From January 1, 2011

My boy Ryan hooked me up with Shogun by James Clavell a while back. Do people even say "my boy" or "hooked up" any more? My exposure to American hip hop has decreased tremendously during my time abroad.

In fact, I was reading about the popularity of "Teach Me How to Dougie" in the Wall Street Journal and a separate article about the "Black and Yellow" song a few weeks back and thought about what a lame ass I have to be to get my pop culture news from the WSJ. I disgust myself a little bit when thinking about it...

Anyway, Perin and I were eating a salad with dressing produced by a company called Eta. In Shogun, I learned that the lowest class people in feudal Japan (the sewage workers, those in the tannery business, etc.) were called eta. In discussing this with her, Perin decided that Japanese probably don't consume that brand of dressing while here.

But back to present times. The very present. I'm skipping over our badass muliti-day trip over the world-rek owned Milford track and our overnight cruise on Doubtful Sound (perhaps the most beautiful place in NZ?) to discuss the guy at tonight's campsite reading in the kitchen facilities. The kitchen facilities are for everyone at the campsite. All 119 sites. Some people cook at their own sites, but there's free running water at the facilities so everyone goes there to wash dishes.

It was super packed with everyone cooking and cleaning (Perin and I learned our lesson and made a nice chicken, artichokes, capers, and cream sauce with pasta in case any French people tried to intimidate us.) So this guy is choosing to sit in the middle of all this to read his massive tome and proceeds to get upset with how loud everyone is! I'm sure I'm not the only one who was thinking "screw you, this isn't the place for quiet reading!"

Which reminded me of staying in our mountain house in Tahoe a couple winters back. One of the house members was a Berkelely Law professor (lecturer?) who would sit in the kitchen of house packed with ski people cooking and ask them to be quiet while he read law books about to prepare his upcoming lectures.

Nobody could stand that law guy so after dinner one night Perin went to bed and I hit the bars with a few other guys. Most of them dropped off after a beer or two and I ended up being wing man for some investment banker. I had just read Market Forces (in which the characters drink much Laphroig) and got all pumped up to try it. The i-banker loved Laphroig and bought me my first glass of it. I liked it a lot but in exchange, while he hit on this hot South African ski cougar, I had to jump on a grenade for him (her blind California friend - who had retired from nursing 10 years earlier before she lost her sight.)

My drink was finished long before the banker's, and since I had the blind chick, I didn't feel bad about frantically signaling him across the bar for him to buy me another while re-assuring her it was totally normal for blind retired nurses to pick up young dudes at ski-town bars. Only after he bought my second three-fingers worth of Laphroig and I had consumed it, did I eject from my wingman duties and let her know that I was going home without her.

Perin wanted to know what she missed and I let her know the truth: massive amounts of social awkwardness. Which brings me back to the Japanese culture of politeness. From my understanding there are 3-4 major politeness levels/sentence structures in Japanese, with numerous sub-variations. A question: what is the proper way (and correct politeness level) to dismiss blind retired nurses in Japan when you're flying wingman?