When life gives you eggs, attempt to boil them and fail miserably

This week, in honor of my MOM's BIRTHDAY! (HappyBirthdayandIloveyouMom) I took another step towards self-sufficiency.

In a weird way, I can also list this as a tribute to my colleague Oliver, who happens to share a birthday with my mother and a general dislike for cooking with me. Where we really differ is in our love of eggs. I love them. They hate him (allergies).

Feeling hungry and comfortable in the flat the other night, I looked in the kitchen to see what things in there I could possibly consume. I started with a bowl of cereal, then ate 30 or so spoonfuls of peanut butter. But I wasn't finished -- we had 3 eggs left: 2 in one carton, on in the other.

It seemed like a good time to learn how to hard-boil an egg.

For those accomplished chefs out there (and also for most with opposable thumbs), boiling an egg is the easiest thing to do in the world. For that reason I want to be very specific in explaining how I went 0 for 3 in successfully hard-boiling one.

Egg #1: I was a little rough with this one. I dropped it in the boiling water gently enough, but the water wasn't quite deep enough and it cracked slightly on the bottom of the pot. This caused exactly the type of messiness (water + yoke + whites) that usually keeps me out of the kitchen. Still, I persevered.

Egg #2: This was a no win. The carton listed an expiration date of September. Prior to reading this I had no idea eggs could expire. It all seems so perfectly contained and regulated. This egg, boiled or not, was never going to be good.

Egg #3: This was a good egg in terms of the egg life-cycle, and I gently placed it in the pot, even given the distracting egg yoke filthiness than muddled the boiling water. The problem here was my inability to gauge 3 minutes. I'm an impatient guy, especially when it comes to food. So maybe I shortchanged it a little bit and it ended up soft-boiled.

I ate some more peanut butter and headed to bed. Still a bit hungry, but also a bit fuller of non-delicious, in no way as satisfying as a hard-boiled egg, experience.

Little brother

If you're in the Houston area, take a good look at your life and ask yourself why? WHY?

But also, go to the Theatre Under the Stars (TUTS) and watch Les Miserables. It's a Broadway quality production and features Kyle Dean Reinford in the ensemble. If you've never met Kyle, he's like me only slightly less good looking and far more talented.

The most rubbish company in the world.

You may have heard that in Europe you can buy plane tickets for pocket change. This is false.

Western Europe is small (London to Amsterdam sounds exotic, but it's only a 40 minute flight) and densely populated. There are also a lot of airlines here (every country has at least one; imagine if every State did). There are also efficient train connections to compete with. When you plot this all on a demand curve, it should point to low prices (especially when you remove the currency exchange factor).

The big myth of unbelievably low airline fares has one main perpetrator: Ryanair. This is the most rubbish company in the world (I changed this from worst because the actual concept is a good one, it's just the application that ruins it.)

Here are 20 reasons why (from the Times London):

1. £0.01 flights are never £0.01
Even if you strike it lucky and find a £0.01 flight you actually want to take, Ryanair charge you for the pleasure of paying for it. To the tune of £4.75. For each passenger. Each way.

And that doesn’t even include…

2. The check-in charge
If you want to book a bag into the aircraft hold you must check in at the airport, which will cost you £4.75 per passenger, per way, if you book online and a whopping £10 per passenger, per way if you pay at the airport or over the phone. And it doesn’t matter if only one person in your party takes a bag, everyone else still has to pay to check in at the airport too.

This week Ryanair announced that from May airport check in will rocket to £20 per person, per way. That is a grand total of £160 for a return flight as a family of four.

All without factoring in…

3. The baggage charge
Which is an extortionate £9.50 per bag, per flight. Or £19 if you book at the airport or over the phone.

4. The sneaky weight limit
Ryanair set its weight limit for hold luggage at 15kg catching the majority of passengers off guard.

You’re not allowed to pool bags either so, even if you have a party of four sharing luggage, if the bag weighs 16kg you will be charged £14 per additional kilo. Nevermind that it makes not a jot of difference to the weight of the aeroplane.

5. Queues glorious queues
If you’re still talking to your partner following the inevitable blazing row about why you shouldn’t just pay the bloody charges listed above, you won’t be after being told to join the back of the enormous queue at the ‘payments’ desk.

6. The additional baggage charge
Probably best to wear all of your clothes at once on the flight if you are travelling somewhere for more than a couple of days (until Ryanair start charging passengers for excess body weight that is). Check more than one bag in and it will cost you another £19 per extra piece of luggage, per way.

7. The website is rubbish. On purpose.
You have no choice but to book a Ryanair flight through its website so the airline may as well make it as stressful an experience as possible. The website is ugly for starters, and it crashes. All the time.

Because you can’t easily browse for dates when cheap flights are available you have to dedicate at least five precious hours of your life to sitting in front of the screen and laboriously trying different combinations to find a good deal.

And if you don’t understand what you’ve just pressed there is no one to e-mail. Because Ryanair want you to spend more money and phone its…

8. Premium rate internet helpline
Calls cost £1 a minute to speak to someone in a call centre. Be amazed if you can explain what your problem is for under a fiver.

9. You can only fly cheap mid week
To get the bargains that make the pain of Ryanair worth the gain you have to be prepared to fly on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, which can rule out the bargain European weekend break. Kind of why you wanted to book with Ryanair in the first place.

10. You have to travel at obscene hours.
Not only are you travelling on a Tuesday you also have to be prepared to wake up at 2am to get to the airport two hours ahead of your 6.55am flight. Or, if you choose a more civilised evening departure time, arrive in your destination at midnight with no where to stay because…

11. The destination airports are in the middle of nowhere.
Don’t expect to fly to Frankfurt if you book a flight to Frankfurt, to name one of many examples. Frankfurt Hahn airport where Ryanair land is 120 km from the city centre.

12. A bottle of water on board costs £3
I know the moral of this story is to buy a drink from WH Smith before you board, but it’s still annoying.

13. Sweaty, plasticky seats
Whatever you do, don’t wear shorts or you might be stuck to your seat forever and forced to listen to…

14. The in-flight musak
Pray that your flight is not delayed before it takes off or you’ll have to put up with the bleepy, computer-game inspired musak that is played on loop as your board, over, and over.

15. The fanfare
Do we really need the shrill fanfare that sounds when/if the flight lands on time? Or does it just ruin the first three minutes of each passenger's holiday?

16. You can’t book a seat
As if the British holiday ritual of crowding round the baggage carousel isn’t enough to warrant the use of blood-thinning medication, Ryanair invite you to partake in the extreme sport that is racing across the tarmac to get a seat next to your companion. Flip flops are a distinct disadvantage.

17. No refunds, ever
Unless you have a spare few days to waste do not even bother trying.

18. Poor compensation
A report by the UK’s Air Transport Users Council has found that the world’s airlines lost more than one million bags in 2007 and more than 42 million pieces of luggage were mishandled worldwide.

Guess who it named as the worst airline for compensation if your bag goes missing or is damaged?

19. You are always being flogged stuff
No we don't want your ridiculously overpriced travel insurance, car hire or Ryanair tea-towels. Go away.

20. Michael O’Leary himself
Don't tell me you can bear to make him any more smug? (This is the CEO. He loves all publicity, good and bad. Recently he held a contest to get ideas for which discretionary charge they should introduce next. There are plans to charge for the restrooms.)

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My biggest problems with Ryanair are that I have to pay £10 to pay for my flight if I use a credit card. And there is no other option. I also have a problem with the airports Ryanair (and similarly terrible airlines) they fly in and out of, and the passengers who fly these kinds of airlines. Dumpy airlines, dumpy consumers.

Buyer beware!

Ring my bell

I'm crazy about technology, which is why I use my MOBILE PHONE as an ALARM CLOCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My mobile even lets me name my alarms and set up to 3 daily. Here are the uplifting alarm names/times that I used yesterday on holiday, juxtaposed with the soul-crushing alarms I used today.

HOLIDAY ALARMS
10:30 AM -- awake and progress to beach
1:30 PM -- eat something? why not
3:00 PM -- think about going to airport

WORKDAY ALARMS
8:10 AM -- be alarmed!
8:12 AM -- get up already
8:20 AM -- seriously, get up. seriously.

PS, I had 2,101 unread emails in my inbox today.

Redefining things

Some of you know that I'm 80% through a project to transpose the dictionary. I'm taking a brief, 9-months and counting hiatus. I've got about 100 pages to go. At a rate of 1 page per day that means if I started back up tomorrow I could be done in roughly... well I'm not going to do the math. Just got back from vaca.

Anyhow here are some better defined words.

1. Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.

2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you've gained.

3. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.

6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown.

7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle (n.), olive-flavoured mouthwash.
9. Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.

12. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

13. Pokemon (n), a Rastafarian proctologist.

14. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms
15. Frisbeetarianism (n.), (back by popular demand): The belief that, when you die your Soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16. Circumvent (n.), an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.

A window into my world

7:39 AM me: you up?

no idea what time it is in denver...

5 minutes

7:45 AM me: it's 9.44pm there. if you're in bed, i'm embarrassed

7:48 AM Brad: hey man, it's so late there, I'm ebarrassed for you

me: i'm in africa, it's 8am

[jerk]

Brad: where are you now, Tanzanier?

ha

me: ebarrassed

Brad: how is it, just as you left it?

me: is that some new online catchphrase?

7:49 AM it's great here

Brad: snyder and kristy still there

what have you all been doing

me: they're on safari

sarah [last name removed to protect the innocent] too

Brad: elitists

me: so i haven't seen them yet

Brad: you with Nate and Julie?

me: we meet them tonight in zanzibar

yeah

7:50 AM and krabill is arriving imminently

Brad: [gosh], how many vacation days do you get?

Krabill is coming too?

me: and maybe thad is stopping by

Brad: [wow]

[WOW]

me: he was landing 4 minutes ago

Brad: Maybe [a mutual acquaintance we don't like]?

five bucks says he is not on the plane

me: [the mutual acquaintance we don't like] showed up but was turned away

the thad thing is the funniest

7:51 AM Brad: do you know if he actually made the flight

me: he's in malawi for something

Brad: naturally

me: thad?

i don't even know if he has a flight

he may meet us in zanzibar this weekend

Brad: ha

sweet, zanzibar!

me: yeah, can't wait

7:52 AM Brad: how long you there?

me: chilling at nate and julie's flat is fun though too

Brad: what a [really great] trip

me: they have a chef and a housekeeper

Brad: tell em hello for me

me: got here yesterday at noon. next friday i fly to doha.

then back to london on sunday

Brad: how long are you in Doha?

me: i'll tell everyone you said hey

2 nights

just a long layover

Brad: go to the souq

me: a long, soulless layover

7:53 AM you been there?

Brad: yeah

pretty sweet

me: where should i stay?

Brad: when do Nate and Julie come back?

I stayed at the Marriott

they have a good brunch for $50

me: yeah everything seems pricey

Brad: not in Tanzania though

7:54 AM me: n&j come back in july

to philly

Brad: eat [food] for cheap

me: i had a good [non-alcoholic beverage] last night for 60 cents

half liter

Brad: I'm going to sarasota in a few weeks, which is kind of like Tanzania

60[expletive]cents

7:55 AM me: it's not as cheap around here as it was 10 years ago though

Brad: are they coming to Denver for Harf's wedding?

me: it's boomtown

all the [three ethnic groups who are investing heavily in africa] apparently

if they get invited they will

Brad: I'm sure they'll be invited

if not, they should come anyway

7:56 AM me: in doha, should i stay at one of the big hotels? book in advance?

Brad: It's all big hotels, stay at the Marriott, you'll get your own beach

7:57 AM there are probably smaller places, but it's kind of like Dubai in that it is expensive and wealthy

me: and pool?

Brad: Pool was being remodeled, but is probably done by now

they work fast

me: nate and julie said they heard you never socialized anymore.

7:58 AM told them that was your last phase

Brad: it's true, but the rebirth is coming

kind of like shedding my skin, when the new skin comes in, I'll be [deleting this because i'm not sure if it was a typo or actually just really offensive] again

me: that's funny -- i told them i was expecting a continued renaissance from you

7:59 AM i think i even might have said the word reborn as well

Brad: Now I'm just an old boring white guy

let's just say I'm about to get a lot younger

if you catch my drift

me: gross

8:00 AM i'm nearly 29

if you catch my drift

Brad: oh yeah your b day is next week

celebrate by [common sense tells me to delete this]!

me: yeah sunday

give the cell phone a ring and i'll pass you around

Brad: the last of an era

I'd call your cell, but all I have is the rick roll number [call me anytime on (772) 257-4501!]

8:01 AM what is your number

me: unless we're playing rook -- then just leave a voicemail

[not going to post my number on the internet]

Brad: cool, I'll give a call

me: or just call kristy or snyder

Brad: they are americans dude

their phones don't work abroad

8:02 AM me: 3G buddy

kristy has been texting

or maybe they got a phone here

pay as you go

8:03 AM Brad: post some pics on facebook, and tell nate and julie to get on facebook

I hear Nate never socializes anymore

he just hangs out on the corner with witch doctors

me: i gave julie a demo of fb yesterday

she was wowed

Brad: she'll be on in now time

she loves social capital

did I just say now time

8:04 AM it's sooo late here

me: postmodern academic

it's a whole new paradigm

8:05 AM Brad: I am the hyper real: http://www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com/cgi-bin/seigmiaow.pl

8:07 AM me: i'll check it out

was trying to find the link to this thing i looked at the other day -- 99 things to see on the internet [http://youshouldhaveseenthis.com/]

Brad: have fun man, I'm going to bed soon...jess went to bed at 8:30

Oh yeah, I saw that too, love the fail blog

http://failblog.org/

8:08 AM me: how do you do it brad

and still go to bed before 10pm

Brad: cultural capital

me: good talk

Brad: take care

me: sleep easy

Brad: have fun

me: kwa heri bwana

8:09 AM Brad: at least watch the video of the dog sleep walking

No one really says hakuna matata

Tomorrow evening I'm flying to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (via Doha, Qatar). I'm as excited about this trip as any I've been on since my last trip to Tz 9 years ago for my University's Cross-Cultural program. In fact, I'm so excited that I've been laying out clothes all week -- something else I don't think I've done since 9 years ago. I'm more of a Day-Of packer these days.

A few things that have changed about me in the past 9 years...

I have surgically enhanced eyes.
I weigh approximately 3 pounds more.
I have a degree and a job.
I must shave more than bi-monthly.
I'm no longer fiscally indebted to my parents.
I'm an uncle x2.
I'm all over the internet.

If you've never been to Africa you should be scheming of a way to get there at some point. It can be any corner, but for me it was an important trip to take to understand my place in the world. This will be my third time on the continent but Morocco and [especially] Egypt didn't really strike me in the same way as Tanzania.

Also excited to use my Swahili skillz. Saaaafi.

I'll end with a song. (Translation on the right).

Jambo	Hello
Jambo, Jambo Bwana,	Hello, Hello Sir,
Habari gani,	How are you,
Mzuri sana.	Very fine.
Wageni, mwakaribishwa,	Foreigners, you're welcome,
Kenya yetu Hakuna Matata.	In our Kenya there is no problem.
Kenya nchi nzuri,	Kenya is a beautiful country,
Hakuna Matata.	There is no problem.
Nchi ya maajabu	A wonderful country
Hakuna Matata.	There is no problem.
Nchi yenye amani,	A peaceful country,
Hakuna Matata.	There is no problem.
Hakuna Matata,	There is no problem,
Hakuna Matata.	There is no problem.
Watu wote,	Everybody,
Hakuna Matata,	There is no problem,
Wakaribishwa,	Are welcome,
Hakuna Matata.	There is no problem.
Hakuna Matata,	There is no problem,
Hakuna Matata. (mpaka mwisho)	There is no problem. (till end)