It's All About The Mystery

The population of Cupertino, California reminds me of a five-star hotel in Bangalore. There are a few Asians. There are heaps of Indian software engineers. And there are a small number of caucasian Americans who look like they don't really belong here.

On weekends these Indians take turns bringing their families (or, in the case of my hosts, their college buddies) to The Mystery Spot. The primary attraction of this place is that they have a canteen (isn't the word "canteen" redolent with the smell of the British Raj?) which sells hot Indian food. For $1 you can pop a plate of dal-rice or a besan laddoo. A close second to the canteen in its power to draw in the Indian crowds is the Mystery Spot itself.

This is a tourist attraction crafted with delightful cleverness. The claim is that in this place space is warped and gravity works erratically. Strange forces push at you. Small round objects roll up a slope. Tall people shrink. And there is not a sngle mirror or smoke machine in sight. The enthusiastic tour guides demonstrate these unique phenomena and spin theories of carbon dioxide vents and magnetic field anomalies. The Indian software engineers take it all in silently with keen eyes and furrowed brows. If you strain very hard you can hear their brains humming gently as they try to work out the real secret that makes the magic trick work.

The Mystery Spot is a shining example of the American talent for infusing drama and fun into anything. Domestic air travel is a contrary instance of them sucking all the excitement out of an experience that used to be all about pleasure and adventure. I have remarked before about the bigness of the USA. The distance from Boston to San Francisco is about the same as that from Boston to London, and so the flight takes about the same amount of time. The resemblance ends there.

I don't like being asked to pay for every single bag I want to check in, regardless of weight. I hate undressing for the security checks. The whole ritual of removing my jacket, belt and shoes and then putting them back on is inconvenient and undignified. I'm thinking of buying a velcro traveling suit that I can unfasten with a single sweeping gesture, like one of the male dancers in The Full Monty.

I do like to get my meal served on a tray with each individual item of food clevely pacakaged in its own little receptacle; but on my US Airways flight I had to make do with a "buy your food on board" service. When in mid-flight a shaggy-haired and overweight guy in an indeterminate steel-grey uniform tapped me on the shoulder I was first startled and then baffled. I tried to work out whether he was a steward or a pilot while he made small talk about the t-shirt I was wearing. In my mind I was wondering whether we would not all be better off if he would just go back to flying a plane or selling pretzels to passengers.

I am convinced that the best way to travel in this country is by road. That way you can skid along a coastal highway and stop occasionally to look out over the Pacific. And you can bend down to gape at the seaweed washed up on a rocky beach. Giant, 15-foot stalks of seaweed as thick as a man's arm.

That's the thing that redeems this country for the traveler: they screw up their airlines like noone else but then they make up for it by nonchalantly tossing unique oddities at you when you least expect them. There's always the chance of something new just around the next bend in the road. Now if I could only find the store where they sell those velcro suits...

Point That Bottle Away From Me!

"Here, let me open that. Of course it's easy. I'll just..."
(pop!!!)
 "...Oh my eye! I'm blind!!!!"

How many champagne-swilling morons are there in the US? About 1500. I know that because the American Academy of Opthalmology recently announced that every year one and a half thousand people suffer cork-related eye injuries. You have to wonder about these people. What kind of jackass points a projectile weapon at themselves before pulling the trigger? And just how idle do you have to be to keep count of all these suicidal projectile-pointers?

I'm surprised that none of them have yet made it to the Darwin Awards.

For those who don't know, and can't be bothered to follow the link, the Darwin Awards are a celebration of those who did the human race a favour by removing themselves from the gene pool through sheer spectacular stupidity. Unfortunately for our species, the eye is not a reproductive organ, notwithstanding the fifteen hundred or so people who annually sheepishly confess "I accidentally %@^&ed my own eye with a cork". If it were, then their numbers would have steadily been culled at every Christmas party, every wedding, and at the end of every motor sports event. As it stands, though, they remain monocularly capable of perpetuating the existence of their own kind.

Our only hope is that one day they will all join the NRA and start cleaning their handguns.

Oooh, This Stuff is Tingly!

Phoebe the dog woke up and sniffed the air; something was different about today. She barked quizzically a couple of times, but I pretended to still be asleep in bed. So she got up and skidded downstairs to investigate by herself.

At first everything seemed the same around the house except for the silence, which was smothering.

Then I opened the door and that's when Phoebe saw that the world had changed overnight. The ground had turned crunchy! And it had a new smell, like ice. And it was white! How very strange....

Phoebe rolled over experimentally to see if doing that felt any different from yesterday. And it did, it was pleasantly cooling. As was this powdery stuff that was settling on her coat of hair. Some bits landed on her nose, and that was a bit tickly.

There were certainly a lot of birds around. That was a change too, she hadn't seen any birds for the past several days. A chipmunk flitted behind some trees in the near distance; for an instant Phoebe thought of giving chase but for now this new sensation underfoot was far more interesting.

So she rolled over some more, and then tried running. Even that was not the same. This new stuff on the ground made her skid a little at high speed. The other dogs seemed to be rather nonchalant about what had happened (except for one hyperactive poodle that was running in supersonic circles). Could it be that they had experienced this before?

Well if they had, then this was nothing to worry about. So Phoebe went back to doing what really matters: sniffing at bushes, cracking twigs, and waving her tail at anything that moved. After all, this might be the very first snowfall of her life, but that was not going to distract her from the serious business of being a shaggy dog out for a walk on a Sunday morning.

Laws of Nature

There are some things you can't mess with. Gravity. The ocean. The 10-minute rule.

What's that, you ask? Let me explain by way of example. Pretend it is a day when you need to leave work no later than 5 in the evening. No, lives will not be lost if you don't leave by then, but you do really really want to leave by 5. So, late in the afternoon you're feverishly wrapping up all the little to-do items that you can. It's nearly time to leave now, and you're about to hit the "Send" button on the last email of the day so you can start to pack up. And then it happens. At 10 minutes to 5 your door is darkened by someone who steps in to talk about an issue at work. He says he'll take "a minute"; instead, he stays for sixty.

It's as if someone sent a memo: "Dear colleagues of Mahogany, today he has plans for the evening. It's up to us to ruin them. Will one of you step up and be a jerk? Will one of you walk up to him at precisely 4.50pm and proceed to trap him in a rambling, frustrating, endless discussion about something that no sane person would really care about? You would? Thanks, we knew we could count on you!"

And so the trap is set.

But where there's an ocean, there is a boat. Where there is gravity, there is anti-gravity. (Don't scoff, I know for a fact that there are alien spacecraft interred in Area 51 that are powered by anti-gravity drives). And where there is a 10-minute rule, there is a 30-minute stratagem. From now on, I will plan to leave 30 minutes before the time that I plan to leave.

Let's see how long I can fool the universe.