We explore this fine and vast cityscape of ours. First round out on the town we stumbled into Tiffany's in Beverly Hills and discovered the most expensive item in the store was...a jewel encrusted parrot for $44,000 (as far as we could find at least). The other day we landed in Ripley's Believe It or Not (after munching on ice cream at the Santa Monica Pier and avoiding creepy-as clowns and crowds) (and after I wasted an hour looking for parking. heh) which is an ...iiiiinteresting place to fall into. Its full of random facts and weird things to look at, albeit you have to have a strong stomach for the "people impaled by things" section. Hey, it's Hollywood. There's also, for some good reason I'm sure, a staged collapsing balcony. I found this out through my impeccable inductive reasoning system:

(Stands on the balcony) (balcony collapses rapidly down an inch or so)
me: woah
maddie: what?
me: this thing just jerked down a bit. hmm.
maddie: oh. thats cool.
(I step off the balcony, maddie steps on)
(balcony jerks up suddenly back to its original position)
maddie: YAH! (surprised, suppressed laughter)
me: what?
maddie: it juh...it...just sprung back up and...gih...god.
me: haaaaa (point)

More entries as the summer continues, and as I get less lazy.

--Chris

War! HUMH! Good God, yawl! Whuut is it GOOD for?! Absolutely Nothing! Blog it again, yawl.

2009-07-24T10:17:00.000-07:00

Suggested Listening: Theme (Tank!) by The Seatbelts from the Cowboy Bebop original soundtrack.

We have a slight problem. The wildlife is attacking.

Not like this should surprise us at all, being that we've lived in this place for over 10 years now. But they've learned a new tactic: invasion.

Usually the wildlife up on our hill has been a nice distraction, as in occasionally a deer will stroll by and munch on some grass. This gets the following reactions from the family members:

mom: Oh! a deer!
dad: Oh that's nice
me: What? oh. deer.
mom: There's a baby with it!
me: That's cool. (watches it munch on grass)
dad: let me get the camera
Sadie, the dog: DEER?! WHERE?! Stay away, STAY AWAY! I shall save you, family! BE GONE STRANGE BROWN THING! I live here! SADIE! ME! I'm Here! STAY AWAY!
Deer: -run away!-
us: shut up, Sadie
Sadie: Can I have a cookie? Look! I'm sitting!
us: no
Sadie: pleeeeeeeeeeease?

This time, though, the animals have started to take advantage of our prime real estate (I blame the economy.) There are a couple of reasons for this. First off because we're in a dry spell most of the food has gone, not surprisingly, uphill. Therefore everyone in the food chain is moving up hill. The bigger reason for this rise in animal activity is that Tigger is retired. Tigger is, or was, our outdoor utility cat in charge of killing things. He's a bit old now, and slow, so we keep him in a lot more than we used to. All the things he used to kill are now moving back.

Like mice. One was trying to burrow into the house through one of the closets. It sounded like one of our cats got stuck in a room and was trying to paw itself out. Instead all of our cats were in the hallway, glowering at the noise. There's a crawl space that leads under the house that's used for checking the foundation and this is how the mouse found its way in. So there we had it, mouse, trying to get through several layers of house. What ended up working was me filling up my old super-soaker (CPS 2100. Accurate, light weight, to the point, best one they've ever made), myself crawling under the house and putting a few rounds under where the closet is. Thing hasn't been back since.

There are also squirrels. If sheep are hilarious, and they are, squirrels are evil. We have been keeping Tigger in the garage to help fend off mice and such in there. One night, Tigger wont come near his food dish, and the dish is licked clean. Not only that, the cat food container was ripped open. We washed the dish, fed him again, and he dug right in. The next night one of us heard a "thunking" noise coming from the front of the garage (our garage doesn't have any cars, just lots of boxes). Wary, we put Tigger inside and set up a video camera to see if we can catch whoever was in there.

Two Squirrels. We think they might be living in there. So far, we have no real good idea how to get rid of them. Websites have suggested that if they don't immediately leave (some do) we should call animal control. The other night I found Tigger's food dish, apparatus, thing, flung CLEAR ACROSS the garage and the food container, now locked shut, nearly torn apart. Literally.

It might be war.

So there's that. Have a good weekend,

Chris

Sadie: I brought your sandals for you. Can I have a cookie?
Chris: Drop it. No.
Sadie: Can I chew on your sandals?
Chris: No! Stop it!

All I wanna do is have some fun until the Blog comes up over Santa Monica Blvd.

2009-07-20T21:52:00.000-07:00

Suggested Listening: Suits Are Picking Up The Bill by Squirrel Nut Zippers.

My computer died. Therefore all my saved original copies of entries were all washed away with the tide of megabytes and other computery things. Luckily not much else was lost...except for all the nifty ringtones I had.

Rats.

In other news I'm going to start backing up my stuff.

But this week:

It has been great seeing my friends back here in LA. Not only that, I had underestimated how nice it would be to be back in 80 degree weather. Shorts and Sandals for everything I do.

Thats Sandals, not Jandals. You know who you are out there.

Its hard to write these things on the fly. I'm used to writing them on word, polishing them up a bit, and then posting them. Oh, great, that's another thing I lost: microsoft word.

I know it's a bit lame to talk about stuff you're THINKING of doing, but that's just it: I'm still entering into my summer vacation so not much has been planned out. I want to get scuba certified and learn to surf, or martial arts, god knows what. I'll let you know what I end up doing. Do have much more time to blog now, obviously.

Things I have done so far: Return trip to Menchies, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince movie going (I saw it at 10 am. That is weird, but worth it) (I'm not THAT much of a fan), mini golf, bowling (My buddy Ian can curve the ball, by the way. Nasty stuff. I can...uh...not.) and the worlds best mexican food joint with my brother. That was fun. He's an airline pilot and was in LA for two hours so I picked him up, went to a local place (Tito's Tacos) (apparently THE taco joint down here)

Ive been hauling around some NZ money I kept from my trip to show to people. I have a $5 bill and several coins and they're good things to show around. I think they look cool. I never mentioned the money in earlier blogs. Its color coded, sorta. The 5's are orange, 10's are blue, 20's green, 50's pinkish, 100's are...can't remember but you get the idea. They also have holes in them, sort of. There are plastic spots in the bills that are almost like windows but have a small little symbol in them. Nifty.

If you're from NZ and reading this: Ours are just green. Other people's money is always kinda cool to us.

I'm starting a new section of the blog called "things I forgot to tell you that were pretty funny." They'll all be pretty out of context stories I meant to write in earlier blogs but completely forgot about.

Like this: We went to an island night one night on Aitutaki. It's a dinner and show put on by the locals to demonstrate some of the local dances and culture, much like a luau for Hawai'i (NZ readers: what is a Maori one called? I never remembered its name) Anyway after the show me and the parents were walking back to the car.
me: Did we pay?
Mom: No idea. Did we pay?
Dad: ... I think so.
me: Great. I always knew the first time I dined and ditched would be with you guys.

I was joking.

I was right however. The next morning we got a knock on the door from one of the staffers from the restaurant where the island night was held wondering when we were gonna pay.

awesome.

Right, this blog is getting out of hand.

I'm sleepy.

--CJ

No Shirt, No Blogs, No Problems

2009-07-13T14:42:00.000-07:00

Suggested Listening: Into Yesterday by Sugar Ray

If you couldn’t guess, I didn’t have Internet in the Cook Islands.

And I didn’t care.

When I booked my flights to and from New Zealand through IFSA-Butler, I was given the option (we all were) to add on a stay over on either the Cook Islands or… Fiji, I think. My family and I opted for the Cook Islands just for a place to lay back a bit more before going home to LA. The Cook Islands are pretty much due directly northwest from New Zealand and only a 3-hour flight or so. They’re pretty, we like secluded island getaways, so why not.

Where you land is Avarua, on the island of Rarotonga, which is the main island of the cluster. The Cook Island chain is a series of ancient volcanoes formed by the pacific plate passing over a hot spot, much like the Hawaiian Islands currently. The Cook Islands, however, are ancient volcanoes that have sunken into the ocean protected by surrounding reefs. This makes for just straaaaange fish life and gorgeous private lagoons. It was almost as if the islands had their own little private oceans for you to explore.

I just got back from a Disney movie, please pardon the sugary metaphors.

One of the good things about the Cook Islands is that it LOOKS like a proper tropical island. Lots of tropical plant life and incredibly blue water. From what I hear it’s also a lot like what Hawaii was 20 to 30 years ago. Hawaii is pretty thoroughly developed today so that when you’re out on an ocean kayak looking back at the island you see high rise apartments, hotels, things like that. Rarotonga and Aitutaki, the islands I went to, are still pretty untouched by mainstream commercialism. Rarotonga has one road that goes around the island, and every other road connects to that one, aptly called “the road.”

We arrived at Rarotonga sometime after 1 in the morning, and with the added time of getting bags and going through customs, arrived at our hotel sometime after 2 30 am.

And this is what I woke up to:

Dear Santa Monica. This is what the Pacific Ocean is supposed to look like.

Before we continue: When I was in Auckland I noticed a lot advertisements for the islands as a couple’s paradise, and it is. Aitutaki especially was surrounded by just lush tranquil paradise and a clear blue cove; just immense beauty perfect for sharing with that special someone.

There were couples everywhere: either happily married, happily to be married, or one of them was proposing to the other that night. I’m single. It was a little rough. Moving on.

Aitutaki was the main island we stayed on. We went there because my dad heard a pretty good write up on the island as an incredible peaceful get away and it is. The flight over circled the island cluster of (there is one big one, and then several small ones) the lagoon before landing which was a real surprise. Everyone on board thought it was what usually happens so a few of us applauded when we landed. The truth was there was a casket on board with a local killed in an automotive collision and the entire island turned out to see him back home. There’s no real solid way to segway into talking about the amazing community we experienced on the island. They’re just good people down there, eager to help and patient with the sometimes blatant ignorance of some tourists. There’s not enough I can say about the local islanders in this blog. Everyone was friendly, laid back, and helpful.

Being this far away from “civilization” had some drawbacks. Our rental car was a mid 90’s station wagon with only one air conditioning setting (less than gentle blizzard) and a rear window wiper that, when turned on, would sound like someone stepping on and releasing off of a squeaky toy. We named our proud little car the White Rhino. Mom barely managed to drive on the left side of the road. To her credit, it is quite hard. I wouldn't know because I had lost my wallet in Auckland and didn't have a drivers license on me...or money. We had also decided to stay at a given place when we found out our first choice was booked. This place didn’t have air conditioning. Fans, but no air conditioning. It’s pretty hard for me to sleep in heat. I can do it, sure, but overall it was a bit more work than we were expecting during our vacation.

Not to mention mosquitoes bit us a bit. I ended up with 39 bites in total over 4 days. Repellant doesn’t seem to do…anything. Instead of “Chris” I become “Chris with a lovely tropical glaze.”

Snorkeling was the big highlight of the trip. I’m a water kid in that I’m usually in the nearest body of water swimming and exploring around it. When friends go to the beach, they’re on the sand reading a book, I’m in the water. Its how it is.

Er anyway

Aitutaki’s lagoon is protected by a large reef as previously stated which has left the coral life pretty much untouched by natural predators. This makes for some good wildlife viewing. There were several types of fish: cute small blue fish, very bright blue fish, stripy fish, big stripy fish, sorbet fish, Willem Dafoe Fish and the elusive “Ah! I think I know what that one’s called!” fish. Just gorgeous sealife viewing. Oh yeah, saw an eel. That’s pretty cool, seeing a bunch of stuff that you can only get in aquariums out here.

I'm standing about a quarter mile out to sea. Its a pretty large sand bank. Geology is lovely.

Another thing worth mentioning is Te Puna’s Restaurant. It’s in what is essentially a persons garage decorated with sand on the floor, carved roof supports, and so-so table covers but….good lord the food was fantastic. It kept getting written up the guest book for our flat so we had to try it. It was absolutely fantastic.

In short, get a place with air conditioning and try not to be single. In all fairness though, you won’t care. I am disappointed I didn’t have more time in Aitutaki because if I had about 2 more days I could have gotten scuba certified down there. I mean, why not? That got put on the list of stuff I wanna learn (list: drift a car, more advanced race car driving all together, singing and acting of any type, pilots license, sailing lessons, surfing lessons, now scuba. Plus I want to scuba dive on a shipwreck one day. Hooray for tangents)

So now I’m here in LA. The flight home was a bit terrible. We all managed to get sick and I couldn’t get much sleep for those 9 hours. Only did just get over my cold. I made the flight in shorts and flip flops because I was bitten so much I couldn’t wear pants and shoes because it irritated the bites so much.

Good to be home though. Cats and Sadie say hi.
They also so say feed us.

I’ll be right back.

Hang Loose,

Chris

Open Letter to the People of New Zealand

2009-06-29T22:52:00.000-07:00

Dear New Zealand,

It was an interesting time to try and study abroad in my life. I knew I had to get away from the United States for a little bit while in university at Sarah Lawrence. The idea behind coming here was to be very much out of my comfort zone in a new country and new hemisphere. I’m sitting here in the Auckland airport reflecting on how fast and how hard 2009 has hit me. Life hit me like a whirlwind this semester. I’m glad I wasn’t at home for any of it though. You guys couldn’t have been more hospitable and friendly while I tried to navigate my new surroundings. It was the best place at the right time. It’s actually really hard to write this. Being here has helped me in more ways than I can possibly retell on a Microsoft word document. I had a lot of fun here, and I’m going to miss it very much. I’ll especially miss the atmosphere, surroundings and the pace. It’s just a good place to be. I feel like I have made a second home here. You guys deserve much more than a dinky little paragraph. This place was beautiful for me.
Thank you.

Love,

Christian

Ice, Blog, Baby.

2009-06-28T23:15:00.000-07:00

Man that title was a stretch...anyway,

Suggested Listening: Is It Any Wonder? by Keane off the album Under the Iron Sea

Sometime in the history of human kind, two people were bored. Coincidentally they lived on the side of a giant mountain that earlier had been hit by a giant snowstorm. The first person turns to the other and says,
“I just had an idea.”
“What is it?” the second person says.
“What if we took those two planks of wood over there,” the first person says, gesturing, “strap them to our feet, and slide down the snow on the mountain?”
“Wouldn’t that be dangerous?” The second said, a bit baffled at the prospect of possibly hurtling headlong into a boulder or tree.
“Yup.”
“Well then lets do it.”

And that's how the sport of skiing was born.

I first went skiing round about 4 years ago with my church youth group at one of Big Bear’s two ski fields, Bear Mountain. Bear Mountain, if you’re not local to the Southern California area, is known as a place with snow. To ski enthusiasts, it's known a place with apparently horrendous skiing conditions in that since Bear relies so heavily on re…uh…recycled (?) snow developed through snow machines over night it creates very icy conditions. Hitting a patch of icy snow usually results in one leg going one-way and your body … not. So I was in for a treat going to a proper skiing area.

Views from a proper skiing area.

But then again skiing never was a really “safe” idea. Loads of fun though. This is probably the most varied trip climate wise I’ve taken. But, being in Queenstown I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go skiing in June…and then consequently gloat a little bit about it.

Or a lot.

Back to the topic: There are several differences between Big Bear and Coronet Peak, where I went in the Queenstown area. Big Bear has its runs carefully carved out of preexisting forests, which provide tricky obstacles for beginners such as myself. Also a bit of an obstacle was that I thought that green slopes were harder than blue slopes. It’s the other way around. I found this out the hard way on my first day skiing. Coronet Peak, and apparently most of the other ski areas in NZ, has little to no natural obstacles on the slopes. Southern Alpine natural plant life is short and shrubby, if that’s a word, so there are no trees to get up close and personal with. Coronet peak, therefore, is just one giant hill essentially (well several different hills carved out of the mountain.). It was a great place to re learn everything I had gathered from my first trip skiing four years ago. Since my dad elected to take a class and mom elected to read a book, I was on my own for pretty much the whole day.

Firstly I stayed pretty much on the green slopes just to help myself remember how to ski. Took a bit longer than I had expected (almost the entire day) but it was fun. I tended to fall a lot and bend my legs in strange forms but I expected as much. The biggest problem I have is speed. I feel perfectly comfortable behind the wheel of a car going at speeds not exactly recommended or allowed on public roads but when it comes to strapping to sticks to my feet and sliding down some white stuff I have a hard time convincing myself that going faster is a good idea. A bit contradictory, I know. I suppose its sort of like riding a bike, slow is a bad idea if you want to be in control, but to get up to speed and control in skiing you have to do everything your brain is telling you –not- to do. First off you have to be leaning forward a bit, bending at the knees and turning with the opposite foot of the direction you want to go (i.e. turning right meant lifting up with your right foot a bit and putting weight on your left). Stopping is another issue. When you’re first learning you learn a carrot or wedge maneuver, which helps you stay in control as a beginner. Sooner or later you have to learn another way to stop, primarily just turning really sharply and kicking up a lot of snow in the process.

Again I’m writing this with no idea if I’m doing this right or not. I could remember the wedge maneuver, but could never really turn all that well with left me with the wedge, even at higher speeds. Ways I got around this: going up hill and never going that fast in the first place, but that’s no fun. In one of my attempts to slow down and figure out some tricks to turning I managed to ski uphill right into a snow bank. My skis caught the bottom of it and I promptly fell face first.

One I had gotten around turning, I had to learn to get my speed under control. You essentially zig zag on a hill to keep yourself at a steady pace. I was practicing this a bit wheeeennn…

I fell, yes, but I split my legs a bit when I fell and heard a very peculiar popping sound. I checked myself over to make sure that it wasn’t a part of my body breaking…then I felt a draft.

Down there

Yeah I ripped my jeans straight down the…interesting bits. My jacket did cover it up when I was standing up straight but my parents did make it a point to make fun of me for ending up like that.

One of the more enjoyable things of the day was riding the ski lift. Skiing alone means that you get paired up with someone else on a chair so I met a lot of interesting characters: a 40 year old woman from Australia just here on holiday, a junior snowboarder (who promptly fell over once he exited the lift…felt bad for him), a guy my age from the UK who works in NZ as a ski instructor, but the guy who took the cake so to speak was Jon from Figi. Jon is 8.

“Hey”
Hey.
“I’m Jon. What’s your name?”
I’m Chris. Good to meet you. Where are you from?
“Figi. How about you?”
Los Angeles. I was living in Wellington for the past 6 months though.
“Oh, that’s cool.”

“Do you listen to Slipknot?”
my brain: What?!
Me: uuuuh no. doooo you?
“Yah I rather like death metal.”
My brain: You’re 8, kid!
Me: not that into death metal, yah.
“Yeah, its cool.”

Slipknot at 8. Good lord man.

Good meeting people though. Was properly sore after that day of skiing. Yesterday we went to the Ice Bar, which as its name indicates is a Bar made out of ice. You buy a ticket into the bar, which covers the costs of drinks, and you can only stay in there for a bout 30 minutes or so since it is at 20 degrees Fahrenheit (to be more precise, its –5 Centigrade hence the name of the bar: -5.). It was just us in the bar though so we made nice with the bartender and such.

Oh yah the glasses are made out of ice. I had something pear flavored. Oh, also in the bar next to it (named the Boiler Room) I had possibly the best drink of my life. It was called the Randy Little Kiwi. Its mashed up kiwi fruit, a spoonful of brown sugar, midori, vodka, (lots of both) apple juice, shaken served chilled with two straws and a slice of kiwi fruit. Good LORD it was tasty.

So now I’m here on a plane going to Auckland. It’s particularly choppy too; we’re heading straight into a rainstorm. Oh goody.

So in short, don’t go skiing in jeans

One more day in New Zealand,

Chris

The Blog Illusion

2009-06-27T17:37:00.000-07:00

Suggested Listening: 3x5 by John Mayer off the album Room for Squares

I would have pictures

I would have links

But the fact of the matter is the Internet where I am right now is the slowest I’ve ever seen. This includes my home in Los Angeles, and THAT, my friends, is saying something.

I will aspire to do as best as I can with the written word. I do go to Sarah Lawrence after all.

My parents, having their son go to New Zealand to study, decided to come and pick him up because, well, they can visit New Zealand in the process.

No I’m not being “picked up” so to speak. But mom did bake cookies for A-Floor. By the way, a-floor, bug Kev, he has the cookies.

I joined up with them the middle of last week in their hotel room in Wellington. It was nice to be with people who pay for your food. I just impossibly great steak at this place called Sweet Mothers Kitchen. A couple from New Orleans made their way down to Wellington to become chefs and open a restaurant. And the food is…amazing. Early Wednesday morning we got onto the interislander ferry, which was a hoot. It’s a pretty decked out ferry with reclining chairs, two café’s, a bar, a private lounge, a video arcade, and film viewing room. It is quite the operation for a three-hour voyage.

What was really stunning was that when we arrived at Picton the boat was greeted by what had to be 20 or 30 of the local dolphins. Man I wish the picture thing worked at my current hotel. I’ve been trying to upload pictures to this entry but the Internet is so slow…it just wont work.

Naturally, we took the train from Picton to Christchurch, and then took a train day excursion through the Alps, which of course made for some great pictures…which I can’t upload. One thing that was insanely fun and a bit foggy safety wise was an open-air rail car. It was a rail car at the end of the train (in both trains) with no seats, a few handrails, and a roof. It was a freakin barrel of monkeys to ride on when it wasn’t packed to the gills with tourists. The day excursion train went through Arthur’s Pass that is surrounded by towering rocky mountains covered in snow.

Which I took pictures of.

So now I’m in a bed and breakfast in Queenstown, and the Internet is so ridiculously slow I’m forced to show you guys these things later.

It is quite beautiful here.

--Chris

Blogging for the Weekend

2009-06-22T06:01:00.000-07:00

Suggested Listening: No Such Thing by John Mayer off the album Room for Squares

It seems unreal.

I’ve spent the better part of 6 months here, and in about two weeks I’ll be back in Los Angeles.

Yah, that Los Angeles.

This week I’ve been feeling exceptionally weird. When I’m at college back in the ‘States I fly back for Christmas and spring break and what you will. Here, well, I lived here. I took spring break here, all two weeks of it. It was the first place I really did live on my own to some degree. When you spend 6 full months of your life somewhere so far away from the familiar it can grow on you.

This was my last weekend here.

Friday was spent with the Americans. We went around the bars, again, mostly just Hotel Bristol and Boogie Wonderland, affectionately known as "The Boog." Dancing was had. We all talked about where we were going after the break: Great Barrier Reef, Cook Islands, Australia, and of course (me) skiing when the parents visit.

Seems like Friday should get more than a paragraph. It was just pretty much straightforward hanging out.

Saturday was a big-ish day. It was the All Blacks game. France, in the Inveco series, came on down south to face New Zealand in two test matches in Rugby Union. France won the first one in Dunedin a week earlier which made the atmosphere in Wellington a bit tense in the lead up to this game. France, with the win last week, already won…I dunno… some trophy, but it was an issue of pride. That and I just wanted to see them win. I suppose I should tone down my prideful nature when it comes to sport events.

Nah.

Westpac Stadium is nicknamed the Cake Tin in town because, well, it looks like one cleverly enough. It also looks cool at night.

Tracey and James, the guys I was with at the game. James is part French (right?) so for this game he vowed to view without bias. Tracey…is rather biased. RATHER biased towards The Blacks.

-Rather-

Thrown down some Haka. I had a video of this but it was ruined by the drunk-as guy behind me deciding to sing along to it.

Rugby Action (Photo Credit: Tracey)

Rugby is an interesting game, and by interesting I mean terribly confusing. Essentially the rules are: don’t pass the ball forward, don’t tackle illegally (we’ll decided that later), and try to score. Good luck to ya. I learned the rules of Rugby League, which apparently is not the true rugby. Rugby Union is a lot more popular in NZ. There’s a difference, but that’s why God invented
wikipedia.
Well someone had to.

Now, on facebook I reported that the All Blacks “flattened” France 14-10. It wasn’t really a flattening. France is quite good at rugby, after all. I mean look at them:

That hair just says rugby. (Photo: Tracey)

In their defense, the All Blacks had several players out on injury, including the good-looking ones. This was evident when the ABs had 5 chances to score points by penalty or conversion kick (again, wikipedia) and only made 2 of them.

The French, however, only made 1 out of 4. Come to think of it, it might have been the weather that day.

Il fait pleut. Just a touch. (Photo: Tracey)

Now, just one second here. An open letter to NZ rugby fans. Get. Loud. You guys were way too polite in watching the game. The French fans had it right. Loud. All the time. You guys? You can't just politely sit and watch something like Rugby. Especially when your team wins all the time. Man...

So aside from the fact that I loved Paris the 3 days I was there, and the small amount of time I spent in Western France, Ha ha, we won, suckers.

Sunday I did manage to find some ice cream in Wellington. I was out with a friend of mine on one of my “I’m leaving the country lets do something” trips and hey, found some ice cream. Mostly it was a relaxing day. Till…

A migraine headache has to feel like what being crushed to death feels like, except specifically to one side of my head. Sunday night it was my left side and I happen to miss that I ran out of painkillers. Not often do I find myself armed, but since I had found a good way to slim down the number of headaches I get, I had lost track.

Bad idea.

I don’t remember the last time I had one this bad. On a scale of 1-10 it had to be an 11. I know, that’s cheesy, but…well not getting into too much detail stumbling around the Wellington streets at 3 in the morning heading to your parents hotel room to get some Advil (or Neurophen here in NZ) screaming in pain…that was a new one for me. Ended up with me throwing up. I hate the ones that end up like that. I gotta thank the good people at the James Cook Hotel who set up a spare bed for me so I didn’t have to hobble back to Weir that night. I wasn’t in too good of shape, to say the least.

Needless to say I bought some pills this morning.

Oh yeah, my parents are here. Tomorrow, (or rather today since its after midnight when I’m writing this) I’m moving out of Weir and into the hotel room after shipping a considerable amount of my stuff home. To come: Skiing, Cook Islands, and a 9-hour flight to LA.

I’m gonna miss it here, really. A lot has happened in a short amount of time, but all in all, it was really worth it coming here.

Hell I’ll really miss it.

As of tomorrow morning, I'm a tourist. Man...

For the last time from Wellington, at least for right now,

Chris

Closing Music: Wheel by John Mayer off the album Heavier Things

What Would You Blog

2009-06-17T05:35:00.000-07:00

Suggested Listening: The Remedy (I Won't Worry) by Jason Mraz off the album Waiting for My Rocket to Come

A lot of you have studied for exams, but I’m sure none of you have had the expanse of resources available today to the starving college student.

You know, YouTube.

But I have been diligent enough to keep ahead of my work. Well…certainly better than in the past. I used to put work off till pretty late in the game. But understatements aside this has been my first proper exam study week in my university life.

Its like navigating New York blindfolded. Theoretically possible, and everyone else says they can do it with a high level of ease, but fie on you for getting run over by a taxi every time you try to do it.

In other news I’ve taken a more liberal approach when it comes to my analogies.

Victoria University has a great medium to help with my studies, other than its nasty fast internet (that sometimes doesn’t work and cant run iChat). Unlike Sarah Lawrence, I find its student intranet, how should I put this, useable. Their great research tools help me get whatever help I want for whatever topic I’m pursuing. (Warning: links...strange)

I know, links leading to more subliminal humor. Downtime is very, very important in studying. By the way if you’re looking to kill some time, play Hexic.

Right, exams. I’m studying for my last one right now: Free Jazz. Thankfully the instructor left me everything I needed to know about the exam so I know exactly what to prepare for. … Oh wait he didn’t. Well, not as –detailed- as the other classes. All I know that I have to do is be able to identify musical samples of featured artists, comment on musical aspects of recorded performances, and answer some short answer questions about the music and its political impulse.

I’ll have 2 hours.

Yeah, sure, ok.

I suppose at the start of this I liked having one stressful day of an exam with infinite amount of time to prepare for it as opposed to two to three stressful weeks of compiling a bunch of information together into one knock out paper.

I.e. I was starting to fall in love with exams over conference work. These past two exams (the other being Nationalism and Politics) have left me longing for my two to three weeks of excitement I have come to know at Sarah Lawrence. Maybe it’s just a variant of Stockholm syndrome I’ve acquired.

That’s it! I’m calling it Bronxville Syndrome. The apparent comfort found in the immense pressure from an immense paper being due, oh, NOW. And you thought SLC kids couldn’t be all science-y. nYah HAH!

It’s probably called something closer to “ADD kid looks at bunnies and gets lost in thought” disease (AKLaBaGLiT-NZ strain) but I’m learning to control it. Ish.

You’re right I actually should be studying right now.

On another note: Why does Wellington NOT have a proper ice cream joint?!

Pay attention,

Chris

p.s. My whites are still in the dryer…and the laundry room is locked. Hooray me.

Singin' in the Blog

2009-06-11T02:10:00.000-07:00

Suggested Listening: The Best is Yet to Come as performed by Michael Buble off the album Call Me Irresponsible

I have no idea what I've gotten into.

4 years ago, I applied to Sarah Lawrence to hone my skills as a writer. The plan was to learn the art of storytelling so that I could attend USC Film and, well, get into Filmmaking.

I have no idea what I've gotten into.

You know, I’ve always had a knack for storytelling to some degree. I used to tell mile long stories when I was a kid. It seemed only reasonable that I’d end up doing something like that in the future.

I have NO idea what I've gotten into.

Thing is, though, I’ve always been singing as well. A little bit here and there, in the car, shower, alone in the room, what have you. I don’t really know what convinced me that singing couldn’t possibly be a strong suit of mine.

I was 100% sure it couldn’t have been. I was convinced I couldn’t sing.

Breaking it down it came from two major sources (maybe a few minor, but these two were tops.) In choristers (i.e. little kid choir) I had a tremendously difficult time keeping up because my voice had dropped before the rest of my age group. Chorister boys are supposed to be able to sing in the much higher range, soprano almost. By the time I had joined, I couldn’t reach up there so I sounded a bit too raw and pitchy, i.e., like I couldn’t do it. My choir director didn’t really do much to help that idea either.

Secondly, Zac Efron. You know who you are. The pretty boy tenors with the messed up hair and down home appeal. Somewhere along the line, Hollywood decided to make you the popular ones. Or rather, the American viewing public has decided that you lot are “good singers.” I had realized that I had a knack for sounding quite a bit like Sinatra or Dean Martin when I sang, but when I looked at all the successful singers roughly my age in the public eye I saw, or rather heard, the same thing. Tenor, pitchy, a little weak but solid. Not
baritone, rich, with volume and depth.

Now, some of you are good, like the previously mentioned Efron, and some (most) of this is just my disdain for tenors getting all the lovin’, but some of you just can’t sing.

And you know who you are. (warning: link contains blasphemy)

Mostly I’m frustrated I didn’t realize I could do this earlier. I would be so much further along the road with developing my own style and performance while gaining some ground on the “what I want to do department” which, even at the moment, is seriously lacking direction. In all honesty, even though those two instances did more to harm than help the singer in me, there was a lot I could have taken the time to notice instead of being a stubborn screenwriter.

For instance, actually for BIG instance in this case: Josh Groban and Michael Buble.

Yet I still have no idea what I’ve gotten into.

From what I hear, apparently I’m pretty good at this stuff. –shrug- It’s an interesting point in my life because of the whole idea of performing actually becoming a viable option. It’s unsettling as well because I know about 20,000 other kids are sitting out there dreaming of doing what I want to do. (disclaimer: We Didn't Start The Blog does not condone the use of American Idol as a singing evaluation method. or as a watchable tv show.) Even more unsettling thinking that all those kids were doing it for longer than I have. Did I mention I’m a smidge competitive? (pg13 link) I suppose in the long run that’ll help me out more in my drive to get better and get my face out there.

I’ve never considered myself a theatre or performance kid when I was growing up. Most of my closest friends from that time who had something to do with the stage were all angling towards production of some sort. I don’t particularly know how to be a performer. I love doing it, when I do it, but off the stage I still manage to be my own west coast biased self.

A lot of this is just the pressure of modern day society around people my age. From what I’ve been told at one point it was ok to be indecisive in your 20’s. Today’s society puts so much pressure on someone exiting college to –know- what to do. Majors, internships, scholarships, all of it seems dependent on someone knowing what they want to do.

That’s it, when I get rich (er, if I get rich) I’m setting up the Jacobson Grant for Finding Out What You Wanna Do.

But at the moment, it is singing.

Before I came to NZ I tried to apply for the New Zealand School of Music through Victoria University. This of course meant submitting audition material, which I was fully ready to do. When I mentioned this to IFSA Butler, the program through which I applied to VUW (try to keep up with the acronyms), they said not to audition at all and that they would just casually mention that I was a performance student.

When I put down a bunch of performance classes at the music school they informed me I could not be admitted since I didn’t audition.

This made IFSA Butler rather embarrassed because they had told me not to do it. They wrote both the music school and me a long apologetic letter explaining the situation. In response, the music school allowed me to audition when I got here so that I could at least pay for voice lessons. Normally, the answer would be tough luck all the way.

However I did manage to audition my way into voice lessons. Today was my last in New Zealand.

Learning with Margaret has been…interesting. It was much more physical than any other coach I have had previously, if that makes any sense. Learning with her was great because I was doing something wrong all the time. I really get a lot out of a voice lesson that pressures me. I’ve found the more I’m pressured in performance, the quicker I adapt and learn the role of music or technique. I’ve always had pretty sharp muscle memory learning centers and it translates very well into singing.

But man some of the lessons were rough. One two weeks ago left me really discouraged. She was much more focused on what my body was doing to produce my voice instead of what my voice sounded like. After about 7 or 8 lessons with her my voice has completely changed…well…maybe not that much but to me it feels a lot easier to sing. I worked a lot on freeing up my system so that I can get the voice out easier and using my tongue more to produce the words instead of my mouth.

Have I lost you yet? Yes? Great.

Also it was my first real expansion into singing another language, in this case, Italian. It was a lot easier than I had thought it would be. The biggest challenge was to learn what exactly what I was saying. For me a lot of singing is found in the words. If you don’t know what you’re singing, then you’re just making pretty sounds. Singing, in it’s essence, is supposed to move the audience in some way or form. Being Italian songs, most of them are about being in love so…there’s that.

I don’t know where to go with the singing. I like both the classical and the contemporary (Sinatra, Dean Martin, Buble) but it seems to me I might need to choose one or the other. I mean, I’m sort of in between everything in my life right now and worrying about how I’m going to take over the world seems a bit less important than other things. I really love both types of singing but…the contemporary stuff also meshes well with the performance/film/ love of Hollywood musicals.

In typical me form, I ended in a rant. Here are the songs I’ve learned:

“Alma del Core” by Antonio Caldera
“Caro Mio Ben” by Giuseppe Giordani
“Gia Il Sole dal Gange” by Alessandro Scarlatti
“Aria: O Del Mio Dolce Ardor” by Christoph Willinvald von Gluck

Also all those jazz songs I keep singing to myself…

You know how it is,

After all, apparently I'm pretty good at this singing stuff.

Chris

Closing Music: They Can't Take That Away From Me, written by George and Ira Gershwin, as performed by Michael Feinstein. (my personal favorite jazz standard)

Take The "A" Blog

2009-06-05T02:40:00.000-07:00

Suggested Listening: Linus and Lucy by The Vince Guaraldi Trio from the album A Boy Named Charlie Brown

A-Floor.

Where to begin?

I know that’s an incredibly cliché way to start.

Oh here’s something, apparently its an NZ thing or maybe just a
Weir House thing, but they leave their doors open. That’s probably been the hardest thing I’ve had to become accustomed to. It’s not uncomfortable to have a hall full of open doors, no no no. I’m still getting used to having MY door open. It's how the hall socializes.

I’m glad I got put with the A-Floor kids, they really are a social group of people which has been good for me through what I’ve been having do deal with. There have been some…odd instances though.

They all seem to matriculate whenever I walk outside of my door. (I wont use names)

- One guy walking on his hands down the hall just to see how far he can get.
- Water fight breaks out between the two rooms next door
- pair of boxers laying randomly on the floor
- In talking to one of my hall mates, I get decked in the face with a tennis ball being bowled down the hall in a game of Cricket.
- Hell, even the fact we play cricket in the hall is something to see
- Our official color is pink (which was difficult for me because…I tend to not have pink readily available)
- I keep waking up to someone singing Coldplay (not complaining, just saying)

I find it hard to talk candidly about the A's because, well, I’m not wholly sure which ones read my blog (correction: I know about ONE). (Wusup?) Meh, I love all' ya'll.

On another level I’ve been feeling discouraged lately. I’ve never been really fantastic at being outgoing…no not true. I was pretty good at being outgoing. I was a really social kid when I was in kindergarten. Something at my elementary school really…changed all that. I didn’t feel like it was ok to be myself anymore.

And I’ve been living with this notion for…what, 15 years? Of course family and friends have tried to get me to get back to the way I was. There was a lot of pressure for me to keep hiding in the corner though. I didn’t know better.

I got tired of living with the after effects.

Recently I’ve adopted a much more active and no excuses attitude toward being social. There are a lot of reasons for this, but in the end it all comes down to me wanting to be me again. Not a lot of you out there know the real me (don’t get scared, I’m not looking to become a completely different person, just a better outside representation of what I am inside) (Deep, Chris. Deep.).

In essence, I feel locked inside. I know who I am, and a lot of you probably don’t believe that I’m actually a pretty social and interested guy. The fact that I’ve been sleeping so much lately hasn’t helped getting to know the A-floor kids (just in case you were wondering, guys) but…it’s something that I’m just tired of now, sitting in my chair trying to work.

Well there’s only so much social science talk you can do in one blog.

A-floor, as a group, went bowling this past Wednesday. It has been a little bit since I went bowling, and certainly not in such nice clothes. I bring this up because it was a “trendy’ bowling alley. Lets see how I can describe it… The place itself looked more like a club in terms of dark lighting coupled with brightly lit décor (I dunno, neon and stuff) the lanes were black lit, along with the pins, club music was being pumped through the speakers at a reasonable level (not loud enough to stop the A-floor kids making fun of each other. Ah, for instance one of the guys, Toby, had his named entered in wrong (the desk enters in the names, not you) so instead of Toby it was “Tooby” which we were kind enough to remind him of every time he stepped up. “Toooooooooo!” ) and it was restricted to people 18 years and up after a certain point.

At this point in this blog you might be saying to yourself “Chris, didn’t you hurt your shoulder?”

Yah, I did. It was pretty sore that night. In retrospect it was probably a bad idea to attach an 11-13 lbs ball to the end of my arm and use all of my “strength” (not much since one of the joints isn’t working properly) to roll it down towards a neatly organized set of 10 pins.

Thankfully my shoulder doc doesn’t read my blog. Parents do though…and I might catch a moderate amount of hell for that later…

Come to think of it I was properly sore that night. Kinda took away from some of the action.

This week is the first time I’m on the downhill from things at school. I do have two exams coming up, but I don’t have two papers to do which is lovely. Studying is a mite easier just because you don’t have to write 2000 words worth of stuff down. Let me tell you even that much of a difference is worth mentioning. I know I go to Sarah Lawrence, but it just got a little tedious this semester for some reason.

In other news I no longer have an excuse for the long pauses between updates. I’ll really try to get some more out to you.

Things coming up: exams, The All Blacks beating up on some team called “France” (click here for a short history and rugby analysis of this country according to a local New Zealander)(warning: esoteric), travel with the parents, and then LA.

Kia Ora,

Christian

Lie In Our Blogs

2009-05-24T23:35:00.000-07:00

Suggested Listening: Teardrop by Massive Attack off the album Mezzanine

Dammit.

Picture, if you will, a science project from your youth. You work tirelessly on it through the night getting help from teachers, friends and parents to make it perfect and get that coveted A +.

Imagine that the night before the project is due, your dog comes in and tears it all to shreds.

That’s the best way I can explain how I feel right now.

Sure the shoulder still “works”, but I have to wait another week before I even try running.

Back in 2002 I was doing something called “tubing” on the Sacramento River Delta on a youth group houseboat trip. Tubing is essentially where you lay face down on an inner tube as a speedboat drags you along the waters surface. I had seen earlier on in the day the spectacular spills people were taking while “tubing” but decided to try it out anyway. Part of the thrill of tubing is this feeling of sheer frightened glee as you get whipped around the water as the boat turns…a lot quicker than your tube can. Essentially the whole point of this adventure is to test how far you can push the laws of physics while holding onto dear life.

Physics won

It didn’t feel any different other than that I had a face full of water and I didn’t actually enter the waters surface for a good second as I skipped across the water like stone. I tried to raise my right arm to swim back to the boat and

“YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH”

I would say it was the worst pain I had ever felt, but that’s the not the case. The worst pain I’ve ever felt was trying to get back into the boat. Since, obviously, I couldn’t use my arm I had to be lifted up from the life jacket. Gary, the guy who was driving the boat at the time, put a little bit too much back into lifting me out of the water and I went head first into the bottom of the boat. Naturally I tried to break my fall with my hands. Of course anyone would naturally try to do this. It hurt so badly I couldn’t bring myself to make any noise. I nearly passed out.

I kinda felt sorry for the other kids in the boat as I was wearing my rash guard which is a skin tight shirt designed to keep my upper body warm in the water. So naturally you could see everything that was happening the right side of the body in crisp clear detail. I was drawing a lot of stares. Any sort of movement you experience while your arm is out hurts like nothing else so naturally…on a boat is a bit rough.

Lodi Memorial Hospital kept me out of Urgent Care for 4 hours…before sending me to the ER to have my arm placed. We had gone to urgent care thinking that the ER would take longer. I didn’t know any better; I was in the pain of a lifetime.

But they did give me lots of morphine, which made the rest of my night a laugh riot.

Apparently for 10 minutes I was completely incoherent.

On the better advice of the doctors I saw I kept the arm in sling for a month, didn’t use it, and then was cleared to do everything a growing freshman in high school could do.

December 2002 I threw it out, literally, playing dry water polo. I had to have surgery. This injury would effectively end my serious soccer playing till junior year of college and, not only that, be a whole mess of problems.

Surgery revealed a couple of things: I didn’t tear my rotator cuff, but rather made it extremely stretchy. My labrum, which attaches a major muscle in the area, had been completely torn off and had to be screwed back into place (my x-rays show them…I think it's cool). As the procedure was performed arthroscopically it could be seen in clear detail that when I first injured my arm the force was so great that when the bone snapped back from being ripped out of the socket it dented the upper part of my humerus.

But at least it wouldn’t come out again.

July 2005, I throw it out, again, playing goalie in soccer in the UK.

November 2005 I dislocate it again raising my hand in class. That’s right. Raising my hand.

Second surgery, more screws. This time they folded the tendons on top of each other and sewed them together to make them stronger and resistant to being injured.

I had lately gotten back to seriously hitting the weight room. Not to get a nice body or anything but mostly for two reasons: 1. Amazingly cures migraines and 2. Fix the damn shoulder. I had gotten up to 8 KG’s on my shoulder exercises, which is…well really good for a guy who had blown it out as much as I had.

May 2008, I’m playing soccer for Victoria University Wanderers.

(Suggested Listening: You Promised Me (Satisfaction/Barry Bassini mix) by Ingrid)

It was a bad day to play soccer, no matter how much we wanted to pump ourselves up. We were out in Upper Hutt (which is Kiwi for “New Jersey”) (Said with love, all my fans in ‘Jersey) (but it's true) and we were faced with playing soccer in the rushing wind and rain known to the area. The ground had become soft serve ice cream (which didn’t bother me because my spikes are pretty deep on my cleats) and it was so windy at times I couldn’t look over my right shoulder to see if there was a man I was supposed to be covering (let a goal slip by because of that. Still kicking myself).

It was a bad day.

The funny part is that I knew it was gonna be a bit sour of a day anyway when I woke up.

Our back line was being broken on pretty much every attack by their forwards all day (its called offsides…i.e. they were cheating). One play I found myself the only back in position (thanks guys) and in one of the only times they DIDN’T cheat the back line got split with an excellent forward pass to … whoever number 5 was. Naturally I bolted after him as per my job of Center Back. Run really hard; stop the ball from going into the net. I catch up to this guy at the 18 box and decide I have two options, back off and leave him to the goalie, which would almost hand him a goal or try and take him out.

I slide in from his left side with my left leg as to not foul him but nonetheless get a good piece of the ball and get it out of bounds, which I was able to do. HOWEVER the turf was so slippery I collected him as well (still a legal hit) and he fell onto the right side of my body and rolled my right shoulder,

Rolling me,

Ripping it out.

-Crunch-

(Suggested Listening: I dunno, I didnt have much music going through my head at that moment.)

I don’t think I was screaming as much from the pain as I was screaming in agony of it being out again. I couldn’t believe it, but there it was. After I had gotten injured both sides decided it was an insane day to try and play soccer and that I need a hospital.

It was so cold that day that I was shivering so violently the bone was jiggling. Naturally, I didn’t have a change of clothes. I was somehow warmer without my shirt than with it on. I had to stop shivering because of the amount of pain I was in. I couldn’t stop my body from shaking and it hurt so badly. My teammates took every dry jacket they could get a handle on and put it around me. The ambulance came with heated blankets too.

And Morphine. Hooray for Morphine. Actually, and sadly, it didn’t work as well as it had in the past.

Hutt Hospital was where I was taken (btw, Wellington Free Ambulance Service gets credit as my first proper ambulance ride…no sirens though. Boooo) and they got me into another stretcher as soon as possible. Keep in mind I'm still soaked and muddy from the playing field. I got x-rayed (and got to keep them) and then finally got it put back in.

Hutt Hospital uses the sandbag technique of shoulder setting in that they have you lie on your stomach, give you a heavy sandbag to hold with your bad arm, and dope you up with everything they have. For me it was nitrous oxide, better known as laughing gas. Seeing this as my opportunity to get high without further penalty from the NZ Police, Immigration, US Immigration or Customs, and even more frightening, the parents. I leapt at the opportunity to indulge myself.

Laughing gas, at least for me, doesn’t make me laugh uncontrollably. It makes me find reasons TO laugh uncontrollably. For instance I found that NO2 (nitrous oxide) made my voice go way lower than normal, which brought about the hilarious thought that it made me sound exactly like Seth Rogan.

And Darth Vader.

Me: (puff, puff) Luke

(puff puff) I am your father (giggles like a schoolgirl)

I spent a good 15 minutes on the stuff not realizing that I was so heavily on the stuff to begin with that my shoulder relocated as soon as I rolled onto my stomach.

So I was getting high on NO2 for no good reason.

Probably spooked all the parents reading this…hi guys.

Thoughtfully, the good people at Hutt Hospital…didn’t give me a sling leaving me to buy one myself. I had to wait till today to get one. Huzzah for further shoulder damage.

It’s discouraging, more than anything else. I had really thought I had gotten it nailed down (technically screwed in) last time and that I was in the clear. When this happened I really thought I was done for especially since I wanted to play soccer for Sarah Lawrence in my senior year. Now mind you I don’t now how much damage got done this time but still. Sometimes I just want to throw my hands to the air and proclaim: what is this year coming to?

Of course, at the moment, I can only sling one hand into the air. Really, it’s discouraging. I’ve always had a tremendous capacity for putting up with pain but…a reprieve would be nice. At times it feels like I’m just perpetually broken.

I know I gotta have a better attitude about this. After a week of resting this I can start rehabbing and exercising again. I’m gonna lay off serious contact for two weeks or so and then see where I am. It’s probably me being stubborn, but I can’t let this get the better of me.

I have been trying to find the sunshine in a rainstorm for a while now, and while I know it’s out there, things like this don’t help. That’s part of the reason why I’m so exhausted lately.

I love taking risks, despite what my introverted demeanor might say about me. At the core, I’m not introverted at all. There are a lot of things standing in my way when it comes to being personable. Sure this injury has nothing to do with my ability to talk but it is discouraging that when I try to get out there and enjoy the things I love things like this give me the impression that only pain lies ahead. My mind sometimes likes to try to convince me that trying isn’t worth while, and that self improvement never comes (loooong history of why it says that to me). I know that’s stupid to think, but it’s hard for me not to think that way. I mean…I’ve done this 5 times already. Though good things have come from me busting up my shoulder in the past. For instance if I wasn’t knocked out of soccer for four years in high school I wouldn’t have figured out that I could actually sing…and look where that’s getting me.

Stupid shoulder.

Love,

Chris

(Closing Music: Funny The Way It Is by the Dave Matthews Band off their not even released yet album Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King) ( I got the song legally though guys)

p.s. just because the A-Floor kids keep asking, you do use your hands a LOT in soccer. You can’t touch the ball but there’s a lot more you can do. Plus this was just a stupid accident.

I Come From A Blog Down Under. Part 4: Invercargill-Te Anau-Fjordland Natl. Park-Queenstown

2009-05-22T05:19:00.000-07:00

Suggested Listening: "Sacramento" by Storyhill off their self titled album.

(partially this is listed as the listening because I was thrilled to see someone actually wrote a song about Sacramento)

This blog will seem pretty sped up.

I’ve been struggling to find good places to have breakfast and usually I just capitulate and head into a Starbucks. Heading into a Starbucks in Invercargill meant I got to see this:

Which probably just makes me more of a bigheaded American capitalist than anything else.

There wasn’t much on the road from Invercargill to Te Anau except a farm, which we visited. Obviously a farm was worth mentioning on the blog because it had...

SHEEP! Which, as previously reported on we didn’t start the blog, are hilarious. This picture is one of the pet sheep, which, uh…you could pet, but also ‘baa-d’ the heck out of anyone who passed by. Like me.

Baa

It was cool to watch sheepdogs work. One sheep dog, a girl, cant remember the name, is a silent dog, What a silent dog is able to do is round up sheep without barking at all using quick movements which looks…pretty damn cool. Also the dog seemed to love me a lot. When it was not concentrating on the sheep it came by and sat on my shoe, demanding petting.

Awwww

Te Anau is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been in. It’s a bit small, but it’s pretty much only a summer vacation spot for those who can afford a house on the lake. It was here that I realized (or just made a hasty conclusion) that in almost every city in NZ that I’ve been in you could see the Milky Way in incredible clarity. Even Wellington. Te Anau was small enough that I could really get a decent look at the night sky. I always liked looking at the stars. NZ is pretty good for stargazing since its in the southern hemisphere and there isn’t that much light pollution form the near by cities. It’s not only dark enough to see the stars unlike ooooh a couple cities I know but the stars are so different.

Also, I’m not quite sure where the Southern Cross is. There are two that could very well be the Southern Cross but…I don’t know which one it is. I also saw the Magellenic Clouds ... or however you say it.

The next day, we got a new bus. Slightly bigger.

(Suggested Listening: Main Themes from the Jurassic Park Soundtrack, composed by John Williams.)

This was probably the best day of the trip; a bit hectic, but the most spectacle driven. The next day we got driven through Fjordland National Park (Te Wahipounamu), which, according to the World Heritage Center, is a World Heritage Site. This means that, according to the Center, that the world CAN NOT DO without this place and has to be preserved for the good of human society. Other such things appearing on this list are Independence Hall, Yosemite National Park, The Tower of London, The Old City of a Berne in Switzerland, The Great Barrier Reef, Glacier Bay (Alaska/Canada), Hawai’I Volcanoes National Park, as well as several other world wide locations. Sadly, the list does not include In-N-Out Burger, Magnolia Bakery, or Ghirardelli Square (actually…neither is the city of San Francisco, but there I go again being biased). I took loads of pictures, as you’re about to see. Firstly were the Mirror Lakes:

In the early hours of the morning on a clear day these shallow lakes give off near perfect mirror images of the impressive mountain range behind it. What was even more interesting (which I think I was the only guy to notice) these pools are shallow and have ancient trees in the bottom of them, which looked really weird.

The whole place where the mirror pools are is a glacial valley. This valley was carved out very slowly by…well a glacier thousands of years ago. Glacier valleys are very interesting things to come across because they’re as flat as the state of Indiana but surrounded by huge mountains. In this valley the glacier deposits boulders the size of houses some times. Really eerie ground.

But consequently some of the most stunning landscapes I’ve ever seen. This national park is really a treasure with some of the most amazing geography on this planet.

Also we went through a tunnel. This tunnel took a while to build. One round of dynamite would blow away six inches of granite. But it was worth it cause it would get us to...

(that's the tunnel. Look how much like a tunnel it looks like.)

A boat.

(...siiiigh...just because...)suggested listening is : "I'm On A Boat (feat. T-Pain)" By The Lonely Island off the album Incredibad

(Dude I just discovered this song two weeks ago. Be nice to me)

Mitre Peak: The tallest mountain in the world that rises directly from sea level.

This was the tour of Midford Sound (all though it was technically a Fjord like the rest of the sounds in the area…nevermind. Just don’t trust the English to name things) There was food which was nice. And wind which made things rather freezing. I prefer boat tours that show you wildlife (though I prefer anything with an engine that moves). This tour seemed to be keenly interested in the trees. Mind you, they were gorgeous trees and all (and able to climb on a 75% incline or something amazing) but the boat tour was unspectacular; being the only boat tour of a fjord in the nation. Hey, boats are fun though.

Look, a waterfall. The boat tour found this very interesting and decided to float up right under it.
like so.

Also we went to an underwater observatory that was really…sadly average. It’s just this room…under water…with fish floating by.

I mean it all sounds unspectacular but it was so beautiful here that it all made up for it. The drive back to Queenstown wasn’t that much worth reporting (since it was night and you couldn’t see anything.) Flew back and here I am.

It was good to see the edge of the earth. How many people can claim to that?

Ok this time I’ll actually try to update more often. Im heading into exam periods though so…it might not be that exciting. I know it doesn’t have to be “exciting” but…I’ve been feeling pressure to at least give off the impression that every day spent here in NZ is fun and adventure filled. In some ways it is, but lately I’ve been dealing with things that get in the way of such adventure (I’ll write later about that). Since I’ve been here I’ve been having a rough time making connections and such and such. I’ve been frustrated lately that I haven’t been able to find my footing yet, even though I leave in a month and a half. There have been plenty of good things but… it’s hard to explain.

It’s another blog post, I promise.

Well speaking of adventure, I have another soccer game tomorrow nearly an hour outside of town by train.

Oh speaking of soccer , we won our first game last weekend. 5-2. I didn’t score anything. I defend, which means I’m the physical guy in the backfield making all the fancy dancing forwards eat grass. But it was a good game. Should be pouring rain tomorrow. Hope they don’t cancel it because of the weather.

Another tangential ending to a blog post,

Kia Ora

Christian

Closing Music: "Don't Stop Believin'" by the cast of "Glee" on FOX.

p.s. Hooray for TV shows saluting the theatre nerds from high school

p.p.s. I'm about to say something provocative. Cory Monteith can't sing.

p.p.p.s. see Glee to know what I'm talking about.

The sign post outside the Queenstown Airport. Personally, I thought it was awesome.

Hips Don't Blog

2009-05-21T05:30:00.000-07:00

Suggested Listening: Fooling Yourself by Styx off the album The Grand Illusion

Dear you guys,

Hi!

Ok look i've been really busy with personal and school matters so I just haven't been able to finish off my next blog post, closing off my trip over spring break which was ... what, a month ago?! Man I'm really bad at this blog thing.

But it does actually exist! Just on my laptop and not on the blog itself. I felt like writing a little ditty here to apologize for the delay and to say that things are fine, just a) not exactly great and b) amazingly busy. Partially this delay comes from being immensely exhausted from school and life. I've been spending most of my time trying to find some way to rest up without burning myself out.

Kia Ora,

Christian

P.S. If any of the A-Floor kids read this, this is essentially why I've been like a zombie lately. I do usually say more than three sentences a day. I'll get on the cheerier side of life soon.

I Come From a Blog Down Under. Part 3: Dunedin-Invercargill

2009-05-10T04:05:00.000-07:00

Suggested Listening: Days Go By by Keith Urban off the album Be Here

Well first I have to apologize.

I left you stranded in Dunedin, which is a horrible thing to do.

Traveling from Dunedin to Invercargill was much more the point of going there in the first place.

First off we stopped at Nugget Point. Nugget Point got its name because there is the geologic formation of tiny islands going out from this tip of the south island that, when the sun hits them just right, look like nuggets.
See?

Uuuuh…

OK I have a huge case of writers block if you couldn’t notice. The current week I’ve been in has been very, very busy. I have a weekly soccer practice, game, classes (which have all decided that this week is a great week to assign stuff) not to mention hanging out with the A-Floor kids as well as an inter floor soccer tournament coming up in a few hours and of course going to see the new Star Trek. Also I have a migraine.

Hrm.

Right, Nugget Point: It has a lighthouse.

Moving on.

Notably this is my 2nd lighthouse sighting in the span of one year.

I saw some wildlife on this leg of the trip. The stop after Nugget Point was a beach. Whooptiedoo. However this beach is renowned for its sea lion watching. Quite Renowned. I got probably five feet from one of them.

Like so

Also there were penguins. Yes, real ones. No I wasn’t at a zoo. On the southern side of the south island there are a lot of rock shelves where an ancient earthquake knocked the long dormant ocean floor up to the surface…you know. Boring geologist stuff. The cool part is that the yellow-eyed penguin, the rarest penguin out there, thinks these series of rock shelves are awesome to live on…or rather in. They live in the boundary, so to speak, of where the rock shelf joins up with the rest of the coastline.

These penguins act in a weird manner. Granted I don’t know that much about penguins (except they’re hilarious. Much like sheep.) But it was really interesting to watch. Let me try my best here to put what I saw into words. One of the penguins came back from catching/eating fish. Pretty much as soon as this one guy was visible from the edge of the shelf, one other penguin came out and watched it walk back to its…home or whatever penguins live in. Very interesting. This happened a couple of times so in total I saw about 4 penguins or so.

And took pictures. Ok this is my best shot of a penguin. It's dead center.

Also there were some sheep. They blocked the road.

Oh that reminds me. While on the bus the driver had the local rock station on (More FM) and during a news break I heard the funniest news story ever. Some dudes from the sticks got the great idea to try and set fire to sheep with fireworks. It didn't turn out too well. Ask me to link you to the full news story (the NZ Herald is pretty gorey on details) but when asked by police to explain the sheeps, er, wounds, the mutton-pyros stated that they saw it fall off a cliff. Yeah...

Invercargill is an eerie town to be in. I don’t know what exactly gave me this striking impression, but I felt like I was the edge of the world. Pretty darn groovy. There was something odd about it; maybe it was the thick mist that covered the town (and region). Really this entire part of the trip felt very strange. I was standing on the edge of a world (ok well I thought it was awesome.) There was some inter-bus bonding in Inver. We found the best (ok, only) Chinese restaurant in town and had a drink at the…well the nearest bar. Good people. Most of them were like me, students looking to see something else other than where their school is.

The edge of the world, pretty much. About 100 KM directly in front of the camera is Antarctica.

More later. Kind of a busy month for me for many reasons. Patience, guys. I'm still working on 2 weeks (or so) ago. I cant remember. I'll just fast forward after I'm done with this series.

I Come from a Blog Down Under. Part 2: Queenstown-Dunedin

2009-04-30T05:28:00.000-07:00

Suggested Listening: The Space Between by The Dave Matthews Band off the album Everyday

There is only one thing worth getting up at 7 in the morning, and that’s to travel (well ok I can think of a couple of other things). KiwiExperience, the company through whom I booked my trip, picks up its passengers out in front of the BASE Queenstown at 8 or so. I like to give myself an hour or so to get ready (I take a while).

The BASE: Queenstown

KiwiExperience is a bit more than just a bus ride geared towards young adults backpacking through Aotearoa New Zealand. What they do is they have these stop overs in other cities and show you cool stuff along the way from one city to another. Getting on the bus with me in Queenstown were Naomi, from Nebraska studying at Indiana, some happy young couple from the UK, a girl from Ireland, as well as four kids studying abroad in Australia whose names I can not for the life of me remember. Come to think of it I somehow have only managed to resurrect naomi’s name in my memory. Oh, our bus drivers name was Rob. And our bus was small. It had to be small to get to some of the more interesting parts of day two’s trip. But this is the blog entry on day one so those’ll have to wait.

KiwiExperience Bus-idge

I’m having a hard time writing this post because the Queenstown (ZQN) to Dunedin (ZZZ) leg is rather short… and boring. From what I gather the kiwis agree with me when I say…there just isn’t that much in Otago. The land between Queenstown and Dunedin is very, very dull. Californians, think of the Central valley mixed in with patches that look like Calabasas except with fewer homes.

Yup. That dull. We saw a dam. It’s hydroelectric.
Ooooooo. Aaaaaaaah

So this post might come crawling to a screeching halt in a big hurry. But before it does, here is a mention of Dunedin.

That was it.

No not really. Dunedin failed to impress me, if you haven’t been able to guess by now. The place is billed as the “Student Capital of New Zealand” (which, for the record, is why I went to Wellington because THAT was billed as the student capital but whatever) and that the night life is something to die for as it is, of course, full of college kids and they party. In reality, it’s pretty dead. I suppose my assessment of Dunedin night life might be unfair because I arrived on a Tuesday night during semester break and, well, if I was a student in Dunedin I wouldn’t be spending my break in there either.

Their church is pretty.

Oh so is their Railroad Station. In fact its one of the prettier buildings I've seen down here. (Might be my huge train bias coming out again)

Being in Dunedin made me feel rather lonely. I cant put my finger on why. Dunedin is constructed to have exactly the same street layout as Edinburgh, Scotland, which meant that it was a bit more spread out than Queenstown and Wellington. However, this layout…or something really hit it home of how isolated and absent I felt…hell I dunno how to put it.

Day one wasn’t that spectacular.

There was this:

Anyone tell me what exactly is going on on top of this car?

I'll try to cut down the time between posts on this blog series. Should be about 4 parts in it.

(Lets keep the Dave Matthews Band thing going:)
Closing music: Bartender by The Dave Matthews Band off the album Busted Stuff

I Come From a Blog Down Under. Part 1: Wellington-Queenstown

2009-04-26T04:04:00.000-07:00

Suggested Listening: My Feet Can't Fail Me Now by The Dirty Dozen Brass Band

I had to get out of Wellington.

There’s nothing wrong with Wellington, but I needed an escape of some sort from all the energy and strength I had used up over this past month.

That and I’m in freakin’ New Zealand.

Monday morning I decided to wake up bright and early (waking up for me at any point before 11 am is a bit of a chore) and get myself onto a plane at Welly International (WLG) going to Queenstown (ZQN). It was cold, rainy, and windy…surprise surprise... that made for a fun take off, especially since my plane was as big as a…well…look at it! I did sort of immaturely giggle at the sound of a propeller driven plane and thinking I was in some WW2 bomber or something. I bet nothing about that statement surprises you.

I fell in love with Queenstown instantly. No city has ever been able to do that for me (nope, not even the greatest city in the world). True, Queenstown is much less a city than town (its about the size of your thumbnail) but its gorgeous and easily walk able and has loads to do.

I immediately wanted to go skiing…even though there’s no snow. Maybe that’s a July trip thing. (hint) (I know who’s reading this) (Oh you parents with money).

New Suggested Listening: Ski Party Yodel from the album Voyager Series: Edelweiss

nah just kidding how about...Strawberry Swing from Coldplay off the album Viva La Vida

Queenstown is somewhere between Lake Arrowhead/Big Bear and Montreaux, Switzerland. It’s nestled in the middle of a region of the South Island that was carved out by ancient glaciers making large and at places very deep lakes. (Californians, think Lake Arrowhead on steroids) (And with a new zealand accent) As a closet geologist the mountains really fascinated me because of how steeply they rose. I have seen glacially formed ranges before in Alaska but these mountains look like they’re from another planet. It’s hard to describe (and naturally I didn’t really break out the camera until the next day) they rise so steeply they look unnatural but they’re right there and everything.

The only picture I managed to take of Queenstown. This is a shot overlooking the harbor.

Truth is I was wiped out when I got to Queenstown (I tried shortening it to Queeny but somehow it didn’t really ring) so I promptly took a nap. This was the first real nap I had a chance to take (since the day before) so I savored every moment of it. I stayed at the BASE lodge and was fortunate to grab a private room for pretty cheap. Naps are way underrated.

In typical American fashion I sought out a burger joint called Fergberger. Ok ok not really because I’m American, but I went to it because it was highly recommended by the locals. It was…actually pretty good. The Queenstownites are rather proud of this local joint and the hype is deserved. I sat down at a nice park overlooking the lake.

Queenstown is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and even better at night which is hard to believe. Probably the most eerie places I've been is this dock on the lakefront. At night it’s blue-lit underneath so that you can see the lake life swimming around it. The lights above this dock crawl out over the surface of the water as the mist rolls in. Behind you towards the mountain the town is lit up in the crystal clear air and on top of this mountain a chalet is lit up (Coincidentally you can bungee jump and parasail off the top of it…just like everything else in NZ.)

That night I took a bath. Long time since I’ve had one of those. There wasn’t much adventuring during that night because I had to get up at oh-dark-30 (ok ok just 7 am) to get on my tour experience bus to Dunedin.

But that’s tomorrow’s entry.

Ick cheesy way to end an entry.

I kind of miss Switzerland due to this trip.

Live from Wellington, capital of the craziest weather on the planet,

Chris

Closing Music: Hide and Seek as performed by the Harvard Oppertunes off their album Off The Page

...and for the hell of it also Ski Party Yodel from the album Voyager Series: Edelweiss

Blog Low, Sweet Chariot

2009-04-19T04:47:00.000-07:00

Suggested Listening: "Down To the River to Pray" by The Kings Singers from Six

To be honest my last couple of weeks have been just terrible. I gotta be honest with you guys; I’m not going to tell much about last week, maybe not at all. I do have to say that after the smoke cleared I’ve been moved out of the McFlat and into Weir House and that this move was for the better.

There just hasn’t been that much to write about.

Well Easter was pretty cool.

I’ve been going to the Wellington International Christian Fellowship in town which is a Christian group specifically set up for international students (if you couldn’t tell by the name.) Every year they have a trip up north to a Marae and I decided to tag along. The first day up we were welcomed on the Marae by an official ceremony (I think I detailed this before in the orientation blog). Just a quick run down: The men are placed at the back of the group to demonstrate an act of peace. When seated, the men are at the front and are the only ones allowed to speak. The welcoming Marae speaker first says a few words about the week and what not, and then the visitor speaker speaks on what a great thing to be visiting is (errrr yah pretty much.) What was really cool is that we had a speaker represent every language in our group: English (obviously), Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese Chinese, Japanese, Koooorean, Polynesian and Malaysian dialects, and Solomon Island Pigeon. Ping, our group leader, spoke on how the group had members from all corners of the globe…

Ping: We have members from Japan, Korea, China, Singapore, Vietnam, New Zealand, Australia, and even Canada.
Inside my head: Who’s from Canada?

After the ceremony was complete, we all gave a ceremonial Hongi to the members of the Marae and introduced ourselves. By the time I got around to where Ping was…

Me: Who’s from Canada?
Ping: … You’re from Canada, right?
Me: Los Angel…I’m from the United States man!
Ping: uuuuuuuh oops.

It’s strangely a great thing to be from Los Angeles when meeting people from another country. Word spreads about my town in a very very strange manner. For example:

WICF kid: Where are you from, man?
Me: I’m from Los Angeles
WICF kid: Wow! I want to go there!
Me: Yes you do
WICF kid: So do you know any famous people?

Funny thing is I do.

Next up:

Me: I’m from Los Angeles
WICF Kid: Wow! I have family there!

And the number one response:

Me: I’m from Los Angeles.
WICF Kid: Ah! Kobe Bryant! Lakers!

That’s right, world. The Yankees might sell more merchandise worldwide but the fact of the matter is that the team that everyone REALLY follows is your Los Angeles Lakers.

And LA Galaxy, but that’s mostly because of Beckham…and Beckham Spice.

Day one at the Marae I volunteered for Hangi duty. A Hangi is a traditional Maori way of cooking food in that you heat up rocks, dig a giant whole, place hot rocks in bottom of hole, put meat and veggies on top of rocks, cover, and cover with dirt and let cook for about 2 to 3 hours. It was sort of strange but I really wanted to get some manual labor in just to clear my head and such. That and there was something eerily cathartic of the thought of building a 5 foot tall fire. That night we had our first “meeting” in which we discussed cultural differences on various topics within our small groups. We talked about how our different cultures view the origin of life and what happens after death. This was particularly hard for me because American “culture” is only 200 years old for the most part, at least the part I come from. It’s heavily Judeo-Christian so…well I thought my answers wouldn’t be interesting. I was grasping at straws trying to remember all the Native American traditions I could. The coolest one I could remember (sort of) was a Creole tradition pertaining to death. Creole people believed that the soul could become trapped in a house or building with an uncovered mirror. As soon as someone died in a given room, any mirror in the room or close to it would be covered to protect the soul of the person and the persons preparing the body. After the first meeting there was free time.

And mafia.

Mafia is card/role-playing game that is sort of a church trip tradition. A stack of cards is divided among a group of players. Every player gets one card. If a player gets an “ace” card they are the mafia and their job is to kill everyone else in the game. Players with number cards are ordinary civilians. The player with the “queen” card is the doctor and can choose to save one person per turn. The “king” card is the sniper and is given one bullet to shoot who he or she thinks is a mafia member. If the sniper guesses right the mafia member is killed and the sniper is just an ordinary citizen. If the sniper misses his/her target is killed along with the sniper him/herself. The Jack is the detective and can investigate one person per turn to see if they are the mafia. A turn works like this. The town “goes to sleep” which is to say the players all close their eyes. The mafia, as directed by the narrator, wakes up, quietly votes to kill one person, and then goes to sleep. The detective wakes up, points to one person to investigate, and the narrator lets him/her know if she is right or wrong discreetly. The doctor awakes and points at the person he/she wants to save. The sniper wakes up and decides whether or not to shoot someone. After the “night” the town wakes up and the narrator lets them know if someone has been killed or not. The town then deliberates on who might be the mafia. They can elect to execute one person per turn by majority vote. It is the detective’s job to persuade the citizens to vote off one person or another if they know who the mafia is. An accused person has to defend him or herself and convince the others that they are not the mafia…

Which almost never works. I should know.

Then again I somehow ended up being the mafia every game.

The two sharp ones in the group were Kristen and her sister. Also, I really can’t lie worth a dime.

Kristen: … I think Chris is the mafia.
Me: WHAT?! Noooo!
Kristen: Oh my god you’re so the mafia.
Me: Dammit!

And I was voted off. Next round…

Kristen: Hey guys I think Chris is the mafia
Me: ARRRRGH!

I don’t think I ever survived past the third round.

Day two we had “crazy games.” The first game wasn’t worth mentioning (something silly and Christian) so on to the second game, which was trivia based mixed in with “challenges”. Our small group was paired with another and we competed against the other groups. Going into the final challenge we were behind one point…luckily for us the final challenge was to act out a scene from lord of the rings.

Tee hee. Our group chose this scene, where Gandalf (the grey) gets killed fighting a fire demon thing. Jon, our small group leader, was the demon (wearing palm branches as wings), the other group members were the bridge we were standing on…and I was Ian McKellan as Gandalf. Haaah. This sort of fired up my director genes and I sorted most of the group out. “Ok you guys as soon as I stamp my staff down on the bench here (staff being a broom), half of you fall down and then you, Jon, fall with them but you whip me and I fall off as well, got it?”

Thanks to my summer at the Groundlings Theatre I always do my scenes 100 percent no matter how silly or useless they might be. So naturally I did my best to mimic the scene and bellowed out…

YOOU

SHALL NOT

PAAAAAASSS

If you’re gonna embarrass yourself, do it with honor and dignity.

Of course. And long story short our performance won our group the competition. Heh. We got chocolate.

And I got the nickname Gandalf.

(start sappy Christian stuff)

It was eerily peaceful to be away from a city for Easter. It sort of got me back to sticking my feet in the ground and analyzing what God was doing. I really don’t know what God’s been doing in my life and frankly I was getting a bit impatient. I don’t get Easter and why it’s such a big deal. It’s the cornerstone of my faith and I feel very bad that it doesn’t affect me as much as other Christians are. I guess at this point in my life I’m still waiting for the sun to rise. I didn’t focus all that much on the rising of the Son, Christ Jesus from the tomb on the third day but rather the disciples on the second day. I think this is where my life is right now, perhaps. No gospel talks about the day before the resurrection.

They watched their savior be executed. They watched their hopes get dashed. More importantly, they watched their friend die and they couldn’t do anything about it. What would it have been like the next day? Everything would be lost. Their friend who took them in and taught them about life in a way never heard of before, at least to them, and never delivered so succinctly, was gone. What would it have felt like?

Maybe thats what Easter is for me. Life can crumble in your hands, but God, even in the darkest places, is light. Hope is worth holding on to, even though some times life might try to convince you otherwise.

(end sappy Christian stuff)

Day three wasn’t that impressive. We talked a bit, cleaned up the place and got back in our cars and left. Yah that’s sort of a quick and dirty version of day three but not much happened.

So now I’m here in my new place writing another blog for you guys. Sorry it took so long, and sorry again because it’ll be a bit until I write again becauuuuse I'm going on vacation! I’m heading to the south island care of KiwiExperience to explore the very southern reaches of this fine nation (and also to freeze my ass off but its all good). I’ll be going to Queenstown, Dunedin (pronounced DooNEEdin), Invercargill, and Te Anau.

Yes I’ll take pictures…well I’ll try to.

Hmm I gotta pack.

Kia Ora,

Christian

Picture Blog! Pictures of your mamma, pictures of your pappa, a loooong time ago...

2009-03-26T17:14:00.000-07:00

(because it's such a good song, the inspiration for the title is also this entries...)

Suggested Listening: Picture Book by The Kinks from the album The Village Green Preservation

You've heard and read the voice of the blog, now see what the blog sees. A brief tour around the campus area and Wellington...as well as other things round Aotearoa New Zealand.

So heeeeere we go:

Very large airplane I flew on. My first time on a 747, I think. Very very smooth which was surprising to me
Our orientation center! there was lots of orienteering. Also lots of getting sunburned.

Did I mention the beach was a 3 minute walk away? You cant really see it there...

My view from the hostel overlooking the harbour. That interesting looking building at the bottom there is a New Worlds Grocery Store...so stop looking.
This was Wellington Carnival, i.e. Mardi Gras ish stuff. And this is also the only picture I took that day. Hooray for me.

This is Cuba Street, which I'm sure will get a lot of mentions in the blog as I complete my semester here. LOTS of mentions.

Rue de Cuba

Cuba Straße

This is sort of near to the central business district on the corner of Taranaki and Dixon. You can see one of the big yellow and black busses that roll around town here...and of course blatant disregard for traffic signals. Ah, welly.

View from behind the National Museum Te Papa (our place). It was windy, and this was my iPhone camera, so just trust me when I say this was really pretty.

Kelburn Park: Home of YOUR Victoria University of Wellington Wanderers FC! (I had to plug)More Kelburn Park, looking up at campus.

Kelburn Club Rooms. If you're a member of VUW Rugby, Cricket, and Association Football you can go there and hang. Pool tables, bar, tv, real cool stuff.
Also has a fountain. This lights up at night...but not right now. heh. This was also an attempt to demonstrate the eerie view of the wellington skyline direclty behind Kelburn Park... but my camera isnt that good.

The Cable CarAgain

Inside the cable car
This is the view from pretty much on top of the McFlat roof (no I didnt climb up onto it) Trees, man, trees.Aro Valley, our suburb.

Inside McFlat.

Ah, here is a good time to explain why it's called "mcflat" in the first place. (correct me if I'm wrong guys) McFlat comes from Grey's Anatomy in that the flatties are pretty big fans of the show. Last year on a field trip they decided to give themselves all "Mc" names (like McDreamy and such) which dissolved into giving everyhing a mc name. "McBlog" for instance.

dont start calling it mcblog, guys.

the desk of the blog
the bed of the blog. Yes that is a Ford Motor Company cover with racing stripes. I'm 12, ok?

This is downtown Wellington as seen from my commute to-from school. I mean look at it.Uptown Wellington. I dont know if you can see it really well, but that giant obilisk is the New Zealand war memorial and tomb of the unknown soldier which I walk past on my way to Jazz Class. No pictures of Massey University because it is ugly.
Close up of the Memorial

This is the view of the harbor from the library. Better in person, yes, and tress do get in the way, but still pretty good.

Thats about it so far. I'll try to take more pictures. Yesterday I had an audition to get recommended for vocal coaches in town and it went very, very well. Im ancey to get back to singing.

Ah, before I go. I have to alert you to Earth Hour. On Saturday March 28th at 830 PM local time wherever you are, turn off everything, lights, what have you, for one hour to save some energy and raise awareness for the environment. As as side benefit, if enough people in your local town do so, you'll be able to see some pretty cool stars (I had better see some stars. If its cloudy here...). I do know that pretty much every business in and the city of Wellington itself will participate (sweet-as) but I am encouraging all of you to do so.

I promise that's the most Sarah Lawrence College Student I'll ever be on this blog.

I can't keep that promise, actually. I'll try to warn you next time.

Standing upside-down compared to the rest of you,
Chris

Blogging on Empty

2009-03-22T23:56:00.000-07:00

Suggested Listening: Bang the Drum by Todd Rundgren

I feel like my head is in a vice grip. I have a whole heaping spoonful of whatevertheheck the local cold strain is down here and its making my head feel like an atomic collider or something impressive and scientific that deals with incredible amounts of heat and energy.

However, I am feeling a lot better than yesterday.

What I very much so dislike about having a sinus headache is that my brain somehow gets put into overdrive, which makes it rather hard to sleep. I think about everything and anything good or bad and I cant seem to quiet it down.

But complaining aside,

Mondays and Thursdays are the roughest and easiest for me just because I wake up at 7 30 in the morning. Wooptiedoo. To make matters less enjoyable, my class is a good 20-30 minute walk from the McFlat and for some reason the weather pattern around Wellington works just so its pouring Monday and Thursday every week.

Strike that. At the moment it’s just decided to rain all the time regardless of day, hour, etc.

On the sunnier side of things the class that morning is Free Jazz which is taught by an aging kiwi hippie jazz pianist who rarely looks at his class notes and just has open discussion (just do your readings however and you’ll be ok.) This is a class that’s very comfortable for a Sarah Lawrence kid such as myself. It’s only about 16 kids and we sit in a semi circle listening to jazz from the free jazz movement (post bebop from the 50’s and 60’s and everything else close to it) talking about music and atmosphere.

If nothing else this class is adding a lot of choice cuts into my jazz play list on my iPod. Tee Hee. (by the way check out Flamenco Sketches by Miles Davis from Kind of Blue)

Yes a semi circle. I wish I could make this stuff up.

Class number 2 is Nationalism and Politics on Wednesdays and Fridays. Again, very SLC kid friendly with only about 25 kids and one teacher. My biggest problem with this course is that our lecturer doesn’t spend much time away from the slide show. Her slides are very detailed, but conversely she powers through them so quickly my notes are all over the place and in some cases just plain incomplete as I’ll go onto blackboard later on and just download the slideshow for myself (blackboard is VUW’s online database). This makes things all the more difficult since the reading for the course is pretty damn dense. I have my own problems with reading academic material as it is.

Religion Law and Politics is a 100 level course, i.e., introductory level i.e. full of freshman i.e. there are about 150 kids in this class. Its gets broken down into tutorials (or group conferences for you slc kids out there) of about 15 kids a group so that you and your tutor can explore the week’s topics a bit more in depth.

I’ll probably eat these words later on, but this course is laughably easy so far (pg13 link: language). I’m not taking it lightly as I'm putting as much back into it as I can (admittedly, at the moment for a myriad of reasons, not much back) but…for example last weeks tutorial was spent specifically to learn how to cite a source from a book and journal. I understand many froshies (excuse me, “first years”) might not know this coming out of oh I dunno high school but…come on. Not only that the first big assignment for the course is finding three academic books and three online journal articles and their abstracts from the library and citing them in the appropriate format. I guess I should have expected as much coming from a 100 level.

This is a thing I’ve been dealing with for a bit in college. I like how SLC has given me freedom in not being restrained by a major and its requirements but at the same time I feel like I haven’t really gone anywhere. I’ve been having reservations about continuing on with the singing or something like it but in looking outside of that I don’t feel I’ve done enough growth on another area. I’m trying to remain focused on the moment but at present I’m having periods where I just feel lost.

I just realized that much of this information might be a repeat from an earlier entry.

This entry has come across a little gripey and I promise I’m not that much of a jerk in real life. The headache isn’t helping my mood any.

Or my grammar I’m noticing.

In other news do you know why parents are great? They send you Girl Scout cookies. Sweet as, guys.

Oh, I have a break coming up don’t I? I should get cracking on deciding what I should do for it.

I love how my blogs end up as a sort of stream of consciousness.

Ah I also need to get myself a dress shirt or two. Ok there is a story behind this. I set aside 3 shirts to be sent after I left for NZ (along with other things such as soccer cleats and etc to save weight for my actual suitcase.) (Another note, when traveling to Aotearoa New Zealand, pack your rain gear in your suitcase and not in the box that follows you). Because this box’s contents valued over $1000 NZ it had to be imported officially by yours truly. This meant I had to get an importer code for NZ and FURTHER MORE fill out several official import forms. Long story short, I got the box and realized that somewhere along the line three of the wrong shirts got placed in the box instead of the three I thought I set aside. I’m not directly blaming anyone here because I'm a rather absent-minded person myself and it might have been me who set aside those shirts. Blaming aside, only one of the shirts was mine meaning only one of the shirts actually fit. Me’ n the fam decided that just buying new ones here would be much much cheaper than shipping the other ones out here.

So that’s tomorrow if I’m feeling better.

Oh nuts! I need to easter shop as well!

AND start going to church again!

I’ll write more…at least I'll try to.

Chris

Ole, Ole Ole Oleeeeee! The Blooooooog, The Blooooooog!

2009-03-13T02:13:00.000-07:00

Suggested Listening: Helicopter by Bloc Party off the album Silent Alarm

If you haven’t guessed it already, I like playing soccer. In freshman year of high school, I got injured just before the start of the season. Over the next 4 years I would not be cleared to play at competition level effectively keeping me from the sport.

Admittedly this wasn’t that much of a bad thing (except for my shoulder no longer being able to work properly). I got over the idea that I couldn’t sing and got myself back into performance.

Round’ bout the last half of my first year of Sarah Lawrence I got back into intramural soccer to keep myself fit and that’s how it happened. Back at it. I’m on the team at SLC and while I’m living down here I had to find a way to get in and keep in shape for my senior season.

Wow I sound like a jock. Let me dissuade any thoughts you be having that I’ve changed somehow and now go around at parties yelling "AWESOME!"

Victoria University has the "Victoria University of Wellington Association Football Club" (i.e. soccer) which is a school wide club with competitive teams in the Wellington City league as well as social teams, 15 in total counting competitive.

I got to play with some of the existing members on Thursday when they had an open practice for anyone interested in playing competitively. The practice was held at “nearby” Ian Galloway Park.

“Nearby”

Truth be told, Ian Galloway Park is a good 30-minute walk from campus. I should know. It’s made especially apparent when one is wearing flip flops (or Jandals as they call them down here. Not a typo) 30 minutes later I was in cleats and running around. I hadn’t thought much of joining a competitive team at VUW because of the level of fitness I was at when I left SLC. I had been running some while at home in LA not to mention I’ve been running nearly non stop since I’ve been here but I still wasn’t quite sure of where I was.

Now I’m very sure. I’m in a lot better shape than I thought.

My archenemy when it comes to getting and keeping in shape is nutella. Firstly, it’s rather bad for you in vast amounts. Secondly, I love having it in vast amounts. Good LORD! I’ve been told I used to love this stuff as a baby but I somehow only managed to discover it a few years ago. Needless to say I've had to cut back of nutella ingestion over this recent year.

Hold on I'm going to go make some nutella toast –dash-

mmmmmmmmmm

Right, soccer.

Trials were where I learned that everyone playing the sport here at VUW is very, very, very fast. This is a good thing because it’ll push me to get better and by the time I get back to SLC I’ll be in top form for their season but…

My GOD! It’s been a long time since I've been run that hard. I think I did very well. Even though in top shape I’m actually pretty fast I’ve always played more of a strength game as a defensive wing/ center back so I was much more muscley and attempting to slow the game down as much as I could. It was really nice to play at such a high level again, even if it wasn’t really that high of a level.

Oh, right, I made one of the reserve squads for the main team. Yeah. I’m pretty pumped.

Livin’ It, Without the “G”

Chris

p.s. John Mayer is sort of my hero.

Another Blog in the Wall

2009-03-05T17:47:00.000-08:00

Suggested Listening: Blame it on the Boogie from The Jacksons off the album Destiny (completely unrelated to the following post but its a really fun song)

At some point something had to wake me up out of my reverie and remind me I was here to go to school instead of tour around looking at the prettiness.

That wake up was 9 am on Wednesday, when I had to wake up to go to class. I had been routinely waking up…well…way after 9 am.

I have three classes this semester: Nationalism and Politics, Religion, Law, and Politics, and Free Jazz. I did only just realize that I really am a Sarah Lawrence kid in that I have no idea what I want to end up doing so I just took three classes that looked groovy. First on the menu Wednesday was Nationalism and Politics. It’s a relatively small group of kids (about 25) all crammed into a windowless lecture hall. The class will only last an hour accompanied with a “tutorial” once a week which is a smaller group discussing further reading on the weekly topic (SLC kids, think group conference). I wish there was more to discuss about this class but it was only 15 minutes long, i.e., here’s what we’re gonna talk about, sign up for your tutorial, have a nice week.

Ever since the 2004 election I’ve been interested in the role of religion in government. I was a bit miffed at how the Republican Party adorned themselves as the party of God and that their ideals were the right and just way. Instead of calling them out on their tactics (which I could go on for another three or four paragraphs in very, very colorful language) the Democratic Party decided they would become the Secular party! Well hooray for you… Two things happened as a result of this: (well a lot of things did including the election of a circus chimp into our nation’s highest Executive office) The first thing was that in the following year when I turned 18 and could register to vote, I declined to state a party on my registration form, i.e., “independent”, and I got keenly interested in the role or supposed role of religion in domestic and international policy. I read a few books on the subject such as “Gods Politics” by Jim Wallis but never really got to further study it. Obviously I was going to take this class. It’s a 100 level class that is very large and mostly full of first years. I sort of feel strange having no true focus academically but there just hasn’t been anything that has really captivated me so I’m sort of circling right now.

But ‘nuff bout me.

(New Suggested Listening: Tomorrow is the Question! by Ornette Coleman from Tomorrow is the Question!) There's a story behind the class Free Jazz: I havent actually been to it yet. I signed up for a class called "Jazz Rock Fusion" which looked pretty awesome only to learn that the registrar accidentally filed it in the wrong semester. I learn this tuesday. Weeeeee. After a long and confusing conversation with the music faculty here I learned that I would be placed in the semester 1 equivalent "Free Jazz" which looks at in more detail the post bebop movements of the fifties (Ornette Coleman, some Miles Davis, etc). My first class would be thursday except the music faculty forgot to mention that this class wasnt taught on this campus...but on Massey University's campus which is a good 30 minutes walk from McFlat. By the time I figured THIS out it was already too late to go to class (I wrote and explained to the teacher, no problems).

Bad news on top of that is that its a 9 am class on mondays and thursdays...on top of a long as hell walk means VERY early wakey wakey.

(Back to your originally scheduled listening.)

This week was also clubs week in that all of the VUWSA (Victoria U- Wellington Students Association) clubs put up tables in the quad area and advertise themselves. Lets seeeeee there’s Ultimate Frisbee, Vic- Labour, Vic- National, Vic-Green (political parties…cept ultimate Frisbee) Vic-U Association Football (guess which one I signed up for), Rugby, Fencing, The University Games (have NO idea), Muslim Students, Jewish Students, Buddhist students, 3 Christian groups, Chinese, Malaysian, Pacific Islander, Germans, Internationals, etc etc… Vic Labour is doing a tour of Parliament next week which I’ll sneak into (more like ask nicely and go with McFlattie Kurt) which should rock. We’re gonna watch a debate and look around the government buildings.

Things I gotta do: file more customs paper work, apply for a HANZ ID Card, and obviously write more blog entries.

Chris

In Da Blog

2009-02-28T19:05:00.000-08:00

Suggested Listening: Poker Face by Lady GaGa from The Fame...then another song...then Poker Face, another song, back to Poker Face, repeat until you want to start a fire.

I somehow think that cramming a weeks worth of events into one blog is the most efficient way to do business. The truth is I'm trying to catch up to talking about the present day again. We are getting internet in the flat soon so my blog entries will move from the rather public atmosphere of the Vic-U Wellington Library to the coziness of “McFlat” 34 B.

Er…I’ll explain McFlat at a later time. If I don’t, remind me.

Over this past week, this is what I’ve done during the day: Bought a sim card, wrote some blog entries, met people in a hostel, moved OUT of the hostel into the flat, and fought my way into the VUW wireless network.

I mention all the stuff I did during the day in one short and abridged paragraph because in Wellington who cares about what you did today?

What about last night?

Wellington probably gets most of its fun from its nightlife. There are loads of places to find your self after hours in the downtown area and Cuba Street. Unfortunately every joint in Wellington seems to only be able to play Poker Face by Lady GaGa.

But that aside…

Actually, yes, an aside: My blog was just temporarily interrupted by an argument over chives and Linda’s…um…eating habits. She prefers to put chives and salt on straight pasta.

Please reserve your comments about me not having tomato sauce on ANYTHING. Thank you.

By the way I’m now writing this from the living room of McBlog. I mean McFlat. Dammit.

McAnyway, Wellington seems as it if was accidentally engineered for a good nightlife. All the good dives are within walking distance of each other so one could easily pub crawl, club hop, bar…er…mosey. On top of that, city center (or centre if you write it incorrectly) is about 10 to 15 minutes walk from our University.

In short, it’s everything Bronxville ISN’T (you don’t have to take a 30 – 45 minute train ride to stuff, stuff stays open, and there’s lots of stuff…not to mention you don’t have to worry about the last train out of the stuff.).

I’ve been to quite a few over the past couple-a-weeks. The big ones that eeeeeveryone goes to are Big Kumera, JJ Murphy’s, and to some extent Downtown Local, or DTL, but that’s mostly just students. Albeit JJ’s is mostly just Americans and “Big K” is mostly just first years and of the like but nonetheless mostly all of them are pretty legit places to go and hang out.

Last night I went out with the flat mates to two of my new favorite spots: Alice and Boogie Wonderland. They are essentially the same joint as they are right next door and connected by a hallway. Alice is named after Alice in Wonderland and it does the job in a rather strange way (surprise surprise). The Alice imagery isn’t that in your face but you pick up on subtle cues as you spend your night there. The bar is the only constant in the space while the surrounding area is split into two different planes. The plane you enter on makes you about a full half body length higher than the bar so that you have to lean down to order. The second “level” of the bar puts the top of the bar above chest height. Not only that, the chairs and tables are either too big or too small. I didn’t make the connection at first…or at all for that matter.

Libby: You know I think its cool that they do the furniture like this so that it mimics the bit from the book where she eats the cake and she grows, ya’ know?
We Didn’t Start The Blog: aaaaaaaaaaaaaah. I totally get it now.

And I was beginning to wonder why they bought way too small beanbags…and why I was on one and not in the way too small couch.

Some of you guys out there might remember what a disco was (kids, ask your parents). I was born in 1987, which means that I have no idea what one was actually like, but I’m sure Boogie Wonderland comes close to the mark. BW is a small dance club with a bar tucked into one corner and comfy booths tucked into another. The middle? The dance floor. I’ll get back to that in a second. BW only plays the best stuff from the disco era (and occasionally crams in a few disco inspired stuff) and the ambiance around it matches perfectly. Dress nicely, and dance. Simple as that.

True most of the other places I mentioned have dancing, and in fact Big K has a room dedicated strictly to my forbidden desire of a genre, techno. There is more dancing at places such as Big K but it doesn’t matter because...

Boogie Wonderland has a LIGHT UP DANCE FLOOR.

That’s my last word. More later.

Wellington is kind of awesome,

Chris

Why Should I Worry? Tell me! Why Should I Caa-aaaa-aaa-aare. Ya-I may not have a dime, but I got Blog Savoir Faire!

2009-02-23T20:25:00.000-08:00

Suggested Listening: Trashin' the Camp, by Phil Collins, as performed by Phil Collins and N*Sync off of the Tarzan motion picture soundtrack.

(p.s. Why Should I Worry by Billy Joel, great frickin tune. I recommend all of my title songs (if you can figure out which ones they are.))

As promised I'm finally going to talk about orientation, i.e., the couple of days I had no internet. Trying to fit all of orientation into one blog will be a task, but as always one should always start at the beginning.

I am the type of guy who could on a whim just go to some new and interesting destination. I prefer it, actually, and frankly I’m not sure within the next 5 years if I’ll have a definite place I’ll call "home." (Obviously aside from my home in LA). I guess my flight to NZ was the first real test of that; a way of God saying “OK, lets try this out then.”

Piece of cake.

Sort of.

Arriving in Auckland is an interesting thing when departing from Los Angeles. It’s considerably smaller in size and a lot easier to navigate. I won’t lie, the first thing I did was that I went and flushed a toilet. Sadly, it doesn’t swirl the other way below the equator…at least I think so. NZ johns go straight down which not only confuses us northern hemisphere people but also saves water. They actually have the option to use half of the water after you finish your business. NZ, as you’ll read, has a lot of efficient options in ordinary appliances and utilities that some nations might want to adopt in the future.

Customs was easy…sort of. I got detained because my Visa wasn’t quiiiiite properly formatted and they had to phone it into the embassy to make sure that I was actually me.

Got bags, got bags screened, walk through rain to put bags on truck, made phone call. yadda. yadda. yadda.

Our orientation site was in Whangaparaoa (in the Maori language pronounce “wh” as an F), just north of Auckland, and it was pouring. Naturally the first thing the orientation crew did was take us on a hike through the countryside pointing out pretty things in the landscape and of course the local wildlife. In my infinite wisdom I managed to pack my rain slicker into one of the boxes that we were going to ship to the flat instead of in the suitcase.

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrr. In other news my black and white Dodger hat fits a lot more nicely now. Rain tends to do that. Make em fit…anyway

When the rain cleared up it was time for traditional kiwi games such as rugby. Rugby is a lot harder than it looks especially for
out of shape Americans like ourselves (by the way, the flat mates have Nutella, which means I should get back to my jogging but anyway). In sum, the person with the rugby ball has to be the furthest up the pitch and can not pass it forward. Until the ball is in play, defenders must keep a certain distance from the spot at which the ball was downed last. Each side gets 6 tries to get the ball down into the end zone where a player must “touch down” the ball, that is to say that the ball must be placed on the ground while in his or her control, to score a try. You can kick the ball forward thought it becomes a free ball and…

See? This is why I like soccer. Kick ball, pass ball, shoot ball into net to score, don’t touch ball with your hands, don’t foul anyone (we’ll figure that part out later). Best. Sport. Ever. I might still be detailing the finer points of rugby if I didn’t have other things to do today.

Another tried and tested Kiwi pastime is getting sunburned, which we all did because we didn’t think the hole in the o-zone was THAT big of a concern.

Orienteering and a Pub Quiz were on the next day’s agenda. Pub quizzes are trivia games local pubs put on and are rather popular in NZ (drink booze, answer trivia, always a good time.) My group rocked it, at least the trivia bits. We had to do a sketch or performance of some type detailing our story up to that point in time. Our group drew “interpretive dance.” Luckily, as I am from Sarah Lawrence and another of the group members was from Connecticut College, interpretive dance was the LEAST of our worries. Orienteering was another story, however. Orienteering is essentially speed scavenger hunting in that our group is given a map and told to go find these symbols located SOMEWHERE near where they are indicated on the map. Some-where. These things were impossible to find as they were the size of a CD case and could be located anywhere within ooooh lets say that forest over there.

I’m griping because we lost because of this event. We killed the trivia bit but noooooo since we couldn’t find a little freakin symbol thing we lost by 10 points.

Again, sore loser.

Strangely enough us Americans fell in love with Cricket (perhaps our internal clocks realized it was summer and our brains were going “baaaaaassebaaaaaaaaall.”) (Baseball is still better than cricket.) Baseball skills and cricket do not mix well. Firstly one must hold the bat downward, sort of like a golf club, as to protect your wickets (on a given bowl, if the bowler hits the wickets, yer-out.) (or if you’re running between bases, out.) (Hit the wickets to get an out.). Once you hit the ball, run between the two bases. One full round of the bases gets you one run. One can stay on one base while another batter is up and that way you can double your points.

Yes its confusing, but as long as you don’t really pay attention to some of the rules, it is quite fun.

On the third day, there was ocean kayaking (didn’t fall in, yussss), but that isn’t much blog material. YaKnow what is? Earth Boarding.

Earth boarding is a sport that combines skateboarding, snowboarding, and suicide. Naturally I wanted to try it given my spotless record when it comes to personal injury. One straps him or herself into this skateboard with huge dirt wheels on it and then you push yourself down any terrain you so desire. One of the keys to earth boarding is that you have to lean a bit forward to keep your balance which your brain just does NOT want you to do. Leaning back, however, means pain so after a few falls onto your backside you pick up on this rather quickly. After a couple of trips down the front lawn of the campsite we were at, it was time for their own private course which was essentially a pasture with some trees, some hastily marked out paths, and, of course, certain death. Whoopee. The course was muddy the day before which meant that there were several new bumps and jagged edges that were now hard as rock after two days of sunshine. Our instructions at this point were essentially just “pick a path and I’ll see you at the bottom. K-thanks.”

Good lord it was fun.

The final day at the campsite we packed up and headed for a Marae which is a Maori reservation. They were very gracious to let us ramble into town to stay for a night. We participated in a traditional Maori welcome celebration which we followed Maori custom as closely as possible. On entering the space the men were required to surround the women as an elder Maori woman called us into the meeting, pausing every so often to wait for those who have passed on to catch up with us. We were to sit with the men in the front of the group and the women in the back. Two of the guys were selected to read a Maori greeting conveying peace and thanks from our group to their village. Our group would then sing a song supporting the person who just spoke.

Singing tends to get me into situations. Alert W-D-S-T-B readers will have noticed that I sing. Apparently I’m pretty damn good at it too. This gets me noticed, which is good and bad at times. It didn’t much matter during the gathering at the Marae but on the bus rides to and from the Marae this was frequently heard: “Take it away, Christ! (my nickname. Don’t ask).” “Hey Christ, aint that a Josh Groban tune? Sing!”

Sigh. I don’t mind singing though. … and I do only know one Josh Groban tune by heart but its sort of a sad song.

-shrug-

We spent the night at the Marae and then got shipped off to our respective Universities, and now I’m here in the Victoria library looking out over Wellington Harbor. I finally have access to the wifi in the library so there will be more blog updates as they happen. I can see you loading your rifles from here from the lack of blogging. Right now, food.

Kia Ora,

Chris

Blogging on a Jet Plane

2009-02-23T20:14:00.000-08:00

Suggested Listening: Jet Airliner by the Steve Miller Band off the album Book of Dreams.

(This and the next one are flashback blogs. This one I wrote when on the plane to NZ, the next one written about Orientation at Whangaparaoa)

Good morning from somewhere about 4000 kilometers northeast of Auckland at a cruising altitude of 10000 + meters (you do the imperial conversion). Right now we’re passing some island called Papeete or something en route to, of course, New Zealand.

And I’ve given up trying to sleep. I have to keep this one short as I think I might have miffed one of the people next to me. Naturally I have a middle seat and the airplane for some reason is a bit too stuffy for me making things a bit too warm and such.

It is a big airplane though.

I quietly promised myself I’d blog from the middle of the pacific but didn’t realize how stealthily I’d have to do it.

Ok I feel sleepy. Lets try this again.

--Chris

You'll Take the High Blog and I'll Take the Low Blog

2009-02-20T01:35:00.001-08:00

Suggested Listening: O'Sullivans March by The Boston Pops Orchestra, Conducted by Keith Lockheart, from The Celtic Album.

I was thinking about something today. Occassionally my genes like to speak up and make me yern for the old country. I've never been to the old country but every once and a while I just have to listen to something cultural.

Unfortunately my Norweigen genes are almost always watching Hockey so I never get the urge to go and listen to traditional Norse stuff...whatever that might be.

What has been happening lately is that I have been indulging my urges to listen to traditional Celtic stuff. Today was particularly strong since I was staring at my enrollment papers for Victoria University of Wellington, especially the "ethnicity" part. Obviously "American" (or Amrrrrricun) isnt one of the choices so I just sort of wing it with what european genes are listed. "Other" (Norway, with a dash of Swiss and French), British/Irish, and German. I had the urge to listen to some of my traditional celtic stuff and dream of the old country.

Its an odd sensation I get and I'm not doing a particularly good job of conveying it. I always think its in my blood, in that, sometimes my genetics from a -way -back when jump start and demand to feel at home.

hrm

I have 5 minutes left on my prepaid internet cafe time. Tomorrow should bring about stories. Its Carnival in Wellington.

And I promise i'll blog about Orientation and such as soon as I can get my laptop to some internets. Oh and links. There will be links.

My study abroad country is prettier than yours,
Chris

In a Foreign Blog

2009-02-17T21:32:00.000-08:00

Suggested Listening: 500 Miles by The Proclaimers

Hey

This IS supposed to be the blog post I wrote while on the plane ride over here, but the WiFi in the place I'm staying is junk and am restricted to writing my posts on the internet cafe computers.

which are also junk

Ok, so, I'm staying at the YHA Wellington City hostel right now while I wait to find out when I can move in. I know for sure that I'm in my new flat by the 22nd but I could be there as early as tomorrow.

If I will be there tomorrow, im back on the lap top and making you some proper posts. With links.

but for right now...

The hostel really is quite chill, in actuality. Its nice meeting poor kids like yourselves shoveled into 4 a person rooms with two bunk beds. So far we've had Ian from the UK, Ian also from the UK, and ... uh... crap he just moved in too. Lets just call him "steve" from Berkeley.

(Im frustrated right now because I totally have all of these link ideas but In my infinite wisedom I forgot my laptop upstairs so i cant copy the html onto this computer...and i only have a few minuts of internet usage.)

Wellington is quite great. Imagine a city thats part Washington DC, San Francisco, and New Orleans (with a tablespoon of Seattle) (set on the stove on a low burn and stir every 5-7 minutes.) the YHA is in the center of the city and is about 5 minutes walk from anything (actually the entire city is 5 minutes from everything which is useful). Last night me and some of the other americans went bar searching. We were looking for a joint called "Alice" ... and failed but will attempt again tonight. We landed in an irish pub called JJ's where me and Sergio (one of the americans) immediately ran into a problem.

NZ bars dont take US drivers licences. We had to go back all the way to the hostel, get our passports, and then head on back.

In which we meet Kurt. I had let him know that I was in town as of about 4 that evening and he guessed where the Americans would be out drinking. (The irish pubs. very well done) Kurt, as you might already know, is one of the kiwi flatmates. He's in town working at Parliament before starting up at Victoria as well. Sergio, Kurt, and I all went back to the YHA to fetch dem passports and then headed back to JJ's, now full of americans, to have some drinks. My drink? Makers Mark Whisky, straight on the rocks (its a good starter). Most of the time was just spent with Kurt getting my bearings of the current NZ state and hearing about the day and days to come.

I gotta go run to dinner. I will write later, guys.

Kia Ora,
Christian

The Long and Winding Blog

2009-02-12T13:46:00.001-08:00

Suggested Listening: Life is a Highway (originally by Tom Cochrane) by Rascal Flatts off of the Cars Motion Picture Soundtrack.

Gooooood lord

I actually don’t really know how to feel. I’m excited, sure, but at the same time I’m pretty, well, nervous. I’m certainly nervous about the 12-hour flight.

Dear god that’s a long time. I’m not afraid of flying; I'm just a bit weary of flying for a long period of time over no solid land. Small space, long time. Woooo. Today is just the final preparations like packing, making sure all of my paperwork is in order, and saying goodbye to the cats and dog.

This past winter break was an interesting one, that’s for sure. I did only start my blog with a month to go before leaving for New Zealand so you didn’t get to hear much about Christmas and the like.

I’m sorry guys but there isn’t much to talk about today. I have to keep this short cause I have to get back to packing. I leave LAX at 730 Pacific Time on a gorgeous 747-400 owned and operated by the friendly kiwis at Air New Zealand, Flight number 5 (for those of you who like to track flights and such) and arrive around 6 AM NZ time in Auckland on Saturday the 14th. (I totally get to skip Friday. Haaaaaa)

What else is there to say? Thanks for reading the blog so far and of course there’ll be more.

I have no idea when I’ll have Internet access again for a suitable amount of time for a blog post so it might be another week before I post one of these again. For those on facebook I’ll try to get an “I’m here” notice out or something.

Go west, young man.

Chris

If You're Going to San Francisco, Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Blog, part 2

2009-02-11T22:40:00.000-08:00

Suggested Listening: Human by The Killers off the album Day and Age

I’m willing to take a guess and say that when you’re planning a vacation, one of the things not on the list is going to be wake up a 8 AM and do some community service. A week before I went down to San Francisco, Frances wrote me saying that her young adult group from church would be working at Project Open Hand Saturday morning. Project Open Hand is a non-profit geared around helping the homeless as well as those with AIDS and breast cancer.

I think many of you already know this, but if not, I lost an uncle to AIDS when I was young. Wayne Lee Love. He was one of the first people to really take a notice to that a toddler who can dance in time and come in on key to Gene Kelly song'n'dance numbers is something to invest in. I really wish I got to know him better. For my Mom's birthday one year, the year before he died, he gave the City of San Francisco to us, in that, he took us to every nook and cranny of his beloved town and explained everything, and anything, he knew about his love, San Francisco. I remember him specifically telling me to never, EVER, call it 'Frisco.

I know a few of the readers of this blog remember the details of the AIDS epidemic of the 80's and 90's a bit more vividly than I do so I wont spend much time divulging on that topic. Just a final thought: It only really struck me a few years ago what happened. I lost and uncle, and ally in music, and a good man to a horrid condition.

I tend to form grudges against things that hurt the people I care about and I have a vendetta against AIDS. Since I’ve never been any good at medicine the best I can do is little things like Project Open Hand.

Open Hand is located in what is essentially a hollowed out office building. The first level is the kitchen and eating area and the second level houses the grocery store. Open Hand put us up in the grocery department cutting and sorting stuff. First on the menu were green onions, which I quickly learned my eyes hate.

I mean absolutely loathe. I know that when people cut onions they tend to tear up. My eyes decided to catch on fire. On freaking fire. I had to step away several times because my eyes hurt to such a degree so that I couldn’t keep them open. Ick. Luckily up next was pepperoni and juice boxes. Packing juice boxes is always a chore since more often than not their natural reaction to being stuffed into a small space is to burst, which makes things rather sticky.

What’s really nice is that after your shift is done (ours was 9 am to 12 pm) they feed you and to be honest the food is quite good. They prepared some sort of Asian chicken thing with rice and veggies. OH, and cake. Gotta have the cake

Did I mention it was Chinese New Year / Spring Festival that weekend? I seem to have the dumb luck of planning to visit cities on packed travel days completely by accident. I have encountered this more than once. The first time was when my family planned to romp around Europe and see a solar eclipse (it was cloudy, again. We’ve tried to see two so far, both cloudy. Lame). We were staying at our friend’s alpine house in Aigle, just below Villars, Switzerland (ohmygod gorgeous) and just happened to be in town for the national Swiss Holiday. The second time was actually a family visit to San Francisco where somehow the fact that the weekend we were visiting was Gay Pride weekend. This time around it was Chinese New Year. I have nothing against the Chinese, Gay community, or the Swiss and I was thrilled to get to experience a little of all three celebrations but its like taking a mid-day nap and waking up to find 50 people in your house because you totally forgot it was Christmas Eve.

I was reminded of this when while riding the California Street Cable Car Frances and I decided to spontaneously get off at China Town and walk through the festivities. Unfortunately neither of us speaks Mandarin or Cantonese so the whole thing was a bit lost on us leading us to…

Frances: “Oh! You know what would be awesome? I bet the Golden Gate is gorgeous today!”
Me: “Sweet.”

San Francisco must have outlawed ugly days at some point in its history because it was beautiful out. Of course the sky was blue, of course there were sailboats on the bay, of course you could see for miles. Mostly we just goofed off and people watched at the “viewing point” of the bridge (though beautiful, it was still pretty darn cold and onshore flow from the pacific is less than comfortable thus no walking on the bridge).

Saturday night brought a “sobriety” party at an Indian restaurant called Naan & Curry. A few of Frances’ friends were celebrating their years of being sober (btw, big ups, guys) by noshing on all you can eat Indian food. I had forgotten within the years span (about) from the last time I had Indian food how spicy it actually was.

I had really forgotten.

Frances: Chris, are you all right?
Me: How can pineapple be spicy!? –downs a gallon of lemonade- IT’S PINEAPPLE!

Note to self: don’t have the pineapple at Naan and Curry.

After the sober party, Frances took me to hang out with some friends of hers at “The Café” which is one of the premier gay clubs in The Castro. Not being a gay guy it was still pretty cool with a fun open atmosphere. What was great about that night was that the club was taken over by a local “all techno” radio station which made me very happy as I like techno perhaps a bit too much. There was lots of dancing that was had. Not too much though since I had to catch a flight in the morning.

I don’t understand San Francisco. There’s no real concrete way to describe it or my attraction to it. To be honest I’m a bit cautious to write what I have in mind for this last little bit because…

Recently, I’ve been trying really hard to live in today’s terms. That is to say, I don’t dwell in the past nor do I thrive in the future (well at least I try not to). I just focus on what needs to be done today. I’m sure this’ll derail me in the near future (like, for instance, after senior year) but for right now I’d go crazy thinking too deeply into what will come. I’m a Christian (at least attempting to be) and Jesus says that going about your day worrying will not an hour to your life. Don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.

Maybe that’s why I love San Francisco the way I do. It’s just another day in the City by the Bay

Yich… totally didn’t mean for that to rhyme

--Chris

If You're Going to San Francisco, Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Blog, part 1

2009-02-10T00:30:00.000-08:00

Suggested Lisetning: California Soul by Marlena Shaw off of The Spice of Life

I have been going to San Francisco ever since I could remember. In fact it was the place I took my first steps. I think it might be the one place I’ve visited the most and to be frank I’m pretty sure I’m going to end up living there. Things seem so much more in line in my life when I’m up there.

I can’t explain it. I won’t begin to try to explain it. I Love San Francisco.

So naturally I had to go back up there before I began my semester abroad in New Zealand. This past weekend I went up to San Francisco to visit my friend Frances and, yes, of course, run around the city.

That is, of course, if the rapid transit in the bay area would stop hitting things. Er, wait, let me back track a bit.

Firstly, it has been raining a whole lot in California. The Thursday before I left for San Fran I managed to flood the engine in my car more than once (admittedly that was sort of my fault too.) A slight tangent: The southern California weather pattern seems to have a wire on me so that whenever I say, “I should really wash my car tomorrow” it promptly rains a few inches. But anyway…

Friday it was pouring, of course, making the transit of bags from car to parking lot shuttle to airplane that much more taxing. I think my luggage is going to go on strike from the amount of times I’ve dragged it through down pours. My transit up to the bay area was lovingly provided by Southwest Airlines which in this post 9-11 world has decided to stop being funny. I don’t know if any of you have flown Southwest lately but have you noticed their sudden bout of seriousness? For those of you who don’t know Southwest Airlines made their name based on cheap fares, peanuts, and hilarious flight crews. But all of a sudden on my Vegas flight and this flight to Oakland there were no funny bits.

Sigh.

I flew into Oakland and then caught the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit. Still the coolest looking subway in the world) to go meet up with Frances. Usually the BART trip takes about 15 minutes to head in from Oakland Airport to downtown San Francisco. Oh but today there was a little something extra to be had. The first train I had caught changed routes halfway because of “train trouble ahead.” All of a sudden the BART going to San Francisco, er, wasn’t, forcing most of the train passengers off of that train and onto another one. Because of this “trouble with the train ahead” we then promptly sat for a half hour at the station, another half hour in between that station and the next one, and then sort of limped through the tunnel under the bay, better known as the transbay tube.

What had happened was that the train immediately before the first BART I caught hit something in the Transbay Tube? Upon further inspection it was determined that the BART train had struck “metal debris” and had been knocked out of commission in the middle of the San Francisco bound side of the tube, forcing BART to use only one side of the tunnel, backing up everything from there to east Jesus. But what exactly was this metal debris anyway? It could have been anything. What’s curious is that even a couple of days after this metal debris was cleaned up, BART still wont report on what it was claiming that the debris was too hard to distinguish.

Psh. For the record Frances and I both thought the metal debris was a robot.

Metal Debris aside, I did eventually get to Frances’ place in Noe Valley. There was exploring to be had.

Proper exploring in San Francisco demands a Muni pass. Muni goes everywhere in the city you’d possibly want to be. (Ha! Imagine that! A Californian city with proper public transportation (kicks LA) ) First thing we set off for was Golden Gate park where the new Academy of Sciences…or Science Academy…science building thing… was which was actually pretty nifty. They had a biosphere that mimicked a rainforest climate of 85 degrees and humid (otherwise known as 1 AM in New Orleans weather but I digress) which was a really nice escape from the 50 degrees and drizzly San Francisco weather. The Biosphere contained the three levels of a rainforest including plants, butterflies, birds, and other interesting growth. If nothing else it was a really great excuse to look at colorful frogs. Oh and fish. It had a rather nice aquarium in it. After that we cut through Golden Gate park to go walk along the beachfront, looked at some cool old bathhouses, rode on the greatest bus seats EVER (they were IN the bendy section of a bendy bus) (the part that looks like an accordion), discussed the mishaps of apparently the worst light rail line in the world; the N-Judah (famous enough to have its own blog), and then, of course, it was off to The Bitter End

That’s a bar, by the way. Irish pub. Yum. Its Frances n’ pal’s chief hang out spot. It’s a two level pub with comfy seating, good music, and pool and darts on the second level. It was good times, hanging around with mostly friends from her high school life and playing darts. I did pretty well at darts considering my right arm doesn’t exactly “work”.

Ok I lost half of my games, but I have an excuse (no, not that excuse). Well for instance I was playing Frances at a round of 501 (first to reach 0 from 501 wins) and I scored about 30 points on a turn, but instead of subtracting 30, I added it to my score. Whoops. There. I totally would have won that game if I actually knew how to do math.

Yes it’s a cheap excuse. I’m a sore loser. At least at darts…

Part 2 to follow, naturally.

Video Killed The Radio Blog

2009-02-06T09:01:00.000-08:00

Suggested Listening: Your Radio

I have a strange fixation with the radio. It started back when I was learning to drive. My “first” car was a 1986 Volvo DL, which as many of you might know handles just about as well as a tank. In fact it is just a tank. The Volvo had no CD player or a working tape adapter therefore enslaving me to the use of the radio.

I grew up dependent on music. I still am in fact. It surrounds my life everywhere I go. I guess I was surprised to get turned on to the radio the way I did because I was so controlling over what sort of music I had playing in the car growing up. I don’t know if it was the experience of letting someone else drive, per se, that really got me hooked but what keeps me hooked is the every expanding library of music I stumble upon. Perhaps I let music define my life too much, but nonetheless I can’t get enough of the stuff.

This week in particular had me thinking a lot about why the hell I am listening to the radio as much as I do. It doesn’t make sense. Usually I'm bounding around my house/dorm room (whatever space I happen to be in) listening to whatever catches my fancy on my iPod. My Integra has a 6 disc CD changer and tape deck adapter for anything with a headphone jack (like an iPod) but I’m almost always listening to the radio.

This is all just open musing, mind you. Not much of a blog entry, but maybe it’ll spark some conversation in the comments area.

It provides this nice soundtrack to your day I’ve come to find. When you’re listening to an iPod you can get anxious sometimes when you cant find what you’re “in the mood” for. The radio doesn’t care about that.

Musing complete. Commence actual blog material

As for my week…

Nothing much has been going on. I’ve been running around getting ready for New Zealand, mostly buying stuff I might need. I was also instructed by the Kiwi roommates (Kurt, Libby, and Linda…hey guys) to re-watch the Lord Of The Rings trilogy. Oh my god. I couldn’t get over the amount of times I had to pinch myself because the background wasnt CGI. I got new shoes (Nike shox….nothing new for me) and that’s that just an average weekend. This is a smaller update, as I have to leave for my next blog entry in about a half hour.

What’s next? San Francisco.

Sweet

Uh, I gotta go catch a plane.

--Chris

p.s. For the record I'm officially tired of Lady GaGa's "Just Dance"

p.p.s. I dont know blogging copyright law so lemmie just cover myself here by saying that (obviously) the pictures or videos I link to aren't my own.

p.p.p.s. Here's a palate cleanser after that serious interlude.

Viva Blog Vegas, Part 2

2009-02-03T02:13:00.000-08:00

(continued from part 1. so read that first)

(Suggested Listening: Hell Yeah by Rev Theory from Light It Up)
(generic "awesome" music, true)

I’m sure you know this, but I’m a huge racing fan. A couple of years ago I got performance driving lessons as a Christmas present. Only last weekend did that present get put to use. I attended an introductory open wheel racing class at the Andretti-Gordon Racing School. This is the only publicly open racing school to operate open wheel racers (normally I’d have to take the long way to driving one of these babies i.e. go kart racing tournaments.) but they offer a class in oval racing and as its still on my short list of things I want to do with my life (though admittedly pro racer is low on the list) (still gonna do some of it though) (yay speed). Gotta start somewhere. The day began at four or so with classroom instruction on what to expect at speed, what to pay attention to in the car, on the track, what the preferred line is, and what to do in case something goes wrong (disturbingly, the answer to that question is “nothing” unless there’s a fire). After that it was some hands on instruction inside the cockpit of the racecar coupled with a trip around Las Vegas Speedway demonstrating the line and proper following and passing procedure.

I took a ride around the course in a more powerful race car (than the one I drove) to get myself used to the lateral G I would experience. I didn’t exactly know what lateral gravitational force I would expect. I expected something along the line of the lat-g one experiences when one turns his or her car a bit too hard in an effort to make a quick correction. That sort of lateral G sort of rotates around your lower stomach and it gives the sensation that someone is pulling your arm (and torso) in the opposite direction of your turn. Lateral G at 150 to 170 miles an hour is very, very different. If you ever want to feel like a magnet, I recommend doing this ride along thing at Las Vegas Speedway. It’s the most insane and incredible sensation I’ve ever felt. Your entire body gets pressed to the outside of the cockpit in a high bank turn at full power with seemingly no focal point; just your entire body, up against whatever is next to you. It was like all of a sudden someone flipped you horizontally to the ground and your entire body was falling towards it.

And I had to drive a car with all of this going on. Really glad I did that ride along first.

God I couldn’t wait to do it.

Driving lessons, at least in the beginner level, work as such. An instructor will drive in front of him and you follow. Easy?

No.

You keep a certain distance back from the instructor just in case anything goes badly and you need to react but the instructor gradually increases speed every lap (6 laps) from 100 mph to 150, the fastest they’ll let you go. They will accommodate you if you’re not comfortable with going that fast but…uh…you know me. Driving an open wheel car is a crazy thing because your head is outside of the shell of the car by about 4 to 5 inches, which means wind and lots of it. Open wheel car aerodynamics work as such so that the air rushing into the cockpit rushes out equally as fast pushing the helmet off of your head so if it isn’t strapped in tightly enough it will fly off. Even strapped on tightly enough it was like someone standing on top of the car gently lifting the helmet off my head. Not only that every crease and pebble on the road feels like a speed bump you just took too quickly. Going straight in one of these things is an adventure in itself. Turning the car you actually have to accelerate more because you will lose momentum in a banked turn found on oval circuits. It was like rolling down hill on your bicycle but intentionally going faster. Not only that you had to fight whatever air was coming off the car in front of you. They didn’t let you tail close enough as to pick up a draft (where the air from the car ahead is pushed aside for a few moments after that car passes it therefore giving you less wind resistance. Try standing behind a friend of yours as to block a gust of wind and you’ll get it. ) This meant driving in “dirty” air that was…rough. It was like something was constantly knocking me left to right in random intermittent levels making going any direction rough. There was a hair-raising moment when we had to pass slower traffic on turn one. They had the low line pushing us up into the second line that was higher up on the corner. Oval racetracks form grooves in them as cars are raced on them. The track is considered green if that track hasn’t been used and therefore is littered with dust and bits of rubber from the tire. Essentially driving in a groove versus driving on a green track is like driving on a newly paved road on a hot day, making it sticky and better for grip, versus driving on ice. I was now on the green part of the track for this turn. I had to keep very still as to not get too much into the upper reaches of the track and keep the car gripping. Dirt and rubber were flying against my helmet as the car in front of me kicked it up. Obviously I made it through but…god.

It was some of the most amazing few minutes of my life and I cant wait to do it again

Of course when I saw my time sheet and my top speed around the beginner allowed 150 mph I immediately wanted to go faster.

And now, pictures:

Hot helmet action. or "a la stig" (dont worry bout that last bit. very very esoteric reference)

waiting

That blur? me. 150 mph.

awesome

Peace, Love, and Hang Loose of course.

Chris

Viva Blog Vegas, Part 1

2009-02-03T01:23:00.000-08:00

This blog entry is rated PG13. All pictures safe for work.

Suggested Listening: I Wish by Stevie Wonder from Songs in the Key of Life.

It’s any wonder as to why Las Vegas exists as a city at all. I read that the area contained vast meadowlands at one time, at least long enough for the Spanish to get there and name it Las Vegas (The Meadows). Here in 2009 it looks miserable and inconceivable that anyone would live here. That and god knows what the local Nuclear bomb tests did for the local, er, atmosphere.

I’ve already started to trash the city, and quite unfairly. I loved it.

Well I loved the “strip” that’s for sure. It’s like saying I loved Chicago but having only visited the few blocks contained inside of The Loop. Vegas was always a city that was lost on me. Everyone seemed to be having a great time without seeming to do anything fun. Truth be told I was under the age of 14 the last two times I went so “fun” was still roller coasters and water slides (still are fun) Vegas for a 21 year old is a whole different animal.

We stayed in the Venetian hotel that is billed as having the biggest hotel rooms in the world (which is a fact.) The biggest hotel rooms in the world are actually pretty much your standard room size plus a nice seating area adjacent to the sleeping area. Both have flat screen HD TV’s, as does the bathroom because, hello, it’s a hotel in Vegas. It was the most relaxing hotel I’ve been in on the strip (others: Mandalay Bay and Tropicana) and frankly a Vegas trip requires a nice place to relax because it can be a fast paced time if you want it as such.

It’s just a bunch of fun, really.

My adventuring was well assisted by the Las Vegas Monorail. Though useful, the monorail seemed a bit silly of all things. Firstly journeys between stations were accompanied by classic porn music and two smooth talking presenters detailing some facts about Las Vegas and the strip all while the monorail car itself dimmed its cabin lights to get you in the mood for…monorailing It does get you places though. Every stop is at least walking distance from one major hotel or another. (walking distance used loosely here)

But enough about monorails. How about some awards?

Best at being the Biggest: MGM Grand

“The Grand” is the gem of the “new” Vegas. From what I read and hear Vegas up until about the late 80’s was just this sleaze fest of a place that mostly mob bosses and lowlifes visited. This trend changed a bit when then owner of the free world Howard Hughes bought many of the casinos on the strip and made them a more family friendly sleazy. Then in 1989 MGM shows up with The Mirage. That wasn’t a typo. They own the Mirage, MGM Grand, New York New York, The Bellagio, Luxor, Mandalay Bay, Monte Carlo, Excalibur, Circus Circus, and quite possibly you as well. What The Mirage did was open this new avenue of themed hotels that weren’t just some rooms attached to some slot machines (hookers sold separately). There were now themed rooms attached to themed slot machines (themed hookers sold separately). Why does the MGM Grand get my attention? That would be because it’s huge. Some say you can see the curvature of the earth inside its casino. The MGM Grand set the bar for the rest of the strip’s hotels and really flexed the developmental muscle of what a resort hotel could be.

To counteract the seriousness of that paragraph, here’s a funny picture.

Biggest Letdown and Rip Off: The New York New York Roller Coaster

I hadn’t been on a roller coaster in over two years, I think and I got hungry and thought hey, there’s a roller coaster!

As a coaster it was pretty mild even with two inversions and a top speed of about 70 miles an hour. One of the inversions was pretty intense as the coaster was going just a mile an hour too slow for comfort and you lifted out of your seat for a split second. However it wasn’t worth it because it cost 14 dollars. One ride. 14 bucks. I mean what the hell.

Worst Attention To Theme: Paris Las Vegas

Not even close, guys. You don't even get a link.

Best attention to theme: The Venetian

Hey gotta plug the hotel I stayed in.

Biggest Surprise:

Planet Hollywood. I had presumed that this hotel would be some shabby shot at what Hollywood is like (I had just walked over from Paris, LV and was quite pessimistic). I was right, but it was so over the top that there was no way that I couldn’t love it. It was shiny, colorful, glitzy, sexy, I mean everything just cranked up all the way to eleven. I’ll make a note of that if I get a chance to go again with friends.

Best Club: Tao (New Suggested Listening: Touch the Sky by Kanye West from Late Registration.)

Sort of an unfair award but I couldn’t find a good transition to talking about my club experience. I do have some credentials for giving it at least a preliminary best club award. Firstly it’s a club that’s mostly frequented by 20 something’s instead of mid to late 30 something’s (like every other club I saw) which was helpful in finding people to hang out with. Also, there’s a “hotel guests only” line. Big points.

The club itself is inspired by Asian culture and ambiance (apparently throwing a few Buddhas and candles around occasionally ornamented by a dancing girl, girl in rose pedal bathtub, or girls doing… some sort “performance art” counts as Asian to Las Vegas.) The layout of the place is pretty simple: bar and dance/hang out area downstairs, two stages upstairs with hang outs in between. All poorly lit except for candles and good ol’ Siddhartha in the house. I went just looking to meet new people and it was a good time. I mostly hung around this guy named Jason from DC and from there voyaged between groups of people. Also we were introduced to “the worst shot in the world” which is just straight Campari. Frankly, I loved it, but then again I have an unusually high tolerance for pain. I’m still not quite sure what it tasted like. I couldn’t have too much of anything that night because of what would happen Saturday afternoon and into the evening.

But that’s part two.

Long Blog Runnin'

2009-01-27T01:04:00.000-08:00

(Suggested Listening: Train in Vain from The Clash, off the album London Calling)

I love taking the train. I don’t expect you to understand this madness, but I’m not going to change my ways for anything.

So this past weekend I saw it fit to take the train to Santa Barbara to hang with my buddy Ian at UCSB.

You’ve heard about UCSB, haven’t you?

Ok to be fair they’ve been working really hard on improving their image and have been rather successful on reminding people they actually are a rather great school. And no, their long-standing errrr social lifestyle was not the primary reason for visiting

But enough defending myself needlessly.

Trains rock. Seriously. They do. I don’t even understand my own fixation with them. It possibly has something to do with the sensation of going rather fast while not traveling on a motorway. For those of you who don’t know I decided the best way to travel east to Sarah Lawrence would be by train so I took an Amtrak Superliner from LA to NYC. It took 4 days. Four. Awesome. Days.

Yes, I am a nerd.

What’s great about taking the train to Santa Barbara is that for more than half of the journey you’re skimming the gorgeous California coastline. Train travel is very relaxing for me and frankly I needed an escape.

It takes about three hours to get there by train but I really didn’t care.

I spent only that Friday night and then Saturday morning in Isla Vista, which is pretty much a suburb of UCSB. Its all essentially identical slabs of plaster and wood with windows poked out of them but it still is one of the most relaxing places I’ve ever been. True the neighborhood sits right on top of the beach (truth) but at first glance it looks nothing more than a whole bunch of two story apartment buildings.

That being said, the community is really what makes Isla Vista the place that it is. It’s overrun with college kids so there are hardly any cars on the road and it’s mostly people walking or biking around. The town center has a lot of cool homegrown dives and I’ve-never-heard-of-it hangout joints and its just really laid back.

Well it is Santa Barbara. What do you want?

Friday nights are really a sight to see in Isla Vista. Ian and I set out on our own looking for people to hang with and for a time hung around in the apartment of some friend of his as we had some drinks and watched a little TV musing about anything and everything. After which we rolled onto a way way over crowded party, declared it “eh” and went on our way.

Saturday brought pancakes and 24. Oh yes. 24. I don’t know whether or not to call 24 a guilty pleasure because I don’t feel guilty loving this show. This show begs to be loved and delivers every week on being stupidly fun. The only problem is that it’s not that friendly to viewers who are just joining the series. Even though you’ll catch on eventually you might want to have someone who’s watched the show faithfully to fill in all the vague bits.

You know what, no. 24 hates viewers with a passion. No other show has left me so aggravated after an episode as to where they dared to leave us for the next week. 24 will kill all of your favorite characters (except Jack. Killing Jack Bauer does not make him dead, it just makes him angry) and then completely flip the plot on its head all within the confines of one episode.

It’s an abusive relationship. I know its bad for me but I can’t get enough.

And now here I am, 2 am writing a blog entry. Though my previous weekend and the weekends to follow had and will have exciting things to report on, my weeks are just dull. I’m getting very fidgety to get New Zealand underway (for other reasons other than to get more writing material) but its just made worse by the weeks in between.

This is my average day:

Get woken up by cat, fall back asleep.
Get woken up by multiple cats, fall back asleep,
Get woken up by cat gnawing on my face, decide it’s a good time to get cereal.
Get cereal, watch espn. Shower. Go run (I'm up to 2.5 miles a day!). Come back. Shower. Find something else to do.
If its cold enough, make a fire, huddle around fire.
Pet Sadie
Dinner,
Sleep.

I mean how dull! I’m begging to find other stuff to do during the day. Tomorrow I’m going to go digging for the 24 video game (I don’t have a problem, I can quit any time I like) and then…well…and then what? The days are long.

Oh crap I just remembered I’m picking up my brother tomorrow from the airport.

Oh crap I just remembered my Dad’s birthday is this weekend.

Well that’s two things then! Awesome

Peace and Hang Loose,

Chris

P.S. ok not exactly a funny post. I’ll try to keep the humor as constant as possible.

You Always Remember Your First Blog

2009-01-22T23:43:00.000-08:00

(Suggested Blog Listening: Something Going Round by Hanson from The Walk)

Ah, finally, the blog.

I guess its “the thing” to start a blog for when you go overseas so here’s mine. So if I haven’t been talking your ear off in excitement for the past few months about where I'm going, I’m going to New Zealand for second semester. I’ll be living in Wellington, the capital, and frankly I’m freakin excited to get it going.

Why am I going? Why not? It's there and looks gorgeous (re: Lord Of The Rings).

But no, I’m here in Los Angeles for another three weeks. Not like there’s anything WRONG with that. I do get to brag to (most of) you guys as you freeze your ass off in the northern part of our great nation as I cruise around Ventura Boulevard in shorts and flip-flops. Karma has crept up to me this week however as it is raining here…and will for another five days.

So here’s a little bit about Los Angeles:

(New suggested listening: I Love L.A. by Randy Newman from Trouble in Paradise)

Name: El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de la Porciúncula
Nicknames: Los Angeles, LA, LALA land.
Often preceded by the words: I love, I hate, Crap I have to go to, Oh You live in, Yes I live in, The traffic sucks in, etc…
Population: A lot

Measurements:
- City 498.3 sq mi (1,290.6 km2)
- Land 469.1 sq mi (1,214.9 km2)
- Water 29.2 sq mi (75.7 km2) 5.8%
- Urban 1,667.9 sq mi (4,319.9 km2)
- Self described as “athletic”

Personality: A bit lightheaded but serious when it needs to be, which is hardly ever. But over all a kind hearted city
Likes: sunshine, beaches, live music, sports, college kids, cars! more sunshine, pools, famous people watching, coffee
Dislikes: Cold, bad coffee, mornings.
Primary industry: Entertainment, Inter-Pacific business and politics, Porn (you think I’m kidding).
Chief imports: everyone with a car.
Chief exports: OMG AMERICAN IDOL!!*

And that’s as best as I could describe it. I’ve been in a lull lately finding stuff to do. I’ve lined myself up with a bunch of little mini trips over the next three weekends that will definitely get mention in the blog.

For right now, that’s pretty much it. I do know what’s getting written of next, and that would be Santa Barbara.

And Trains.

Hang Loose,
Chris.

p.s. I was going to write a bit about New Zealand on here, but since I haven’t actually been there I couldn’t accurately spill the beans on it yet. But in the mean time here’s their National Anthem.

and their "other" national anthem.

p.p.s. Big thanks to Cori Johnson on help creating the title of the blog. (ok it was pretty much all her. Props)

*As an Angeleno, I sincerely apologize. We should have had the foresight to let the British KEEP that idea for themselves.