Minosian Burps

Had a nice treat today, Kind Boss brought Pepperdemon and me out for a concert and dinner. If you're thinking it was an ordinary concert and ordinary dinner, think again..

The concert
========
I got to hear the Hilliard Ensemble at Harkness Chapel (at Case Western Reserve University)! They were practically flawless. Audience was good too, they waited for the end of a piece before coughing and shuffling. Well behaved civilised concert-goers, unlike the savages back home. Kind Boss brought her husband and kids along (Hi Tom, Sophie and Daniel!). You can sorta see them in the pic. Sorta. If you think this pic is bad, it's because of mini-hail pelting my head, and a very very cold wind freezing my hands when I take them out of my pocket for more than 5 seconds.

The interior of the Chapel is rather nice, if not quite 'authentic'. Apparently, a lot of the original sandstone was replaced, due to discoloration. Acoustics were still good though... Wonder if Organ Mistress knows of this pipe organ here.. An exterior pic - taken in haste due to cold, and ugly generator near the side..


After a very nice medieval a cappella concert, we went to this nice-looking Greek/Indian restaurant in our portable-petroleum-powered igloo. Owner's Greek and wife is Indian, so they have both Indian and Greek dishes on the menu. Did you know that Pakoras actually goes quite well with Hummus? Here's a pic of my Island of Minos Stir-fried-Steak-and-shrimp.

Yum!

My morning view today - we haven't had any direct sunlight for a while, so this was welcome.. except when I tried to watch a borrowed DVD in the sunlight. bleah.

So why Yum?

Lunch! Roasted red potatoes with Country-style pork ribs, marinated with cajun seasoning and dijon mustard, roasted to just-cooked tenderness...

While I'm warm and well-stuffed:
It's snowing again! Dunno if you can make out the mini-snow flakes - they're so fine, it looks foggy.

Chipotle in the Snow

Boy was I productive today!

Not only did I finish doing my laundry for the week, I also washed out the microwave roomie had been polluting for two weeks, and collected the freshly roasted UnCharredbucks coffee I ordered a couple of days ago. Yum! This day is so exciting! I even used the large commercial-grade dryer for my non-delicates! Wow!

Plus!!! My skin is flaking off! Who'da thunk it? OK, so maybe that's not so exciting. Just bothersome, having to lube up so often.

Pepperdemon and I decided to get some air, exercise and groceries this afternoon, all at the same time! We walked 1.5 KM over rough, undulating terrain. Only careful podiatric placement and split-second nap-of-the-earth navigational strategy served to keep two butts from causing serious damage to an iced-sludge-topped-with-white-snow-encrusted road.

On the way back, JavaMaso and PepperChist jointly decided to refuel at a local(what else would it be, Intergalactic?) Tex-Mex place:
Can't see the name?
The nappy.. um, napkin is saving the Fajito Burrito from stage fright, but it's under there.
Word to Spice-heads out there: Order the Hot salsa. Don't even bother with Medium - there's barely a buzz.

Now over to Pepperdemon, who will now talk about the pseudo excitement somewhere near our apartment building... sometime soon.

Veni, Vidi, Amex

This is the last of the "Great Caesar" quotes... at least for some time.

But it is accurate though. Why? Because I finally found my XXL Weatheredge 3 System parka, that's why! When I post pics of me in it, you'll see it. I have finally managed to fully utilize my Winter Allowance®! In the meantime, stay tuned, and Don't Touch That Dial! (er.. mouse.)
Pepperdemon (not pictured) and I were mercifully driven in slo-mo by our gallant and discount-hungry roommates to yet another Prime Outlet, but this time, somewhere around Medina or Burbank, Ohio. Going Southwest too, not Northeast (or some other random cardinal direction) to Amish Country.

Other than boring highways and being sucked in by hypersonic 18-wheelers, we saw a lot of:
After doing some guy-style-shopping (go in, try, buy, get out), I parked my frozen butt (did I mention that Prime Outlets advocates a distributed store policy? You have to walk more than you shop) on a cafeteria seat, and:
Hey, I gotta live up to my name right? By the way, at 7pm, this Americano sucked big time.
Speaking of which, time to go down to the apartment lobby and see if my coffee package has arrived. Yup, after suffering a pound of Charbucks®, I ordered from a local coffee roaster.

Field Report pending!

DQ Blizzard

Darned Qold Blizzard is what I'm talking about!

If you've been reading my blog, you'd know that I'm currently in Ohio. What you might not now (unless you're in Ohio) is that there's a winter storm pounding the state. Aaaand since I'm so fortunate as to be within spitting range of the great lakes, there's area effect snow.

Translation? This ...

is now this...

Take a few moments, and examine the two images again.

OK, now that you've crossed your eyes a little, and maybe gotten a bit hypertensive from the eyestrain and holding your breath, let's continue.

"Huh?" you say. Well, I don't blame ya. See, what happened is this. We had some nice light snow flurries that coated the county in soft, powdery snow. Cool! Then we had two days of heavy snow that coated all the trees in snow, even the bare nekkid tree you saw just now. Then there was intense wind (travelling faster than a sofa falling off a 40 story building) that blew all the snow right off again, leaving the formerly snow-clothed tree, bare nekkid again.

I kid you not! This is what that tree looked like before the blizzard...
blew the snow and leaves off. Even the building.

OK, so before I lose my credulity completely, here's what the carpark looked like two blizzards ago:
Aaaaaaand then, to top my day off, this happened...
No, it's not that some people got locked out of the office and decided to spend some time freezing their collective buns off. There was a fire! It was like Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!!Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!!
OK, you get the picture, right? So we're all semi-panicking and grabbing coats and running helter-skelter (in an orderly and dignified fashion), being sonically assaulted by the Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!!, running the gauntlet from cube to stair to hallway to the blessed silence of the not-on-fire outside. The outside, where it's -20 celcius, with wind chill. The outside, where colleagues have stopped wincing in sonic agony and are wincing in pain at nerves tortured by frostbite and coldburn.

Several minutes of shivering and turning blue later, we get loudhailed by a fire warden, informing us penguins that it was OK to re-enter the building. I think we narrowly missed trampling the fire warden on the way in. Turns out there was no fire. Cafeteria employee bumped a fire alarm on her way from oven to deep fryer and forced an site-wide evacuation and mass-freeze. I tell ya, I have extreme sympathy for the guy that just finished his sweaty workout in the gym. All he had on was a sweaty cotten T, running shorts and track shoes. Man, that guy is getting pneumonia for sure.

Oh, yeah, I also did some work today.

I have work!

At long last, after months of blunting the razor-edged slingblade that is my grey matter with sodium, glucose, sucrose, dextrose, maltose, dosetose and ambidextrose, I get some real honest-to-goodness-bona-fide-brain-cooking-eye-watering- hair-follicle-loosening-weirdo-tech-comm-any-old-how-edit-a-
300-page-doc work!

Whoo Hoo?

Don't get me wrong. I welcome the work. I welcome the opportunity to earn my measly pay and flex some neurons, nevermind that my cube has no ceiling light.. At least I got my name on the wall...Oh, those medals on the wall of my cube? They're not mine. Neither are the STC awards on the wall. Nope. Those belong to Robin Boldt. Who's Robin? The owner of the cube in which I have been assigned to work/squat for the duration of my training. I occupy the cube, but the final reality belongs to Robin. Stuff around me resonates of Robin (other than having her name on it, of course), but thankfully doesn't smell of Robin (unlike my roomie, whose fragrance fills the apartment in which I am condemned to live). Nope. On a more cosmic time scale, I am merely a ghost, flitting aimlessly about, anchored by invisible bonds to this confined space.

Once in a few half-lives of a free neutron, I am driven by primal urges (sweat, odour, narcolepsy) to seek a less bounded domain: This is where I freeze my butt off every work day.

I survived the shopping trip

..and I confess! I wanted to have some nice (but cheap) Timberland gear!

So I tagged along with some other professional shoppers to the sort-of local factory outlet 2 hours away from Mayfield, Prime Outlets at Grove City. Here's proof I was there
I managed to score me some Timberland shoes at $39, and some cheapo Polo-Ts and Chinos at bargain prices. But alas, alack! The classy 3-system Parka from Timberland wasn't available in my size.
BLARGH!

Weather here (and there) is chilly, even for me. It's about 25 Fahrenheit, but feels much colder with the wind chill, and the occasional snow flurries.
Most of the place looked like this. Sprawling, distributed factory outlets. The three parents in the group had a whale of a time getting toys for their kids, but I kinda OD'd on the variety of goods and unavailability of my clothes size - looks like too many people here have my clothes size... which is actually about the same as the store not having my size at all.

More later, after I re-fuel.

A little behind

That I am, cuz I had 3 days of full-on Industrial Automation training, and Jet-Lag finally started kicking my butt.

But enough of me, on to some piccies!
A nice post-snow dawn greeted me that first snow-day. If you see pixellation and purpley-stuff, you can attribute that to my half-frozen eyeballs thawing out just after I woke up.
That's my office, company HQ in Ohio. As with most buildings in the US, it's sprawled out over a large area, unlike high-rise multi-layer cake buildings in Singapore.

Just to the right of the photo above, there's a frozen pond, with a bridge (see this pic's background). Apparently, the grounds used to be a golf course. Which explained the two swarms of Geese waddling around the building exterior.
And why don't I have a shot of them? Because I'm stupid, that's why.
Speaking of stupid, this is the first time I've seen two-foot tall bags of potato chips...
Carolyn (the other writer from Singapore, also in training, like me) and I chose to walk back to the apartments that one day after class. Thought it would be a good way to get some exercise in, while familiarizing ourselves with the route home.
Most of it was boring, snow covered cars, homes, shovelled driveways etc, but this stood out, at least to me.
Ok folks, that's all for today. Why? Because I'm going to Pennselvania to shop? Why? Tell you later.

Snoooooowwww!

Whoo Hoo! 3rd day into my training trip, and I score me some snow! Woke up in the middle of the night to see the first vanguard of a billion snowflakes invade Planet Ohio. Temps for today are near freezing, or below zero. Wind chill brings the temp down by another ten, and I chose this day to try wearing my dress pants (made for the tropics!!) BBrrrrr!

Thankfully, with my stupidly warm parka, I managed to stave off hypothermia, look alert during my training classes, and did my best snowman imitation from the supermart back to the apartment, where I made this:
Piping hot roast chicken, fresh from the oven, yumm.. the only thing missing is the red potatoes, which were still in the oven.

More later!

Sardinian Thoughts

No, not from Sardinia, but from a Sardine in an aluminium can sent hurtling in a parabolic arc under the Earth's stratosphere from Point A to B to C to D. Needless to say, I uncanned unharmed.

I must say I was pleasantly surprised by airline food served on Northwest. The texture's all boing-boing and splurghth, but the flavours are good. If you eat the food blindfolded, not only will you be able to polish off the entire meal, but you'll get random spotty samples all over the front of your shirt and pants to boot! Is that a great deal or what?

Sodden veggies aside, the worst experience of the flight from Singapore to Cleveland was the waiting. It was all rush rush rush rush rush rush after the initial human bull rush to deplane, then by stampede to the immigration counters, only to be abruptly brought to a moaning halt at CUSTOMS, with the muffled cursing of forcibly-extracted notebooks and tinny pleas for "Chinese Interpreter at counter 14" being mildly interrupted with the stamp of impatient hooves.

I got no pics to show you of all that, cuz using a camera phone there's ill-eagle. In place of that, here's a pic of my desk sign. So other than spending an additional hour on the tarmac waiting for the passenger umbilical to detach from the mini-plane's passenger disgorging outlet because the umbilical probably got frozen stuck to the plane (did I mention that it was -16 celcius in Minneapolis?) and also waiting for them to de-ice the plane's butt and also waiting half an hour on the runway waiting for a bewildering vehicle to finish running mystically ritualistic smoke rings around the plane to bless the flight (I was not seated in a position to see any animal sacrifices), the journey was good.

Remind me to tell you more about passenger garbage. Those pigs..

In the meantime, here are some superlative-class pics.

This here's a bad pic of my Mayfield Heights apartment living room.

This here's a worse pic of the dining room.

This here's a worser pic of the kitchen.


No pics of the still-single (unattached) bathroom and me small bedroom, cuz there's too much junk in it.

Time for me to make breakfast. Eggs with Italian sausages, stone ground wheat bread, and coffee. yum.

Veiny, Giddy, Visa

I veined, my head swam, and I applied for a visa — a J-1 visa, that is.

Public Service Announcement: When applying for a J-1 visa, be reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally careful about your flight scheduling. I had to re-arrange my flight plan 5 times. ARGH! >8-{

I vaguely remember mentioning before that I'll be on a training stint in the US, no? Well, I apparently can't just slime my way across the unfriendly skies and flop my sweaty carcass over on a US customs officer's counter and expect to be allowed to train on the Visa Waiver Program. Nuh-uh. I need legal sponsorship. My company uses AIPT (Assoc for International Practical Training), and they handle all the silly legal mumbo-jumbo that visa applications traditionally come saddled with. All for a fee somewhere around the value of my monthy salary. Wow, who knew?

Anyhoo, there I was happily riding on the coattails of a flight-planning-accomplished colleague, blissfully unaware of impending doom. All the while, I thought that I could show up at the Airport on the 12th and have Northwurst sling-rocket my saggy butt halfway around the world. I'm day-dreaming about collecting on all those air miles when I get a perturbing e-mail from Fedex. What the...?

To compress several harrying hours spent re-reading the email, let's just say that "I read the e-mail and acted accordingly". After harassing a I'm-still-in-a-meeting-HR-person, I find out that the Fedex package contains documents that I need, for my J-1 visa application.
OK, fine.
I then find out that the American Embassy takes 2 days to process and (hopefully) approve the visa application.
Still OK.
That is, until I check the expected delivery date of the Fedex package. 8th Jan.

ARGHRRRGRHRRHGRHH!

OK, let's do some logic exercises:

Package with important visa document arrives 8th jan.
I can only go the Embassy to personally beg for the visa the next day (at 7.30 am), 9th jan.
The visa takes two days to process, 10-11 Jan.
Collect the visa after two days 12 jan. Ooooops. My flight leaves 12th jan at 0600...
I start getting hypertensive, and the vein in my neck throbs a vein (ugh) counterpoint to the smugly blinking cursor on my computer screen. Veiny? Check.

After wasting two hours griping to random, helpless people in the office, it finally occurs to me that maybe, just maybe, Fedex might deliver the package early!! While my cube-mate snorts derisively enough to cause a mini-tsunami in her coffee-cup, I frantically click through the Fedex e-mail and website to look for a Customer Disservice number. I find the number and convince the somewhat helpful but disembodied voice to request the the package be re-directed to my home, should it arrive early. Still in a dazed panic, I grill the hapless HR person about half-baked alternatives to the J-1 visa, but alas, alack, 'tis in vain (enough vein references already right?). I spend the rest of the afternoon moping about yet another change to the flight plan and losing one day of jet-lag recovery by pushing my departure date by a day. It's the only way I can be more sure of actually making it to the US customs counter with a J-1 visa. I morosely slouch my way home, my mind playing virtual pinball with scenarios until I finally pass out on my bed. Giddy? Check.

Whoo Hoo! A night of intermittent frantic pleading with the Power That Is yields great results! The next morning, I track the progress of the Fedex package, seeing it ping its way from Maryland to Newark, up to Anchorage (Alaska!?!), and finally, Singapore! A friendly Fedex delivery guy cheerfully hurls the package into my waiting palms, and I spend the next 2 hours reading font point size 5.34 legal print... gah! I'll be spending my Black Monday morning queueing up at the Embassy to beg for my visa.. Visa? More or less Check.