Tiff and I went out for a walk last night. It was a nice cool evening, which was a relief, since our apartment stays really warm for some reason. Wandering around the commons we went into the Mate Factor, a local Cafe which purports to sell Mate teas, and some light food.

Total hippy joint, that was the first impression. Then, as the guy was making my Mate Latte (which was very good) I noticed the business card for “The Twelve Tribes”. This peaked my interest, because several weeks ago we saw a very large Twelve Tribes bus parked downtown, with a bunch of hippies, and a “Come on in” sign.

We walked home, and immediatly hit the internet. It turns out that the Twelve Tribes are a hippy/christian cult, all into jeebus and such. Which wouldn’t be a problem, execpt for the recurring claims of child abuse, racism and anti-semitism. The child abuse really got to me, I definatly won’t be going back there and supporting that business.

Which is too bad since the Cafe was pretty neat. All done up in hand carved wood, with beautiful tables…

Wednesday morning I took the bus to NYC, a 5-hour ride, and arrived at 9:50am. The bus I would leave on departed at 8:30, so I had 10 hours to do as much exploring as I could in one day. It wasn’t important for me to go to any museums or galleries this time. I just wanted to hustle and get to as many neighbourhoods as I could see. But I had already bought a ticket online for the Empire State Building observatory, my only real plan for the day.

Note: There are several photos following so if you’re on dial-up, I suggest you go watch a movie or something while this downloads ;)
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I’m huge over there, they love me.

Yes that’s right, I’m going to Japan! The exciting world of particle physics just never stops. I’m going to the International Lattice Field Theory Network workshop, which you can read all about here.

Of course, travel from Ithaca NY to Tokyo is, well, long. I spend roughly 18 hours in the air or in airports, each way. And, to top it all off, the conference is two and a half hours by train from Narita airport.

But, there’s one cool bit in all this travel. The directions to the hotel include the following bit:

“Then, you take the Shinkansen super-express to Mishima station”

So I can die a happy man, having been on the Shinkansen super-express traveling at 270 km/hr. For those of you who are dying to know, the Shinkansen super-express looks like this

SWEET!

That’s right, I decided today on a whim! I’m on a bus tomorrow morning at 4:50am for my FIRST EVER VISIT to The City, returning late evening/wee hours. YIPPEE!

I’m bringing my digicam & film SLR that I haven’t picked up for years. You know, this occasion calls for it to be dusted off, don’t ya think?

First thing I’m going to do is ride the elevator to the top of the Empire State Building!

I got moved into my new office today, so this will be my “home” for the next couple of years. It’s supposedly the “good” office. It get’s a lot of light, and has lots of room (two desks!). For the thousands of people watching the fizzixcam, I’ll try to move it around a bit, hopefully giving y’all a full view of the place.

Have I mentioned how much I enjoy stencil art on sidewalks?

Now that the new students’ mommies have left town, who will clean up after them when they drink through the night at local parks and leave trails of crushed beer cans and empty bags of fried pork skins in their wake?

Me for one, it seems. It’s impossible not to feel compelled to be a good citizen and pick up some of the scraps of trash left about town. Though it’s also impossible to pick up everything in your path, because there’s too damn much of it. It makes no sense that people can’t pick up their own waste and drop it in a can only a few steps away. Baffling.

I know, let’s go chug a 40oz of Bud at the church!

And sit around in a pile of slate, eat fried pork skins and wash it down with Milwaukee’s Best.

I filled up this 24 box to bulging with empty cans, broken glass and various bits of plastic. Exiting the path from the gorge, there were a few maintenance guys who had just finished mowing the lawn and were sitting around in their truck. They had pushed a pile of garbage aside while mowing, so I picked that up too while they watched. I think they were just going to leave it behind since there aren’t even garbage cans around at the trailhead, which obviously there should be. It certainly doesn’t encourage people to carry garbage out.

There’s mayhem in the city at the moment. The class of 2008 has descended on Ithaca to register at Cornell (and Ithaca College) and they all brought their parents, siblings and grandmas. Grocery stores are frenzied and traffic is thick downtown and in shopping center parking lots. The university residence lawns are makeshift parking lots for minivans loaded with personal effects. Public buses are full.

The Ithaca Journal and The Ithaca Times each published a city guide for people new in town. The Times’ guide had little or no useful information, though they did splash their cover with this shamefully (gasp!) Photoshopped image of a Penske truck:

The Journal published several short interviews with locals and there was a great quote from a resident of Dryden. When asked what she likes about the town she says,

“It’s peaceful, it’s friendly. Right when we moved here was when those teenage girls were dying, so my mom was pretty paranoid, but it turned out to be a really safe place.”

Way to sell it!

Yesterday on NPR, Ted Koppel was talking about the current state of the media. He said back in the day when Cronkite was calling the news, he gave a ’straight up’ delivery, where now media is bent left or right.

Talking about Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, Koppel said while it’s a great film, it’s not journalism by any stretch. This I agree with. He then went on to say that journalism is either red or blue. In the USA, I took this to mean media sways either Democrat or Republican. If this is the case, then what are the colo(u)r(s) of journalism in Canada?

We came across this flailing cicada on the sidewalk this morning. Apparently they haven’t ALL returned underground or died, cause this guy was still kicking. In case you haven’t heard of these creepy bugs from Brood X, you can read all about it here at National Geographic.

I’ve seen two other carcasses since we got here, both pitch black. One of them was being munched on by a menacing little sparrow.

Speaking of birds; I’ve lately (in the past week) experienced too many bird encounters than should be normal for one person. To name a few:

>There’s a lovely cardinal that hangs out in our trees and sings tweet tweet, knockknockknockknock. I dig this bird.
>I saw a smushed sparrow on the sidewalk
>Saw that cicada-chewing sparrow
>Watched Winged Migration
>and finally, this:

While we’re on the topic of critters, I should note that crickets are singing nearly constantly in the yard. If you knew me in kindergarten, then you would know crickets frightened me to the point of sheer terror. When I came home from school and heard them, instead of just walking up the driveway and into the house, I stayed on the front street crying and wailing until someone came and carried me in. Crickets don’t scare me (as much) now, but they still give me shivers when I see them - little Darth Vaders - and they are damn loud when you’re trying to get to sleep!