I figure that while I get my trip posts out, I'll get some up to date ones as well. Damn backlogging.
Anyway. I recently (two days ago) sold my iPod. I sold my iPod for a couple reasons. Mainly that I don't really listen to anything anymore now that I'm home. I don't need to walk anywhere and I don't have the jogging while iPodding thing down, so I decided to just sell the thing. I thought about buying a new, smaller one with the money and then realized - what the hell do I need an iPod for? Then I thought, "is this me selling off everything I own before I leave the country, wherever I go?" Then I wondered, "do people do that?"
So I don't think I'll be the person that comes back from a life changing experience and sells everything he owns...I think I'll sell everything I own before I leave. Not really sure what that means, but it may happen. Next item up for debate - my PS2. Big, big, big decision there.
7.21.2008
I Have Now Been to 3/4 Hemispheres
So apparently I went on this trip. Overall, outstanding trip. If you don't know me or my family at all, we take big trips. We've traveled all over the US, mainly the western parts - Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Montana, Colorado, etc. Usually national parks are the mainstays for us. Then we started traveling through Europe a few times. This trip was our most adventurous yet, going down under for three weeks. Because of the way the tickets worked out, according to my dad, we could have either stayed over in Tahiti or New Zealand for 5 days. After some debate, we chose the place with huts on the ocean as opposed to the hillsides of Hobbits.
For some perspective, here is the best map I could find of Tahiti's relation to the rest of the world --
As you may or may not be able to read (the resolution on the picture sucks, I'll try and find a better one), Tahiti is roughly 4100 miles from LA. That's an 8 hour flight from LA to Tahiti. Then, it's almost 3000ish miles to Sydney, another 6 hours. To say it's in the middle of nowhere is giving nowhere a lot of credit.
So we get to Tahiti, where the weather is 85 degrees and sunny everyday, and take our cab to our hotel/resort. Also, it should be known, we're not really resort people. We don't really just sit on the beach. We like to explore places as much as we can. But we quickly learned that Tahiti isn't really a place to sight see. It's a place to sit on the beach.
What I noticed about Tahiti is as such, for anyone who's thinking of visiting, or writing a middle school report about Tahiti. The economy of Tahiti is based on primarily 2 markets - tourism and produce. There's a huge wonderful market with fresh fish and fruit and chocolate and everything. Then there's all the tourism, the hotels, the taxis, the boat tours etc. There's no downtown, no nightlife, no malls, no clubs, no Target or real commercial center. There's one hospital and some schools, and a lot of construction, but that's really it. To display this in a microcosm, here is a public service job I found out about. The main road into town consists of 4 lanes divided by those little Jersey wall dividers. At normal hours of the day, it's 2 lanes both ways. But during rush hour, they make it 3 lanes with traffic. How? There's a man who gets into his little truck late at night and moves each divider over a lane. Then after rush hour he moves them back. Then back to 3 lanes the other way. Then back again. And so forth and so on. And that's his job. That's a job with shifts and management. That's what there is to do in Tahiti. Eat, fish, drive a taxi and move concrete from one side of the road to another. It may not sound like a lot, but it's life and they seem to have it down pretty well.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One of the most interesting things that happened to us was going to synagouge on Saturday. Yes, there's a Jewish community in Tahiti. They have a shul. They meet every week. They have a Hebrew school. And we went there. It was interesting because it was a combination of French/Sefardi (non-European style of Judaism) and Orthodox. So men sat separately but it was very laid back. After the service we were invited to someones house for lunch where we were warmly greeted and I was served schnapps upon schnapps. How could I be so rude to not drink the whiskey the old man next to me kept pouring in my cup? Eventually he started pouring beer into my glass when it still had whiskey in it...so I had to monitor it a little more. Nevertheless, an interesting lunch.
One fun note - this synagouge would be the last synagouge in the world, so to speak. Tahiti is the closest land mass to the international date line. So in any given day, this would be the last Jewish community to celebrate a holiday. Just one fun and interesting play on time I got to have.
Also in Tahiti, I started my "Things I Never Thought I Would Do" list. This list was really kicked off when we went on a boat tour of the neighboring island, Mo'orea. We get on this boat that seats maybe 20 of us, mainly couples on their honeymoon and my family, and this very overly stereotyped island man gives us a little tour and such. Then they stop the boat about 100 feet or so from the shore and one of the guys jumps out and swims out with a rope. Then we get a little shpeil about swimming with the sharks. How they're real, don't kick them, and don't pee in the water. Then - go ahead, jump in.
Basically, that's it. Grab your goggles, jump in, grab the rope and pray. Now, I'm not an aquatic person by any real stretch of the imagination but I figured, what the hell.
Here you can see me and my extreme close proximity to the deadly super man eating shark --
In all reality, the sharks were being herded on the other side of the rope from us tourists, and I'm pretty sure I'd have to kick one pretty square in the jaw for it to become hostile...nevertheless, I swam with sharks. From there it was on to sting rays, which I can say are much more docile than sharks. Swimming with sting rays is sort of like getting into 4 foot deep water with giant bath toys that swim under your feet. They're not really slimey at all, rather smooth actually. But they still look so prehistoric and unreal that it's just trippy. Much like the sharks, they're constantly being fed so they literally just glide all around you. For the first 10 minutes or so all you could hear was the following --
Oh....Oh...AH! Ah...Aw...AH!...Ah...hahaha...AH!
Once you realize they are of little to no harm, they're really kind of cute. Once that got old we got back into the boat, did some more touring, ate some coconuts and went back ashore. Alive and with every limb we came out there with.
I don't want to say that swimming feet away from a shark changed my life, because I'm not that naive. I didn't go into the water one person and emerge a new person. I'm not that arrogant. But if you ever thought that I would say that I swam next to a shark, well, then you didn't know me very well. I think all that I gathered from all of this can be found in a conversation I had with my dad the day before we went. My dad, if you don't know, is worse than any Jewish mother you can imagine in terms of worrying.
Me: (Some joke about how my dad is a pansy about getting into the ocean with sharks)
Dad: You mean you're not scared at all?
Me: I'm terrified. The ocean scares the shit out of me.
Dad: Then why are you so excited?
Me: Because it scares the shit out of me.
Such was the beginning of my beginning to do new and weird things list. My basic rule of thumb throughout the trip was: will I be able to do this any time in the near future? No? Ok, sign me up.
That was basically it for Tahiti. Some more beaches and such and then we were off to Cairnes, via Sydney. More on that later.
Ta
For some perspective, here is the best map I could find of Tahiti's relation to the rest of the world --
As you may or may not be able to read (the resolution on the picture sucks, I'll try and find a better one), Tahiti is roughly 4100 miles from LA. That's an 8 hour flight from LA to Tahiti. Then, it's almost 3000ish miles to Sydney, another 6 hours. To say it's in the middle of nowhere is giving nowhere a lot of credit.
So we get to Tahiti, where the weather is 85 degrees and sunny everyday, and take our cab to our hotel/resort. Also, it should be known, we're not really resort people. We don't really just sit on the beach. We like to explore places as much as we can. But we quickly learned that Tahiti isn't really a place to sight see. It's a place to sit on the beach.
What I noticed about Tahiti is as such, for anyone who's thinking of visiting, or writing a middle school report about Tahiti. The economy of Tahiti is based on primarily 2 markets - tourism and produce. There's a huge wonderful market with fresh fish and fruit and chocolate and everything. Then there's all the tourism, the hotels, the taxis, the boat tours etc. There's no downtown, no nightlife, no malls, no clubs, no Target or real commercial center. There's one hospital and some schools, and a lot of construction, but that's really it. To display this in a microcosm, here is a public service job I found out about. The main road into town consists of 4 lanes divided by those little Jersey wall dividers. At normal hours of the day, it's 2 lanes both ways. But during rush hour, they make it 3 lanes with traffic. How? There's a man who gets into his little truck late at night and moves each divider over a lane. Then after rush hour he moves them back. Then back to 3 lanes the other way. Then back again. And so forth and so on. And that's his job. That's a job with shifts and management. That's what there is to do in Tahiti. Eat, fish, drive a taxi and move concrete from one side of the road to another. It may not sound like a lot, but it's life and they seem to have it down pretty well.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One of the most interesting things that happened to us was going to synagouge on Saturday. Yes, there's a Jewish community in Tahiti. They have a shul. They meet every week. They have a Hebrew school. And we went there. It was interesting because it was a combination of French/Sefardi (non-European style of Judaism) and Orthodox. So men sat separately but it was very laid back. After the service we were invited to someones house for lunch where we were warmly greeted and I was served schnapps upon schnapps. How could I be so rude to not drink the whiskey the old man next to me kept pouring in my cup? Eventually he started pouring beer into my glass when it still had whiskey in it...so I had to monitor it a little more. Nevertheless, an interesting lunch.
One fun note - this synagouge would be the last synagouge in the world, so to speak. Tahiti is the closest land mass to the international date line. So in any given day, this would be the last Jewish community to celebrate a holiday. Just one fun and interesting play on time I got to have.
Also in Tahiti, I started my "Things I Never Thought I Would Do" list. This list was really kicked off when we went on a boat tour of the neighboring island, Mo'orea. We get on this boat that seats maybe 20 of us, mainly couples on their honeymoon and my family, and this very overly stereotyped island man gives us a little tour and such. Then they stop the boat about 100 feet or so from the shore and one of the guys jumps out and swims out with a rope. Then we get a little shpeil about swimming with the sharks. How they're real, don't kick them, and don't pee in the water. Then - go ahead, jump in.
Basically, that's it. Grab your goggles, jump in, grab the rope and pray. Now, I'm not an aquatic person by any real stretch of the imagination but I figured, what the hell.
Here you can see me and my extreme close proximity to the deadly super man eating shark --
In all reality, the sharks were being herded on the other side of the rope from us tourists, and I'm pretty sure I'd have to kick one pretty square in the jaw for it to become hostile...nevertheless, I swam with sharks. From there it was on to sting rays, which I can say are much more docile than sharks. Swimming with sting rays is sort of like getting into 4 foot deep water with giant bath toys that swim under your feet. They're not really slimey at all, rather smooth actually. But they still look so prehistoric and unreal that it's just trippy. Much like the sharks, they're constantly being fed so they literally just glide all around you. For the first 10 minutes or so all you could hear was the following --
Oh....Oh...AH! Ah...Aw...AH!...Ah...hahaha...AH!
Once you realize they are of little to no harm, they're really kind of cute. Once that got old we got back into the boat, did some more touring, ate some coconuts and went back ashore. Alive and with every limb we came out there with.
I don't want to say that swimming feet away from a shark changed my life, because I'm not that naive. I didn't go into the water one person and emerge a new person. I'm not that arrogant. But if you ever thought that I would say that I swam next to a shark, well, then you didn't know me very well. I think all that I gathered from all of this can be found in a conversation I had with my dad the day before we went. My dad, if you don't know, is worse than any Jewish mother you can imagine in terms of worrying.
Me: (Some joke about how my dad is a pansy about getting into the ocean with sharks)
Dad: You mean you're not scared at all?
Me: I'm terrified. The ocean scares the shit out of me.
Dad: Then why are you so excited?
Me: Because it scares the shit out of me.
Such was the beginning of my beginning to do new and weird things list. My basic rule of thumb throughout the trip was: will I be able to do this any time in the near future? No? Ok, sign me up.
That was basically it for Tahiti. Some more beaches and such and then we were off to Cairnes, via Sydney. More on that later.
Ta
7.13.2008
Back in an American time zone
So I'm back. I have a few big posts coming, filled with pictures and the like. But right now all my mind can muster is the following.
I was in Sydney on Saturday, July 11th at 11am. Then the plane left and we flew 3 hours to Aukland, where it was 4pm local time. Then we left at 5pm local time, and 12 hours later arrived in LAX at 11:00am, Saturday, July 11th.
There you have it folks.
I, Asher Novek, have traveled through time.
I was in Sydney on Saturday, July 11th at 11am. Then the plane left and we flew 3 hours to Aukland, where it was 4pm local time. Then we left at 5pm local time, and 12 hours later arrived in LAX at 11:00am, Saturday, July 11th.
There you have it folks.
I, Asher Novek, have traveled through time.
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