Bay Area, II: listing

You know you're back when...? Or maybe you know you're in CA when...?

1. One person takes up the entirely space of a table seating for four.
2. You can't spell American style anymore, and you realize this is a problem.
3. The person at the table next to you keeps his dog on his lap and feeds it bites of pita & hummus.
4. The person at the table next to you is eating pita and hummus.
5. Bikes. Expensive bikes. Everywhere. And their riders are not riding them out of the necessity to get from one place to another.
6. You keep unconsciously gripping your seat because everyone insists on driving on the 'wrong' side of the road.
7. It takes you five minutes to find the word gas even as petrol trips lightly off your tongue.
8. Mi-ssion-'ry. Te-rrit-'ry. (Let's call the whole thing off...)

Bay Area, I: checking in

Just an update to reassure all your readers that I have not been run over by a bakkie -- I mean, truck -- since returning to the US. I am in the Bay Area attending my discipline's annual meetings. It's completely insane. It's really, really lovely to see people and hear about all kinds of exciting research. But it's also really overwhelming. I find myself doing all kinds of craziness, like reading aloud an 8-page paper on community policing in Taiwan. All in a day's work, I guess...

In other news, when I see deer on the hillsides, I expect them to be impala. They're not.

Boxing? I don't think so...

Now that I'm back in the US, I have access to crazy-fast internet connections and abundant sources of procrastination. So, in honor of the kind of day I'm having, and in homage to the famous boxing giraffes, here's a tasty (if bizarre) video tidbit for those of you with the bandwidth to handle it:

Hm... Maybe those giraffes in the Khama Rhino Sanctuary were just warming up?

on the other foot

I spent the past two years of being teased for sporting my clunky Dankso clogs amidst a sea of sporty sandals, slingbacks and the like. (The most stellar quality of these clogs is the infrequency with which they cause my feet to bleed. I draw the line at bleeding for fashion.) Then today, on the bus downtown, I found myself sitting on the bus between two women wearing ... (you guessed it)... Dankso clogs.

home

Grey, rainy streets. Cold wind and rain. The other side of the car and the road. Noise, light and impossibly tall buildings. Crowds of people, wide and blond, pounding past on Michigan Avenue, steaming paper cups of coffee in hand. The small-squared but far-ranging patchwork of city blocks. Sleeping cats, cold floors, and a false coastline. The sheer number of Americans, not to mention the staggering number of white people. I'm adjusting, but slowly.

how you know

You know it's time for you to leave the field when you get booted out of your living situation.

You know it's time to leave when you get that call at 11pm on the night in between the two days of a conference you've been helping to plan for the last several months.

It's time to leave when the night before you get the call you have had to check yourself into an air-conditioned hotel room so that you could stay up til 1:30am writing a biographical note you had to give the next morning as part of the conference opening.

But at least I'm packed.