All Blacks

In the desert of postings for this blog, there are occasional oasis when a flurry of activity by either of us results in many postings in a small space of time. And so, today three of the All Blacks came to my workplace to sign autographs and take pictures with everyone. In attendance were Ma'a Nonu, Cory Jane, and Owen Franks.

Nonu is one of my favorite players and getting to see his forearms in-person was a great experience. I didn't end up talking to Jane but I had a good discussion about gridiron football with Owen Franks (his brother Ben Franks is another All Black). Owen's favorite team is the Raiders and I thought about discussing his poor choice, but then noticed his cauliflower ear and realized that even though I probably know more about football, I would have lost that argument.

Phones

Melbourne was great. We did lots of touristy things, went out to eat, and I was strough (contraction of strong and tough) enough to chaperone some power shopping. We met up with our American friend Nicole too and she was great company. You'll get all the details and pictures in a future post.

Now for the inspiration behind this post: phones and the noises they make. At one point in my life I attended graduate school in the mornings and answered phones for a living all night. I was doing tech support and answered the phone tens of times each shift. And nobody was calling to tell me how well their equipment was working. They all had problems and high-stress levels and wanted me to share the emotions they had. Answering the phone wasn't great, but I really hated that little red voice mail light. Long meandering monologues about their problems that they could have relayed to the next available tech support agent.

At school, I was studying Telecommunications and gaining deep insight in the engineering, business, and legal methods though which the phone companies were screwing us all. Together with my job, I developed a severe aversion to phones. I cancelled my home phone and refused to get a mobile phone. I had broadband and could email or IM with anyone from home or work, but if you wanted to talk to me, you had to call me at work. When I had to call someone, I would do it at work and planned my life accordingly.

After dating for a while, Perin didn't care for my arrangement and eventually convinced me to get a mobile phone. Having done research into the mobile operators, I was paralyzed attempting to choose the least-evil provider. It couldn't be done: they were all really evil. I eventually relented and chose one. People could call me on it, but I refused to check voice mail.

Time heals all wounds. Two years after graduation and leaving that job, I could force myself to check my voice mail when it would get to around 10. And now I don't despise checking voicemail, and I can check it each time I get one, but I still dislike it.

And at the same time, I've become the ultimate sell-out. I work for the phone company now. Technically, I work for a subsidiary of the phone company selling/doing computer stuff, but I work with people who sell "communication solutions" including phones, mobile phones, and phone plans.

Or course, I still dislike the sounds of phones ringing. I always try to set my phone to minimal ring sound. A single ping or something like that. I leave my phone on vibrate pretty much all the time. However, working with this team of phone salespeople means they're always getting new phones and tend to be too lazy to change the default sounds. So when one phone rings, they're all "Is that me? Is that you? Who's is that?" Same thing for reminders, and email, text, and voice mail alerts.

This makes me appreciate the exceptions a little more though. The 50-year-old lady next to me has the Black Eyed Peas' Boom Boom Pow song which is a nice change (also she doesn't get too many calls which I'm sure helps). But the best is going to visit the Unix and development teams. Those nerds have no problem changing the default noises the computers and phones in their lives make. Standing over there before one of their team meetings starts is like the noisiest SciFi set ever. Everyone's computers and phones alerting them is a cacophony of bosun's whistles, phaser noises, light sabres, R2D2 noises, and a lot pneumatic door noises. The best.

Back in Oz

Perin and I got up at 3:30am yesterday to catch our flight to Melbourne. Being the grisled travellers we are, Perin had the rows with no people in them scoped out. As soon as they closed the doors we jumped and each had a row of three seats to ourself. Perin went right to sleep and I watched Date Night before getting a couple hours of horizontal rest myself. It was glorious.

Last time I came to Melbourne, I got the ExpressBus from the airport to the city and it was great. There's a bus that leaves every ten minutes. I tried to buy us tickets for that again, but the girl at the airport desk sold us tickets to a shuttle that were non-fundable. We watched two or three ExpressBusses leave before our shuttle arrived. And then they packed us full and we were the last drop-off. The nice part is that we got a nice free tour of the city before arriving at our destination.

We didn't have a lot of touring energy, so we walked through the casino, got some delicious hamburgers, then checking into our hotel and took showers and naps. Then we headed out. Some hair product company (Schwartkopf) was putting on a live infomercial for thier hair products and having people off the street enter in the "Best Hair in Australia" competition. Perin entered, got her hair didded, and it came out beautifully. She would totally win, but we don't live in Australia and are excluded from competition. Glam shot photo to be displayed later.

We ended the evening by heading up to Chinatown and looking for a hole-in-the-wall noodle and dumpling restaraunt. I remember it from my last trip here, but we didn't eat there because it was cash-only and there was long queue. I wasn't sure we'd find it because it was down some dark alley, but we ended up right at it. Waited our turn in line and then had a delicious feast for very little money.

Then we wandered through the alleys and shops and along the river just watching people and looking and everything. I wanted to talk to Perin about Date Night and all the funny parts, but still not give away the whole movie. She'll have to watch it on the plane home and I'll have to hold my tongue until then. Still tired we called it an early night and went to bed. Today, we're hitting the touristy stuff hard. But first, we have to eat!