#180: Become an expert on something you know nothing about

August 16, 2010 at 10:38 am (Daily Awesomeness, Love and CJ)

This reader suggestion has been haunting me for weeks. How can I become an expert in a day (or perhaps a week), when becoming an expert takes thousands of hours?

Answer: specialise.

Originally I was going to become an expert on my tetras. I would be the Only One in the Whole World who could tell my four neon tetras apart.

Here’s someone else’s neon tetra photo, from wikipedia:

Unfortunately, after several months I still can’t tell my tetras apart (with one exception, because my pakistan loach bit that one).

So I tried to think of something else very specific – something that I’m obsessed with. Writing doesn’t cut it, because there are just too many writers more expert than myself.

The answer was so obvious: CJ.

I am the world expert on being married to CJ. In fact, since I’m the only girl he ever dated, I corner the market on dating CJ, too. That’s very cool.

So, as a service to you single folk out there, this is apparently how one finds and acquires the love of their life:

1. Dress up as Jack Sparrow and act like a drunken letch to a lot of your same-orientation friends (see picture at right).

2. Accidentally talk to CJ at pirate ball. Fall in love instantly.

3. Confirm CJ’s hotness by looking at photos the next day, because the only thing you remember clearly is laughing, and the feel of his arm (mmm. . . arm. . . )

4. Spend the next two months stalking him – personally, I visited a dance hall and two churches before I gave up and acquired his number off a friend of a friend.

5. Call him. Lure him to you with lies about how your writing group is desperate for new members. NB: Realise at this point that this has proven an excellent method for making hot guys become your bestest friend without ever noticing that you are, in fact, female.

6. Force your writing group to suddenly meet weekly instead of annually. Tell them to act natural. Watch as Ben takes a series of phone calls week after week, and says he has to leave. Immediately. End up alone with CJ each time.

7. Talk to CJ for hours in a series of cafes. Quickly cease bothering to pretend to write. Go to another ball together, wearing a dress this time (me, not him).

8. Stop inviting the rest of the writing group to the alleged writing days.

CJ: “Should we wait for the others?”

Louise: “Uh. . . they’re not coming. Would you like to have lunch here at the romantically-lit Pancake Parlour in a booth for two – and then walk over to Glebe Park and lay side by side in the emerald grass as a band plays love songs?” (I didn’t actually say all that.)

CJ: “Sure.”

NB: It was that day, Australia Day 2007, that CJ observed (after several hours) that Something Was Afoot. The euphempism “and then they lay down in the grass” wasn’t invented for nothing, kids.

9. Decide it’d be “cool” to have a night-time picnic on Mount Roger the day after Valentine’s Day.

10. When he asks you out and is so nervous he gets your name wrong, don’t tell him until after the kissing.

And voila! Marriage and babies, here we come. Here’s a photo taken a year after we met (at another pirate ball):

Play along at home: Err. . . no guarantees regarding the ol’ success rate of this method.

But in the meantime, here’s today’s “Peace Hostage” rainforest pic from flickr.com (the narrator’s body is buried near the stump on the left):

Coming soon: Experiment on a pet, three-ingredient thursday (dinner), that alphabet thing (for real this time), make music, etc

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#173: Love and Pirates

August 1, 2010 at 11:36 am (Daily Awesomeness, Love and CJ)

How many emails do you have in your inbox right now? I have three.

Yep, three.

Down from over four hundred. I only needed half a dozen folders (three just for writing – legal data, backups, and conversations with publishers).

I also discovered a few old favourites (now in the “sentimental” folder). Here’s a photo taken after a truck ran into my bathroom (fortunately no-one was sitting on the throne at the time):

And here’s another photo of my parents’ house, taken less than a month earlier (yay for insurance!) This was taken at the far end of the house from the actual fire. The “spiderwebs” are toxic solidified plastic from the burning microwave.

But the most sentimental email of all is the one I sent to my sister the night I met CJ (at a pirate ball – the photo on the right hand side of the blog was taken that night). Here it is (I have cut a lot out of the middle, changed names, and fixed spelling, but nothing has been added):

So, to begin at the end: Have you ever stripped naked and walked into a room to see a bearded face looking back at you? A *hot* guy’s bearded face? Your own bearded face, as a hot guy?
It’s a trifle off putting. Today I was Jack Sparrow, and was I EVER! (Enough to find myself hot. At least, out of the corner of my eye, in the bathroom mirror just now.)
I haven’t been able to get to sleep before three lately, and today I had to get up super-early. I knew the pirate ball was tonight, and likely to be exhausting, so I was planning to sleep in the arvo. Instead I went over to W’s place. Then I had Bob pick me up so we could go to the ball together.
My Jack Sparrow outfit was AWESOME (and incidentally, so was Bob’s). There are photos.
I amused myself at the ball by acting totally drunk and lecherous. It was Bob’s first ball, I think, and he brought a bunch of friends (this is an important plot point 🙂 ). Bobette1 and Bobette2 were there too (which hasn’t happened in about two years). I slapped Bobbette1 and Bobette2’s butts a lot, and was totally awesomely Jack-like (“Would you like to see my sword?” – and I actually had a sword, too. I danced with it on!)
Bob pointed out one of his friends (Bob2), and said I “had” to meet him. I mixed him up almost immediately with someone completely different (RandomMan), who was obviously ill at ease. Being nice, I went to chat to RandomMan, figuring Bob wanted me to make him feel comfortable. I walked up, plonked myself down and said, “Hi, I’m Jack, and you’re Martin. You see, I know all things.” He pretty much ignored me (which makes sense now I know I had his name wrong), but there was another complete stranger sitting facing me. I turned to him and said, “Hi, I’m Jack and I know all things. This may come as a shock to you, but your name is Timothy.” He said something like, “Ah, my silly parents. They’re always calling me by the wrong name – CJ.” So I plunged on and said, “It may also surprise you that your father’s a redhead.” From there we went into a wild and ridiculous conversation, for half an hour or more, in which I was Jack Sparrow, and he was a random guy from the same era. We discussed scurvy, wenches, and whether a ship sails faster if it has holes in the sails (like the Black Pearl). It was a brilliant conversation.
CJ’s a guy, I’m a girl.
My mind began to turn, and I wondered whether to bolt. I didn’t.
A dance ended, another began, and he took my hand. He was shaking a tiny bit, but/and I liked the way he held my hand. It was one of those dances where you’re practically in each other’s arms, and I flowed with it. If it hadn’t been for the fact he was almost certainly not a Christian, I would have been all for getting to know him better (he’s taller than me, with green eyes, and isn’t bad to look at*
). I already knew (due to conversationing) that he was a friend of a friend of Bob’s, so I thought I’d take Bob aside and ask outright if CJ was Christian or not – but I didn’t have the guts, so when the dance ended (it was progressive, meaning I wasn’t near CJ at the end, though we laughed heartily at one another’s attempts to remember the dance partway through) I just went and talked to someone else.
The night was almost finished then, and when it was completely finished I went over to Bob (who, as I mentioned, was looking fabulous). He and I took some photos, and then CJ and his group came up to us. I asked Bob where he knew them from, thinking it might give me a clue as to whether CJ was Christian or not.
It did.
He knows them from church.
CJ came and stood beside me, and we talked some more (as normal people, not as Jack Sparrow). If he wants to see me again, it shouldn’t be too hard. But I reckon I’ll email Bob anyways. It’s just occured to me that CJ might not have realised that I’m a Christian too.
CJ is a southsider, so the usual Canberra rule (we’re sure to run into each other – as he himself said on the way out) doesn’t work. I like him. I think he likes me, at least a little (enough to be witty, to be nervous when we danced, and to come up to talk to me afterwards). How awesome would it be if I got together with a guy because of Jack Sparrow!
Louise
THIS month, since the twittertale is set in tropical Irian Jaya, each day here shall feature a rainforest picture from Flickr.com. Most aren’t from the right region, but they’re sooooooo pretty.
*Yep, that’s what I said. Actually I was so high on lack of sleep and excitement that I had only the haziest notion of what CJ looked like, so I asked Bob to bring photos over so the next day so I could decide if CJ was hot or not. Verdict: yay. Then all I had to do was track him down – which is another story. I still can’t believe such an excellent guy asked me out.

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January 11: Toilet Travails

January 11, 2010 at 10:29 am (funny, Love and CJ) ()

At some point soon I’ll be writing something comparing Beijing and Indonesia (which I know a lot better) on my other blog, at https://felicitybloomfield.wordpress.com

Why is it that Indonesian adventures are always somehow toilet-related?

My partner and I are in Indonesia now, on the same island as the illustrious Jimmy Bind (no sightings yet, though, sadly). We’ve spent two days getting to our current location (and we’re getting picked up at 5am tomorrow to go and see Mount Bromo, an active volcano) so today was a rest day.

Rest days are usually boring. *I* certainly didn’t do anything exciting. My husband, however, dutifully picked up the slack.

We’re staying in a rather nice area of a quite nice city. All the houses around here have a series of annoying security things – fences are locked down on various roads at night (you can still get to any house by wandering around, so it’s really just annoying), and each house has a huge gate out the front, which residents need to reach through to unlock (sometimes blind and one-handed). My husband, who likes security, approves of this arrangement. I don’t – if it was up to me (which it isn’t), I’d leave at least one door of our house unlocked at all times.

However.

Our house is empty because the people who live there are away. We’re staying in the guest area out the back, which has a bedroom and bathroom (both lockable) coming off a tiled verandah.

Oh yeah, and a castle. Honestly.

Immediately over the back fence is a castle, complete with crenellations (bigger than on the Great Wall), turrets, and everything a megalomaniac could want. The owner is from Saudi Arabia, and he had the castle built specially (coz it’s pretty. Obviously).

Technically we’re not alone in the house – a dog walker comes every day (which means we need to unlock everything), and so does a “pembantu” (literally a “helper”) who cooks and cleans and generally becomes a paid member of the family. Our pembantu is called Mrs Ani. She’s one of the best.

Indonesia is tropical, and it’s wet season. Breathing is a little bit like drinking, and a little bit like being dunked upside down in warm soup. It’s smelly (one reason Indonesians shower twice a day), but it’s great. The doors to our bedroom and bathroom are made of wood, and they’ve expanded in the heat. That’s less great.

So my husband went to the bathroom, and since there were two Indonesians in the house (who could choose to use and/or clean the bathroom at any time, and who don’t speak English), he closed the door.

Big. Mistake.

Mrs Ani heard his calls for help, and was the first on the scene (somewhat bemused at this wacky Australian habit of actually closing bathroom doors). I heard her yelling and came to help.

The three of us pushed and pulled at the door, and yanked and kicked it and placed our backs against it. It did nothing. My partner told me later he was all right – his only concern was how we’d get food in to him over the next few days.

Mrs Ani and I began gathering an assortment of tools. We used two screwdrivers, a hammer (whacked against a thong so we didn’t break our absent hosts’ house), a plywood shovel-thing, large quantities of detergent, an electric fan, and a crowbar.

Mrs Ani became increasingly concerned and phoned our host (who, incidentally, we’ve never met – he’s a friend of some friends, Mr and Mrs Baik, which is how we ended up in his house), our actual friends, and the dog walker. No-one answered.

Because it’s so hot and the bathroom has no windows, Mrs Ani was afraid my husband would pass out.

Later Mrs Baik told us that Mrs Ani’s message had got through to the house owner. Too bad he’s on holiday in Australia. Nonetheless, he phoned Mr Baik long distance to let him know their mutual guests were locked in the toilet. My husband has already incited an international incident. That’s not bad after two days.

After about an hour, Mrs Ani gave the door yet another hefty shove, and it suddenly opened. My husband and Mrs Ani and I stood in shock for a moment, staring at one another.

Then there was much laughing and hugging, and much drinking of cold water and having a nice sit down. Mrs Ani left us alone and went to spread the tale (with abundant joy and, presumably, embellishments). Mr Baik arrived soon afterwards, and we went to their house. About 15 people are currently staying there, and all of them knew part of the tale and wanted to hear the rest.

Welcome to Indonesia.

We also discovered an oh-so-exclusive coffee that has an unusual claim to fame. Civets (big cats) apparently have exquisite taste when it comes to eating coffee beans – they only eat the most fresh; the most succulent. So after ten-twelve hours, when those amazingly good beans exit the civet, they are picked up by this coffee company and made into very very expensive cappucinos.

I’m afraid I chose not to have one. Apparently it has a lovely aftertaste, though – sweet and pleasant.

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