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I have found driving in Australia to be fundamentally somewhat different from driving in California. Beyond the obvious driving on the left side of the road thing.
In California, on highways with two or more lanes in each direction, such as The Five (California's main North-South artery) for most of its length, on paper the fast (left) lane is for passing only. I hear in other states they actually enforce this and people abide it and I assume all aspects of life are therefore better in these states and people wake up with a smile plastered to their face every day as a consequence. However, that is not the case in California. In California people get in the "fast" lane and sit there. Even if they are going the speed limit or even less. They expect slower moving cars in front of them to move to the slow lane to let them by and generally enforce this by tailgating, honking, light flashing, and/or generally being obnoxious and probably swearing a lot in the confines of their own car for the assumed benefit of their target. Long queus of cars form in the fast lane when someone won't move over, possibly because said front car driver is saying to himself "well I'm going the speed limit gosh dang it so I'm not getting out of the way."
And that's another thing. The speed limit. Even on paper the speed limit is basically a suggestion, though I don't think they explicitly say you can go faster. Generally on the 5 the flow of traffic is around 80mph even when the speed limit is 65. But because everyone has a different interpretation of how much leeway they have, you are always passing and being passed.
Now in contrast, in Australia the speed limit seems to be almost always 100kph, aka 62mph in the One True System. This speed seems a bit slow on the highways, and crazy fast on the narrow two lane farm roads winding through the gum forest. And on those narrow farm roads people generally DO go zipping around at 62mph, which frankly terrifies me. But on the major highways... people STILL go exactly 100kph. You see, the thing is, in Australia they apparently enforce a strict interpretation of their speed limits. I've heard of people getting ticketed for going 102. So everyone gets on the road, and get up to exactly 100 and sits there right on it. As a result, you aren't passed nor do you pass anyone else generally once you get going, the cars just move along the highway in line like they're on a conveyor belt.
And generally everyone does stay in the slow lane util they're passing, but I found another thing happening. I am often turning on to the highway from small farm roads, so I need to quickly accelerate to 100 as cars are zipping by. So as not to impede everyone else, I found myself moving immediately to the fast lane (which I started doing after seeing other people doing it), until I get to 100 and THEN I move into the slow lane and move along with everyone else. I think other people do this too. Weird how the de facto use of lanes doesn't stay as intended.
Driving Hell!
May. 23rd, 2016 09:13 pmOkay following relatively quickly on last entry, I found where I was on the map. The pin is dropped in the town we spent the night, the place where we walked around a lot was Bundibugyo. Note Kesese in the south of this map, Fort Portal where the major highways all intersect, and the border with Congo just by Nyahuka.
Thursday, November 5th, Day 33, Nyahuka, Western Uganda - Woke up in a little hotel last entry, I found where I was by the Uganda/Congo border, western Uganda, feeling marginally better. This day the plan was just to drive back to Kampala, 243 miles east. Google maps optimistically estimates it as a 6 hour drive but of course it was more like 12, with at least two of those hours being slogging through the Kampala traffic.
Once again we stopped to eat in Kampala at the little restaurant I think I've been compelled to mention every time (honestly though food this good is pretty rare in central Africa). I had a crocodile burger, which tasted kind of like a cross between shark and chicken. I'm convinced now that it would make a really good teriyaki burger. Also, it occurred to me that there's actually crocodile farmers out there, how hard core is that??
The rest of the drive was relatively uneventful. Lots of gently undulating Ugandan countryside, covered in banana plantations. At one point there were a lot of people gathering things in the grass by the road and Alex told me they were people gathering grasshoppers to eat. I remember scrambling for my phone to jot this down in my notes lest I forget .. but fortunately that scramble to write it down itself engraved it in my memory.
We arrived in Kampala just at twilight, and the hotel I was trying to get to was unfortunately on the far side of the city ("the Forest Cottages"), so we were making extremely slow progress. An hour later it was completely dark and we were still miles away. It was now that Alex, who I believe is in his fifties, asked me if I could drive, since he couldn't see very well in the dark. Not without trepidation I agreed to do so.
Now let me lay this out for you. It was dark. There were no street lights. Pedestrians in dark clothing (and, um, having dark skin) were constantly crossing the road willy nilly. There was thick vehicular traffic, the roads in this area being one lane each way. It was RAINING and Alex's windshield wipers weren't great, so the uncoming cars made a terrible glare on the window. The road was full of potholes sometimes so big you HAD to go around them, and/or sometimes there's just be an open ditch on the side of the road. On top of all this they drive on the left side of the road, contrary to what I was accustomed to. Alex's car was manual transmission, which I'm adept at when I'm shifting with my right hand, but the left-hand-driving leaves you shifting with your left hand and breaks your muscle memory ability to shift without thinking. And on top of all this the motorbike taxis, boda-bodas, are zipping in and out of traffic, the ones whom you will recall I mentioned are often former soldiers with probable severe psychological damage, and Alex casually mentions to me to be careful not to hit any of them because even if it's totally their fault they'll all swarm me if I do. Gee thanks. No stress.
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! I hadn't been to this hotel before, and my phone battery was on its very last legs. So when I had a moment to pull over I'd turn my phone on, study the map, and then turn it off again ... until we appeared to be lost again.
Altogether I think I was driving for about forty minutes of insane hell. We drove past the hotel turnoff, realized the error and came back that way and passed it again, then we parked and Alex went exploring on foot until he found it. Even with him knowing exactly where it was then it was still really hard to find in the rain and darkness!
Alex left his car there and took a boda-boda home so he wouldn't have to go back into driving hell. The hotel, as it happened, was on a nice spacious grounds with lots of trees, hence the "forest cottages," name. My room was relatively cheap but really small, in conversation with another guest I came to believe that they have a lot of rooms for that same rate, most of which are much bigger, but I think I got the very last room they had.
At dinner in the hotel restaurant there was a big group speaking Danish, which I can recognize as a language I can almost but not quite understand, through my Swedish. They turned out to be a Danish church based charity called Karitas, after dinner I had a good long chat with one of them, a girl I at first thought was a local but then she proved to speak fluent Danish -- I guess she was a Ugandan adopted into Denmark at a young age.
I'll keep this short and sweet, next entry, another wild goose chase trying to get to the US Embassy on time for a meeting! And then I might be able to wrap up this whole trip in one or two entries after that!! Finally!
The Second Annual1 Procrastinator's Choice Award - Fall 2005
This finals week I actually spent a significant amount of time reading about the so-called barbarian tribes which overran the Roman Empire in the 5th Century -- The Goths (Visigoths sacked Rome in 410 AD, Ostrogoths captured all of Italy in 493 AD), Vandals (sacked Rome for two weeks in 455 AD), Huns (despite modern misconceptions, have absolutely no relation to modern Germans or the geographic area of modern Germany), Alans (started out north-east of the Black Sea, ended up migrating down through Spain and setting up a kingdom in North Africa with the Vandals), etc. It has always fascinated me how history normally treats these civilizations like non-people with non-governments -- who just happen to appear out of nowhere when they trouble a more noteworthy civilization. The idea of the collapse of the Roman Empire is intriguing as well: an empire thought to be the be all end all of civilization, what was it like to experience its collapse?
So yeah, I spent time studying these people when I had no reason to, and in fact should have been doing other things. I think one of my major regrets with college is that I never took any classes relating to this period, despite the fact that its fascinated me all my life (from elementry school till I got excited about diplomacy in 9th grade I wanted to become an archeologist).
My other regret is that I didn't manage to go abroad )=
Anyway, in other finals week procrastination news: last Fall quarter finals week I entertained myself by watching the epic drama fly between SaulSugarman and others on the Daviswiki. This finals week I did not pay attention at all as an epic battle raged on Daviswiki between SaulSugarman and others on Daviswiki. In fact I just recently became aware of it and haven't had the appetite to try to scrutinize whats going on, but it appears Saul is trying to say that Ikea is the incarnation of evil. What caught my attention was the unusual comment "Dude, your ass must be SORE after pulling so much untruth out of it." which someone had made to Saul regarding his facts.
Kitten-Themed Photo Essay of the Day
Bailey and I drove down back down to OC today.
( a few more )
Bailey seriously sat on my shoulder like that 98% of the trip. He was amazingly well-behaved. Originally I was afraid it would be tedious driving down with mr catface, but in the future I think I'd rather have him keeping me company for the drive than not. We're like, Best Friends Forever now.
Previously on Emosnail
04-12-12: Final Throes - I need a ride back to OC after finals week ends. Also I have $3.77 in my bank account. I've really moved up in the world since then: a year later I'm driving my mercedes home with my awesome co-pilot and I totally have like $100 in my bank account.
04-12-13: The UCD Nuremburg Trials - The then-members of the ASUCD Elections Committee are tried before the Campus Judicial Board and utterly destroyed by the arguments of the Orwellian candidates. The Orwellian plaintiffs are now the Elections Committee.
Year Ago Last Thursday: Shoot the Moon - Police respond to calls regarding a suspicious individual on campus. Arriving on the scene, they are shot at by the individual in question, return fire. Suspect dies on the scene with ten gunshot wounds, no officers are harmed. This is the first shooting death at UC Davis. This is the first officer related death at UC Davis. At the time it wasn't clear what caused the incident. It appears the Aggie wrote a follow-up article on it, but because the Aggie changed servers and broke all their links, it would take some searching to find.
ALSO, an artistic rendering of the previous day's elections committee trial, and an anonymous poster gives me the crushing advice to "get a life." I think I'm still recovering from that one. ALSO, pictures from my trip down to UCLA.
Year Ago Last Sunday: Procrastinatory Morass - The aforementioned Procrastinator's Choice Awards 2004 -- Awarded to Daviswiki.org. Also, we review some historic murdurous violence that occured in Davis, and in conjunction with others placed a $6 reward for anyone that can determine which campus restroom was the site of a violent murder. This reward was later nullified by another editor who thought it in poor taste, and we didn't push the issue. I'd still give $6 to know though.
Year Ago Today: Breaking News:
(1) Eric Sanchez Announced as New ASUCD Advisor - Chosen by an expert panel of Student Focus and SS members (+ token Leadite member Adam Barr), he'd last appx 2/3rds of a year. After a short time of trouble, new ASUCD Advisor Michael Tucker now advises a Senate with only a small focite minority.
(2) On the Deleterious Behaviour of the Elections Committee - The official opinions of the Campus Judicial Board are publicized via Emosnail. They had earlier been posted on the wall on the Third Floor but were almost immediately removed by some unknown individual. See also, a funny comment string to the entry.
20 of 30 - Phosting It
Jun. 20th, 2005 11:52 pm So yeah, I left Davis around 6pm yesterday (Sunday), my and my two little girls, and I come rolling in here about 26 hours later with the addition of some pond water, some polywogs, a whole bunch of frogs, and a woman old enough to be my mother!!
Okay so it was my mother. And by two little girls I mean the rats Leia and Delilah. When I left I was worried they'd be too hot so I put a bunch of icecubes in their cage with them. By the time I stopped at Merced for In-N-Out I was worried they'd be too cold, but upon examination they had piled all the icecubes into one pile in the corner of their cage, crafty girls!
I took the 99 instead of the Five, because there are more towns along it and I figured there was a pretty good chance my car would explode. About two hours out I realized the first thing I'd forgotten: the two bottles of wine made by Coleman that I was going to give to my parents. Later I'd realize I forgot my flipflops as well (rainbows!) )=
Anyway I think it was about 1am when I finally reached the gate into Tweedy, but then I had to deal with a riddle of sorts. The key to the gate was "locked with a combination lock to a chain around a post -- it'll be obvious," so in the moonlight I searched the base of every pole until finally I found out with a lock and chain. Fifteen minutes of fiddling with the combination lock later I finally got that open and managed to get through the gate. Finally the last part of the quest was before me, the part I'd been dreading the entire way: the final ascension up to the cabin.
On the first attempt the car began sliding backwards and stalled. Several attempts to restart it ended in stalling and sliding further backwards. As there was a deep rut behind me (the road curved at that point on the steep hill), if this could continue the car could end up in very precarious straights indeed. Finally I tried one last time, giving the engine a mighty wallop of gas, and successfully charged up the hill.
Later I was told it was probably a good thing I didn't try to walk in from the gate, as there are mountain lions about.
The next day we (maternal grandparents, mother, myself) bollocksed about for awhile. Myself and mother went down to the lake, where there were millions of little frogs. Then we saw a 3 and a half foot gopher snake, which mother proceeded to pick up by the tail like that Australian guy (Crickey!). We waited around to avoid coming back through LA during rush hour traffic, and then returned. As mentioned, mother had decided to bring back some polywogs and frogs.
This evening I stopped by Diedrichs Coffee and found Villem, and friends from HS, Russel Renzas and Kerry Wilcox.
Also the demolition of the wooden structure at Little Big People Park in Davis began today. Inexorably society continues to move from interesting and unique things to prefabricated plastic. )=
Previously on Emosnail
Two Years Ago Today: Leaving Apt for First Time in Week - hung out with Ben and Garian
Year Ago Today: 6, 7 & 8 of 30 - 11 Hours on Amtrak, Controversial Political Statement, & Interviewing ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
shid - "The Sexual Confessions of Shid W."
17 of 30 - the Dark Side of Driving
Jun. 17th, 2005 10:15 pm So ostensibly I'll be driving down to so-cal tomorrow. RandMcNally.com tells me its a seven hour, five minute drive. I've driven this route many a time now. Its a long monotonous drive down The Five, interrupted only by my car traditionally breaking down in Coalinga and the prospect of In-N-Out in Kettleman City. This drive gives one ample time to think. To think about things like.. whats wrong with all the other drivers.
It seems there is a major school of thought on driving that is not in keeping with the actual legal directives on driving behaviour. This school of thought proposes a world where all drivers act selfishly and foolishly while in their cars, and thus in aggregate all slow eachother down. It is the dark side of driving behaviour. I will try to illuminate the subject. You may well be an adherent and you don't even know.
The following are the basic tenets of the dark side of driving:
(1) Where there are two lanes per direction of traffic, as is the case with most of The Five through the central valley, one will always drive on the LEFT (inner) side rather than the right. This not infrequently creates the situation where the left side ("fast lane") of a road is going significantly slower than the lanes to its right, but all these drivers have it set in their head that they drive on the left. The only reason in their opinion one should leave the innermost lane is:
(2) the procedure for passing, since one presumably won't have any lanes on ones left, is rather that one should realize when there is a car behind them going faster than them and move over to the right so that they may successfully pass on the left;
(3) in order to alert the car ahead of oneself that they should let one pass, one will either ride up super close behind the offending vehicle, or perhaps turn on their brights.
Needless to say, I don't agree that this is an advisable driving system. Passing can occur much more successfully if it's the upcoming car that changes lanes for the experience rather than the lead car. The lead car is likely not to notice the need for a maneuver in a time efficient manner, and because a lot of these people have it in their head that they really are travelling faster than the car coming up behind them and they needn't let them pass.
And of course, the methods frequently employed to annoy the forward vehicle into changing lanes are unsafe. Really there is no reason to ever get dangerously close behind another vehicle (unless I dunno, you're all trying to outrace a tsunami).
The better system. The correct and advisable system, is that you remain on the right side of the road whenever possible unless you see that you are about to overtake the car in front of you and the lane to your left is going faster. What if the lane to your right is going faster? you ask. Well then why aren't you in it!? This once lead nibot to claim I was passing a car on the right. nibot is an ogre.
The other day I walk into local taquaria Guadalajara with Kristy and we find codetoad and another young man there. The other guy greets me with "how can you believe in justice without a God?" and later introduces himself as "the king of livejournal, 1tophi."
My first thought of course is that one can't be the king of livejournal if one hasn't even attempted to write 30 entries in the month of June.
But its okay because I later learned that he and codetoad had had this adventure that evening.
Picture of the Day
Another of Kristy's pictures. She named these cats Joli & Angelina
Previously on Emosnail
Two Years Ago Today: "I Think I'm in Hell" - yeah I'm not fond of summer in Davis
Year Ago Today: Blogology II & III - 30 in 30 2004 gets going with two entries on the second day, both about Blogology. Hey it was new and exciting to me, and I had to set forth to my readers the brave new philosophies which 30 in 30 stands for. Bold and spicy philosophies.
nibot would have you believe that half my entries were "meta" posts, but in fact there were only four.
