DominicHamon.com

Life is like a grapefruit

Writing in the dark

I thought that I’d survived jetlag. I was clearly wrong.

After a very tiring day yesterday, during which I walked nearly 3km with an enormous bag of dog food thanks to getting lost and not finding a cab, I crashed early at 7.30pm. I like to think of the walk of doom as my own personal Biggest Loser challenge. Sleeping early would have been fine, except I woke up very confused in the dark. Bugger, I thought, it’s 3am, isn’t it. I resigned myself to another early start before checking the time and seeing 11.15. Confused that it was still dark but the time showed that I’d slept in late, it took a while before I realised I’d only been asleep for a few hours.

Fortunately, or unfortunately in retrospect, I had a great idea for the novel that I’m writing as part of NaNoWriMo. So I slunk into the living room, fired up Ike, the EeePC, and started writing. Now I’m horribly behind in my writing; I should be at around 15,000 words and I was at about 4,000. I churned out over 2,500 words before feeling that I could sleep once more, at about 2am. I haven’t caught up, but it was a good dent in the word count.

Sadly, I was mistaken about my propensity for sleep. Another couple of hours went by as I stared at the ceiling during which Mirto also woke up. We decided to give up on sleep for a while and watch some TV. An hour later, she’d been able to crash again, but I stayed up until nearly 7am before crashing on the couch. The couch, by the way, is the least comfortable couch I’ve ever had the displeasure of knowing. It’s too short, too shallow, and the cushions are attached to the frame.

I finally woke up at 11.30am with a very frustrated puppy nuzzling my arm for breakfast and a walk, with a stiff neck, arms, shoulders and back.

Now it’s early afternoon and I’m about to have pancakes for breakfast. Yeah, I know. My life sucks, right?

It’s my first day at work tomorrow in a new company, so I really need to get a solid night’s sleep. Of course, if it’s interrupted by another bout of writing, I won’t be too upset. But sleep would be great too.

Posted on 2008/11/09 by dominic in personal | Tagged jetlag, NaNoWriMo | Leave a comment

When shuffle just works

iPod: Morning Dom, how about we start with a little Maiden.

Dom: Ok, but make it something chilled.

iPod: Infinite Dreams?

Dom: Perfect.

iPod: Time to step it up a gear: Sell Out by the Levellers good?

Dom: Great. I need to wake up a bit.

iPod: Let’s not get too perky, I fancy slowing it down with Radiohead and Bullet Proof… I Wish I Was.

Dom: Ooh, good choice for a nice chilled walk.

iPod: And now a little R.E.M. and Find The River?

Dom: Yes!

iPod: Hmm.. The streets are getting a little grungy. Fancy some Clash?

Dom: Rudie Can’t Fail would be great about now.

iPod: Can do!

Posted on 2008/11/08 by dominic in personal | Tagged conversation, music | Leave a comment

Stand and deliver

Image via Wikipedia

I have a bank account! But not just any account, oh no. I have a bank account with Wells Fargo. The Wells Fargo that was formed in the mid-nineteenth century amid the gold rush in California. The one that is obsessed with stage coaches, pioneering and horses.

They are definitely staying true to their roots. Firstly, the options for their atm card images are stage coaches or horses. Similarly, the ~~cheque~~ check options range across a whole gamut from stage coaches to horses. When opening the account, we were given a free gift of… a plush horse (which Oliver is happily parading around with). Do you see the theme maybe?

Even the branch had a museum attached filled with gold, prospecting equipment, stage coaches (of course) and olde timey wanted posters.

Having said that, they are offering up-to-date online services, which I’ll bore you with if I tell you about, but which are exciting to a geek like me. It’s just great to be in a country that embraces technology again.

The thing that made me write this, though, is that when logging on I had to choose some security questions. That’s fine and normal and dull, right? Well not quite as dull as I expected. The security questions are things like:

What is your dream occupation?

What is the name of your favourite childhood superhero?

What was your most memorable gift as a child?

This is just another example of the great attitude that prevails around here; that people are willing to just loosen up a bit, and while being aware of things as important and as dull as security issues for online banking, willing to have a bit of fun with it.

Posted on 2008/11/08 by dominic in personal | Leave a comment

First you jump off the cliff and you build wings on the way down.

Ray Bradbury

Posted on 2008/11/07 by dominic in personal | Leave a comment

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

Douglas Adams

Posted on 2008/11/07 by dominic in personal | Leave a comment

Born free, as free as the wind blows

Apparently, according to Mirto, I write better when I’m tired. If so, this should post should be comedy gold!

I started writing that we’re one day in to our San Francisco life, but I think it might have been two. Between the waking at odd hours and the naps in between brief periods of wakefulness, I’ve already lost track of time.

I do know that last night myself, the wife and Oliver went for a great walk together. We went along the road we’re living on and into the small park next door, Mission Creek Park. It’s a couple of small grassy areas with a path running through the middle and some sports courts (volleyball, basketball, tennis, etc) that runs alongside the creek. On the water are some of the most amazing houseboats I’ve seen. I used to live on a dock in London and quite a few people lived on barges there; these are like mansions to their garden sheds. Some of them are two storey affairs that look as if someone just took a house and dropped it onto the creek, hoping that it would float.

Anyway, just past the little park is an off-leash dog run. It’s essentially a large gravelled area with airlock style gates at each end. To give some background to dog run experiences and us: In Vancouver, everywhere was pretty much a dog run. There was the grassy patch opposite the apartment, there was Kits Beach. Even just walking along the roads, you’d see people with their dogs off-leash and they’d sniff and play and wag. In Singapore, not so much. I don’t want to get too deep into Singapore and dogs because it was, frankly, depressing and frustrating. The essential deal is that as most people don’t train their dogs there, or bother to learn about dog behaviour, and coupled with the extremely strict dog leash laws, and steep fines for breaking those laws, you rarely see dogs off-leash. It’s rare even for on-leash dogs to be allowed to meet, which of course just continues the spiral of anti-social dogs, which leads to dogs not meeting, etc, etc. Anyway, this was a slightly different experience.

There were at least eight other dogs there between three or four owners. Every dog was brilliantly behaved and played really nicely, and were clearly well socialised. Even Oliver, who frankly has picked up some bad habits from Singapore, played wonderfully. He’s been dying to get running for months now and this was his chance. Two of the dogs there were owned by a couple who also foster dogs from Rocket Dog, and I feel compelled to give them a link because their love for their dogs was so apparent, and their drive to help dogs so infectious, I almost offered to adopt one of their fosters on the spot. I was so impressed that dogs who have possibly been maltreated were able to be off-leash in a dog run with other dogs and be so well behaved. Perhaps we have room for a foster somewhere in our family…

Forty minutes later, we had a very tired pooch — more tired than I’ve seen him since Vancouver — who we managed to drag home. He slept solidly all night and has been napping all day today.

The only downside is that when I took him back to the run this evening, as eager as he was to play, his paws are too sore from the gravel to allow him to have fun. We’ll go back there in a day or two when his paws are feeling better, and this time he won’t be playing quite so hard.

It is clear already that this city could not be a better place for him, and that makes it the best place for me.

Posted on 2008/11/07 by dominic in personal | Tagged oliver | Leave a comment

Letter from America

The last time we left him, our hero was boarding a Singapore Air plane bound for San Francisco. Let’s see what happened next.

The Singapore Air experience was, as always, fantastic. Food every three hours, drinks every hour, and a really comfortable seat. We had a transit stop in Hong Kong that was vaguely ridiculous: We left the plane, travelled through half the airport, and then reboarded the same plane the moment we got to the new gate. There was just enough time to have someone top up Oliver’s water supply, and get the news that he was “very active”. I have pictures of him greeting the water-carrier with a great wagging of tail and sniffing of water bottle, and possibly scaring them half to death.

Back on board, the flow of alcohol began. I was very cold on board so I was forced to have coffee with cognac, alongside the screwdrivers, champagne and Silver Kris Sling; a heady mix of champagne, gin, cointreau, orange and pineapple juice, for the vitamin C of course.

The food was excellent, although Mirto will probably have something to say about the running out of the beef before getting to her. When the service is this good, it’s the small things that really get to you. For instance, the wonderful service requires the attendants to interrupt movies a lot to ensure you get exactly what you want. If you’re not careful, you can end up resenting that constant interruption!

Movie-wise, I watched Iron Man, a waste with that screen size, but the noise-cancelling headphones made the audio reasonable, and I’m sure to watch it again, and Kung Fu Panda, which was one of the finest animations I’ve seen in a long time. While Wall-E is a great movie for story and characterisation, the standard of animation is exactly what I now expect from Pixar. This, however, was unexpected and wonderful.

After movies, things started to fall apart. Not literally, thankfully, although we did have a couple of hairy moments flying through active thunderstorms, but my eyes started to droop and my brain started to shut down. I normally make it a rule to not sleep on flights as I find that really helps the jet lag. I don’t know if it was the comfy chair, the relief of stress, the overwhelming amounts of alcohol or the carbohydrate laden food that actually pushed me over the edge, but I slept. Really really well.

Five hours later I woke up (in time for breakfast, yay!) and realised what I’d done. One poor attendant received the full force of it: when he asked if I wanted coffee or tea, I just stared at him blankly, I’m told. I thought that I said very clearly “yes please, a coffee would be a fantastic idea. Thank you”, however I apparently just stared at him until he looked worriedly at Mirto, who was able to translate for me.

I’ll skip over watching Forbidden Kingdom as it was so forgettable that I did not mind when my movie system rebooted during the final boss battle. The movie system runs a customised DR-DOS which unzips the software on boot that it then runs through something that looked alot like Windows 3.1, by the way.

Once we landed, we sailed through immigration thanks to the power of lawyers and enormous piles of documentation, and our bags came off almost immediately. I went over to the animal carrier handling to pick up Oliver, where I could see his crate. The gentleman who was looking out for me motioned that the crate was empty! This, apparently, was a very poorly timed joke on his part. On reaching the crate, I was greeted with a great tail-wagging and snuffling. I’m impressed that he had not dirtied his crate, and was not stressed, but merely extremely happy to see us.

It was not all fun and sunshine, however. We were expecting to be met by a driver, as we were travelling with many bags and the poochinator. No-one was there. Fortunately, we had two numbers to call in case of issues like this. I went to the payphones and tried the first, free, number.

Automated phone voice: “<insert name here> is not available, please leave a message or hit 0 for assistance”

Me: 0

Automated phone voice: “General mailbox… is not available, please leave a message <phoop>”

Me: “bum”

So I found some US coins and tried the second number we had, a more direct line, apparently.

Automated phone voice: “Our office is now closed. Please call back tomorrow morning after 9am.”

Me: *sob*

It appeared that while I’d successfully made it to the new country, and successfully brought my family with me, I couldn’t get out of the airport, and was stranded there. I can tell you that I have never felt so impotent and frustrated as that moment. I really did not know what to do. It didn’t help that Oliver was sitting in his crate with his legs crossed. He really needed to go.

Meanwhile, Mirto has made friends with a family with a kid, and they’re all fawning over Oliver. I’m glad that she was able to relax, and I only worry what the family must have thought about this blustering, harassed brit storming around with bits of paper flying everywhere on the verge of frustrated tears.

Mirto suggested that I go and find an alternative limo or taxi who could take us, which I think was her way of getting me out of her hair while she thought of a solution, but which I did anyway. The conversation went something like this:

Me: “Hello, large van limo driver, I have lots of luggage and a dog. Can you take me home?”

Driver: “Yes, I’m your driver and have been waiting for a call from the office who were waiting for you to contact them.”

Me: “Bu.. wha.. Great!”

I could leave it here and say that we are living happily ever after in the service apartment with everyone in one piece, however there’s one really important story that I want to tell.

As we were loading the luggages into the van, it came to be Oliver’s turn. Now Oliver ways 30kg, and his crate is 12kg, but it was also full of blankets and toys, which pushed the whole thing up to 50kg. I can’t lift 50kg, especially when 60% of it is moving around inside. Just as I start to look for a porter, an older gentleman who I didn’t know came over and offered to help. I tried to refuse, but he insisted, saying that he noticed I was looking harassed, and needed to do something while he waited for his wife anyway. Between us, we got the crate to the van and in the back, and then he welcomed us to “Obama country”, which was the first we heard of the news, and went back to the terminal.

I can’t think of a better way to sum up how happy I am to be in San Francisco than to point to that and say that that is the attitude I’ve always wanted to be living around. A selfless willingness to help, and eyes open enough to see when people need help.

A greater welcome to the new America, there could not have been. Thank you, random older gentleman of possibly German extraction.

Posted on 2008/11/05 by dominic in personal | Tagged moving | Leave a comment

Leaving on a jetplane

“Today” has been going on now for something like 35 hours, but I’m too numb in the brain to figure it out exactly. It started on Tuesday morning in Singapore with the chaps who were meant to pick up the last of our boxes not showing up, and the co-ordinator explaining that they’d get there some time after we’d left the country. Which was less than helpful. Some expectation-realignment later, and that minor hitch was sorted out.

I’m going to skip the packing and repacking and the final handover of keys, and get to the fun bit. The bit where we had to get to the airport with a dog and shiny new US visas. The first stop was the US embassy, where it became clear we hadn’t been given the coupon we needed to pick up our passports. We were still allowed in and went through the metal detectors and scanners and finally to the inner sanctum, where we were told that our passports were available, and were in a basket by the front door. Back we went, and picked up the passports. It took about 10 minutes, which was fantastic as I was expecting at least an hour there.

Next up was the pickup of the puppy, which was smooth sailing, and then on to the airport. I was impressed yet again at the efficiency of the check-in team at Changi Airport. They handled all of the paperwork requirements easily and arranged for Oliver to be taken off to the holding area. We’d been told horror stories of holding areas being out on the tarmac in the full glare of the sun, but were assured that their holding area was inside.

We had to put him in his crate for weighing, then take him out, then try to put him back in again. Putting him back in was a scene from a cartoon: He splayed his legs as far as possible to try to stop the inevitable. It was a battle of wills, and the irresistable force of me finally overcame the immovable object of Oliver, and in he went. He was carted off on a trolley and all we could see were his big brown eyes the size of dinner plates through the bars of his crate.

If you are reading this as a dog owner, and have ever relocated a dog, you know how stressful this moment can be. If not, I will do my best to explain. At the moment they are taken away, you start imagining the worst. Will he be put on the right plane? Will they remember to switch on the climate control? Will he be taken off during the transit stop and not put back on? Will all of his water spill before he gets there? When we get him off at the other end, will he be in one piece? Will he have dirtied his crate and be feeling humiliated and stressed? I took comfort in how professional Changi Airport were with him, and that we had ensured every piece of paperwork was in place for him.

So it was time for us to go to the lounge (we were flying business class, courtesy of Uncle George) and get a cucumber sandwich. For those who don’t know, the cucumber sandwich, made well, is the finest sandwich ever made. It must be made with white bread, cut small, with real butter and layers of thinly sliced cucumber with just a little salt and pepper. The crusts must, of course, be cut off.

Settling into the lounge, and briefly checking early election results, I went to grab a plateful of the sandwiches. I saw them in the food area and decided to browse around a bit to see what else I could get. When I returned, the entire plate had been taken away! It did not return, and I was sad. So I grabbed a couple of small Tiger beers and went back to our very comfy chairs. Please note that at this point, myself and the wife had not sat in a chair for a week; I can’t tell you the relief of a really comfy armchair after that.

We’d been told at the reception of the lounge that we were to board about fifteen minutes later. Given that, it was time to go down to the gate to board. Imagine our surprise when the screens were showing the gate was closing already! Also, imagine the stress levels rising when we find out that the gates are 18 minutes away! A mad dash through the airport later, we get to the hand luggage scanner. I dread these; not because of the scrutiny, the personal space intrusion or any notion of privacy being eroded, but because I’m a geek and carry two laptops, plus gaming machines, plus miscellaneous gadgets, in my hand luggage. My wife also carries a laptop, pda and a smattering of gadgets. Every time we go through the scanner, we have to unpack it all into the trays, get scanned, then repack it all. Add to this the pressure of “last call for flight SQ002” booming of the tannoy, and things got a little frantic.

I’m too tired to keep up the tension, and it is probably clear from the fact that I’m writing this post, but we did make it on to the plane on time, and were greeted by drinks and food galore, as is the way with Singapore Air.

Another post will be along in a few hours when I’ve had some sleep to complete the story of the journey to the Brave New World.