...stole my bike.

I guess you could call this karma for my previous comments:

There are two things that really bother me about this. The first is how little it bothers me, compared to how much I expect it to bother me, and how much other people expect it to bother me. Like seriously, guys. I haven't lost a child. It's just a bike. I'm fine. Yes it was a very expensive bike. Yeah, I quite liked it. But it's just stuff.

The other thing that bothers me is how much it bothers me. Not so much losing it, but not having it. Having to shape your life around public transport is extremely irritating, especially when you have no easy way to get to stations and such. I imagine that it'd be even worse if I had a car. And, riding to uni each day is actually something I enjoy. I did borrow a spare bike from a friend, but it's just not the same. It's a mountain bike with big fat tires and suspension is like putting on gigantic boots after walking barefoot. I miss being able to feel the road.

Okay, I'm actually starting to sound like some kind of nut now.

As you were.

Geocaching

This post contains spoilers for GC3DAPD. If that kind of thing bothers you, stop reading right... now.

I got a new phone last month. Normally this would not be in any way significant, except that this phone (despite being a Nokia brick) has GPS. Like actual, honest to god, beaming from satellites in space GPS. I'm actually a little embarrassed that it took me so long to figure that out. I just thought they'd made stunning advances in triangulation in Google maps until I noticed the GPS data section in the menu. Maybe I should've read the manual. I bet it's in the manual.

Anyway. Yes. GPS. This could obviously only mean one thing: It was time to start Geocaching.

Geocaching, if you weren't previously aware, is a worldwide GPS-based treasure hunt. You hide stuff, and log its coordinates online, and then you go on treasure hunts to find other people's 'caches'. It gets more complex than that, some have puzzles and things, but that's the essence of the game.

So last night I signed up on the largest repository of said coordinates, and asked it where my nearest cache was. The first thing that blew my mind was the scale of this thing. The cache map defaults to Seattle (I think) and there was literally a cache on every block. Even in tiny, boring Perth, there's easily a hundred or so within biking distance of my house.

The site recommended me a 'beginner cache', that wasn't too hard to find, and was reasonably close to my house. And then my mind was blown for a second time. I had been cycling right past a tiny hidden stash of treasures on my way to uni every day since the start of the year. So I scribbled down the coordinates and stopped there on my way home.

It was actually tougher than I thought. I spent about 15 minutes wandering in circles, looking in trees, and waving my phone in the air to get a better signal. I thought I must've made a mistake, or that someone had moved the cache without logging it online, or that this whole thing was somehow an elaborate hoax. And then, just as I was about to give up, I saw it.

It was very cleverly hidden. It's far enough into off the path that there's no chance that anyone would just stumble upon it, but once you know what you're looking for it's as plain as... something very plain. Water crackers or something. The 'treasure' was mostly keyrings and stuff, and I hadn't brought anything with me to put in by way of replacement (which I gather is one of the rules) so I just signed the little log sheet and hid it back where I found it.

So that's the story of how I found my first geocache, I guess. It was pretty rad. The idea that there's this game, this elaborate system which most of us aren't even aware of, that just sits on top of everyday reality like another layer, secretly ticking over, filled with secrets and treasure and adventure... I think that's probably one of the coolest things ever.

Daww, it's my first cache.

The worst theives in the world.

So, funny story...

For one of my units, we have to film and edit a shortish video portrait on a person of our choice. It just so happens that a member of our group knows just about the most interesting guy in the world, a certain Bryn Davis. Anyway, long story short, he's at least partially responsible for saving the Fremantle Power Station, and so that's where we ended up filming last Thursday.

Just an aside here. I'm not one of those people who normally breaks into abandoned buildings on a regular basis for sheer thrills, but by god this one makes me see why they do it. This building was like a goddamned cathedral. It was creepy and claustrophobic and cavernous and decrepit and echoing, impossibly grafittied from top to bottom and I'll be damned it if wasn't the most amazing place to just wander around and look at. I'm with him on this one. Demolishing a place like this would be terrible.

So anyway. Having spent about 20 minutes shooting wide shots of the exterior and definitely not shoving a thousand odd dollars worth of university-owned camera through a tiny window to check out the inside, we headed back to the car. And despite lugging said equipment, and thus lagging behind, I knew something was wrong by the surprised and shocked face which appeared on everyone's face as they approached the car.

The front window had been totally smashed in. A handbag was missing. At this point we start to panic. We had the camera and tripod with us, but another couple grand worth of rode mikes, boom poles and reflectors were in the boot.

Except for some reason, it was still there. We breathed a little. Then the phone showed up, 'hidden' behind a CD which was chucked out of the centre console while they were probably, ironically, looking for phones. And we breathed a little more. This left our (most likely male) thieves with a bright pink handbag, thirty bucks cash, some cancelled cards and a bunch of university notes.

The police found the handbag in a nearby park next day, with only the cash missing. It was at this point that we realised that we were quite possibly dealing with the worst thieves in the world.

If anything, I guess the moral of this story is to always be prepared. If they had known what was in the boot of the car, how many thousands of bucks worth of gear were there - if they had even been a little more methodical searching the car and not thrown CDs everywhere - they'd have drug money for months. Or years, I don't know, I'm not down on street prices for hard narcotics. As it is, they got a happy meal or two, and we got the infamy of being 'that one group', and a cool story to boot.

Suckers.

I am extremely wet right now.

Last night, and then sort of by extension this morning, I left a linguistics assignment to the last minute. I guess that must've been karmically signifcant or something, because the second I stepped ou the door it started to rain. Possibly it's my fault. I hesitated for a full minute wondering whether I should grab a rain jacket, and then decided against it, and rode off anyway, and the rain just kept getting heavier and by the time I was half way here I realised that not bringing a jacket had been a mistake but it was much too late to do anything about it now because it was 11:49 and the assignment was due at noon.

And so I just got progressively wetter and wetter and wetter and now I have a much more intimate understanding of the meaning of the word saturated. Saturated means that you are so goddamned wet that you do not care about standing outside in the rain any more because it would not be physically possible for you to be any wetter than you are right now.

So at this point if this was a proper story I'd get up there at 12:01 and then find out that the assignment wasn't due until tomorrow and do some kind of comedic shrug, but the universe doesn't actually run on the rules of what makes good fiction apparently, so it was due today, which in some ways actually makes me feel worse.

Now I'm sitting in the library, having decided that no, lectures are for dry people, a set of which I am most emphatically not a member, and if the events of today are anything to go by this means I'll probably get rained on on the way home too, but I don't think I'm likely to care. (see previous thoughts re: meaning of the word 'saturated')

I'm wearing just a hoodie, which is a bit slackerish (like showing up in ugg boots or thongs. seriously people. get dressed in the morning. not. hard.) but also a bit of a novel experience (it's surprisingly comfortable actually, though I won't be making a habit of it), and because it was in my backpack at least it's dry. But not JUST just a hoodie, obviously. I'm wearing my stupid sodden pants too (denim y u no dry fast :'| ) but my shirt is currently on the desk next to me vaguely spread out to try and dry it but I have my doubts about whether or not that will work.

This sounds crazy but despite being sodden and thoroughly pissed off I'm actually kind of happy. We spend a lot of time trying to cheer people up and get them to think positively and be happy, but being petulant and grumpy and not giving a fuck and savagely hating on stuff I have no control over... is actually weirdly satisfying. It's obviously self-indulgent and stupid, but I don't know. Maybe we need that kind of release every now and then? (yay pop psychology)

There doesn't appear to be any kind of coherent thread to this post so I guess there's no reason I can't just wrap it up here. If anyone wants me, I'll be sitting here, looking out the rainbow, watching other poor suckers get rained on.

This would not be proper self-indulgence without a webcam picture of my face.

revenge

(previously)

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