Shyzer.com

I’m not sure what exactly kept me from posting this week. I just blinked and wham, it was Saturday night. Monday night we cooked the rest of our sausages leftover from a cookout Sunday and Tuesday / Wednesday were pretty much laid back, relaxing days. St. Paddies Day was fun, Friday I used all my Internet time at once and pretty much spent today answering e-mails and writing essays and whatnot. But don’t let the laid back attitude fool you. I’m still having more fun here than I’ve had in ages. I just need to make sure I don’t stray too far away from the real Goob, if that makes any sense.

In case the glaring light off my head in the recent cam pic didn’t clue you in, I shaved my head again this week. I grew bored and annoyed with the hair and decided that it was either time to let it grow out long again, a la the Jesus Look, or lop it all off and start over fresh. And now, as I sit here running my hand over my head, I can’t help but think that I almost forgot how much of a freeing feeling this actually is.

Tomorrow I’m heading back to the beach, as I did last Sunday. I’ve never really enjoyed the beach back home because in all honesty, they blow. But the beaches here are amazing. When we went last week, most of the Aussie’s with us all stared at the waves and commented on how small they were. If I had transported those waves back home, they probably would have been some of the biggest ones of the summer. So frankly, I can’t wait to see how much larger they are tomorrow.

I promise next week will bring with it more frequent posts. I’m about 85% done with the Aussie cast page that I’m making. I have all the pics and info and have written most of the people’s bios. The few that I have yet to do are proving to be the hardest, but I’m aiming to have them done within a day or two.

And with that, I’m going back to the conversation with Alex, John, and Sez that is going on right behind me. Did I mention it’s 0300 and we are going to the beach in the morning?

God, I love this country.

Monday morning, I awoke startled and worried that I had missed my class. I was dressed and headed towards to door within 6 seconds when I realized that 1) I was in Australia and I don’t care about this semester and 2) I WAS IN AUSTRALIA AND I DON’T CARE ABOUT THIS SEMESTER! Of course, as luck would have it, I still had plenty of time to make my class, so I stripped down, snagged a towel, and headed for the showers.

Just as I was washing the shampoo out from behind my eyelids, I heard a guitar start wailing from within the corridor. Never one to pass up an opportunity to sing in the shower, I began a heavy chorus of “Duh, duh, duuuuuh. Duh, duh, da duuuuuh” until the music finally subsided minutes later. As I stepped out of the shower room, I was greeted by Aiden and Memma standing outside my room wondering where I was. It only took a second before they saw me and greeted me. “Oh, so you were awake! Since it was past noon and we hadn’t seen you all day, we thought we’d wake you up with some calming music. Guess we’ll have to try it again later this week.”

I guess my reputation for sleeping in is global now. At least I know I have friends who care enough to give me an early heart attack before lunch.

Everybody here raise a hand if you thought the previous entry was extremely grotesque. That’s what I thought =) If the obvious wasn’t already clear here, let me state it for you. My mates here now know of Shyzer and enjoy it. The previous “story” was written by my friend Sez. I told her she could write something and I’d post it for a day, she wrote that and didn’t believe I’d post it, and me, being the stubborn and hard headed person that I am posted it since I promised to do it before hand. But it’s been a day now and so it’s down. Don’t worry, that’s the last time somebody else will write here on Shyzer (except for Fellner, who still has an entire month’s worth of authorship still in queue from winning the Goob Experience!) But no, I was not hacked and yes, I did watch as she hit the Publish button herself. If that didn’t show that I’m a man of my word, I don’t know what will.

So…anybody who had the “pleasure” of reading that story, I pity you. And if you missed it, well then YOU SHOULD CHECK SHYZER EVERY DAY! You just have to know Sez in real life to appreciate and love how crazy she is. I’m still working on the bios for everybody. I walked around tonight writing down the names and hometowns of the corridor and am typing the their bios as we speak. I bought a cheap flash drive off E-bay so that I can transfer all the pictures and files to a computer that has Internet, so now I get to play the waiting game for the seller to send it to me. He lives in Aussie, so hopefully it will be here sometime this week.

I finally became sunburned for the first time since I arrived here. There are small splotches all over my back where my hands obviously missed in spreading out the lotion and I somehow completely forgot to put any of my neck, so I slightly resemble a lobster from the head up. We spent the afternoon at the beach today riding waves and whatnot. Dutch Dave and I were out in the surf without any flippers or body boards, so the waves were tossing us around like rag dolls. When you consider the fact that Dave is basically a freaking Olympic swimmer, I thought it was a tad unfair. We all had fun none-the-less, especially when the Tsunami Wave came crashing down upon us, resulting in Goob being thrown around on the ocean bed and surfacing completely upside-down.

Anyway, just wanted to give a quick update. Now that I can check / post things on my mate’s computers here in the dorm, I can hopefully respond to things a little quicker and update Shyzer more often.

I officially give up. I haven’t been able to load Shyzer for a few days now on any of the library computers anymore. It will load all the graphics and links to the sub pages on the left hand side, and then lock up and crash the browser. I can get into the MovableType database to load and edit posts, but I just can’t get the damn blog to show up. Color me confused. I can read the comments that have been left so far and have been able to respond to them throught the database, but I’m sick of doing it that way.

With that in mind, it looks like it’s time to let the cat out of the bag and try to see if I can get this baby to load on any of my mate’s computers. Like I said in an earlier post, I intended to keep Shyzer on the DL, thereby allowing me to say anything and everything about whatever I wanted to without having to worry about what people might think. But as I look back over what I’ve posted since I arrived here, there’s not much I’ve written that I wouldn’t want people to read. That being said, you might find that a few paragraphs / posts have pulled a Harry Houdini. Now I expect you all to play along nicely and enjoy the magic show like a good audience would.

I have to say, I’m slightly impressed how I was able to keep Shyzer a secret for 3 and a half weeks. It wasn’t nearly as hard as I initially thought it might be and I doubt I would have had any trouble going the whole 6 months without doing so. Anybody who knows me in real life knows that I talk about Shyzer every seventeen seconds and I was worried that I’d let slip the fact that I run a site during a night of heavy drinking or such. But now that I can talk about it, I guess I can go back to my old habits and bore all those around me with talk of Shyzer!

The summer before I started year 9, Chong and I apparently spent a little too much time indoors watching cooking shows and not enough time outside setting fires in backyards and harassing the neighbors, because somehow the notion that we could cook was implanted firmly in our brains. We eventually discovered a CD of 1001 recipes, so we sat down one afternoon and went through each category picking out dishes that looked decent from the pictures and designed a full 5-course meal. After convincing our families that yes, we were going to cook them dinner and no, we weren’t going to poison them (at least on purpose), they agreed to let us serve dinner the following night.

The next afternoon, we inventoried our kitchens and made our way to the grocery store to pick up what we didn’t have. After grabbing everything needed, we realized we were missing two things on the list. Chong went for the tomatoes and I set off to find an extra box of noodles. I quickly spotted an elderly man going through a stock list the next aisle over and figured I’d save some time and ask him where they were. He saw me walking towards him as I was halfway down the aisle and asked if there was anything I needed, so I went ahead and asked him if he knew where the noodles were. Seeing as how I was still 40 feet away from him and I always equate anybody over the age of 50 as having bad hearing, I initially shouted out my question to him. He looked mildly shocked, but also had the classic “Na, he didn’t just say what I think he did” look upon his face, so he asked again what it was I was looking for, pretending he didn’t hear me the first time. By now, we were face-to-face and I again repeated my query for him. Yet, again, he didn’t answer me and instead looked up at me as if I was the Great Satan himself. After a few seconds, I began to wonder if he was stunned by my birthmark or maybe having a silent heart attack, or even worse, maybe he recognized me as the kid who chopped down a tree in his back yard to build a bridge over the creek. We never did find out who lived in that house. Anyways, I broke the silence and figured I’d give him one last chance to snap out of it.

“Uh, sir…do you know where it is? I’m making dinner for my family tonight and the only thing my siblings will eat is junk food and noodles, so I really need a box of this stuff.” It was right about then that Chong came whirling around the corner and ran up to me half panting from his sprint and half gasping for air from laughing so hard. “Dude, what’s wrong,” I asked, trying to figure out just what in the hell was going on in this store. As he regained his breath, he glanced over my shoulder, saw the elderly employee’s look, and kneeled over with renewed laughter. I spun around to see that every ounce of blood in the poor man had drained far, far down into his body resulting in his face color turning a nice shade of pale-old-white-man. His eyes were so large they were pushing his nose out of place and I finally had had enough. “What in the hell is so goddamn funny,” I demanded a bit too loud and this only fueled Chong’s bit of the funnies. I didn’t know whether to pull a Homer and just start laughing because everybody else was or to start yelling at the old guy. I choose the later. “What? What did I say that is making my friend over there act like a little school girl and is making you look as if you just saw the Titanic pull into harbor? What did I say? AND WHY ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT!?”

“Sir, I believe you are looking for Angel Hair pasta, not Angel Dust. The first is food, the latter is a drug that kids like you do these day. I certainly hope you wouldn’t be looking to score your siblings any drugs.” And so from that day forward, I’ve always called it Angel Dust pasta.

But how did the dinner go, you ask? It was fantastic. Everybody pretended to enjoy the food, there were zero cases of food poisoning, and the desert was delicious, which is why I started writing this post in the first place. You see, everything we cooked that night, we made from scratch. From the appetizers to the desert to the freshly squeezed water from the faucet, we both had our hands in every dish served. If I could remember what the desert was, I would tell you, but the only thing I remember from it was the fact that it called for a dose of pure molasses. Sweet, succulent molasses…at least, that’s what I thought it would taste like. If you’ve never tried molasses straight from the jar in its pure form, then you’re doing your stomach a favor. Chong and I both scooped out a spoonful and downed it at the same time, thinking we were about to eat pure sugar in liquid form and experience a new heightened sense of awareness. The only thing I remember experiencing after that was the desire to vomit. I’d never dry heaved over a kitchen sink before that fateful bite, but I was able to check that off my list of things to do before I die that afternoon.

Fast forward seven and a half years into the future to just last week. I was hanging out in the corridor and stopped off at Karen’s room to see what was up. Josh, a fellow American, was sitting on her bed chatting with her and noticed that she had some Vegemite in her cupboard. He asked if he could try some and being curious, I stuck my finger in the jar and scooped some out as well. Just as we both were giving it a go, Karen turned around from her computer, saw what we were doing, and gave a futile cry of “Nooooo” Within a few seconds, Josh and I realized what she was trying to keep us from doing. My mouth sent an urgent message to my brain to spit whatever the hell was in there out and to never, ever again try to ingest it. I summoned up my lougee spitting skills honed from years of contests with my friends and mom and launched the Vegemite straight into the rubbish bin. After brushing my teeth for approximately 90 minutes, I returned and asked how in the hell anybody could eat that stuff.

Yesterday, Sarah and I went on an adventure to make toast. After almost setting middle floor West on fire, we returned to our corridor with the browned bread and sat down to watch Kill Bill 2. After a few minutes, she asked if I wanted a piece and I turned to see my arch nemesis staring me in the face. The toast was covered in butter with a thin layer of Vegemite on top. As I shuddered thinking of my previous experience with the crap condiment, I politely told her there I had no wish to hurl all over her room and that she could keep it all to herself. When she started making fun of me, I told her of my earlier experience and she promised that was no way to eat this “yummy” yeast extract. The only way, she pleaded, was to eat it with copious amounts of butter on toasted bread. I hesitantly plucked the toast from her hand, closed my eyes, and took a bite.

I now have a jar of Vegemite sitting in my cupboard, right next to the bread and butter. Maybe when I get home I’ll give Molasses another try.

As a general rule of thumb, we can miss up to three tutorials without failing the class. As I type this, I am missing my second in two weeks for “America: Good or Evil?” I would go to class, but I still have yet to find the building and I refuse to ask my teacher where it is. The location of the buildings on my map are slightly difficult to understand since it looks as if it was drawn by a retarded two-year old child. Apparently those little redish-brownish swirls are buildings and not giant piles of dung. And while you might think the green blotches around the buildings represent brush or undergrowth, I just now figured out that they represent water fountains.

Water fucking fountains. Water fountains that, according to the map, are the same size as a three story building. I almost think it’s worth failing this class in order to never look at this map again.

I somehow got my Internet to work last night and was able to get on the school network. 15 minutes later I had all three episodes of LOST that I had missed since I left for Aussie and all I have to say is 1) Hurley is freaking hilarious/awesome and 2) Claire is still hooooooooooot. Too bad nobody watches 24 over here. I scanned the entire network and didn’t find a single episode. Over 10,000 gigs on the network and not a single episode of 24. I need to show these people the wonders of Jack Bauer.

(Sidenote: As you can see, the posts didn’t upload like I told them to. I’m at a loss at this point seeing as how I’ve scoured the Internet and tried every solution I’ve found.)

When I came to Aussie four years ago, the only cities I managed to infiltrate were Sydney and Cairns and while both may have been excellent cities to visit, they didn’t really give you a correct impression of the rest of the country as a whole, so I didn’t really know what to expect of Newcastle. Once I finally made it on the correct train and began my journey north during the Day that Wouldn’t Die, I sat back and began to take in the view. Within 20 minutes I was worried.

Not long after leaving Sydney, the train began to weave its way through some rural lands. And I mean rweral to the point where I had to do a double take and go “Wait a minute, how the hell did I get back to South Carolina?!” Every dilapidated station we passed seemed to be falling more and more apart and the towns we passed were almost to the point of abandonment. I speak nothing but the truth when I say that during the entire 3 hour journey, there was not one promising sign that Newcastle would be halfway decent.

On another note, however, I realized something that I never knew about Aussie. Right off the coast is a mountain chain. Half of the train ride we were going through tunnels, passing mountain resorts on lakesides, and basically just snaking our way north. I always envision Aussie as a giant desert with beaches on the coast. But I couldn’t have been further from the truth. The mountains are small in a mountainous sense, but they’re still giant rocks that make you go “whoa…” Think of a smaller version of the Appalachian and that’s what they have here.

When I finally pulled into Newcastle, I begun to relax. Alas, it was another city in the sense of how a city should be. Big. Newcastle itself was a huge industrial town that kind of collapsed in the 1960 and 70s and the world became more and more computerized. So they switched gears and started to become a huge environmental friendly city in an attempt to bring people back to the town. It didn’t really start working until the 1980s, but by now they’ve finally filled a good portion of the town back up. The city itself is pretty big (it seems even bigger at 2 AM when you’re trying to make your way from the pub to the bus stop. They really could place those things a little closer together if you ask me.)

The campus itself is a good 10 minute bus ride away from the actual city, so we are kind of out here in the boondocks. The actual size of the campus is close to the size of USC. The only difference is at least half of it is covered in trees, woods, marshes, brush, etc. They don’t just clear out space to build things. Unless they need a new building, they let fauna grow and frankly, it’s a nice change from the way things are done back home. It remind me of being at camp back when I was a teenager, especially when you consider how the living arrangements are. The school population is around 20,000, but only maybe 2000 kids live on campus. My dorm probably has about 500, (compared to, say, my high school class, which started off with over 800), so when you put that into perspective, it makes everybody feel like family to me. You see the same faces all the time and we do everything together, especially during the first week we were here, called O’Week. We all eat together in a cafeteria just for our dorm, which helps you see and get to know people, and everybody (and I mean everybody) hangs out in the corridor or leaves their door open.

One of the first things I noticed about my fellow dorm mates was the fact that they are so damn young! The guy living next to me is 18 and most of the people on my corridor are 18-20. They don’t act immature or anything, but it’s simply strange being surrounded by so many people who are just experiencing college and who are only three months removed from high school. It makes me feel old, but at the same time I feel like they’re helping keep me young. Plus, it’s always nice being one of the “wiser” ones in the group whose experienced shit before. That being said, it seems like the older kids in the dorm have kind of formed a unique bond. We’ve all got the “been there, done that, let’s now have fun!” attitude. It was slightly humorous this previous Monday morning when all the 1st years were fretting over going to the Tutorial classes since they started this week. “What happens if he asks me a question and I don’t know the answer?” one of our friends asked us. Half the table shifted their eyes around nervously as if they all were frightened of the same scenario happening to them while the other half of us just glanced at each other, muffled our giggles, and waited for somebody to step up and make fun of her. Apparently it was my at-bat, so I responded to her with a completely stern face and said, “Oh, shit, you better hope that doesn’t happen. The exact same thing happened to me in my first Tut and he not only yelled at me, he made me leave the class!” The following five or six seconds was filled with silence while you could literally watch all the 1st years go “Holy shit…is he serious?!” Adam finally burst out with laughter and I couldn’t have been happier, because I myself could hardly hold it in any longer. After dodging the apple thrown in the general direction of my head, I just smiled and told her “Nobody will care. It’s Uni for fucks sake! You could walk in wearing your pajamas and nobody would pay you a second glance.”

I like to think I handled that situation no differently than I would have back home =) And with that, I’m off to dinner where I will hopefully have more fruit and vegetables thrown at me. And who knows, by April, maybe their aim will have improved enough to hit me!

Before I came over here, I spent some time mulling over an important decision that I felt could make or break my entire experience. What name should I go by?

It’s a tricky conundrum if you actually think about it. My entire reasoning behind coming over here for a semester was to get away, experience something fresh and new, give college another go around if you will. So the question posed itself: Should I go by Goob?

Look, I’ve had the nickname for 9 years now and it’s had a fantastic run. As my trip grew closer and closer, I began to pull a Michael Jordan circa 1993 and wonder if it was time to hang ‘em up. 9 years is a pretty good stretch for a nickname, but there becomes a time when even the best of the best begin to falter and are moved aside for the young prospects to emerge. Since the entire reason I was coming to Aussie was to start over fresh, I wondered “why not introduce myself as Ryan and see if I can get a new nickname by the time I return stateside.”

Unlike Jordan, however, I didn’t take two years to realize that there was still plenty of juice left in the “Goob Tank.” As completely retarded as it may sound, there’s something special about being known as Goob. People love to say it for some reason unbeknownst to me. I introduced myself as Ryan for the first day or two and it didn’t feel natural. It kinda stumbled off my tongue, lingered in the air, and simply waited for the person who I just met to completely forget it. So I switched over to Goob and the results were almost instant. People who I have absolutely no recollection of meeting come up to me and say “Hey Gooooob! How’s it going mate?” The tingle I get when I step onto a bus heading into town and hear the entire back half go “GOOOOOB!” is incomparable to anything else I’ve ever felt. As you can see, everybody I meet remembers my name and hence we become friends just that much quicker.

On the flip side, however, I’ve yet to tell anybody of Shyzer. I accidentally let slip that I run a site, but only two people heard me and they didn’t press for any further info. If I had my way, I’d most certainly keep it a secret simply so I can say anything I want on here and not have to worry about the consequences. Most people here are pretty savvy with a computer though and I’m simply waiting for the day when somebody Googles “Goob” and realizes that the second site on the results page has a picture of my mug plastered on it. But until then, I’m runnin’ free over here.

One last thing. I scheduled two other posts to reveal themselves at noon Monday and noon Tuesday. Here’s to hoping MovableType will do what I tell it do this time around.

Before I start, I’ve begun sending out e-mails that I promised I would. If you didn’t get one, then you didn’t give me your e-mail address, so no bitching from your corner of the room. If you did give me your e-mail address and still didn’t get one, then let me know. And just a fair warning, you might from time to time find exact quotes from the e-mails here in a Shyzer post (like the AMERICA’S HONOUR! part) so don’t think you’re having deja vu or watching the Matrix reset itself or anything. Just me being lazy as normal.

A fellow Yank has loaned me his power converter until the one me mum sent me arrives, which translates into me being able to sit here and type until my heart’s content. Being able to power my laptop also equates to being able to power my iPod, thereby allowing me to flood my corridor with my wonderful taste in music! (It’s a corridor, not a hall. See, I’m picking up the lingo already) In related news, I don’t know if I’ll be able to maintain the whole “only one post a week” promise that I made earlier. I simply miss writing that much. It’s not even that I miss the Internet so much, it’s just the writing. I brought along a notebook with me and I’ve already filled countless pages with random sentences, paragraph, and entire posts that along the way I though “Hey, that’d be something good for Shyzer.” Now that I have my laptop back, I’m gonna start trying to pump out a few more posts a week. Maybe two or three because in all honesty, I have heaps of material to go on here. (You never hear “a lot”, “a bunch”, or “a ton”….it’s heaps. Look at me here, pretty soon I’m gonna be talking like Steve Irwin.) And of course, this change has “nothing” to do with the dwindling number of visitors Shyzer is receiving since I’m only updating here once a week. My ego is not involved in this decision whatsoever!

After about two weeks away from my computer and the net, I’m surprised at the things I miss and even more surprised at the things I don’t. For instance, I don’t miss AIM one bit. Not a single, miniscule, tinny bit. I can’t even count the hours days I’ve pissed away on that tool of the devil and now that I don’t have it, it’s quite refreshing. I don’t miss sitting around and aimlessly surfing the net to no avail. Sure, you can find some pretty interesting shit that way, but when you add up all the time you lose doing so, it just doesn’t seem worth it in the end. Besides, it’s really hard to meet people when you are in the computer lab surfing the Net all day long.

That being said, I do miss some things. There are some exceptionally well versed authors on this here In-tra-net and reading their ramblings always brought a certain level of joy to this here kid. Doc, Simmons, Dooce, USS Mariner, etc, etc. It’s rare to find a person on the Net who can string sentences together poetically, much less correctly. So when you go find them, you tend to hold on for dear life and refuse to let go. I’ve already gone back and read all their entries made since I left and have loved every minute of it. Screw the newspaper. Give me a daily paper with all my favorite bloggers newest posts and I’m set.

In fact, here’s an example of what I’m talking about. Remember how last week I posted a running log of my trip over here to Aussie? Well Simmons was doing the same thing virtually at the same time of his trip from LA to Denver. And he was able to come up with these gems that I only wish I had written:

Friday, 8 a.m. PST, Los Angeles: The Sports Gal drives me to LAX and starts the token “Fight on the way to the airport,” as required in Rule 43B in the “Code Of Females” guidebook.

8:45 a.m. — Thanks to a comedy of errors, I didn’t make my plane reservation until three days ago, which is relevant for three reasons. First, if my airline for the weekend was an NBA player, it would be Michael Olowokandi — bad reputation, perennial underachiever, but a strangely palatable option since it’s impossible to find a serviceable big man at a reasonable price. Everyone who flies this airline ends up feeling like Kevin McHale, the last NBA GM to sign Olowokandi, and someone who would DEFINITELY never do it again. For the purposes of this column, we’ll be referring to this weekend’s airline as Olowokandi Air.

Second, I’m flying to Vegas and catching a connection to Denver, with a scant 86-minute difference between flights, so I can’t afford any delays … and it’s pouring rain right now. And third, thanks to the passenger-friendly setup at the Olowokandi Air terminal, I’m currently standing outside — in the freezing rain, along with dozens of other passengers, with a guy blowing cigarette smoke in my face — waiting to pass through the metal detectors inside. I feel like I’m in an episode of “Fear Factor.”

9:35 a.m. — On the bright side, I just bought about 20 magazines and newspapers. Which reminds me, why do they sell porn mags in airports? Am I supposed to read Penthouse at the gate? Take it into the men’s room? Save it for the plane so I can read it next to some horrified lady? I never understood this.

10:40 a.m. — After wondering why my flight hasn’t pre-boarded yet, I notice other passengers screaming at the overwhelmed OA guy behind the counter. As it turns out, my plane took off at 10:30 — that’s right, took off — because there was a brief window with the weather conditions. Normally this would be great, except for the fact that A) I’m not on the plane; B) they told everyone we were leaving at 11:15; C) they left behind 15-20 passengers who paid for tickets and checked in; and D) I was sitting 15 feet away and never knew the plane was leaving. According to the weasel behind the desk, it was our fault for not hearing the announcement over a sound system that was so muffled, it sounded like Moses Malone was making the announcements. Has an airline ever used the “You were asking for it” defense before?

10:50 a.m. — It’s just starting to dawn on me that MY EFFING PLANE LEFT WITHOUT ME. I’m screaming louder than anyone right now; it’s like I turned into Stephen A. Simmons. If this was an episode of “Lost,” Jack and Locke would be handcuffing me to the wreckage of the plane until I calmed down.

11:15 a.m. — They’re putting us all on “standby” for the noon flight to Vegas … on a flight that’s already oversold. Can I get a complimentary full-body cavity search with that?

11:55 a.m. — Now the noon flight is “delayed for an hour at least.” Worried about missing my connecting flight — putting the Shaq game in jeopardy — as well as turning into Tom Hanks in that “Terminal” movie, I head over with a few others to Southwest Airlines, which has a noon flight to Vegas with room. Total cost? $108.57. Within five minutes, I’m sitting on the plane. That was easy. Really, is it that hard to run an airline?

12:25 p.m. — You won’t find a happier group of people than the ones on a Southwest Airlines flight from L.A. to Vegas — no first class, no egos, sit where you want, everyone itching to gamble, even applause after the landing. My favorite thing about Southwest? How they always have those sarcastic stewardesses in their 50s with Southern accents, the ones that remain strangely sexy because they all look like they joined the Mile High Club with Burt Reynolds back in 1975. Good times all around.

1:15 p.m. — Well, until the landing. We just skidded for about four miles. I think we’re in Reno.

1:30 p.m. — As everyone heads off to clean the puke off their shirts, I head over to Olowokandi Air and learn…”

See what I mean?

Other than reading my favorite writers, I miss Shyzer itself. I miss talking with all the readers who come here, updating all the sub pages and working on Shlyrics (which never did get finished. I guess I have to try and find a way to work on it from here. Haha Fellner, you have to wait even longer for it!)

But you know what? My daily hour limit is up.

First off, I got on AIM today for about 20 minutes and I think about 70% of the IMs sent to me were blocked for some reason. So to anybody I ignored or never even responded to, it wasn’t at all intentional.

Well, here it is. I promised that I would keep a running log of my trip over here and this is what I came up with. Kinda long, but Jesus H Christ was the trip over here long! Oh, what am I talking about, it only took 42 hours from start to finish. I’ve always wanted to kind of do one of these full day, running blog type entries and I figured that this was probably my best chance to do so.

But before I get to that, I just wanted to say that so far I’m having a blast. I’ll be honest, the first few days (and even today for that matter) were a little weird. Knowing nobody, barely knowing those people that you just met, not having any earthly idea what to expect. But with each passing day it gets a little easier and little funner. ( I know that’s not a word, but I think it should be.) Classes start this Monday, which should make things a lot more interesting and I’m trying out for the baseball team this Sunday. Who the hell knows how good their team is. Hopefully they suck so I can make it =) But all in all, I’m enjoying myself immensely and I just hope it gets better and better.

But here’s the log.

Saturday
07:00 - Oh crap, I have yet to shower. Sleep you ask? HAHAHA
07:40 - Showered, shaved, packed the car, and ready to go.
08:10 - Give a few hugs and head out in the car with my dad.
08:45 - Looks like we got here a little early. Eh, can’t hurt.
08:50 - Check in and get rid of these two gigantor bags holding all my possessions. If United loses them, so help me God
08:56 - For the second time in my life, the security agent looks through my bag and finds a weapon. Guess I forgot to unpack me knife. The first incident occurred when I was 8 and they took away my toy ray gun. I never saw that thing again.
09:05 - Dad comes back to the airport and picks up the knife for me. I really liked that knife. I wasn’t about to let it go the way of my ray gun.
09:10 - Successfully make it through security. The old ladies enjoyed making fun of me for my mistake.
09:16 - I’m already bored.
10:04 - Called to the ticket counter for my boarding pass. So far the itinerary is on track!
10:05 - The lady beside me is talking on her cell phone very loudly. About how heavy her period is!
10:10 - Thank God, we’re boarding.
10:13 - Yeah, I can’t move in this sardine can!
10:30 - Wheels up.
10:31 - Jesus Christ!
10:32 - Seriously, what the hell.
10:33 - JESUS CHRIST!
10:34 - OMFG WE ARE GOING TO FUCKING CRASH IF YOU DON’T STOP SHAKING THE DAMN PLANE!
10:35 - Better, but that was still by far the bumpiest takeoff out of GSP in the history of all takeoffs.
10:40 - Zzzzz.
11:30 - JESUS CHRIST ROUND II!!!
11:35 - What the Hell did I do to piss you off God? There has never been this much turbulence from GSP to IAD.
11:40 - Wheels down.
11:50 - As I’m exiting the plane, I see the pilot. I swear to God, if he was a day older than me, I will pay each and every reader of Shyzer $100. For the past hour, my life was in the hands of some kid who cannot fly through turbulence worth a crap.
11:55 - Get on the “people herder” to take me to the other terminal.
11:56 - There’s an airline called Ethiopian Air. Uhhh, no thanks.
12:01 - Receive phone call from guy interested in my apartment. Fingers crossed, he’ll take the place. He sounded pretty cool to boot.
12:48 - Just got off the phone after possibly the weirdest, most random 26-minute conversation with Jules. Just the way I like it.
13:02 - Hear on CNN that Howard Dean was elected to become the new DNP chairman. Thank God. That man should be our President right now, but I digress.
13:14 - No seriously, I’m bored and tired.
13:39 - My mom was supposed to meet me here in the airport for lunch 39 minutes ago. She’s just now leaving the house, an hour away. I called her to see where she was and the first thing she said was “I’m on my way, but I have bigger news. The 5:00 flight was cancelled, so now you’re screwed! Good luck!” Itinerary’s approximate lifespan: only 5 hours. Well this trip finally just got a little interesting.
13:40 - I love these new CNN commercials. I just saw the one with Wolf Blitzer. Great stuff. See, whoever came up with those would avoid the “Death Button.”
13:41 - VICTORY IS MINE! Just saw that commercial too.
15:11 - Apparently I fell asleep because I was just awoken by my mom laughing at the sight of me sprawled out in the airport sleeping.
15:19 - We run into a friend of my mom’s named Stacy, who is a ticket agent. He shows us that my 22nd birthday last week bumped me from an 8A rank to an 8B. Translation for all you non-frequent fliers out there is that I now went from 3rd on the Space Available List to 19th. I shit you not.
15:31 - Okay, here’s the plan. I try for IAD-LAX. If I don’t make it, I go to BOS, spend the night there, fly BOS-SFX-SYD and then get my luggage sent from LAX to meet me.
15:55 - Mom and I depart, hopefully for the last time for the next few months (I’m not being mean, I just don’t want to have to see her in Boston, because that would mean I didn’t get to this flight!)
16:20 - Due to my unexpected demotion in rank, I doubt I’ll make this flight. Damn it.
16:24 - Stacy calls the ticket agent working the LAX gate and guess what… THEY’RE BEST FRIENDS! Suddenly, I’ve gone from no seat to seat 8D, which is Economy Plus. Wow. Thank the Lords of Cobol.
16:40 - My seat is not only an aisle seat, but it has no seats in front of it and has as much legroom as I could ever use.
16:50 - Wheels up.
17:00 - Zzzzzz.
18:53 - Woken up for dinner. Normally I just pick at these things, this time I devour it.
19:04 - I wish something funny or interesting would happen so I could put it in here. So far, I got nothing.
19:34 - I just checked the Hemisphere magazine to see what movie is showing on the way to Sydney. They’re showing three. Just how damn long is that flight?!
19:35 - Start writing by hand a post for Shyzer.
19:46 - Have to stop writing because my hand gets tired. Wow, my “in class essay speed writing without cramping my hand” skill has seriously deteriorated.
21:04 - This NBC in-flight crap really sucks. I mean, really sucks.
21:05 - How much longer is this freaking flight?!
21:10 - There’s a young lady sitting next to me that keep bending over to mess around with her bag and/or shoes and every time she does, her thong practically rides up to shoulder blades. I’m not complaining though.
21:23 - 45 minutes until we’re there……….
22:10 - Wheels flippin’ down.
22:37 - Okay, I made it over to the International Gates, found the Sydney ones, and decided that the line was too damn long to stand in. I’ll wait a few minutes.
22:59 - I’m told no SA’s are being taken because of weight restrictions. I don’t trust the ticket agent, so I go to another one.
23:15 - I might have a seat on this plane…but wait…
23:20 - I have a problem with my VISA! Of course! In fact, I expect nothing less from myself! However, this Aussie chick is not only extremely nice to me, but she calls Australia and tells them to fix the problem for me. Then she and I make fun of her American counterparts who totally blew me and my problem off!
23:30 - VISA problems cleared. Apparently I put the wrong birth date for myself on the application. Whoops.
23:40 - There’s only 1 seat left with 9 people ahead of me. Wonder-fucking-ful!
23:44 - Oh you’ve got to be shitting me. That was such a mean trick. I SOMEHOW GOT THE SEAT! Everybody in front of me turned it down because they wither had more than one person in their party or they had left!
23:46 - I’m in BUSINESS CLASS! The seats are like freaking palaces!
24:15 - Wheels up!

Sunday

02:20 - Ladder 49 is by far the best movie I’ve ever seen during a flight. I’m on the verge of bawling here.
02:21 - Oh yeah, they just served me fresh salmon that was some of the best I’ve ever had. And it was the appetizer! Oh how I love business class =) The chicken dinner was delicious and the cake? Heavenly.
02:29 - I feel like royalty up here.
11:36 - Just woke up from my sleep. Did I mention the seats up here recline all the way into beds?! Yeah, that’s a nice touch.
11:40 - God, I’m almost here.
12:15 - Breakfast of fruit, Danish, and um, something else that I forgot to write down.
13:16 - I’m watching the sun rise over the ocean. I’m already loving this country.
13:56 - Okay, when you are flying internationally and in Business class, each seat has their own TV. One of the channels is a map of the flight you are on and it tells you the speed you are traveling, etc. I was just looking at the map and the name of the city south of Sydney is Wollongong. I laughed for 10 minutes after seeing that.
14:08 - Almost there…
14:17 - The view is beautiful.
14:19 - Wheels down.
14:20 - That was the smoothest landing in the history of aviation landings. The pilot needs to go teach that kid who flew me to D.C. a thing or two.
14:21 - I now set my watch forward 16 hours =)
14:33 - I always let everybody else get off the plane before myself. It’s habit. In doing so on this flight, I got plenty of “It must have been nice sitting up here” looks. It was hilarious.
14:41 - I realize its Monday here. What the hell happened to my Sunday?!

Okay, I could just make up some times to go with the stuff I’m about to type, but I’ll be honest. I put away my notebook and stopped noting the times because it got really hard for me to lug all my luggage and whatnot around. So, instead I’ll type everything that happened here and let you read it like a normal post. Like I said, I got in around 14:40 and proceeded to go through Customs, or the Australian version thereof. After about a 40 minute wait, I made it through alright and walked into the baggage area to claim my bags. The only problem was that after about another 40 minutes, I realized they weren’t there. I found an agent and made a lost baggage claim and realized I had no idea what to do. I sat down for a few minutes to think and remembered that there was supposed to be another flight leaving LA for Sydney two hours after my flight. Since I got the very last seat on my flight and boarded practically as they closed the door, I realized that my luggage probably hadn’t been placed on since they saw I was 9th on the list and assumed that I wouldn’t make the flight. I crossed my fingers and prayed that they threw my luggage on the next flight once they saw that I had actually made the first one and decided to wait around the airport for the next flight to land. My flight had landed around 0600 Zulu (local) time and so I reasoned that the next flight would land at 0800. Add another hour for my luggage to not be claimed in the baggage area and another hour for it to make its way to United’s. So, I waited around for a few hours and at 10:00 I went up to the offices and viola, there were my bags. I loaded them up on a luggage cart and made my way down to the train station. I bought a ticket, grabbed a map, and went to wait. That’s where I realized just how heavy my bags were. I was about to have to lug these puppies by myself and let’s just say this. Today, a full 4 days later, my shoulders are still bruised and sore. So there’s a lesson for you all. And honestly, my room is bare and practically empty since I didn’t bring that much. Clothes just weigh a lot I guess.

Anyway, I boarded the train and made my way to Sydney Central, where I was going to have to get off and board another train to Newcastle. I got off, went to the Destination Screen, and saw this message next to Newcastle “Ask Station Attendant.” I found an employee wearing a blue shirt, asked him which train was going to Newcastle, and boarded the train on platform 8. I drug my entire luggage onboard, found a seat near the front, and passed out. The time was about 11:00 local. About 20 minutes later I awoke and just sat up for the view. That’s when I noticed I was the only person on the train. I looked at the name of the next station we passed and then looked at my map.

I was headed South.

I had no idea what to do, I was fairly exhausted, and so I just sat back and decided to get off at the next station it stopped at. By 11:45, we had yet to stop and I was getting worried. The train finally slowed around noon and I looked out to see “MAITSLAND TRAIN YARD” Oh great. I grew up with siblings who watched Thomas the Tank Engine and I knew what trains did in the train yard. They just sat there, going nowhere. Once the train stopped, I pulled out some food, had a little snack, and decided it was time to go find somebody. I found a door I could open, jumped out, and walked up to a group of extremely shocked workers who had just watched me dismount a supposedly empty train. I explained what happened, they all laughed, and two of them put their arms around me, led me back to the train, and told me that I was in luck. It was just here for refueling and they would be taking it back to Sydney in just a minute. I climbed back on board and when they did so as well, they invited me up front to sit in the conductor’s car for the ride back. I gladly accepted, if not just for the company, and we were off. Turns out one of them was a huge Cleveland Indians fan (I didn’t hold it against him). The view, being able to watch from up instead of looking sideways out a window, was amazing. We finally made it back to Sydney, the Indians guy personally escorted me to the correct train while making fun of all the blue-shirted employees that worked there since in his words they were all idiots, and I was off. It was close to 13:00 by this point and the train finally left at 13:16. I climbed onboard, found a seat, and looked out the window for the next three hours.

To make a long story a little bit shorter, I had no idea what station to get off at. I ended up riding the line until it ended, calling Newcastle, and riding it back towards Sydney for 10 minutes before getting off at the correct stop, Warabock. When I got off, I had no idea which direction to go in and trust me, once I take some pictures, you’ll understand. It looked like I was in the middle of nowhere. I went up to some other kids my age who were waiting for a train, asked for some directions, and they all pointed me in the right direction. I gathered my bags, rode the “lift” up, and began the 10 minute trek to campus. My bags were so heavy that I could only really travel 50 yards or so before stopping and after about 20 minutes, I was exhausted. It was already 17:00 and I knew that the school was closing up and that I had to get there as soon as possible. Enter my knight in shining armor, the Newcastle Security Car. He saw me struggling, pulled over, introduced himself as Edward, and offered to drive me into campus. Edward was freaking awesome, not only for his kindness, but for his story of Italy that I will have to share in a future post. He drove me around campus to all the buildings I needed to go to and sign in at and after making the stops, he dropped me off in front of my dorm and made sure there was somebody there to check me in. I went in, filled out the forms given to me by the “night” clerk, thanked Edward for his help, and made my way to my dorm room.

And so, at 17:30, 01:30 EST, I walked into my dorm room and smiled. I had finally made it.

I’ll try and upload my next post fairly soon (within a few days). I’ll stick to first impressions and whatnot with it. Until then!