The Real World is Scary

I had a “real world” (ie. not in academia) job interview last week, and can report back that the real world is scary. I think the interview itself went OK – my first of this kind, so it was a learning experience, if nothing else – but they kept asking questions about things I just don’t normally think about: my career path, my mobility, health care plans, 401(k) plans. By the end of the day, I was happy to collapse in a restaurant, enjoy dinner with a friend, and catch at movie.

The movie we watched was Happy-Go-Lucky, which I have to admit to feeling a little ambivalent about. It’s a British movie (this isn’t why I feel ambivalent about it, though), and not a great deal happens in it. And, at least if you’re me, the lead character grates on you in the beginning, although she does grow on you as the movie progresses. Perhaps this is the point? In any case, I felt much better about the movie at the end than I did in the middle of it.

I finally have got around to down loading photos from my camera that I took while I was in Adelaide (at the end of August). I really only had half a day or so to explore, before the conference started, but I actually really liked what I saw (and I really had very low expectations before I got there). I spent my half day walking along the River Torrens and through the botanic gardens, both of which were very pleasant. On my last day, I had a bit of time between my conference ending and needing to be at the airport, so I explored the central market, which is truly amazing – lots of delicious food.

Palm House at Adelaide Botanic Garden

More interesting (to me) stuff, in bullet points:

• Recipe for Concord Grape Pie from Naples, NY, where I spent a year on high school exchange. I’ve been to the Naples Grape Festival. (I think I even played in a marching band at the Naples Grape Festival).
• reCAPTCHA (Stop spam, read books). Someone in my lab reviewed an article on reCAPTCHA for journal club a while back. It’s a pretty cool use of technology, and now that I know about it, I see it everywhere. Basically, they use “not robot” tests (ie. where you have to enter in letters or a word to convince the internet that you’re a person) to improve the digitization of old texts.
• What is the what: The best book I’ve read recently. It’s a compelling story (it follows the life of one of the Lost Boys of Sudan), but it’s also incredibly well written – I couldn’t put it down (I gave an entire weekend to this book!).
• Knit One, Save One: For people wanting to knit for a cause.
• bills food: Has an excellent recipe for baked risotto – you’ll never stir a risotto for hours over a stove again.
• Biodegradable compost bags: I thought I’d come up with an original idea – sadly someone else thought of it long before me! So much for patenting it and becoming rich.

Home-Cooked Food

After a generally lethargic day, I decided that decent food was in order. Since returning from Australia and California I’ve eaten at home very little, and I think it was beginning to take it’s toll. The meal I made was simple: chicken sausages from Trader Joe’s, with sautéed apple, chard/silverbeet, and beet(root) greens (the chard and beet greens were both from the Union Square farmers’ market) but it was just what I needed. Afterwards I taught Rachel about the magic of chocolate self-saucing pudding. Yum! I actually think I’d put it on my list of favorite comfort foods. The added benefit of all this cooking is the left-overs: my lunches may be a little more nutritious. Since then, I’ve made my first roast chicken without parental supervision (courtesy of bills food – I can’t tell you how much the missing apostrophe bothers me) and a berry and peach crumble (the key here is frozen fruit: no coring, no peeling, no washing – hooray!). Home-cooked food is definitely worth the effort.

For some time now I’ve wanted to be able to synchronize my iCal calendar at home with my Sunbird calendar at work. To make matters more complicated, I wanted to be able to edit entries, regardless of which computer they were created on, I wanted to synchronize my to-do list as well as my calendar, and I wanted to do it for free. For some time now, I’ve synchronized my two address books using Plaxo, but Plaxo’s calendar synchronization isn’t set up for Mozilla. After a late night of searching, I can report that there is a free solution that works reasonably well: The Chandler Project. So far as I can tell there’s just one bug: if you include a list of attendees for an event it becomes impossible to edit that even in iCal. This, however, is a bug I’m willing to live with.

Rachel convinced me to buy a student season subscription to the Huntington Theater Company (this turns out to be very reasonably priced. To be honest, Rachel didn’t have to do much convincing), and our first play for the season, How Shakespeare Won the West, was this past Saturday. Sadly, I wasn’t particular impressed. The acting was fine, it was the play itself that disappointed me. Despite being just an hour and a half long, it dragged several times, and felt directionless. There were some very funny parts (and it is supposed to be a comedy), and I thought the staging and costuming was excellent, but that wasn’t enough for me to really enjoy the performance. I’m a little concerned about what I’ve got myself into. Corry, Josh, and Rachel all assure me that the plays were generally much better last year (when they also subscribed), so I’m feeling optimistic. In other subscription news, I recently bought a BSO College Card – an amazing $25 for up to 25 performances! I’m looking forward to the start of the BSO season.

I watched Once recently, with a mixed reaction. Basic background: Set it Dublin. Street busker (guy) meets Czech immigrant (girl) who happens to play the piano. They hit it off – she supplements his songs with keyboard and vocals, completes lyrics to pieces he’s written, etc., etc. The inevitable happens (ie. they are attracted to each other). The movie is full of cliché (although not at the end), and if the busker guy had said “Cool” one more time in the movie, I might have attacked the screen in an effort to strangle him, but I enjoyed it anyway, I think because I liked the movie (sort of soft pop, but that’s OK), which really was central to the film. No big name stars, no flashy effects. Also in Once‘s favor: unusual enough to keep it interesting. I don’t think it breaks any barriers or sets any new standards, but it’s a fun film.

Enjoying Ethiopian Food

Note: Photos in this post are not my own. Click through for complete credit. 

Last night a group of people from my lab went for Ethiopian food. A new Ethiopian restaurant has opened resonably close to the campus, and an Ethiopian student in the lab organized the outing. David and I had planned to go to a movie, but I was really tired, and when I found out about the Ethiopian restaurant outing I dragged him along (it really was to his advantage anyway – the Ethiopian restaurant was on his way home). I also haven’t had Ethopian food in a long time, and was keen to eat it again. I ended up splitting a vegetarian platter (which was delicious) with Rhutesh.

Over dinner there was a suggestion that we should sample cuisine from all the countries in the lab – which someone put at 17. I think it’s a great idea, but am a little apprehensive about my responsibility to Australia’s cuisine. We certainly won’t be visiting an Outback Steakhouse, and there aren’t really any authentic Australian restaurants that I know of (and it’s not clear to me that Australia has an authentic cuisine, anyway). All this makes me alarmed that I may have to cater myself. Which, in turn, makes me alarmed that I’ll have to decide on something that really is Australian. Hamburgers with beetroot and pineapple? Pavlova? Vegemite on toast?