Echidna Media Organization project S.N.A.L.'s Journal
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| Saturday, May 16th, 2015 | 5:30 pm
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| | Sunday, February 22nd, 2026 | | 8:13 pm |
France 2014
For the many new friends from  the_lj_revival: I've been slowly posting a memoir I'd been working on of my travels in the 2011-2021 decade (which I'd also been slowly working on at the same pace though I recently finished it in a marathon frenzy, though leaving some gaps). Heck if you want to start at the beginning or read the whoel thing through certainly be my guest
But as to where we're currently at in posting it here, I'd just traveled from Guinea, West Africa, to Sweden, where I spent two weeks on a 18th century sailing ship, and now arrive in France for essentially the first time:
July 25th, 2014, France, 20:00 – It’s my first time in France, will I experience the famous French rudeness? I’ve spent the last ten days volunteering on a replica 18th century sailing ship in Sweden, and my health is feeling much improved. I’m at the d’Orsey airport on the outskirts of Paris, and need to be in the town of Clermont-Ferrand in the middle of the country by the following afternoon. Recall when I first arrived in Brisbane, Australia, I had a French roommate, and when I left that apartment a gorgeous Brazilian girl had taken my place – at the time I was in a hurry to get the deal agreed to before they fell out with each-other but as it happens now, 16 months later, I am on my way to their wedding.
The man selling tickets to the light rail is almost friendly. I board the subterranean train and at the very next stop a group of about eight young men and women in their mid twenties board, completely sauced, holding bottles of wine, loudly singing, and with a large penguin hat (it appeared be the ripped off head from a big plush penguin?). As there’s no empty seats and I’m standing in the middle holding the pole, I am essentially engulfed by this mobile party. One of them, a pretty brunette with green eyes says something to me in French and puts the penguin hat on my head. Welcome to France, maybe it’s not so bad!
After a few stops I have to transfer to another line, and the roving party moves with me, apparently making the same transfer. When she wasn't busy singing I ask the green eyed girl what they were celebrating. Turns out they are all former flatmates but they are all moving out so this is their last hoorah together. They are all friendly and eager to (drunkenly) try to speak to me in English, inviting me to come out with them, but as I have all my luggage with me, it would be a bit awkward hitting the town with roller luggage, I must regretfully decline. Altogether a nice amusing and friendly welcome to France though.
Saturday, July 26th - Hotel is just across the street from the train station at least, so after a complimentary breakfast that is actually good (in wild contrast to the traditional American hotel breakfast) I trot across the street with half an hour to spare to catch the 7:00 train. Easy peasy. I navigate through the automated ticket dispenser without too much despair ... and then it wants me to insert a credit card, but American credit cards still only have magnetic strips, not the electronic chip the rest of the world has already transitioned to. Card readers in the rest of the world can't read our neanderthal cards. I have euros in cash but it won't accept cash. So I have to wait in the long line to talk to the human ticket salespersons. The line is full of foreigners and old people and moves slow like molasses .... and I miss the 0700 train. There is, however, a 0900 train they could sell me a ticket to. This would get me to Riom outside Clermont Ferrand around 11:00. Matt had told me to show up for the wedding at noon on this day. I'd tried to give myself a 24 hour buffer, but after missing my original flight out of Sweden and the 7:00 train, I’ll be arriving with only an hour to spare!
The trainride is nice, the beautiful French countryside rolls past out the window. Farms and quaint towns of houses all huddled together medieval style, topped by a church spire. The occasional castle. Rivers with roman bridges. I still have one last source of stress though: I'd be getting off at Riom, a small town nearest to Matt's village (Enval), and he said I was to call him when I arrived -- but my phone (which I generally avoid using if I can at all help it, to avoid outrageous international charges) for some reason can't get through to his number. As we roll along I have visions of missing his wedding after traveling 99% of the way there, stuck in a neighboring town!
Finally I get my phone out and unclick "disable mobile data," thus exposing myself to truly outrageous international data usage charges, and facebook message him. I fret that he'll be too busy getting ready for his wedding to notice a facebook message though. Fifteen minutes before my arrival though he writes back, saying he is coming to get me!
The village of Enval is just six kilometers from Riom. Matt takes me to a nice little hotel where his other out-of-town guests are staying. It turns out the wedding isn't actually beginning until around 3:00 so I have enough time to rest and have lunch.
The dining area of the hotel is disproportionately large, it evidently serves as a restaurant for more than just the few hotel guests. I’m directed to a table, and a carafe of wine shows up unsolicited, the way they bring water in America (there was also a carafe of water). The staff have to hunt down the one person who speaks English, who may be the owner, to come take my order. There is a choice of one of just three main dishes (turkey, fish, and beef, though the full descriptions in French sound very gourmet), which they will bring out once I’m done helping myself to the salad bar for an appetizer. I order the beef-with-mushroom-sauce dish and go to load my plate with the varied and interesting things at the salad bar. This isn't the salad bar from an American family-friendly chain with bright lights and sneeze guards mind you, there are all sorts of strange French things I don't know the name of. Most memorable is something I thought was mashed potatoes but it tastes like it is somehow almost entirely mayonnaise. The main dish comes out on cue when I've finished my plate (sans the mayonnaise stuff which I just can't stomach), and then there’s even dessert (some kind of cheesecakey thing)! All in all it’s a fun and delicious dining experience and only comes out to like €10, which is shockingly low.
At an American wedding there is usually a table near the entry for depositing wedding gifts. It turns out this is not the case at French weddings. And therefore, I am left awkwardly holding this giant wooden spork from Africa I had intended to give them as a wedding gift. Finally after the ceremony in a public building in the quaint village of Enval I’m able to foist the spork into Matt’s hands. Then we all proceed to the great hall of a nearby castle (Château de Chazeron) for a five course meal and drinking until the wine runs out at 4am.
Sunday, July 27th - One last travel panic! I had planned to take a taxi back to Riom this afternoon, I had plenty of time and everything was in hand … until I tried to actually book a taxi. There are literally no taxis operating out here in the countryside on a Sunday!
I consult the hotel proprietor about my plight, and even though he is the only one on staff at the moment he volunteers to drive me to the train station. Altogether my brief experience of France has been very friendly and pleasant.
Soon I’m flying through the troposphere across the Atlantic, back to the states. I have a ship to catch in three days after all.
Perhaps a bit inconsequential, I'd even thought about skipping it entirely, as the focus is more travel in Africa, but I'm telling myself there's merit in some travels in Europe for comparison, and so many people say people are rude in France I feel like my experience of people being really kind there is a counter-argument to that travel meme that has merit.
(original entry on the above events) | | Thursday, February 12th, 2026 | | 10:20 pm |
Year in Review: 2025
 (one international trip, to Copenhagen)  (blue: road; red dotted line: flights (to Ballina and Gold Coast); purple train) Reviewing the previous year, 2024, it had been quite a rollercoaster but ended well. Comparatively 2025 was much more stable. I began the year with two good jobs -- Senior Varroa* Extension Officer for Agriculture Victoria (AgVic) (*for those of you new here that's a mite that's a major pest of bees, recently introduced here) as well as editor of Australia's national beekeeping magazine; and of course Cristina had finally managed to get here the previous year.
On (February 1st?) we moved, from the quaint little village of 800 on the edge of the temperate rainforest, where I'd been livin gfor hte past eight years or so -- to a new development just ouside the larger town of Geelong. There's a lot more opportunities for Cristina here near town, though I miss living way out in the forest.
On May 14th I turned 43, and my grandfather died at 98.
I like to get out of Australia entirely in the heart of winter (June/July) but the end of the AgVic job was already on the horizon so I was squirreling away my vacation days for an eventual payout. Nevertheless there were state beekeeping conferences to go to. AgVic sent me to the Victorian one, and on behalf of the magazine I attended the New South Wales and Queensland conferences (of course they didn't compensate me a dime for my expenses but hey). It looks like I only wrote a livejournal entry about the last of those three - probably because I wrote articles about them and didn't fancy rewriting for here (indeed, writing for the magazine kept me so busy I didn't post any livejournal entries at all in February and March!).
Ballina was where the NSW conference was, a small coastal town near the westernmost point of Australia, I like to call it "Prawn Town" due to the giant prawn sculpture there. We stayed at a very nice little airbnb and visited the nearby famous beach town of Byron Bay. I was afraid Cristina would feel awkward at the banquet at the end of the conference but as it happens we grabbed a table that was mostly occupied by members of a beekeeping family from Argentina and the one random Australian who didn't speak Spanish was the one who felt the odd one out!
Beachworth: in mid-winter far inland in the forests at the base of Victoria's mountains, this was a wintry week, crunching through frost covered grass and morning fog to the venue, wearing scarves and coats, gathering in snug pubs in the evening and drinking mulled wine.
And Gold Coast you can read about, but it was another fun experience. I'd never been there before, it's a bit like Vegas (but not nearly so seedy) in that it's a major tourist destination and the streets of the main part are filled with gimmicky places trying to catch tourists, but the beaches were nice. While there we took a trip to (briefly!) visit Brisbane. Brisbane is where I first arrived back in 2012 and haven't been back since so I really enjoyed seeing it again and showed Cristina here I used to live.
Cristina's circle of friends has expanded rapidly as there's a number of latinas in the area and we've had several fun parties at our place (and as to parties at other places it seems like there's almost one a week!)
Rather suddenly in October the owner of the ABK magazine informed me it was folding effective more or less immediately, only because the next issue was essentially finished did she agree to send out one more issue but I couldn't even write a goodbye or tell anyone, not that I think very many people were still subscribed by then -- the resubscribe button had been broken for months, the whole thing had been a disaster for he past year with the owner not sending out issues we had completely finished for months and abruptly ending print issues and... altogether it was a sad end to a 126 year old publication. Several parties wanted to buy it but she wouldn't even return their calls I really really don't know what was going on with her. Anyway a sad end to the legacy of the magazine and also a disappointing personal setback because I was really enjoying being a magazine editor.
Copenhagen!
There's a World Beekeeping Congress ("Apimondia") every two years, and in September 2025 it was in Copenhagen! I went with Cristina, she spent a few days with me then flew to Spain while I was at the conference, then returned and we did some more sightseeing before returning. We both really liked Copenhagen, it's a really nice clean safe city. Having spent a year as an exchange student in Sweden when I was 16 there were also Scandinavian cultural things I had missed. This trip I managed to cover pretty well with LJ entries.
As of the morning of December 18th I have been in Australia for more than ten years.
Sydney
As you probably recall since I just posted about it, I ended the year with one last trip, to Sydney, ending the year watching the Sydney fireworks. I won't write more about that now since I so recently posted about it.
2026 Thus Far
If this just ended at midnight, New Years 2026, it would be a simple warm fuzzy positive story about a pretty good year ... but let us bring the review right up to where we are now.
We always knew the AgVic job was ending, in fact it was originalyl supposed to end months earlier but kept getting extended. But we also always suspected and this solidified near the end, that there would be continuing positions. Our program with 10 part time "VDOs" and two full time senior VDOs, of which I was one, would end and instead there'd be two full time "Bee Biosecurity Officers" doing very nearly the same thing. Well everyone assured me I was a shoe-in but I had to apply all the same ........ and I didn't get the job. Considering its essentially the same job I had continuing the same work, I can't help but feel a bit like I was fired, which is really weird because by all accounts I was really good at it. But government, I find, is full of byzantine political games. So now I'm suddenly unemployed.
I'm still waiting to hear back from some other related government positions I applied for. Otherwise, I can get back into bee related writing (when I worked for the government they severely limited what I could publish), do paid consulting and regular beekeeping, and I think all these things should be enough to keep me afloat without having to go back to the ole factory floor.
The Year Ahead
Is a traditional section of my yearly review, but depending on what ends up happening with the employment situation it's a total unknown right now!!
One thing is definite though, I'll be sworn in as an Australian citizen February 23rd! I can only assume they'll slap me with a snag (sausage), break an egg over my head, dip me in pickled beetroot, make me solumnly swear (the C word), and reveal to me the secrets of the ANZAC biscuit recipe.
But yeah other than that, I really can't think of a definite thing I can say about this upcoming year! | | Wednesday, February 11th, 2026 | | 9:34 am |
Coffee Mishaps
Every morning the first thing I do is make coffee. Because by definition I haven't had my coffee yet this is prone to mistakes. I grind the beans and use a percolator (as God intended), so I've accidentally put unground beans in the percolator filter before, or turned on the machine without adding the beans to result in just hot water, things like that. So I try to do every step in the exact same order so I won't forget. However today that worked against me to make a series of errors.
I ran out of coffee beans yesterday. But I had one cup of coffee left from yesterday -- since I don't put milk or sugar in it it is generally fine the next day. I just pour it form the carafe into a mug so I can clean the carafe (grounds tend to accumulate if this isn't done every time. By muscle memory after washing the carafe I fill it with water and pour it into the percolator's holding tank -- I immediately realize this is unnecessary as I'm not about to make another cup of coffee but seems harmless enough, it'll be there when I have more coffee. Then I wash the filter and pour the coffee from my mug through the filter into the carafe (again to get rid of the grounds that tend to accumulate in the last cup), absent-mindedly hit the "on" button and walk away. Normally I'd do that because I'd have added new fresh grounds and making a new cup of coffee, or, if I hadn't put water in the cistern it would have done nothing ... but only when I came back did I realize that having put water in the cistern, it boiled this water up and passed it through the empty filter and now my last remaining cup of coffee that I was depending on is now watered down 4:1!!! Noooooooooooooooooooooooo | | Monday, February 9th, 2026 | | 4:20 pm |
Christmas at Last
Okay it's time to catch up on actual events before details get too fuzzy.
We had a Christmas party at our place. It was actually really fun. Once again various friends from the latino community all ended up coming over, joint efforts were made to make a huge amount of food. Cristina (since I just added a bunch of people from the LJ Revival community I should note my wife, Cristina, is from Venezuela) had decorated our christmas tree (fake, but christmas being in summer here real trees die to fast) really beautifully. With presents for the White Elephant game and specific presents for various people there was quite the elegant pile of presents under the tree.
The party went on till 2 or 3 am with dancing and revelry.
In the ten years I've been here in Australia, especially at first I was often invited to people's houses for Christmas. I actually found it more sad/lonely/alienating than if I just stayed home -- this is another family deep in their family time, celebrating the most traditional cultural distillate there is, that they've been marinated in their entire lifetimes, and no matter how good of friends we are and well intentioned, I still feel like an outsider.
This was the second Christmas since Cristina was here, last year we just had a quiet christmas just the two of us, and she made Venezuealan tamales (hallacas), apparently a Venezuelan christmas tradition. It seems I never posted or wrote about that so here's three pictures from Christmas 2024:
But back to this Christmas. This party. Celebrating with a community of fellow immigrants, of my wife's culture, a combination of parents with kids and unrelated people, for the first time in ten years it genuinely felt like Christmas to me. We're all immigrants struggling together to find that sense of home. I never felt this with the groups of "Americans in Australia" because half them are always "I'm an ex-pat not an immigrant" and they are the must insufferably privileged people imaginable.
(This most recent Christmas) | | Monday, January 19th, 2026 | | 7:52 pm |
Another D&D Ethical Dilemma (in universe)
Gralsk bounds into the room, over the face down fellow bugbear in the doorway, running tot he far end but the door is barricaded. He knew this of course, he barricaded it, but in his desperate flight -- he turns around Just as his pursuers reach the doorway. The first one, a tiefling, bends down to check the bugbear on the floor but the next one, a ferengi, is leveling a crossbow at him. Gralsk quickly drops his weapons and puts his hands up, exclaiming "I surrender I surrender!" in common.
An armored human pushes the ferengi's crossbow down saying "he surrenders, Margin!"
"I didn't agree to anything! How can he just outsource his external risks onto me like that!" Fortunately the rest of the party prevails and they swarm in to take his weapons, the Ferengi all the while grumbling incomprehensible things about "attaching a cost center to me!"
Once the party has secured the area and determined that their ally, the bugbear down by the door is safe, they seem unsure what to do with him. Several members of the party step out to discuss things. When they come back in, to Gralsk's relief they announce they'll keep him prisoner until such time as they finally return to the surface. The hobgoblin among them, "Krusk," apparently, strongly objects but fortunately he doesn't seem to hold sway on decisions. The party occupy themselves hauling supplies out of this room to somewhere else, leaving the timid dwarf to guard him. Gralsk looks around, there's another human, apparently asleep, the enemy bugbear still unconcious but recovering on a cot, and, very carelessly they've left a magic looking sword practically within reach of him and.. he can slowly work his way out of these bindings ... slowly.. yes. Hah the ferengi had been preoccupied arguing with the hobgoblin while tying them. He picks his moment and bursts from his bindings, grabbing the sword, the dwarf shrieks in genuine shock and surprise...
But going back just fifteen minutes or so, to when they all stepped outside:
"We can't keep him prisoner while we clear this place, the risk of him escaping sooner or later or causing us trouble is just too much" Vexira the tiefling says.
"But we can't just execute a prisoner!" Sildar the knight exclaims.
"Oh but there's at least two more options" Margin the ferengi says thoughtfully
"You're not thinking of employing him? We could never trust him, he's not like Krusk who joined us after we're replaced his king" Sildar objects.
"Oh no no no." Margin says, and then into the expectant silence he elaborates: "A surrender is a contract, unfortunately an involuntary one on the captor's part! But a contract nonetheless. Maybe we can't execute a prisoner but if we hand him back his weapon, return to the positions we had when he surrendered and make it clear it won't be accepted, we can continue the combat without having violated any contracts, social, implied, or real."
"Re-arm him? I'm for justice but that can't be right, then we'd be responsible for one of us getting hurt" Sildar objects.
"Is that not justice?" the ferengi asks, genuinely not seeing the problem.
"Anyway, you said you had one more opton?"
"Ah yess..." he smiles slyly "So surrender is a contract. It's not OUR fault if HE violates and nullifies it. We tie him up just badly enough that he can escape, leave my trusty -4 Sword of Chimbo (a special item that looks like a valuable sword but actually has major penalties) near at hand, and wait out here to ambush him."
Sildar looks uncomfortable still, but Vexira likes the idea. Margin moves on to the details:
"We won't tell Gundren what we're up to, that way his reactions will be genuine. Connor will pretend to be asleep in there in case Gralsk tries to kill Gundren instead of immediately run from the room..." | | Thursday, January 15th, 2026 | | 7:13 pm |
The Rise of King Snik, a D&D Story
Continuing to play D&D, I found while ChatGPT was pretty crap at it ClaudeAI actually makes a pretty good DM. Now I play it for the story of it, and some amusing stories have developed, and so I will tell them here. If you're not into D&D but are into fantasy fiction I hope this will still be amusing to you. If you are into D&D and haven't done the Lost Minves of Phalander you might be exposed to mild spoilerage herein.
Scene I: Cragmaw Hideout A number of goblins are gathered around a small fire in their lair. On a raised ledge above them the largest the largest goblin, Yeemik, sits next to a barely concious human prisoner and rants about how he would be a much better boss than their leader, Klarg, not present. Suddenly another goblin comes running in helter skelter exclaiming "intruders, intruders!!"
The goblins grab for their scimitars as the one who just ran in babbles about some party of intruders who have come in and killed everyone in all the other rooms.
"Don't despair, there are many of us here, and we have this hostage!" Yeemik reminds the goblins, holding a knife to the prisoner's neck. Just at that moment a hulking bugbear strides into the room enters and tosses Klarg's head no the floor, which rolls towards the the assembled goblins. Yeemik can't help but feel a sense of optimism. From behind the bugbear a ferengi steps out [yes in my canon they are also a fantasy race] and announces confidently "Klarg is dead, is dead, we have killed him and all goblins who didn't surrender! He declared Rag-nok Sharp Ear to be his successor!"
Yeemik and many of the goblins quickly glance at the cook. What! Rag-Nok himself, holding a ladle mid air, looks as surprised as anyone. Next a human enters wielding Klarg's morningstar and using it to herd two tied up goblin prisoners, Snik and Brek, blinking and wide eyed.
Yeemik swallows. Then he raises his free hand. “Wait! Wait! Truce! Truce!” He points down at Klarg’s head as if it disgusts him. “Yeemik… Yeemik always wanted Klarg gone. Klarg bully! Klarg bad boss! Yeemik is… friend of new boss. Friend of Rag-nok.”
Rag-nok slowly straightens, ladle still in hand, eyes shining with the first real power he’s ever tasted. One of the goblins near the fire mutters, “Rag-nok boss now?” and another immediately shushes him.
Yeemik quickly tries to control the narrative: “We can talk. We can make deal. Human still alive. We give human. You go. No more kill goblins. Othwise, human dies” he holds a knife up to the captive's throat.
The Ferengi seems to ignore this and addresses Rag-nok: "Okay we need help moving the supplies from Klarg's room to a cart outside, Rag-nok please appoint three of your esteemed senior associates to begin moving the materials outside."
Rag-nok’s eyes flick to the other goblins near the cookfire. For a half-second he looks like he might refuse on principle—then he remembers the head on the floor, and the bugbear's huge shape.
He straightens his greasy apron like it’s a cape.
“Uh—yes. Yes. Rag-nok says… you three! You work!” He points at three goblins on the lower level—quick, arbitrary picks, the kind a new boss makes to look decisive. Two of them start moving immediately. One hesitates until he sees the bugbear glowering at him very specifically.
They grab sacks and crates, hoisting them with grunts and mutters, and begin shuffling toward the passage, careful, submissive, eyes down.
After a moment, as kind of an afterthought, the ferengi adds “Yeemik, are you just going to stand over there? Shall I write 'lacks initiative' in your quarterly evaluation??”
Yeemik’s knife hand tightens… then loosens. What use is a hostage these people don't seem to care about. Maybe it would have worked on humans and elves, notoriously sentimental beings, but a bugbear, a ferengi, there seems to be a tiefling --red skinned, yellow eyed, horned-- behind them, this doesn't seem like a group that would be overly precious about collateral damage. As the three goblins tasked with helping out warily troop past them the tiefling gives them an exagerated thumbs up.
The Ferengi begins walking around seemingly evaluating the goblins in the room. "Now I need someone very responsible and trustworthy." he announces. Settling on Yeemik he announces "ah yes, you look like senior executive vice middle manager potential. I need you to take this the Miraculous Sword of Chimbo -- he draws an ornate sword and holds it up, it seems to glow and sparkle, and guard these two prisoners." He then hands the sword to the prisoner Snik, who awkwardly holds it with his hand that are tied near his belly. The ferengi gestures to the prisoners and they shuffle towards Yeemik.
Honored, confused, greedy to wield this sword, Yeemik steps forward and accepts it from the prisoner. While he is thus occupied the ferengi, whose name, they learn, is Margin, pulls out a ledger and writing implements and begins taking reports from the goblins present. He asks their names, duties, what they consider their greatest accomplishment in their current role is, where they see themselves in five years, any inefficiencies they can identify in the organization. While this is going on the tiefling in an unhurried manner releases the human prisoner and leaves the room with him.
Presently the party seems to have finished its business. "Thank you everyone for your good work," Margin tells the goblins, "upper management will be sure to hear about this and I'm sure there will be promotions all around. Yeemik if you could please untie the prisoners and hand them the sword to bring it back to me, thank you for your good work."
Yeemik retains some dignity by directing another goblin to untie the prisoners while he retains the sword. He thinks for a moment of making a wild attack on someone while he still has this sword, the party of intruders? Rag-nok? But ultimately he suspects it would just be suicide. He hands it back to the prisoner who carries it reverently back to the ferengi, who is standing by the door to the cavern with his party.
"You know, actually, you have all done such a good job, if any of you would like to join us, our party boasts some of the highest quarterly loot earnings in the industry." The goblins all look at eachother, and then to everyone's surprise Snik the erstwhile prisoner tentatively raises his hand, followed shortly after by fellow erstwhile prisoner, Brek.
Scene II: Redbrand Hideout Mosk the bugbear groans as he slowly regains conciousness. He's in a world of pain with several sharp sword cuts. He hears the sound of... dice? He blearily blinks his eyes open. He's in the Redbrand's common room. These ruffians, who work under him, while away enough time playing dice games at the table here but when he first opens his eyes he thinks he must be hallucinating from his injuries -- he sees one of the redbrands, Fletcher, at the table, and one of his bugbear lieutenants Clodd, sure enough, but also at the table with them is an unfamiliar ferengi and... that unnatural aberration that lived in the crevasse of the big cavern, eith its one stairs eye on a short stalk, the Nothic. Clodd and Fletcher look miserable. The Nothic is unreadable but appears to have all the winnings in front of it. A growl catches Mosk's attention, and he turns his head to see a big bugbear sitting in a chair stairing at him, with a big sword across his chest, and Mosk remembers the last thing he saw before blacking out was actually this bugbear and this sword...
Scene III: Cragmaw Castle Sildar, the human knight last seen as a hostage in the Cragmaw Hideout, grimly runs his sword through King Grol, and the bugbear falls behind the overturned table. The crown made of mandible bones with jagged teeth facing upright topples from his head. The party surveys the various bodies lying around. Their colleague Connor the Commoner is unconcious but Vexira the tiefling holds a healing potion to his lips and for the second time in a day he comes back from a near death experience. The rest of the castle is still full of goblins, how will they deal with them? Margin gets an idea. He lifts the bone crown and places it on Snik's head. "I crown thee, King Snik!" ... Shortly later, after they've room by room made the castle occupants swear loyalty to King Snik, it's announced a raiding party is just returning. They assemble in front of the castle, Snik in front wearing the crown and wielding Grol's morningstar, Nard (the bugbear with the party) beside him, behind them Lhupo the goblin priest has Grol's head on a platter and a rather small cowardly goblin named Droop swings a ceremonial censer. "King Grol has fallen! Killed in honorable combat! Behold King Snik, who wears the Cragmaw crown!" Lhupo the priest announces as Targor Bloodsword, leader of the raiding party, mounts the steps. A slow dangerous smile spreads across his face. ""King Grol is dead," he says loudly. "And a goblin claims the crown?" He laughs—harsh, mocking. "The Cragmaws are led by the strong, not the lucky." He drops the bloody sacks and draws his longsword. "If there's a new king to be crowned, let it be through strength! I, Targor Bloodsword, challenge this 'King Snik' to single combat! If he dies—which he will—I claim the Cragmaw Crown!" His three hobgoblin followers spread out slightly, hands on weapons. The two wolves growl. The assembled goblins murmur nervously. This is a legitimate challenge under goblinoid tradition—might makes right. Nard, Snik's right-hand bugbear growls back: "No. Strength isn't just in the sword arm. Strength is in loyalty. In allies. King Grol thought like you—fought alone, trusted no one. That's why his head is on a platter." "Then I'll kill you all" Targor growls and draws his sword. He takes a step forward, but seems to suddenly hesitate in fear. One of his raiding party strides ahead of him, meeting Connor the human, and knocking the latter out. Snik himself then drops his morningstar and draws instead a curved blade, rushes forward and slashes the still hesitating Targor with an impressively well executred strike, and just as quickly darts back to the doorway. Then there's gasps among the goblins inside as a hulking beast with one eye emerges from an inner door, they part before it as it makes its way to the doorway and fixes Targor with a look, and Targot turns a sickly green, falls to his knees, and then falls flat no his face dead. His remaining followers immediately swear loyalty to Snik.
[I really didn't know how this battle would go as Snik is NOT a powerful character and if Targor and his allies got first initiative they could kill him and throw everything topsy turvy. Fortunately Vexira my tiefling wizard got top of the initiative and cast "fear" on him causing him to look scared and then Snik really did roll a nat 20 on an attack on him right before the Nothic dropped him. It was a picture perfect ending to this coup and entirely the result of letting things roll as they may. In clearing the castle, since Snik and Brek were from the same general clan, for each goblin they met I rolled a d20 for goblin relationships, for both Brek and Snik -- above 13 they didn't know eachother but 1-12 were things like "sibling's friend's cousin, owes him money, almost bought something from on cragslist, ex-girlfriend's brother, and... 1 itself was "ex-girlfriend." Very amusingly ex-girlfriend's brother came up exactly once and then one of the last group of goblins rolled the 1 for "ex-girlfriend."
But the funniest coincidence of all was that since Snik and Brek will be departing the party I wanted to recruit a replacement. We recruited a gruff hobgoblin who had been initially skeptical of Snik's rule and when I asked Claude to name him what name should Claude randomly choose from the depths of the internet's ideas on goblinoid names? "Krusk." KRUSK. The name of my half-orc paladin from a prior campaign. I couldn't believe it. I'm taking this as Krusk's origin story.
When I had first had Snik join the party I asked my then-DMbot ChatGPT to generate hobbies, aspirations and fears for him and this is what it had created:
Snik
Role so far: First volunteer, pragmatist, survivor
General vibe: Nervous but observant; wants to live long enough to profit from it
Hobbies
Whittling bone and scrap wood into tiny, sharp figurines (mostly animals, occasionally exaggerated bugbears)
Listening at doors and then confidently reporting half of what he heard
Collecting buttons (he insists some are “lucky”)
Aspirations
To one day run a small, quiet ambush spot with clear escape routes
Dreams of being promoted to something like “Logistics Goblin” instead of frontline muscle
Fear (d100 roll result: 37)
➡ Fear: Being buried or trapped underground
This makes sense for a cave goblin who has seen collapses and floods.
Bees and wasps
So leaving him as king of the whole clan seemed the perfectly fitting ending of a plot arc.
| | Monday, January 12th, 2026 | | 11:49 am |
"Exciting" Adventures at Work
So i needed to make one change to a table in a PowerPoint slide, but the table was an image.  Now a table could have been made in PowerPoint, or excel, or i happened to recall this table was also used in a word doc, so the original could be in any of those file types. It was a bit of a complicated table so i didn't really want to have to make it from scratch. Looked at every likely file in the documents folder, looked for it in other PowerPoint presentations, even looked, i swear, in the "image elements" folder, couldn't find it. Finally decided to remake it, it didn't in the end take as long as I'd spent looking for it. Decided okay i won't lose this again. I actually take pride in how well organized my computer is. None of this "everything just on desktop" i see some people dealing with. The dear wife has even commented "why can't you organize the house as well as your computer" 🤣 So the logical place for this is documents/image_elements, it's something used in slides and docs after all. I go to save it there under the most logical name "miticide table" and what's this, there's already an excel file there by that name ... yes it's the original. ::FACEPALM:: -- I SWEAR I LOOKED THERE!!! Anyway that's how exciting my life is these days | | Wednesday, December 31st, 2025 | | 12:30 pm |
Dungeons and GPT
So, i had some D&D related mechanisms i wanted to playtest, and also my friend Mick had started us on an official campaign "Lost Mine of Phandalvin" before deciding he wanted to run his completely homebrew world campaign and abandoning that, which has ever since left me hanging and wanting to finish said campaign. But it's notoriously hard to get a bunch of people together and I'm not sure they'd want to be subject to my experimental mechanics ... but hey maybe chatgpt could be the Dungeon Master for me! Spoiler: it's crap at this but i like how my homebrew mechanics are working out. 1. ChatgpDM so i have the digital version of said campaign so i thought I'd cut paste large chunks of it to chatgpt and from there it could DM. Well it's pretty good at keeping track of mechanics does make occasional mistakes but i think not more than a human, just keeps one on one's toes double checking what it says. The biggest problem is it just can't be persuaded not to give spoilers such as "if you roll a 15DC investigation here you'll find a trap" and "there's a secret passage to the west." And then it also completely hallucinated a secret passage one time. Also it's heavily biased towards nonviolence, after i TRIED to pick a fight with local ruffians and they just wouldn't fight me i had to read the scene directions myself and point out it says they attack regardless of player actions. I could go on but long story short chatgpt is not suited to this purpose.  Hmmm yeah i think I'd totally play d&d with a trained pigeon. I know some would say D&D is fundamentally meant to be interpersonal and it would be sacrilege to try to play it solitaire, but I've always liked the story element of it most. I might try Claude as a DM, haven't experiment much w it but hear it's good. Okay but enough about AI for now let's talk about these mechanisms. But first: 2. What's in a Name? I've always relished rude sounding character names, from my first, In the first go at ole Lost Mine of Philanderer, a hobbit named Dillweed Tosscobble, to a dwarf named Feldspar Smeltdelver, but I'm very proud of my latest character name, a bugbear named Nard Reacharound (bugbears have extra reach you see). 3. Pike, Extended Addition I'd been feeling like the pike as written was boring, just a spear but not? Pikes being really really long, i decided to give the pike double reach, but then also unusable at normal close melee range of 5ft or indoors. Then in a gratuitously reachy building i armed my bugbear with it so he has triple reach (hence the name, Reacharound). I think it's a good set of tradeoffs, in effect he doesn't get to use it much since most combat is indoors. If an enemy closes to 5ft range Nard must drop his pike ("the shaft") and draw his greatsword "Rawdog." Also if there ever was a mounted opponent it would probably have some advantage against mounted. 4. True Grit The most interesting idea i wanted to experiment with was a method of gaining HP, Rather than just automatically on leveling up, basically when a character takes damage, they have a (damage just received)/(total hp) chance of gaining another max hp. Doesn't trigger unless either they have been reduced to less than 10 hp or half their total hp, but the first hit that reduces them to eligible range credits also for the damage that didn't (i can explain more in a comment but basically this is to prevent people just grinding away taking low level hits on purpose to gain HP.) So far the three classed characters I'm running are only level 2 but the HP they've gained this way almost exactly equals what they'd have gained the other way, but i find it more satisfying this way. The one big downside is its often like a 4/13 chance that can't be manually rolled for. 5. Proficiency The classed characters have the normal proficiency bonuses they should have but i also gave them a run of the mill commoner to make up for the small size of the party. He's not proficient in anything, so i thought I'd give him a mechanic I'd been wishing the roguelike game Nethack had: in Nethack you gain proficiency by scoring hits with a given weapon. I've often thought it would work better if you gain proficiency from MISSES. Ie you learn most from your mistakes, and will learn best by continuing to challenge yourself. He hasn't gained weapons proficiency yet but because most combat is over in a round or two I've set it so he'll gain a +1 at 4 misses, the (normal) +2 at 8 misses, +3 at 16, etc... And for armor, which also involves proficiencies but doesn't suit such a mechanic, I'm thinking if he just gains 300xp (the amount to gain ones first leveling) whilst wearing said armor. Connor the Commoner only HAS 4hp though so I'm trying not to get too attached, he may well not survive receiving his first hit. 6. The Sum of all Fears I might have posted about this before, I'd made a list of 100 fears so they can be easily rolled for, every player character or significant NPC gets a fear. We've got characters with a fear of geese, squirrels, heights.. heroic knightly NPC Sildar has a fear of left handed people which i think is very funny. so far it hasn't had a narrative influence but I think it makes all the characters feel more well rounded. As chatgpt is proving unsatisfactory as a dungeon master, I feel like fully being my own dungeon master is a bit too much of a closed loop. I had tried DMing a game for my friend Trent but even doing that via zoom for one person i felt too time consuming and anxiety inducing for me, having to have everything ready (though more players might have made that easier actually as their actions wouldn't have been so unpredictable). I'm thinking of seeing if any friends would be willing to participate in a slow but constantly ongoing game via whatsapp, though Trent doesn't seem keen, has not responded the several times i brought it up lol.  Written from here on my phone, camped out for the fireworks! | | Thursday, December 18th, 2025 | | 1:05 pm |
10 Years
Ten years ago this morning i arrived in Australia. At the time i did expect to be here a few years, but hadn't really fully contemplated that it might be permanent, which it now appears to be. My citizenship currently only awaits the ceremony. It barely feels like ten years, how time flies. The other funny thing about my arrival is that within 24 hours i had met several of the the people who would be among my best friends here. 😅 | | Friday, December 12th, 2025 | | 4:56 pm |
Marathon Finish!
17 days ago when an editor said might use my memoir manuscript for this editing class, if I could finish it, and it being half finished, I said I thought I could write another chapter or two to bring it to a place it could stop at.
I've really outdone myself. Working on it most evenings but not even on the weekends, I have added 54265 words (3192 a day!) to bring it fully to where I had always intended to finish (through Covid to the high note of things opening up again). I did skip at least two chapters I definitely want to go back and fill in but its functional without them. I had no idea I had that kind of marathon writing productivity in me! (It helped that a lot of it I could drop in things I'd already written about the given thing, but still most of these had to be converted to present tense and edited line by line to make fit perfectly)
The total is now 115,976 words, which is longer than fluffy pop memoirs like Live Laugh Love (80,000) but right in the middle of the range of books by the likes of Paul Theroux and Redmond O'hanlon which, while I don't presuuume to be as good as them, being in the range of them makes me feel I haven't necessarily gone too long. | | Sunday, December 7th, 2025 | | 12:23 pm |
Spotify Wrapped
In previous years I sometimes listened to music on Spotify but I'd get tired of its bad selection abilities and hated the commercials -- I don't mind the Aussies around me, I don't hear their accents any more, but somehow the Aussie accent in commercials absolutely grates on my ears, maybe its the combination of the accent with the usual saccharine-sweet ridiculously-cheerful excited-about-some-dumb-thing-no-one-would-be-excited-about-tone. Well at some point in my wisdom apparently I paid for premium, I don't remember doing this but it seems I did, and the algorithm has gotten better enough that it's surpassed the current youtube "your mix" I used to listen to (which seems to only play a very small selection of songs over and over again these days -- I really miss Pandora's "I'm tired of this song" feature (Pandora has been disabled in Australia))
So that annual end of the year "wrapped" thing Spotify does might actually be relevant for once. I was genuinely curious because I have the utmost trouble describing my music taste to people. (Funny story, one of my coworkers when I worked at the icecream factory was asking me this, so I named what I thought was the most well known band I like, Flogging Molly, and then he asked, "like, okay which radio station here plays that" and I just had to laugh.)
Anyway so these are apparently the genres I like. It's funny there's so much "country" because pop country makes me want to projectile vomit, but I've always liked for example Johnny Cash or like the Corb Lund band is pretty awesome without being too far off mainstream country (though they do have a few songs i can't stand, but man, Student Visas, No Roads Here, Horse Soldier, Horse Soldier, The Truth Comes Out; and Dave Stamey... but i digress.
This boggled my mind because like, I've never heard of "Possessed by Paul James." I was like who the hell is this? And then when you look at my list of top songs:
  
The only song by Possessed by Paul James is the only song in the first 20 that I hadn't "liked." and it's certainly not because it wasn't presented to me to have the opportunity for me to do so. What Spotify thinks is my top artist is somehow essentially the single artist I have declined to give a like to more than any other! And yet it keeps foisting it on me, WTF Spotify! As it happens, listening to the song right now, I don't terribly mind it, but I think it still falls just shy of something I'd give a Like to.
And maybe you can call it the song of the month but the song I've been in danger of playing too much for myself lately is Gasoline Lollipops - Mary Rose | | Thursday, December 4th, 2025 | | 3:04 pm |
Apinautica Chapter 12 - Part 1 - Sweden
Continuing the memoir, but before we continue I'll post a relevant excerpt from much earlier
[From Chapter 10 - Turkey, p109-110] July 12th, 2013 - I find myself standing in the serene vastness of the Hagia Sophia, the basilica turned cathedral turned mosque turned museum that for a thousand years was the largest building in the world. High above on the lofty ceiling gilded quotes from the Qur’an in Arabic seem to glow golden in the dim light, and above that, the inside of the great dome itself is elegantly covered with painted scenes from the Bible in soft pastels. On an upper balcony I find the Viking graffiti the Norse-men the Byzantine emperors had employed as guards had left. Bored and far from home, did “Halvdan” lean against that parapet, some warm July evening, looking out with jade green eyes on the same sea, thinking wistfully of his home a world away? As a cool sea breeze rustled his rust-red beard, did he contemplate impermanence and set to carving his name with his axe-blade? Or was he thinking about some far distant Erika with braided hair whom he’d last seen years previous as his boat pushed off from the banks of the river Göta? Did he dream of seeing her again and wonder why he couldn’t just settle for the convenient local girls? Or was he thinking about nothing nearly so interesting, just extremely bored with a monotonous shift at work?
... [13,620 words / 26 pages later] ...
from where we left off, leaving Guinea, AKA Ebola Ground Zero, feeling sick
July 24th, 2014, Sweden – It’s a pleasant warm summer evening in Sweden, and from where we’re sitting in a small replica viking longboat in the mouth of the River Göta the lights sparkle on shore quite picturesquely while the sky still holds the last purples of a dramatic sunset. There’s just one problem, the square sail hangs limp from its boom, the wind has died.
“Out sweeps!” our skipper Martin calls out and the six of us fit our long oars into the thole pins and begin to row. None of us are particularly practiced at rowing but we begin making our way through the water, towards the high viaduct over the river. Behind us the islands in the river mouth we had just visited are getting further away. In company with other shipmates on a more modern sailboat, the Busen, we had enjoyed an evening picnic on the island, grilling steak over a campfire and departing just at sunset. The Busen with the advantages of 1200 years of sailing innovations had quickly left us behind.
But glancing forward I see we are actually very quickly catching up to it, the same doldrums have left it immobilized as well. We steer to pass close to our friends (and give them some good natured jeering, naturally), and it’s clear they’re worse off than us without wind – we are well-equipped with long oars in a vessel designed to be rowed as much as to be sailed, the Busen, on the other hand, seems to have only two stubby emergency paddles with which they are struggling to make any progress at all.
“Ahoy, Draken!” Anders in the Busen calls out to us. “Can you give us a tow?”
We break into uproarious laughter. But he’s serious. My oarbench partner Erika and I share a look, grins and laughter with just a hint of the put-upon because we know this is going to make things harder for us, as we pass a coiled rope aft to Martin, who secures it to a bit and tosses the end the short distance to the Busen.
We set to with the oars again, it’s even harder now with a vessel under tow behind us, though they’re still trying their best with their stubby paddles too. Not only are none of us habitual rowers but there’s of course a river current we are fighting against, but slowly we pass under the viaduct and the twinkling lights on either side of the river slide by inch by strenuous inch. We sing sea shanties for awhile, starting with the classic homeward bound Mingulay Boat Song, which always sounds divine sung by sailors at dusk on the water:
Heave her ho, boys
Let her go, boys
Swing her head round
into the weather
Heave her ho, boys
Let her go, boys
Sailin' homeward
to Mingulay
What care we
how white the Minch is?
What care we, boys,
for wind and weather
When we know that
every inch is
Sailin' homeward
to Mingulay
...
As we rhythmically pull at the oars I think of the innumerable viking longboats that would have made this same journey returning home from a voyage – the River Göta would have been a major riverine highway to the interior of Sweden. From here viking longboats would have set out for nearby Denmark, or further afield to the British Isles, or even for years-long journeys to Miklagard – their name for Constantinople. Our painfully slow progress just to make it a short way up the river makes such longer journeys seem beyond contemplation, but of course it would have been much much easier in a ship with 20-50 experienced oarsmen. It took us half an hour to make it outbound to the island, two hours of rowing home finally brings us to the welcoming bulk of our mothership, the Swedish Ship Götheborg.
The Götheborg is massive as far as sailing vessels go, with three decks, and masts towering 40 meters into the sky. The original vessel sailed between 1738 and 1745 with a crew of 144, making three trips to China and back which were enormously profitable. This past week we’ve just been a crew of about a dozen doing maintenance on the replica Götheborg. At first I still felt sick and compelled to lie down any time I wasn’t working but my health feels much improved now.
Finally we reach the dock and tie up under the looming hull of our mothership. The stern-cabin windows glow with a warm welcoming light. Despite the exhaustion, we decide to go for some beers at a nearby cafe to refresh ourselves. And after all, the least the crew of the Busen can do is buy the crew of the Draken beers. We sit at outdoor tables, summer evenings in Sweden really are wonderfully pleasant.
I can be very oblivious, but walking back to the Götheborg as a group, I note that Erika, a pretty Swedish woman with her blonde hair in pigtails, is walking beside me, and had sat next to me at the cafe and in the boat. Things clink into place in my head. She’s very nice, and attractive, and artistic. I casually take her hand and she acts like its perfectly natural. We casually dally behind the rest of the group & walk out the the end of the pier alone under the starlight, the river gurgling by and the lights along both shores sparkling.
July 25th, Götheborg, 4:20am – My alarm goes off. Oh god this is too early. I quickly hit snooze before it wakes anyone else. I have a bus to catch at 4:50, but I’m all intertwined with a gorgeous Swedish girl in a hammock and surely I can stay another ten minutes.
4:30 – it goes off again, but this is heaven in this here canvas hammock in the crew quarters deep in the Götheborg. I hit snooze and snuggle Erika. Why hadn’t we made this connection earlier, why does it seem I always must go.
4:40 – okay I really really need to go. I reluctantly extract myself, which takes another few precious minutes, gather my stuff and scramble up the ladders out of the depths of the ship, run down the gangway and up the dock in time to just miss the bus. By the time I catch the next one and make it to the airport I arrive at check in 58 minutes before my flight and they will absolutely under no conditions let me through. I have to buy a new flight to France later in the day for several hundred dollars.
While I've written about that tow home twice before (once in the original entry and again as an LJ Idol entry) this for the first time involves the more salacious details my involvement with "Erika." I don't normally write about these things but it was one of the complaints I identified with similar travelogs that they ignored this aspect which is such a significant part of the human experience. Though also standing as a warning in my mind always is the example of Thomas Kohnstamm who does not ignore it and it definitely comes across as crass they way he writes about it -- but I think the problem there is he writes about the women as either trophies or goals in of themselves (see my review of his book here for a more thorough discussion). To that end, its interesting to see how in the above account I don't seem to really "notice" Erika until any sort of pursuit is irrelevant, which I fear makes me sound like Kohnstamm, though I think what's really going on there is I have a theory that you can't really change a woman's mind about you and didn't generally try to woo any woman who wasn't already showing interest and so it was realizing she was interested that suddenly put her on my radar, and that's interesting but probably a bit much to shoehorn into the section. I actually specifically visited "Erika" the next year but it remains to be seen if that will seem relevant enough to include at all.
While I generally keep to the truth in this memoir there's a fair number of little details changed here. Draken was the other boat, not the one I was in, which was a replica 18th century longboat, not a viking longship. The event actually occurred the night before but I moved it up to the last day in Sweden. Anders is a character from the LJ Idol retelling of the tow not the name of someone present. And neither original vessel was named Busen, which I chose just now because it means rascal in Swedish but looks like its "the bus" (that would be "bussen") which may amuse no one but me but hey.
Anyway I don't know if anyone would remember the first reference to Erika on the River Gota when it comes up again 26 pages later other than perhaps a confused deja vu but I was pleased to create this narrative loop. | | Sunday, November 30th, 2025 | | 12:12 pm |
AI "Art" Is Not Art
I think Elon has tweaked the twitter algorithm again, for the last week or so my feed has been mainly lame engagement-bait. I had earlier tried to get into the twitter-alternatives but none of them felt like they had as vibrant of discussion, but I don't know he might have finally completely killed the vibe.
Also a lot of discussion these days has been about AI. One particular favorite on my feed is screenshots of "AI Artists" complaining about things like not getting taken seriously, and there was one very funny hit tweet this last week of a screenshot of an "AI Artist" complaining that it was too hard coming up with prompts and they should make a feature that comes up with prompts for them!
Here's the thing, as I see it, art is art because when we see it we take a moment to stand in awe of either the technical skills of the creator, or the creator's stunning original thinking and insight, or, often, both. For example a photorealistic painting painted during the rennaissance was awe inspiring, that exact same image captured with a phone camera in 2025 would garner no reaction because it doesn't show case technical skill, unless of course the composition is clever and insightful. Even if it's beautiful, we appreciate it because the photographer managed to be in the right place at the right time and had the insight to catch it, whereas an AI "beautiful scene" we know no one had to put any particular effort into being anywhere in the right place or the right time. As such, AI "art" is not art.
And that's not even getting into the fact that it's a theft machine. Every time AI does come up with something that looks like actual art there is almost inevitably an original human-made work it just ripped off. AI "art" machines are fundamentally incapable of original work.
When it comes to writing, it could be a useful tool in the right hands, as long as the person using it is using it as a tool to express their insightful idea, IN THEORY, if it was better. I have written about my attempts to work with it to write this Star Trek parody but ultimately it required so much intervention on my part it was not worthwhile. But I could imagine if it was better at learning to copy my own personal style after I had spent some hours going back and forth with it that it could eventually become a tool that accurately reflected my original vision on a work .... but it's not nearly there yet. Every single time I've asked it to write something for me to see how it did, it came up with something that was wholly unsatisfactory to me.
Obviously there's a lot of people who's own innate writing ability is worse than chatgpt's and I guess it seemingly helps them seem like better writers, but I still think they'd be better off continuing to practice. Already I'm getting emails that, while directed to me personally about something we were talking about, are just so perfectly professional I'm like ugh you let "Gemini" or whatever write this for you didn't you. If the people pushing AI into every digital product do succeed in getting people to use it for nearly everything, I can really see it genuinely dumbing down the population into being unable to write anything longer than a "prompt"
What I do find it genuinely useful for is quickly collating information, like working on a magazine article I came across a spreadsheet of types of almonds planted in the most recent year, some varieties are self pollinating, most are not, I could spend an hour manually adding up the totals or take a snip, ask chatgpt what percentage are self pollinating... and then if at all possible check it's answer for errors! I have often found it can somehow hallucinate one number in a spreadsheet for another! But eventually you get an answer. Like with the writing this isn't just ask it one prompt and run with the answer, it requires some back and forth to get things right, it's a god damn tool.
I had a funny interaction just the other day. I was looking for historical background on Kenya for the memoir work (sorry it's photos of my screen instead of screenshots):
(yes I talk to chatgpt like I'm talking to a person, because I think it would be mentally unhealthy for ME to do otherwise)
Don't feel like I'm dealing with a super-intelligence here. But even something like this, note I knew exactly what I was looking for, I had to shove chatGPT's face into it, AND, fortunately, I have actually read the Rihla before so I was able to discern if it was hallucinating the passage or not, and in this case what it reported matched my recollection. People who aren't smart and try to use chatGPT to pretend they are are just going to end up in la la land.
Several times I've had someone try to win an argument about some beekeeping topic with me on facebook by posting a long chatgpt explanation of their position. When I poke a bunch of holes in it and chastise them for using chatgpt they usually slink away in shame. ChatGPT is not an expert on any topic, it's more like a drunk guy at a bar pretending to be an expert but willing to confidently tell you details it just made up to maintain the illusion of being smart. | | Wednesday, November 26th, 2025 | | 7:21 pm |
Apinautica Chapter 11 Pt 2
As I mentioned I'm going to continue this now. Since it's been awhile and I actually reworked some bits of the overlapping bit here I'm going to put some of the earlier portion of Guinea 1
June 28th, 2014 - By and by we begin to descend, and Guinea materializes as a landscape seemingly devoid of human development, an endless expanse of wetlands, a tangled criss-cross of rivers and damp-looking foliage, until suddenly the long narrow capital of Conakry, jutting out on a peninsula into the ocean, appears below seconds before landing.
While deplaning I get to talking to a woman from Doctors Without Borders who is here to help fight “the worst ebola outbreak in history,” as she describes it. “It’s completely out of control!” she adds confidentially. Hmmm well great.
Outside the terminal it's hot and humid, and there are the usual throngs of pushy porters trying to help me (for a fee) and taxi drivers insistent on taking me whereever I need to go, but I’ve both been through this before and plow through the crowd to the two staffmembers from The Organization (identifiable by their hats), a young man and young woman, and load my things into the Organization's landcruiser.
Conakry seems more like a large village or expansive town than a city. Previous African capitols I've been in (Abuja, Addis Ababa) are at least characterized by paved streets and big buildings, but across the street from the airport there are houses with corrugated metal roofs, and dirt roads with streams of filthy water running through them. Not quite shantytown, more "functional squalor." The Lonely Planet guidebook describes Conakry as "smelling nausious" in general but the misty rain must have been dampening that effect. We wend our way around throngs of children playing soccer. World Cup fever is in full swing.
Total travel time: 28 hours. Hotel is decent -- the AC works, the power hardly ever goes out, and the internet usually works, what more can one ask for?
“There won’t be any banks up-country, so you’ll need to have all the project funds with you,” Mamadou Th. from the Organization tells me as he begins handing me several bricks of rubber-banded bills. “So this is the $2.8 million Guinean francs.”
“Haha, what! How many dollars is this?” I ask, ogling at the amount of money.
“$414. The largest bill we have is the 10,000 franc note, which is a dollar forty-eight.” He departs leaving me with these bricks of cash on the table, feeling like a drug lord. I look in the usual places safes are hidden (the closet), but there appears to be none! It would not do to submit roomkeeping to the temptation of several years of salary just laying around.
My gimlet eye alights on a pertinent oddity – there’s no safe, but there’s a lock on the room mini-fridge, with a key in it. I remove the water bottles and stuff my cash and laptop into the fridge before heading out to look for a restaurant, surprisingly therere’s a Turkish restaurant a short way down the street. Merhaba, merhaba.
Back in the room in the evening, I pull my laptop out of the fridge to write up some notes and receive an un-asked-for science lesson. Almost immediately, the hot, humid air forms great droplets of cool water on the smooth black laptop. The laptop has burst into tears at the absurdity of the situation, and they flow down its sleek sides and plop sadly to the floor. I nervously eye the drops near its vents, threatening to choke it on its own tears. I’ll need to give it some time to collect itself and acclimate before writing any reflections. I unplug the fridge to prevent any further violations of the natural order of fridges and laptops.
I have a few days in the capital. Pounding rain alternates with steaming sunshine, kids kick soccer balls around on streets potholed with mouldering puddles. I meet another volunteer just finishing a project, as he stumbles back into the hotel after being held by the military/police (gendarmes) for a few hours because he’d taken a picture of the statue in front of the military barracks down the street, and he was only released after he gave in and bribed them $50 to release him. He soon departs to head back home, but I also meet another volunteer who is going up-country at the same time I am, Edie, an older woman who does business development.
Graphs of ebola deaths keep rising. Ebola is here in the capital but not out in the countryside where I’m going, which lends a feeling of particular urgency to escape the fetid capital. Finally on Tuesday morning The Organization’s car arrives. They have a new driver, they explain, because the previous driver died on Saturday.
[okay HERE begins the new part]
It’s twelve hours drive from the Conakry to our destination in the interior. The first four hours alone of that is slogging through the capital where despite an early start the traffic is bumper-to-bumper in the early light. Water fountains onto the road from the dilapidated surrounding buildings, and the potholes are so big that we pass one in which a car has fallen in so deeply that its back wheels are now off the ground leaving it stranded like an upside-down beetle. Obstacles like this do nothing to improve the traffic.
Once out of the city there’s much less traffic though the road is under construction for large sections. By and large it seems to wind up an narrow valley the entire way, the surrounding hills and valley floor filled with palm trees and jungley foliage. We pass through occasional village of huts steaming in the morning sun, or the jumbled corrugated roofs of a small town with a chaos of little market stalls fronting the main road. The occasional old colonial building stands decaying in the center of a town, green with with moss or algae. The further into the interior go the less women wearing jeans are seen and the eventually women in full burqa begin to be seen.
We frequently pass small roadside stands selling bottles of some red liquid. Wondering what this popular beverage is I ask the driver – it turns out this is how they sell gasoline here.
Finally after a long tiresome day of bumping along these bad roads just a short distance outside the larger town of Labe we turn off the paved to drive ten minutes or so down a rural dirt road until we arrive at a low wall with a metal gate that children excitedly push open for us, and we drive into the center of the village of Sanpiring.
This village is very orderly. Villages I’d seen in Nigeria had been awash with discarded plastic festooning every bush and carpeting the ground like a hideous autumn leaf-fall, not here. The village consists of mostly small concrete-brick houses with corrugated roofs, though there’s a few huts, and the houses are surrounded by their small fields of corn or cassava. The paths between them and the broad driveable passage to the central square are covered with uniform clean volcanic gravel – an important touch since the constant rain doesn’t puddle or make mud of the gravel. The entire village is surrounded by a low wall, outside of which the flocks of goats graze in a green countryside of meadows of forests. There’s no sheds, outbuildings or tools left outside the wall, it’s a very definite dividing line between civilization and complete wilderness.
“We used to have a Peace Corps volunteer here named David” someone mentions to me during my first tour of the village, translated by Baro, “but he died.”
There’s a spare room for me available in one of the houses, it even has a western toilet! Though I feel kind of guilty that every time I flush it some kids get sent to work the pump and manually bring buckets of water to refill the cistern.
My local host has a slight stature and boyish grin, though the lines on his face make him look old, and altogether its hard to place his age, as life here can age one’s face prematurely. Nearly none of the local villagers speak French, much less English, so I’ll also be accompanied by an interpreter, Baro. Baro is older, stolid and serene, though he walks with a distinct limp due to having been hit by a car years earlier. Not at all evangelical about it or pushy with righteousness, he glows with real pleasure when he talks about the traditions of his Muslim faith. It’s Ramadan and he earnestly mentions the value he finds in fasting, without seeming for a moment to judge me for my decision not to fast.
Walking to the hives he suddenly bends down and plucks a herb: “This is very good for blood pressure!”
“This is very good for digestion!” he had says later about a different herb.
“This is very good for achy joints” he declares still later, proudly holding another sprig of foliage. And then he acquires some aloe vera, somewhere, and attributes all of the above and more to it. Thereafter every day after the breaking of the fast he carefully, lovingly, slices off a sliver of his tapered aloe vera blade and eats it like the sacred wafer.
Seventy percent or so of the beekeepers I’m training have “Mamadou” as a first name. So many have “Bah” as a last name, looking at the attendance list I at first assume that’s just the local word for man. The names “Diallo,” “Alpha,” and “Yaya” in various combinations make up the remaining 30% of first names or the middle names. They wear either nice traditional fabric clothes or clothing they evidently got from a Salvation Army shipment from the States. One of the beekeepers in has a green "SMHS CHEER" jacket. Another had a shirt ostensibly advertising a 5k in Scantron, Pennsylvania, but being as it also has among the list of causes "celebrity rabies" I suspect it may have something to do with the show The Office. Another has a shirt emblazoned with "Alabama State Youth Beef EXPO 2009" and another, almost certainly Muslim man, wears a shirt for some American church, no doubt unaware of its meaning.
Over the next several days a happy routine develops. I awake to the sound of roosters, with no reference to a clock. Upon emerging someone soon hands me a fresh baguette (not baked in this village but a nearby one), and some barely palatable nescafe (but that’s on me for having somehow become a coffee snob. Even in Australia, a place proud of its coffee culture, it’s considered fine and normal to offer a guest a “cuppa” of execrable nescafe). One by one the trainees show up until we feel we have enough to start – again with no reference to a clock, this is Africa time!
We have classroom sessions in the morning, outdoors if its nice, indoors in a small community hall (in later years it had been turned into a house but in 2014 perhaps it was just conveniently unfinished and suited the purpose), sometimes having to take breaks if it was raining so hard we couldn’t hear ourselves. Sometimes we plug in a generator to show some informational slides and everyone (myself included) plugs their phone charger into the rare source of electricity. In the afternoons we go out to the hives that are here and there in copses of trees in the village’s immediate surroundings. Usually not the whole group but a different half a dozen or so. We sweat in the beekeeping coveralls in the humid heat, and can’t overly exert ourselves because everyone is observing Ramadan and therefore fasting. Upon return to the village, one particular six year old, Mamadou de Boba, has taken it as his sacred duty to carry the smoker.
In the evening Baro and I sit on the porch of the house we’re lodged in, reading and listening to the transistor radio, our one link to the rest of the world. The Ebola outbreak continues to get worse. It hasn’t arrived in this prefecture yet but there’s a few cases in Conakry – what if I can’t get back out through Conakry? I’d have to exit through unstable Mali or a really really long journey through Senegal to the north. Baro, himself had been born in Timbuktu in neighboring Mali, but as radical insurgents flying a sinister black flag had taken over that portion of Mali, he is now temporarily displaced to Guinea. In happier news the radio also keeps us informed about the World Cup.
The children all run laughing amongst the huts like a school of minnows. Mamadou de Boba never tires of talking to me in the local language (Pullar), to which I absently respond “mhm, really? You don’t say.” and he happily carries on. As the adults come in from their day of work they greet their siblings and cousins and inevitably end up gathering on someone’s porch chatting into the evening.
Baro slowly makes tea by pouring the brew repeatedly between a cup and kettle as the stars come out above us and the only light that remains is the glowing embers under the kettle and lightning flashing on the horizon. The call to prayer rings out from his phone and with a genuine smile Baro says “come let us break fast” and we join the procession of people walking by flashlight along the narrow paths hedged in by corn to the little village mosque.
There people would hungrily eat a millet soup before praying, and then after we’d walked back to the house it was usually still an hour (again, of conversation, tea, the light of glowing tea-heating embers and distant lightning) before dinner would finally be ready at around 11, usually meat and rice in one large platter everyone would eat from with their hands, in the near dark.
Ebola is spread by contact with any bodily fluids. I often feel acutely aware of this as I watch half a dozen other people around me putting a mouthful of food in their mouth and then reaching that same hand back into the communal food platter. Does this stop me from participating though? No, although I do use as spoon as I just can’t get the hang of eating with my hands. Finally go to bed and fall asleep to the sound of pounding rain. Wake up to the crowing of roosters and repeat of the process.
I’ve been told they want a lesson on business and marketing. This causes me disproportionate stress – I’m by now confident I can teach beekeeping to everyone’s satisfaction but who am I to teach business? Putting it off to the last day is a good way to at least procrastinate addressing the subject.
Finally it can’t be put off any longer. I put together some notes, we gather indoors because it’s another rainy day and … much to my surprise and relief, Baro, to whom I’ve expressed my misgivings about having much to contribute on this subject, thoroughly steps up. He’s acted as interpreter for several business development projects in the past. Baro, this serene displaced Malian nomad, as always in his traditional patterned fabrics, stands beside the flip board I’ve barely used and fills it with page after page of flow charts and cluster-diagrams and key words. I take a lot of notes, ideas and concepts which will be used in my presentations ever after. When we’ve finished and he hobbles out of the building, he notices a herb by the path and plucks it excitedly, informing me of its medicinal properties. Truly a man of many parts.
One afternoon I explore the surroundings of the village accompanied by Mamadou de Boba, my six year old squire. I try to instill in him an appreciation of insects but unfortunately, with no language in common, he usually interprets my pointing out an interesting insect as an invitation to smash it. There’s a river not far from the village, and another boy of around nine shows us a place on the bank where you can pour a bucket of water and it will disappear down some holes and reappear from others as it runs down to the river. What fun! We enjoy these boyish hydrography games for a good hour, before returning to the village, wet muddy and happy.
Rather to my mortification I arrive at the house in which I’m staying, still wet and muddy, to find the beekeeping federation president and his wife, dressed nicely and sitting primly inside. They’d apparently come on a rather formal visit to see me and showing up late wet and muddy I suddenly felt like an ill-behaved child. Things didn’t improve when the beekeeping president’s wife said she was inviting us for dinner and was preparing fish – which I was prepared to try to have a go at again but Baro promptly noted that I dislike fish.
We do later catch up with the federation president and his wife, and most significantly he asks if I plan to attend the African Beekeeping Symposium in Arusha, Tanzania, coming up in November. Well no that hadn’t been on my radar, but now that you mention it I might consider it.
Another afternoon after our work for the day has finished I decide to walk out to a nearby part of the river where it passes over a large rocky area and forms a number of pools, and the village women do their washing there. In fact I had aborted an earlier attempt to explore the area when from a distance I saw that the village’s women were doing the washing there – topless.
On this pleasant sunny afternoon I set off down the village paths in that direction. As I turn to close the simple wooden gate I see a teenage girl coming along behind me and hold the gate open for her. I then proceed in the direction I intend, but coincidentally the girl seems to be going the exact same direction. I maintain my pace an remain a few steps ahead of her, lest it seem like I’m following or accompanying her to wherever she’s going, but she remains on the same route as me as I leave the village behind and pass the outlying copses of trees.
Finally we arrive at the washing place. I turn to look at her – it turns out she didn’t come here to do any washing either. She simply comes to a stop facing me, brazenly looking me in the eye with a mischievous smile. Well this is awkward.
“Comment t’appelle tu?” I ask dredging up my mediocre French.
“Mamanou” she responds.
“Um…” I dredged my mind for another question I could ask in Fernch.
“Quel âge as-tu?”
“Dix-sept ans, et tu?” but unfortunately the answer to her question, 32, is beyond my French, so I try to indicate three sets of all ten fingers plus two, I’m not sure she understands but she giggles.
Well I admire her brazen pluck, but she’s too young for me and just disappearing out in the bush with her for any period of time could lead people to think things, so after only briefly looking around the rocks we head back to the village, albeit walking side by side now. I’d like to make conversation but unfortunately I don’t know nearly anything else worth saying in French, and her understanding of French may have been exhausted as well, as, again, most people out here only speak Pullar. Safely in sight of the village just outside the gate I show her pictures on my phone of life in California.
The next day, the last day of class, another girl, one of the few in the beekeeping class, palms me a note that says “I love you.” Psh, not nearly as ballsy as Mamanou. The Organization Landcruiser has returned and Baro and I depart, the entire village and all the trainees lining the car’s path out of the village, enthusiastically waving.
That afternoon we only make it halfway back to the capitol. At the hotel I’m excited to finally take a shower for the first time in ten days, eagerly awaiting the turning on of the water heater in the evening. Unfortunately, when they finally do, I find it has no setting other than scalding so the best I can do is steam myself.
The next day we make a short detour to see a tall and beautiful waterfall, one of probably many around the world known as “Bridal Falls” (“La Voile de Mariee”). Its beauty will haunt me as a ghost as by the next year already illegal loggers had strip logged the area leaving just a sad devastation.
As we approach the capitol we pass convoys of white landcruisers emblazoned with red crosses headed inland and billboards advising safety precautions against Ebola, then approaching its peak. Nearly 80% of those infected with ebola will die, often horribly bleeding out of their eyes and ears.
Checking into the hotel in Conakry I’m excited to finally finally take a decent shower. I get in the shower, turn it on and … the showerhead shoots off like a rocket barely missing me but bouncing off the shower wall with a clang as water sprays everywhere.
The next day I’m in the Organization office to meet with USAID officials, who were supposed to show up at 11:00. Another volunteer who’s project had also just ended keeps saying "they won't come, they never come" but around 10:50 they say they are running a little late but were on their way. I feel tired and my back aches. They update us again at 11:15 saying there was bad traffic ... and finally after 11:30 it’s announced they aren't coming at all. Were they ever coming? One of life's great mysteries.
I accompany the other volunteer to a place where souvenirs are being sold and buy two decorated horns and a large wooden spork, though really I just want to go back to the hotel and rest as I’m feeling fatigued.
July 15th, 2014 - I find myself lying my my hotel bed aching, as the rain patters serenely on the windows and the beautiful ethereal call to prayer warbles throughout the city in the pre-dawn darkness. My back aches, I have a sore throat, a runny nose … what are the initial symptoms of ebola? Aches, a sore throat, a runny nose… I lie there through the last hours of the night thinking about this very emphatically.
Reporting to the health authorities would be the responsible thing but also sounds like a good way to end up quarantined with people who definitely have ebola or something. We have a family friend however who is a doctor who has specialized in exotic tropical diseases. I talk to him on the phone and he seems confident I do not have ebola. And I’m an optimistic person, in a country of twelve million what are the odds of me being ebola case number 407?
As I enter the airport that evening I find myself trying very hard not to look sick. They aren’t carefully examining everyone but there's someone in a white doctor’s coat watching everyone enter – I make it around the corner before having my next fit of coughing. Another hour sitting by the gate trying not to blow my nose too much or otherwise arouse suspicion, and finally running the gauntlet of boarding with my best appearances of not being sick. It wasn’t until we were safely in the air and bound for Europe that a different concern began to niggle at my mind – what if I did have Ebola? And I was now spreading it to Europe?
After covid I know intentionally trying not to get quarantined seems like distinctly amoral behavior but in a country where all infrastructure is crumbling, festering and unsanitary you go and volunteer to be put in whatever they call an ebola quarantine. Also looking at contemporaneous livejournal entries I don't think I'd written about the incident with Mamanou, I think because it seemed questionable to dwell on at all, and I'm still on the fence about omitting it in this memoir but after all I did nothing wrong and it represents something of the kind of moral hazards one can face. Also this isn't the last she appears.
Whereas previous trips I've separated events into the days they happened this one I've experimented with running everything together. | | Friday, October 10th, 2025 | | 8:07 pm |
Farewell to Copenhagen
 Monday, September 29th
After being in Copenhagen for over a week now, this was only the my second totally free day with Cristina. I wanted to see one of the various castles around. I'd have liked to go to the famous Helsingor Castle (site of Hamlet), but its like an hour out of the city. There's a few others around but asking around someone had said Rosenborg Castle (or in Danish Rosenborg Slot) was the go-to castle in Copenhagen. I like castles for their impressive stone architecture and history but I wasn't sure that would do it for Cristina -- but I've been in several previous castles that were so elegantly decorated that I was sure she'd like it if it was like that... but was it? Only one way to find out!
As it turns out it was elegantly decorated as it had historically been and Cristina really loved it! My main phone by now had no more storage capacity and my magazine phone which I was borrowing for its storage capacity and good camera (I have to return it soon but not yet!) had run out of battery and was refusing to recharge so I was unable to take any photos with my devices anymore and we have not yet succeeded in transferring anything from Cristina's phone to me. But it was very lovely.
From there was proceeded to the Little Mermaid Statue. I got a picture I really want to post of Cristina by the mermaid with a swan in the water just behind them and in the further background the German frigate Hamburg.
We walked from there to Nyhavn the famously quaint canal filled with small sailboats and lined with little eateries. While walking along there a man appeared to be waving at me, looking behind me and seeing no one he was waving at I approached him and said "you appear to be waving at me but I don't recognize you" but quickly was successfully reminded that he'd been on the bus trip the day before. But I think he was a Finn and I thought they'd continued their journey so how he and his wife ended up here is a mystery. But then as bees were mentioned in the conversation someone at the next table said "excuse me were you at Apimondia??" and it turned out to be a Greek beekeeping equipment manufacturer.
Despite tehre being a lot of eateries along nyhavn, many weren't Danish cuisine (who goes to Copenhagen to eat at the Italian place in picturesque nyhavn??), and having walked along once and eyed them all I wasn't sure where to go but looked at google maps to see which one had the highest star ratings (and danish food) and went there and as usual was definitely not disappointed! :d
(as mentioned, my cameras weren't working so here's a picture Cristina took of me)
Then we returned to our airbnb. Relaxed for a bit and then at 21:00 went out to meet with my friend Ole whom I'd met at breakfast a week earlier. His wife was out of town but he brought along his wife's Colombian friend. We met in a wine bar down the street. It was quite enjoyable, Cristina and the Colombiana chattered away in Espanol while Ole talked about various things, occasionally the two conversations coming together again.
Tuesday, September 30th
For the return journey we hadn't been so successful and matching our flights exactly, so Cristina flew around just after 14:00 and my flight was at 20:00. I took her to the airport around 11:00 and then returned to the airbnb. The host very kindly said he didn't mind if I hung around all day even though check out was 12:00. I must be getting old because I was feeling a bit sore all over from the recent perambulations, otherwise I might have tried to do more sightseeing for this last day. Instead I sat in the garden in the courtyard in the middle of the building and read all afternoon.
This time I flew from Copenhagen to Vienna, after a short layover there I continued on to Bangkok, also on Austrian Airlines. From Bangkok I continued on Thai Airways and it was noticably more comfortable. I had a lot of legroom, I'm wondering if even though I didn't pay for extra legroom maybe no one else did so the random draw had put me into an extra legroom seat?
At some point while I was on this flight Cristina landed around 23:00 Melbourne time Wednesday, cold rain was cmoing down at a steep diagonal angle. Welcome to Melbourne!
Thursday, October 1st
I landed in the morning and took the airport shuttle bus home, Cristina picked me up from the train station after the bus left me, the end!
One last picture I was able to coax out of my camera, Copenhagen skyline as seen from the Round Tower | | Friday, October 3rd, 2025 | | 7:35 am |
Apimondia 2025 - Copenhagen - Part 1!
Every two years the World Beekeeping Federation "Apimondia" holds a congress (founded in 1895 this was their 49th so they missed just a few). I first attended in 2017 in Istanbul, and again in 2023 in Santiago, Chile. This last week it was held in Copenhagen, Denmark.
I had always planned to attend, though its a very difficult time of the year for us here in Australia, practically the busiest part of the beekeeping season at the best of times, and in my current job as a varroa extension officer, the invasive pest mite varroa is just burgeoning across my state at probably its most critical rate right now, AND my colleague the OTHER senior extension officer also wanted to attend Apimondia! So I booked flights to just be there for the conference and the few days before and after during which there would be "technical tours" -- which I've found one of the most rewarding parts of these conferences.
I booked my flights and tickets on June 30th so I could write them off on the financial year ending on that date ;) at the time I didn't think Cristina would be coming along, but later it was decided she would. Unfortunately, you know how flights are, you reload a page practically and the price goes up $1000. The exact flights I had booked were, well, $1000 more so we got her on flights matching as closely as possible to mine that ultimately I think were only like $300 more (my round trip flights were AU$2,300) -- the outbound flight matched so closely in fact that we departed melbourne within ten minutes of eachother, arrived in bangkok together, and arrived in Copenhagen also within ten minutes of eachother!
Saturday, September 20th - The Journey There
Even though I booked through Luftansa I was a bit horrified to find my Melbourne - Bangkok flight was on Jetstar, our budget airline. So that was predictably fairly uncomfortable. I'd never been to Bangkok before, I found the airport both on the way out and again on the way back to be one of the more confusing airports I've been in. I'm a veteran of a lot of airports so I can say this with confidence. Guidance signs were sometimes vague, confusing or missing and asking airport staff, they were usually friendly but sounded like they were only taking wild guesses at instructions on how to get to places merely around the corner from them.
But I did have a moment to eat some thai food in thailand so that was nice.
In Flight Movie Reviews
The Accountant 2 - I had seen the preceding movie in this series, which I recall as "like Rainman if Rainman happened to pick up being a badass cold blooded killer as a random hobby" and in fact trying to remember what happened in the first one I kept conflating it with Rainman. Ultimately the movie was of the genre of people trying to solve a case with frequent gunfights but the plot didn't really make sense, numerous parts of it required people to know things they didn't know until later for their motivations to make any sense. C
Troy - I actually hadn't seen this movie before! And I've been on more of a Greek myths kick than ever, had actually downloaded the Argonautica, Illiad and Odyssey onto my phone before the flight for light reading. All that being said, maybe I'm becoming too hard to please with movies because my feelings about it were just kind of meh. Fun to see all the actors who later became more well known looking so young though. B-
Flow - This was actually the only movie I saw on the flight back. After perusing the movie listings and seeing nothing I was interested in, I noticed more than one fellow passenger watching a beautifully animated film about a cat in a boat with a capybara and became intrigued. In the "Family" category of film options I seldom venture into I found it -- Flow -- it was actually really nice. Not cartoon animations but like, actually trying to be beautiful kind of animations (CGI to be sure but nicely done). For unexplained reasons the forest is flooded and the cat and various other animals escape in a boat. There's no dialogue, no talking animals, but they convey personality with not-implausible behaviors and noises. Sadly we landed when I still had about half an hour left (note to self, I was 59 minutes in). A
I had a short layover in Munich during which I went through EU passport control, which I only realized when I arrived in Copenhagen stuffed up our plan to go through passport control together. As we had discovered in Mexico, just because Venezuelans officially have visa-free entry into a place doesn't mean it will be granted, so I'd brought our wedding certificate and intended we'd walk through passport control arm in arm, but alas I arrived in Copenhagen outside passport control and she arrived inside passport control. Fortunately she didn't have a problem but I was very afraid for a moment there.
Sunday, September 21st - Arrival
I've been to Copenhagen airport a few times before and as I recalled it IS a very easy-to-navigate airport. Simple walk from the baggage claim out to the metro where the machines are straightforward (unlike for example Amsterdam where I once spent nearly an hour trying to figure out how to buy a ticket and was nearly reduced to tears). Our AirBNB was literally just ten minutes down the metro. Short walk of a few blocks (400m?) amongst pretty five story apartment blocks, cobbled streets, trees and shops on the first level of the buildings. I immediately noted that even though it being nearly the equinox and the north and south hemisphere's therefore getting very close to equal sunlight and daytime right now, the climate in Copenhagen was MUCH NICER than Melbourne. I forget there's places where you can go out without multimple layers at times other than the one month of a year it might be summer (maybe). Whether was delightful all week, then had a similar shock when we returned to Melbourne and blisteringly cold winds (actually it was freezing rain when Cristina arrived).
We were unaffected by Russian drone activity a the airport as that began Sept 22nd, though I was worried it could effect our eventual departure, and with the upcoming Trump summoning of all his generals and admirals I wasn't sure WW3 wasN'T about to break out while we were there.
Our AirBNB was a room in a flat. I thought it was well-reviewed (4.27 stars) though just now looking at it again tehre's an AirBnB note advising that that's in the bottom 10% of available places in Copenhagen. The host, apparently from Shanghai originally, was very friendly and obliging, letting us check in early, apparently getting up early after a late shift to clean the place early for us. Well I would have been content but Cristina who is more discerning about these things noted that while the floor had clearly been hastily mopped and there were fresh bed linens and such on the bed, there was also a large amount of visible debris on the floor under everything, and the window and mirror could use some cleaning. The host's flatmate apparently got deported to China the second day we were there, which didn't really effect us but was, like, a thing that happened.
We got some delicious pastries at a bakery across the street and then did some sight seeing around Copenhagen. It was a very easy trip of just a few minutes by the same metro to the center of town. Wandering along Stroget street and surrounds, we marveled at all the beautiful architecture and just how clean and safe it was and how happy everyone seemed.
As can be expected with jetlag we perservered as long as we could but by early afternoon we were fading and returned to the room where we continued to try to stay up until a decent time to go to bed but it was a struggle. (on the flip side of things, which I'm writing this the day after returning, I pretty much passed out just before 21:00, but then was lying awake at 2:30am so got up and began this at 3 or 4am)
Monday, September 22nd - The Equinox
The morning of this day we had to return to the airport because Cristina was flying to Mallorca to see one of her good friends (she'd be in Spain the duration of my conferencing days, first Mallorca and then Madrid). Fortunately due to the aforementioned proximity and easy of access to the airport this was no problem at all.
As best I can recall I then strolled around town some more, exploring some fortifications, ate some more delicious food (in this case "Copenhagen's smallest restaurant." Oh I toured the museum of the Danish resistance to the Nazi occupation. It was a well done museum with immersive audio tour though I was mildly annoyed that with lots of individual exhibits sometimes they'd begin with like a minute of scene setting ambiant noise and one wanted to get on with htings, and in general I have a preference for reading exhibits which I can proceed through much more quickly.
and then I stumbled upon German frigate Baden-Wurttenburg, always cool to see a state of the art warship but also a reminder of the crackling tensions with Russia, the Russian drone mother-ship to be discovered off the coast of Denmark a few days later.
Tuesday, September 23rd
I began this day by trotting down a block or two to a really well reviewed little cafe for breakfast. Sitting outside, Cristina video called me from Mallorca and we chatted a bit in our usual spanglish. Just as I was saying goodbye to her the guy sitting at the next table cheerily waved to the camera and said something simple in Spanish (I forget what exactly but it was thematically related to goodbye). I was greatly amused by this and began talknig to him once I was no longer on the phone with Cristina, we ended up talking for an hour and a half, he was a very interesting and friendly Danish fellow named Ole who had also traveled a bit. I'm not sure what his current project is but he had run and then sold a kayak related company. So I made a new friend (spoiler alert we caught up with him again the last evening but we'll get there when we get there).
I had meant to spend as much time as possible in the national museum but this delayed me a bit. On a previous visit Ii had spent several hours and only succeeded in seeing the first floor (of like five) of the museum which covers from earliest prehistory through the vikings. The rest of the history museum was also really interesting. I particularly liked a room full of things one might think of as sort of "steampunk" but they were real historical items from the middle ages at a time when gunpowder was becoming a thing and people were experimenting with making combination gun-warhammers and crazy things like that.
Another big exhibit they were promoting was titled "the viking sorceress" which was an audiotour through some surreal rooms while it talked about viking mythology, which I already knew beyond the level covered therein so I was once again feeling annoyed with the pace limiting effect of audio tours. Also, starting to run out of time I finally got to the fnial part of the exhibit which actually did have a lot of artifacts that looked interesting, but at this point I didn't have time for the audio tour to take its meandering-ass-time to explain them to me. There was also a whole other wing on the traditional clothing of various people throughout the world I would have liked to see but by now we were really getting up on running out of time for me to get to the opening ceremonies of Apimondia and my colleague Ashton was texting me to hurry up and get outta there. I ran into the traditional clothing exhibit just to see if I could quickly find anything on the native people of Venezuela but at least cruising through the exhibit at nearly a run I was not able to discern such.
Took the metro down to the conference center (the Bella Centre) arriving a comfortable 20-30 minutes before opening ceremony, but I think I'll begin a new etnry for the conference itself (: | | Wednesday, September 17th, 2025 | | 10:51 pm |
Misfortunate Misadventures in Dunkeld
I had an almost comical number of misfortunes all together today.
I had to drive to a place four hours away way out in rural Victoria (Australia) for work (the government job). I was running low on fuel but I hate stopping for fuel so I always try to plan to practically use up the tank before refueling. I calculated I'd be passing through this town Dunkeld right at that point I'd need to refuel, it's not a small town but its the southern entrance to major tourist destination Grampians National Park so I felt confident it would have several gas stations.
Nope.
It had only one gas station. It was a mobil. The government car doesn't have a mobil fuel card. From past experience accounting does _not_ like when I don't use a fuel card and instead pay myself and expense it. It changes from something that happens without any further commentary to filing an expense report with an explanation and back and forth with multiple people griping about it. But I was on E without enough fuel to get to a place I had a fuel card. Okay so I'll just have to pay for it myself. I fuel up (here in Australia you fuel first and then pay). I put my hand on the pocket my wallet is always in. It's not there. I never go anywhere without my wallet, how is it not in my pocket???
I know you can pay for things with the bank app on your phone, I don't like it but I've done it once before when I for some reason didn't have my wallet somewhere else. I go to open the bank app but it needs to update. I go to update but there's not enough room on my phone unless I delete some apps. There's not really any apps I can really spare to delete. I'm stressing out because like, I need to pay for this fuel!
So I delete two apps hopefully I can reinstall later.
Then I actually remember that my wallet is not in my pocket because I'd gone through a Starbucks drivethrough (I never go through drivethroughs but was in a hurry this morning), and had put my wallet on the passenger seat since its hard to reinsert in the pocket while sitting.
So I'm able to pay for the fuel. Though Accounting is still going to give me hell about it.
Then not ten minutes later I was trying to eat a yogurt cup while driving (I really didn't have any spare time, having to drive somewhere four hours away to meet with people for an hour drive four hours back in time to make a presentation at 6pm) and spilled yogurt on my pants. Ugh. "Can't believe!" | | Sunday, July 20th, 2025 | | 9:43 pm |
Into Space!
Okay this is the final act of the pilot, hopefully it just took me this long because I was retraining the AI to my most exacting standards and/or I cared particularly about what happened, because unlike the other episodes where I literally gave it a prompt and it gave me an entertaining story this took so much back and forth I could have written it entirely myself in that time, and really I shaped the plot so exactly all that remains from the AI's "original" input is the phrasing of people's lines and SOME of the fictional induction units but not even a majority of those.
But in other news I finally contrived to watch Star Trek Lower decks (there are far too many streaming networks!) and unlike Orville (and "Utopia" which I also recently tried to watch) I find it to be actually pretty funny.
The onboarding room is windowless and beige, with a low acoustic ceiling and a faint smell of sterilized upholstery. A carafe sits untouched on the table.
On one wall hangs what appears to be an oil painting, though closer inspection reveals it is of course a cheap copy of one. It depicts a weathered hunter, horn to lips, eyes locked on something distant. Below him, in cracked gold letters:
“Raphèl mai amècche zabì almi.”
Rafael reads it twice before giving up. The room feels like it has been borrowed from a dental seminar on a less stylish moon.
“But what if we ran a test,” a Ferengi named Quid is saying. He has expensive boots and a memo pad tucked into one sleeve. “List it once under ‘sandwich’ and once under ‘entrees.’ See where it sells better. That’s the category.”
“In Sweden,” says Haakon Svenson, leaning back with his boots on the conference table, “we have korv med bröd, and no one calls it a sandwich. It is… its own thing. Like a poem. Or an uncle.”
“It’s clearly a sandwich,” says Wesley Crusher, upright and vibrating in a freshly pressed red uniform. “I ran a starch-to-protein ratio sim last night. Optimal bun distribution is within standard deviation for known sandwich types. I even developed a new optimized klein-bottle shaped hot dog, I’ll show you!”
He reaches for his pad, but stops when the klingon Waffel, with the gravitas of one who would think nothing of settling an argument with a blade, growls “It is tradition that a hot dog is not a sandwich and to say it is is dishonorable,” looking from face to face daring someone to argue.
Seated with the quiet poise of someone who does not expect the world to make sense is Søren Kierkegaard, cradling a ceramic cup. He doesn’t appear to be listening. A spiral-bound pamphlet titled Ethical Boundaries in Recreational Holodeck Use: A Tiered Approach lies open in front of him. He turns a page slowly.
Rafael finds a seat between Quid and an anxious young man with a gaunt, Dickensian sort of face. The latter offers a faint, apologetic smile.
“Please sir, Philip Ignacio Pirrip – they call me Pip. Do you feel as lost as me?”
Further introductions are interrupted as the door opens with a hiss, and Dirxana enters with a clacking of high heels, holding a laser stylus like a scalpel.
“ Welcome, new crewmembers,” she says, enunciating each syllable like it had wronged her. “I recognize many of you from your interviews” she continues with a sharp toothed grin. Pip turns red and slumps in his chair as if he’s trying to hide under the table. “Thank you for volunteering” at this Haakon seems about to object but thinks better of it.
After a moment of silence calculated to make Haakon feel awkward, she uses her laser-stylus to put a red dot on the blank presentation screen,, then methodically moves it up and down while watching the attendees. Just as it seems like someone is about to ask what she’s doing she continues.
“Good, I’ve confirmed that your eyes are functional. You will be asked to sign a waiver acknowledging potential retinal fatigue, and we’ll continue with exactly eight hours of powerpoint induction videos”
She clicks a remote. The screen at the front lights up with a menu of training modules, each more tedious than the last. Titles include: Proper Disposal of Personal Matter on Ships with Temporal Anomalies… Stairwell Etiquette During Hull Breaches… Smiling in Multispecies Contexts… and Password Management in the Post-Trust Era.”
“Welcome to your formal orientation aboard the USS Nimrod. You are now part of a team committed to exploration, diplomacy, and the efficient filing of incident reports. You will begin your career with thirty-nine onboarding modules.”
The wall screen flickers to life. The holographic presenter— grinning insincerely with stock-photo-model perfection, and dressed in cheerful shades of teal—gestures with unsettling confidence toward a holo-slide labeled “Welcome to the SpaceFleet Family!” under which is a topologically impossible looking diagram seeming to imply a closely interlinked relationship between “Team Values” “Galactic Peace, Prosperity and Stakeholder Synergy,” “Correctly Filing Expense Reports” “Exploration” “Exceeding KPIs,” and “Inspirational Mindfulness in Emergency Scenarios.”
“Hi! I’m Clippy,” says the man, as if they’re old friends. “And I’ll be your Onboarding Bestie™!
…
Several hours later Rafael has entered a delirious fugue state, as the ever cheerful never-tiring presenter is explaining with impossible levels of enthusiasm
“…To file an expense report, simply navigate to the SpaceFleet Interagency Resource Nexus for Unified Budgetary Access and Logistics—that’s SIRNUBAL dot fleet dot core dot fiscal dot hr dot morale dot net.
From there, hover over the third dropdown labeled ‘Financial Interactions’, and click the seventh option, ‘Asset Reconciliation & Related Initiatives’.
On the next screen, select ‘Nimbus’ from the unlabelled menu—don’t worry, it’s the one that looks least like a menu! Then click the house-shaped icon. Then the wallet-shaped icon.
Congratulations! You’ve completed the simple part and entered the Unified Filing Portal for Expense Matters.
Now for the next 13 steps…”
The floor seems to sway gently. Rafael steals a look at the others in attendance. Wesley, as always, seems genuinely interested. Waffel is gritting his teeth as if he is enduring a cruel torture but is honor-bound not to give in to shrieking, Quid is taking notes but Rafael notices he’s started a “potential loopholes” column on his expense reporting notes. Pip looks like he may actually be having a mental health crisis.
Rafael rubs his temples. He could swear the room is moving. Wait the water in the glasses is in fact sloshing. The others seem to be regaining self awareness as well. Kierkegaard mumbles “To sit through thirteen steps of filing an expense report, and yet to remain oneself—this is the sickness. To be conscious of this sickness, and to know it will recur every three weeks—that is despair.”
“To conquer chaos is the greatest act of will,” Nietzsche intones, staring blankly at the expense portal’s seventh dropdown menu. “And yet… as Wellington said of Waterloo, ‘There is nothing half so melancholy as a battle won.’ So here we are, victorious over Form Zeta-9-F, and still I weep.”
The floor shifts again—subtly, gently. Not forward. Not backward. Just a long, slow roll, like a wooden raft pushing off into open water. The lights tremble.
He glances to his left. The water in Kierkegaard’s glass wobbles in sync with the strange tilt.
“Did—did something just move?” he asks quietly.
“Yes,” says Wesley, leaning forward with an eager glint in his eye. “We’ve left the surface. Artificial gravity's active now, but inertial correction hasn’t fully stabilized. It’s like... riding a non-hover-schooner!”
“What in the name of oo-mox is a non-hover-schooner?” mutters Quid, flipping a page in the holodeck ethics pamphlet.
“A schooner that doesn’t hover!” Haakon explains, “the Ancient Swedes used to…”
Clippy beams, oblivious to the physics, but some AI moderating sub-routine does put an aggressively emphatic tone on his next line to silence the chatter.
“Remember,” Clippy says, “if you see something anomalous, say something anomalous! That’s Module 19!”
A brief yet manic kaleidoscopic cascade of abstract shapes across the screen, accompanied by peppy music from three decades prior signals a transition between presentation topics and Clippy wearing a slightly different teal polo with enthusiasm not one iota diminished from his opening hours earlier, enthusiastically exclaims “Next, Let’s learn how to avoid recreational liability together!” while the title of “Tier 3 Holodeck Misconduct: Culturally Ambiguous Scenarios.” appears in jarringly ill suited big red letters.
Clippy continues: “Let’s start by asking: what is a banana, culturally speaking? Don’t answer yet, just feel it...”
Rafael closes his eyes. He’s not sure if he’s seasick or just becoming spiritually unmoored.
…
[A new scene, we see the curved horizon of a greenish planet seen from orbit, the starts above]
“This is the pilot.”
“You’re just going to break the fourth wall like that?” easy-to-identify-with human Mary Sue asks as she wipes down a glass behind the bar.
“No, this wall is quite sturdy,” replies Chad Jepete, who has the pale not-quite-human appearance similar to 49th US President Zuckerberg. He taps the floor-to-wall window through which we see the planet. Inside the window the characters are in a cozy lounge. “It’s made from transparent aluminum. We call it the ‘forth wall’ because, as you can see, it provides a panoramic view in front of the ship.”
“What about speaking directly to the reader like that.”
“Oh, well the reader,” here he indicates Baruch Spinoza, who sits absorbed in a thick tome. “had asked me who in my opinion was guiding us. I thought I’d introduce him to the pilot, but I see he’s lost interest”
Spinoza has an olive-brown complexion and deep, thoughtful eyes that carry an almost mathematical stillness—eyes that seem to look through phenomena to their underlying substance. His thick, dark curls form a perpetual halo of distraction around his head, and his uniform is slightly rumpled, as if he’d been too absorbed in a logical proof to bother straightening it.
Ensign Gary Tiphys, the helmsman and coxswain of the Nimrod, wears his red uniform open at the collar, his hair sun-bleached curls. Sips his drink and goes back to gazing out the forward window.
“So who’s piloting the ship now?” asks Kevin, red-uniformed and sweaty-palmed, adjusting the collar on his tunic.
“Right now it’s still First Watch,” Chad replies, “so it’s probably Ensign Ancaeus.”
The doors open with a sigh, and Rafael Panza stumbles in. His eyes are bloodshot. His hair is askew. He looks like a man who has been made to choose between thirty-seven equally inane e-learning modules and chosen wrong.
Mary slides a glass toward him without asking.
“How was onboarding” she asks.
Rafael downs it. “I’ve survived temporal anomalies, predatory HR goblins, and whatever passes for coffee at the Agora docks. But those videos—those cheerful teal-shirted devils…”
Kevin chuckles. “That Clippy guy, right? ‘Welcome to your liability consciousness journey!’”
Greg, lounging at a nearby table with his arm slung over the back of Kristen’s chair, raises his own drink. “Who would have thought there was so much to ethical holodeck usage. I felt seen.”
“As the what-not-to-do example,” Kristen notes.
“Greg truly volunteered to be here, leaving behind a successful Widget company, Dirxana couldn’t believe it, but was sure to get him to sign the dotted line before he had second thoughts.” Mary Sue laughs.
“I was suffering from terminal ennui,” Greg explains, “There’s got to be more to life than successfully running a Widget company.”
“I was hired as a botanist, but I’m not allowed to participate in the community garden” Rafael mutters. “Somehow it’s allegedly a conflict of interest!”
Rafael jumps to find a soft light-tan tentacle wrap around his shoulders, “that must be very … unsatisfying” the teasing female voice says. He looks up to see a mullusk-like creature with numerous tentacles, a grey shell that has been decorated with pink swirls, two surprisingly expressive turquoise-green eyes on short eyestalks, and two very distracting bulbous distractions on what would approximate her torso, between her tentacles and shell.
“Oh, um,” Rafael stammers trying not to stare at her bulbous attributes. They can’t be, I mean, she’s clearly not a mammal.
“That’s… Too forward!” Kevin exclaims. Disappointed in a lack of reaction he presses, “get it, get it?”
“Yes, it was just empirically unfunny.” Kant remarks.
T’rixxi’s eyestalks swivel toward Trent with innocent mischief. “Oh, don’t be shy, we’re talking about gardening, you know, his desire to sow his seeds.”
Kevin turns as red as his shirt, mumbling something about HR and needing another drink.
“And what about you, what activities have you been assigned to on our mighty Nimrod?” T’rixxi turns to John Locke, tallish, broad-shouldered, with a ruddy, open face and a genial but questioning air. His blond hair is tied loosely back, strands escaping at the temples. He wears his uniform somewhat casually, the collar usually unfastened, but his boots always polished to a mirror sheen. There’s a sharpness to his gaze that suggests a mind always evaluating experience, but also a sort of paternal good humor, like a country doctor with surprisingly strong opinions on property rights.
“I’m technically assigned to the crew of the USS Imperative, but they gave me an office here, so I telecommute.”
“Speaking of which, I’ve been told I have to hot desk with three other people but I saw loads of empty desks, what gives?” Kevin asks.
Immanuel Kant, who has been seated stiffly beside Locke with a glass of water untouched, gives a small sigh. “Those are allocated to the Department of Cross-Temporal Payroll Harmonization and the Office of Hypothetical Equipment Readiness.”
Kant is short and meticulously kept, with a stiff, upright posture and pale, serious eyes that seem to constantly measure the moral gravity of a room. His powdered white hair is tied neatly back, not a strand out of place. He wears his SpaceFleet uniform buttoned to the throat with surgical precision, and carries a small notepad in which he appears to record either maxims or lunch schedules. There’s a faint bluish tinge to his skin under artificial light, as if his blood flows more in principles than plasma.
Kristen squints. “Are those real departments?”
“They were projected in the 2223 budget cycle,” Kant replies. “Whether or not they ever came into phase is beside the point. The allocation stands.”
Kevin looks dismayed. “So we have to hot-desk to accommodate non-existent departments?”
“On paper they do exist you see,” Kant confirms gravely.
“You can hot desk with me” offers T’rixxie with a calculated insouciance. Kevin chokes on his drink.
Greg swirls his drink idly, then glances up. “So, Nimrod, huh?” He lets the name linger a beat. “Who or what is a Nimrod.”
Spinoza, who has thus far been reading quietly beside the window, does not look up from his book. “He was a mighty hunter before the Lord,” he says mildly. “A king. Possibly the builder of Babel.”
“Oh I thought it meant a fool?” Kristen ventures.
“A misunderstanding,” Spinoza continues, flipping a page. “The name was co-opted as an insult much later—ironically, by people who misunderstood a joke about misunderstanding.”
Kristen tilts her head. “So what, calling someone Nimrod was sarcastic? It’s not that Nimrod was incompetent, it was ironic to call the incompetent a Nimrod?”
“Precisely,” says Kant. “Early 20th century cartoon character Bugs Bunny called Elmer Fudd ‘Nimrod’—mocking his pretensions as a hunter. Children absorbed the mockery but not the irony.”
T’rixxi purrs. “We’re all just chasing something, aren’t we? Might as well look good doing it.”
Greg raises his glass. “To foolish ambition, then.”
At that moment, Chad approaches the replicator.
“One hot dog sandwich, please.”
The replicator chimes: “Please select hot dog or sandwich. Composite orders are not recognized.”
Mary shrugs, polishing a glass. “I guess that settles the argument.”
“Well,” cautions Kant, standing with restrained alarm. “Are we going to accept AI as the arbiter of truth?”
The lounge quiets. Outside the forward wall—the forth wall—the curved planetary horizon drops away as the ship leaves orbit. Behind them the planet is left hanging alone in the void, like perfectly round avocado. | | Wednesday, July 16th, 2025 | | 8:32 pm |
Presenting: The Nimrod
Just a short scene today. I swear I'll cease daily Nimrodposting once I finish this pilot.
The hovertuktuk hums low and steady as it glides up the slope beyond Agora City, its shadow skimming over scrub grass and sun-bleached stone. A low ridge rises ahead, its crest sharp against the hazy sky. The driver is gaunt and silent and for some reason an old oar is lashed to the side. Rafael leans out slightly, the wind warm on his face, Sancho pressed close against his side. Leila quietly watches the scenery go by.
The city has fallen away behind them—white buildings spilling across the valley like scattered bone—and here the land opens out into rows of vineyards, neat lines of grapevines marching toward the hills. A few olive trees scatter the edges, gnarled and unbothered. The air smells of dust, sun, and something faintly herbal.
As they round a hill and there is The USS Nimrod standing in the middle of a vineyard like a monument from another age—broad saucer hull perched on long, jointed landing struts, long warp nacelles hanging under the saucer almost but not quite touching the ground. The beige hull bears the scuffs of atmosphere and time: matte patches where the paint has worn, faint streaks from reentry burns long since cooled. But the lines are still sharp, clean—disciplined. There’s a symmetry to the thing, a quiet pride. It stands there with the faded dignity of a once-feared galleon or a temple that still casts shade in the late afternoon.
A long ramp extends from the underbelly to the ground, like some insect’s proboscus. A flock of small birds lifts from the far nacelle as the wind shifts.
“Surely there was somewhere closer to the city to park it?” Rafael asks.
“There’s a whole Not In My Back Yard crowd” Leila explains “so this is SpaceFleet’s auxiliary parking spot.”
“It looks like a vineyard” Rafael observes.
“Yes, well, the vineyard is not authorized to be here, but the zoning enforcement officer is assigned to the USS Oversight and therefore not present.”
The hovertuktuk hums past a rickety windmill slowly turning on the edge of the vineyard and skims across the tops of the vines.
“You think its sitting on good wine at least?” asks Rafael, peering out at the trellises whipping past underneath the vehicle.
“The canopy’s too thick.” Leila responds casually, “No airflow. That’s how you get mildew and shallow tannins.”
“Oh” muses Rafael, thinking gratefully that you don’t have to worry about tannins in avocados, or do you?
“Smells like Cinsault.” Leila continues "That varietal sulks if you crowd it.”
“Really?” Rafael hadn’t seen Leila talk so expansively about anything prior.
“Yes, a light-bodied red like this… It’s not a lion. Not even a gazelle. It’s more like an African glasswing butterfly. Looks delicate. Transparent. But try to catch it—it’s already gone.” They pass into the shadow of under the saucer, the ship looms around them.
“Is that good? For a wine” Rafael asks.
“Yes, chilled. With chapati and lentils. Maybe grilled tilapia, if you’re lucky.”
The tukuk settles to the ground on a cleared area at the base of the ramp. Sancho hops out, Leila places one obol coin in the drivers palm, who just nods his thanks and begins to drive away. A quiet hum comes from the ship—not loud, but constant, like a generator hidden behind stone. Someone has run cables from the ship’s port nacelle to a nearby junction box, hastily labeled in four languages.
”Welcome to the Nimrod” Leila says as the narrow metal ramp clangs gently with each footstep, and disturbingly seems to sway a little as they pass its midpoint, “You’re a Nimby now!”
Behind them, the vineyard rustles gently in the breeze.
The air cools noticeably as they pass under the shadow of the hull. The ship looms above, vast and impassive.
At the top of the ramp, Leila holds a keycard on a lanyard against a sensor beside the door, there’s the hiss of a pressure seal, and the bulkhead slides open with a tired sigh. Inside: a cargo bay, cavernous and quiet. The lighting is minimal, just the low blue strips along the floor and a few distant amber glows above the loading cranes. Containers sit like sleeping animals in the gloom, their serial codes blinking slowly in orange.
Rafael pauses just past the threshold. “Why is it so dark?”
Leila doesn’t break stride. “Ship time is 23:47,” she says over her shoulder. “Lights are on nighttime cycle.”
“But it’s afternoon.”
“Outside, yes. Inside, it’s late. We run on ship time. Makes scheduling easier.”
“Easier for whom?”
She ignores that. “Now that you’re on board, you’ll need to get onboarded.”
“Now?”
“You’re in luck. They’re doing one at 00:00 in Room B-17 Forward Multimodal Orientation Suite.”
She stops at an intersection of corridors, rests her hands briefly on her hips, and glances sideways at him. “Don’t be late. They’ll make you rewatch the entire harassment module if you miss the opening remarks.”
Sancho sneezes softly, then begins licking his paw.
Leila nods once, businesslike. “I’m off duty.”
She turns crisply and strides away, boots tapping against the deck plating, her silhouette vanishing into the next corridor with the air of someone who has tea waiting and intends to drink it in solitude.
Rafael is left standing there with Sancho in one arm, the blue floor lights humming softly beneath his feet, surrounded by the sleeping shadows of cargo that someone, somewhere, might have once needed in a hurry.
He exhales. “Multimodal,” he says aloud, to no one. “Great.”
Sancho emits a low grunt, the sound of a rodent resigned to bureaucracy.
Okay there should be one scene left of the pilot. If you're curious, this is the ship design style I'm picturing for the ship.
Current Mood: Abney Park - Building Steam |
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