Week 6 - Half Way

Welcome to Week 6

Things that happened this week:

• Finished my science training - I am now certified to perform surveys. Yay, I'm useful now!
• Watched The Martian. Book is much better.
• Watched Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. 
• The tree I planted last week is no longer alive. I think our puppy, Coral, ate it. Or maybe the chickens that roam our front yard pecked it to death.
• If it was Coral...okay, she's cute, I can't stay mad. If it was the chickens...well, I eat their cousins for lunch everyday, so I'd say I still have the upper hand.
• Read Unbroken. After reading about Louie Zamperini's struggles, I feel like a pussy for ever complaining about anything, ever.
• Made a hypothetical rugby team out of my housemates. We'd certainly lose any hypothetical games we played, but we'd sure as hell beat them in marine biology trivia.
• Pushed a boat into the ocean.
• I shaved.
• Practiced my Matrix moves underwater.
• Cleaned our toilet for the first time in 6 weeks.  
• Kieran and I got red, white, and blue Team America team polos made. Professional, sharp, and 'Merican. Everyone's jealous.
• I swam with Zoe again (turtle).
• I figured out how to do decent time lapses on my GoPro.
• Got the most ridiculous haircut of my life.
• Won Dick of the Day for my "Travesty of a haircut." They think they're so clever.

Video Recap

Zoe!

Team Uniform

The entire base is jealous

My stay here is officially half over. 6 weeks has gone by...like nothing. I'm convinced we're living in a wormhole and time doesn't move correctly here.
Or maybe spending close to two hours underwater every day does something to alter the passage of time. Physicists, get on this please.
(I've been reading and watching a lot of SciFi stuff here, so wormholes and time travel are on the brain)

To be fair, this place isn't exactly "real". Like I've said before, this place is temporary.
It's like the Island on Lost: We're all here for different reasons - known and unknown - with no real concept of time. Minus the random polar bears.
Each "day" here only feels like a portion of a real day, and each week feels like a day or two.
If I were still in school right now, I'd already be struggling with midterms by now.
Even looking at my blog entries for each week, it feels like I wrote them a few days ago, instead of over the last 6 weeks.
 

Due to my apparent time slippage, it has come to my attention that I have grown a bit out of touch with the rest of the world (America).

For example:

• I didn't know the World Series was going on. Apparently some Royal people Met someone? Go Peyton Manning.
• I have only seen ONE 49ers Facebook post so far this season. Jarryd Hayne is the only reason I even read it.
• I have no idea how the Oregon Ducks are doing.
• I have no idea how the Raiders are doing. I know they beat the Chargers last week, which I bet Dad loved. 
• I only get Rugby World Cup results and quick highlights. Not enough internet to actually watch a game. For me the final is at 11pm on Saturday, so my plan is to find an internet cafe on Sunday and watch the replay. GO ALL BLACKS. 
• Presidential nominations - no idea, thank God.
• Hurricane hitting the Philippines? Didn't have a clue.
• Typhoon hitting the Philippines? I only knew from concerned friends/family asking if I was okay.
• I forgot it was my birthday until I was wished Happy Birthday by my fellow countryman.
• I haven't heard a Marketplace segment from NPR in 2 months. How are Chinese labor conditions? How's Greece? Does the intro music still slap the bass hardcore?
• Apparently Mexico is getting/got nailed by a typhoon?

It's pretty amazing how many things stop mattering when you simply stop doing them. I haven't once worried about about whether the clothes I'm wearing match, if there will be traffic on the way to work, if I have any missed calls...
It's liberating.

The day of the week hardly matters anymore. Saturday night is trivia and karaoke night, and Sunday is hangover day. Everything else is diving, chores, and reading.
Not using my cell phone is a big change, and I love it. Not that I was great at checking it in the first place, but now I don't do it at all and I LOVE it.
I sit down to check and read emails once an evening, rather than my phone bothering me every time one pops up.
There's no longer that annoying pressure to check your phone in case someone needed to get ahold of you. If someone wants me, they can send me an email and I'll
check it later that evening. Since I'm across the world, what difference is a few hours?

I use a free version of Facebook that doesn't use any data, so I get limited feeds that largely exclude pictures. It's great for 49er-proofing my life, helping me avoid pictures of peoples' breakfasts, and escaping peoples' thoughts on politics.
Huge relief.
 

In other news, I haven't had a sandwich in 6 weeks.
Going cold turkey from video games is tough.
Going cold turkey from turkey sandwiches is brutal.


Things I miss:

• Being surrounded by people who agree that America is the greatest country ever, ever.
• Sandwiches.
• My bed.
• The Hogs Den.
• Unlimited internet.
• Fast internet.
• Dare I say...Comcast....? 
• Traffic lights.
• Peanut butter cookies.
• Dual monitors.

Notice I said "things" I miss, not people. Last week was sappy enough to last me a while.


Things I don't miss

• Doing real work.
• People posting their artisan breakfasts on Facebook.
• Seeing a mirror every day.
• Not being able to wear rugby shorts 24/7.
• Being politically correct.
• TV.
• Flushing toilets. There's something so personal, so intimate, about physically pouring a bucket of seawater into the toilet after finishing your business.
• Responsibility.
• Barwest.

My haircut:

Following the theme of my traveling - doing something different - I decided to get a sweet new haircut.
I figure I've been here six weeks and will be here for another six, so why not immerse myself? Plus, it's not like I have to go to work the next day..
I never got a good disgusting rugby haircut in my time at Sac State, which I have always regretted. It's time to remedy that.
And if it turned out to be disgusting (disgustingly awesome), then who cares? Who am I impressing out here?

I walked into the barber shop, the Filipino barber asked me in broken English:
Barber: What would you like, friend?
Me: Make me look Filipino.
Barber: Haha, you sure, sir?
Me: Yep, like you.
Barber: You serious, sir?
Me: Very. Just like you, but blonde.
Barber: Okay, so undercut?
Me: I don't know what that is, but let's do it.


Almost every Filipino here has an undercut hair style, which means short buzzed sides and long on the top. I believe the undercut is common in the US too, but I'm so out of the loop with that stuff, I have no idea.
As he shaved and cut my hair, I couldn't stop grinning at what I saw in the mirror. A dumb white kid in a foreign country, with a bushy, red, unkempt beard, smiling at himself because he has no clue what kind of haircut he's getting.

When he finished, I looked in the mirror (for the 2nd time in 6 weeks) and absolutely loved it.
It's ridiculous.
As I headed out the tiny door of the tiny shop with a beaming smile, I stopped, turned around and asked, "Can you do racing stripes?".
I'd seen the kid in front of me get lines shaved into the side of his head, which seemed pretty Filipino.
I wanted it.
After a minute of translating and hand gestures, he asked, "Oh, you want lines?"
I turned to the kid waiting to go next and asked him, "Lines? Yeah?"
He laughed and said yes.
I asked him how many lines to get.
He kept laughing, and said three.
I got three.

As I walked out of the barber shop, my motorcycle driver and diving partner, DuDong, busted up laughing. He then proceeded to inform me that three lines means "I love you."
Icing on the cake.

Proper disgusting

I have discovered a new mathematical proof, and am awaiting approval from the AMA (American Math Association).

It goes like this:

Given:
Knowledge = Power
America = Power

Then, according to the Transitive Property:
America = Most Powerful Knowledge.

Team America boasting its physical prowess.

You can tell my content is light for the week when I write an entire paragraph about a haircut and create a proof about America's awesomeness - to be fair, it is always worth reminding people.
This week's been a ton of diving and science stuff, which in itself is exciting, but makes for some pretty dry writing.

Hope you enjoyed reading, and thanks as always.

Sincerely,

Adventure Hogs