Forms of bread

I had a weird, very vivid dream last night that made me wake-up feeling anxious. In my dream I was filling out visa/immigration forms for my move to the US, but instead of paper, the forms were long crusty bread rolls that were split lengthwise into several bready pages. So I was filling out the questions and I suddenly realised I had made a major mistake in a key question. Panicking, I went to the immigration counter nearby and asked for another form. My request was denied and I was told to do the best I could do. At the denial, I got really worried and started to sweat profusely, such that my insanely sweaty palms caused the ink to come off the crust of the bread where I had written one of my answers. Then I woke up. Read what you want into the dream you budding Dreamweavers. Maybe it had to do with me needing to buy a bread knife?

I'm no bread snob but the bread in Boston is awful by the way. For starters there are almost no bakeries, except for those inside supermarkets. The packaged run-of-the-mill sliced supermarket bread that isn't baked on the premises is dreadfully sweet and should be in the confectionery aisle. It tastes very similar to McDonald hamburger buns. White, wholemeal, wholegrain, multi-grain, it doesn't matter, it's all bloody sweet. The only decent bread convenient to me, comes from the in-house bakery of a supermarket chain called Wholefoods. They do a tasty selection of sourdough loaves which are frequently still warm when I go shopping after work. Yum.

Sweet bread dude! My lunch would be so much happier with some non-sweet tasting, normal, freakin bread.

Wholefoods is a great place to shop for food, and I buy all my fresh produce from there. They're big with organic produce and other good quality stuff, and I guess they cater for the more eco-friendly, health conscious, save-the-whales type crowd. The alternate, cheaper supermarket where I get all the basics and non-perishable food is called Shaws. It's the harsh fluorescent lighting, junk food heavy, disinterested clerks (check-out chicks in Aussie-speak), typical American supermarket kinda place, where believe it or not, rice and tinned tomatoes are in a separate section for 'exotic' type foods. The section is called 'Food from the world' or some shit like that.

I bought a bread knife tonight so hopefully my dreams won't be about bread, sweet or otherwise. Sweet dreams everyone.

Not the usual mail

I find it amazing when you see a couple and you just know that they will be happy being together, forever. Lulu and Bing are like that and so is Surfermate and his fiancee, Jules. Although I won't be able to make their wedding later this year, Surfermate was kind enough to send me an invitation anyway, which I was excited to receive the other day. Looking at the pleasant colour co-ordinated envelope and stylish invite, I suspect that Jules must have had a significant part in sending the invites. If it was up to Surfermate to send them, I would have expected a half-scrawled note on a piece of cardboard ripped from the closest VB carton stuffed in my mailbox (VB is an Aussie beer).

Surfermate's wedding invite. A nice change from the "Jesus loves you" junk/chain mail letter I received last week.

Many people in the US see marriage as a holy union between a man and a woman. That's why gay marriage is banned in all states except Massachusetts, although legislation is being pushed forward by right-wing religious groups to re-instate the ban on same-sex marriages in this state. I don't have any particularly strong views on gay marriage except to say that on an equality issue, it seems absurd to not let gays be married. Gay rights has come a long way since the Stonewall riots in 1969 but marriage seems to be a very contentious issue considering its religious origins, and I doubt gay marriage will be widely accepted for many years yet.

Surfermate is the first of our group to get married and it's another reality check that we are all moving to the next stage of life. Thinking about it, and surprising myself, I don't bemoan the transition from youth to maturity that we are/have been going through these past years. It's an exciting new time and I'm glad to leave behind a lot of bullshit that plagued my younger years.

From what I gather, Surfermate's wedding is going to be fairly relaxed and casual, in a style fitting for him, and although I'm disappointed that I won't be able to make it I'm looking forward to hearing about it.

Hi guys

Before I left home, I devised a convoluted set of riddles for my mates to solve that would lead them to my blog. Of course no-one gave a shit, the riddles weren't solved (partially due to how ridiculously difficult I made them, they seemed solvable at the time!) :-). So the address to this blog languished in cyber anonymity. Until now that is.

I foresaw that one of my mates would Google or otherwise locate the blog without going through the tedium of riddle solving. That mate is Entrepreneur, and as the name suggests, he's always coming up with outlandish schemes to make money or open a lucrative business. Last I heard, we were going to start a consulting group and he even had a domain name registered for our company. Entrepreneur is the tech-savvy guy of the group which is not surprising as he has a PhD in software engineering. He's the one that introduces me to sites like Digg and Slashdot, and is the only one of our group who knows what Linux is and who actually runs it.

After what seemed an eternity at uni, Entrepreneur has landed a fancy job in an IT consulting firm that has sent him to India for what I can only enviously describe as a junket. We used to attend a few classes together in first year uni and he was the guy with all the answers to the dreaded weekly math assignments and therefore I soon had the answers shortly after. Of course his answers were courtesy of another bloke and so on. It comes as no surprise then, that he became a tutor and lecturer at the same uni and started designing programs to detect coding plagiarism. Oh the sweet, sweet irony.

He has also confirmed the long-suspected marking scheme at university where they use the highly sophisticated 'random pen-drop onto a page of numbers' technique (or similar) to grade papers.

So welcome to the blog Entrepeneur, Ex-flatmate, The Scot, Ace, GK and Surfermate. Hope that it can provide you with a little side entertainment every now and again, a bit of nostalgia and a peek into parts of my life which you may not yet know about (actually, you may not really want to know...), as well as an update on life here in the States of course.

Saturn returns

“Clutch it like a cornerstone. Otherwise it all comes down.
Justify denials and grip 'em to the lonesome end.
Saturn ascends, comes round again.
Saturn ascends, the one, the ten.
Ignorant to the damage done.”
The Grudge by Tool, from the Lateralus album.

Saturn takes approximately 29.5 years to orbit the Sun. When Saturn returns to the same position as it was at the time of someones birth, astrology states that the person goes through a period of turmoil, uncertainty, change and reflection. However, it's a not just a time of great upheaval, but also of accomplishment, reflection and maturity. This phenomenon is known as the Saturn return, and from my scant knowledge of this subject, the first Return for a person occurs between the ages of 27-30. The precise timing varies for each individual.

I've never been a believer in astrology and I find horoscopes absolutely ridiculous. Yet the current period of my life fits into the notion of a Saturn return quite well. My age fits within the Return period, I've moved to the US, started a new job and will have to find a new life. All events that qualify as a period of upheaval and challenge. It has also been a period where I've seriously reconsidered the meaningfulness of everything (although I've always questioned the purpose of my existence). I'm excited, pessimistic and petrified about what a possible Saturn return has in store for me, but it should prove to be an interesting period nonetheless.

For multiple reasons, the thinking that some distant planet can influence one's life seems silly to me. Yet it is intriguing to consider our link with the stars and planets surrounding us. From the Big Bang, we are "made of stars" after all. The atoms that we're all made of were created through proton-proton fusion reactions in stars or supernova explosions. Maybe there is a link between our lives and the celestial bodies that alter our futures. However, if we are indeed influenced by our link to the stars it seems odd that we humans, who should also be linked in the same manner, can hardly relate to each other in an increasingly divided world.

Planetary Saturn (top); "Saturn" by Goya, 1820-1823 (bottom)

Regardless of ones belief in the Saturn return, the lyrics in "The Grudge" encourage a deeper and more fundamental interpretation. It's about trying to better yourself spiritually as a way to find peace in our lives. The song suggests that forgiving the insignificant grudges that we all accumulate during life and moving on will lead to the path of a higher sense of spirituality.

Hanging on to grievances and overanalysing the past is something that I'm very prone to do. I believe it has to do with me trying to understand what factors have conspired to create the undesirable parts of my personality, or those events which have corrupted the better qualities I once displayed. I miss the time when I was more tolerant, patient and less angry than I am now. Everything seemed, not easier or more carefree, but more peaceful. My hope was that by understanding how the problem came to be, this could lead to acceptance and even resolution of the problem.

But can self-enhancement, higher spirituality and inner peace arise from calculated reasoning? Perhaps the real issue stems from overthinking of the problem and maybe it's better to "let go" as the final words of the song suggest. Just let go. Such a simple command to write, but infinitely harder to accomplish. Seems like inner tranquility will remain elusive for me a while yet.

Looking on the bright side, if I don't succeed in this Saturn return, I've got another 30 or so years to prepare for the next Return. I'll just have to rely on the weekly horoscope to see what's in store for me until then.

"Give away the stone.
Let the oceans take and transmutate this cold and fated anchor.
Give away the stone.
Let the waters kiss and transmutate these leaden grudges into gold.
Let go."
The Grudge by Tool, from the Lateralus album.