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September 29, 2006
Please Note Shiny New Book
Look, over there under BEDFORD'S BOOKS, and behold! The new novel, HYDROGEN STEEL, in all its shiny glory. The link will take you to the catalogue page at EDGE, where you can read the blurb. Sadly there is not yet a sample chapter. You'll just have to take my word for it that it's "a top read!"
Posted by adrian at 08:53 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Trip Report Part 2: Everything is Big, and Loud
Michelle and I spent the next two days recovering from the ordeal of the journey. We found we were okay for the morning, but after about lunchtime local time we'd succumb to epic yawning fits and had to repair to the room for extended snoozing.
More worrying during this phase was another sort-of medical problem: the heels of my feet are prone to cracking. This would be helped if I'd only wear proper shoes, but alas I don't. My feet like to feel free to be who they want to be! Even now, as I write, I'm comfortably barefoot, and loving it. The thing is, every now and then, if you pursue a risky lifestyle like this, you can run into trouble: cracks appear in your heels. And if you're very unlucky, and happen to travel by air for, say, 25 hours, in very dry air (5% humidity in the cabin), the cracks can get a little carried away with themselves. Sure enough, by the second day of our stay in Anaheim, one of my feet sported a crack that felt like it was deep enough to expose bone. It wasn't, of course; it only felt that way. This led to much hopping, hobbling, limping--and wincing, swearing, and muttering. And lots of sitting around in the hotel's Starbucks, sipping cold beverages expensive enough to pay off a good chunk of Australia's national debt, watching the hotel population wax and wane.
The Pokemon World Championship folks left over the Monday and Tuesday. We never heard who won. For a while there, though, every flat surface around the hotel lobby (and we guessed in other parts of the place) sported very keen youngsters armed with cards having at each other, while worried parents hovered nearby (but not *too* nearby). Slowly these kids were replaced with convention goers. They tended to be older, less visibly healthy, sported t-shirts from other conventions--and prone to loud conversations. Not all, by any means. But there were some very loud folks who wouldn't shut up, and you could hear them everywhere. The grinding headache ground on.
Tuesday afternoon congoers could rock up to the adjacent convention centre for early registration, and avoid a lot of queueing. We showed up, got our convention membership packets, and we went "ooooh!" and "aaaah!" over the fabulousness within. The LA Con IV souvenir book was a beautiful, hefty thing to behold. Mmmm, lots to read.
We went over to the t-shirt vendor, and snaffled up a couple of spiffy con shirts. While waiting in line chatting, a very nice older lady nearby heard our accents and said hello, said her name was "Gay", that she and her hubby Joe had spent a lot of time in Australia and just loved it. We're happily chatting, and then her hubby Joe comes over and Gay introduces us: it's Joe Haldeman, awesome writer guy. Gobsmacked, but trying to be cool about it, I squeak out, "Pleased to meet you, Mr Haldeman," while my world quietly spins off its axis.
Later, upstairs at Program Operations, I collected a new membership badge, which came with all my program duties printed neatly on the back. I was richly impressed. The list of items was intimidating: I was down for a lot of stuff.
Meanwhile, the single impression that Michelle and I could not stop thinking about during this entire afternoon was sheer astonishment at the sheer and spectacular immensity of the convention centre. So big you swear you're crossing three time zones just walking from one end to the other. So big you eye off those folks who have scored electric mobility scooters to help them get around, and you feel murderous jealousy. So big there was a whole, other huge convention event tucked away over at the distant other end of the place, so far away that you never saw any of those people or what they might be up to (it was a garden expo thingy). And it was so big that, when you've got a badly cracked open foot, walking around its cyclopean expanse makes you very tired and sore indeed. The voice of your mother in your head, telling you that if you'd only wear proper shoes you'd never have this problem, does not help.
That evening, as we sat once again in the lounge of the hotel Starbucks, watching folks go by, I was wondering if Publisher Brian and his wife Anita had arrived yet. I knew they were due to arrive that day, and I knew (after asking at registration) that they had indeed registered. I contemplated trying to look them up at their hotel (they were at the Marriott, across the street)--when, to our great surprise, we spotted Anita crossing the Hilton lobby at speed. We waved, grinned, and she spotted us, practically exploded with happiness at seeing us (you want to stand well clear of the blast radius), and came over. This was the first time Michelle and I had seen Anita since Noreascon 4 in Boston two years earlier. We chatted, caught up--and then Anita took us upstairs to the hotel's Executive Level. Turns out she and Brian had booked rooms in both the HIlton and the Anaheim, just in case, for complicated reasons. Nice rooms, too. As part of their deal, they got access to this Executive Lounge where free munchies and beverages and really comfy sofas await the privileged, and you can sit and stare dreamily out the enormous floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows at the twinkly nighttime landscape beyond. If we'd waited long enough, we would have been able to see the nightly fireworkss display at Disneyland (which is just next door, and you can plainly see it from this vantage point). I should point out that this fireworks show each night, from such close range, is INCREDIBLY LOUD, LIKE ARTILLERY GOING OFF.
It turned out that if we turned up to this Executive Lounge in the morning, and signed in as guests of Brian and Anita, we could enjoy all the fancy facilities, including free breakfast, as much as we wanted. This is the kind of thing that makes ordinary civilians like Michelle and me very suspicious and wary. Surely if we actually tried this we'd get busted and bad things would ensue. But, as it turned out, you totally could do what Anita said and all was cool.
This was just as well, bank-balance-wise. Breakfast at the hotel restaurant was expensive. To be fair, however, you got a *lot* of breakfast for the price. In fact, you got what looked and felt like about three people's breakfast, *each*! Our first morning, not knowing what to expect, Michelle ordered the innocuous-seeming omelette dish. The gigantic yellow monster on a plate the size of a cycling velodrome that turned up looked less like something to eat than like a bright yellow (with orange flecks) Ayers Rock. Michelle tackled the challenge, and pronounced it was pretty good, but still had to leave at least half. There was also toast, and "breakfast potatoes" and all manner of side dishes. For my part, I'd ordered bacon and eggs, with a sausage. The result, when it appeared on a similarly epic plate, was, again, way too much food. Which didn't stop me eating it all and enjoying it, but it did give me pause at the prospect of eating here each day. By the time you factor in the price of the meal, the extras, the sales tax, the tip, we wound up paying almost US$40--just for breakfast!
Meanwhile, every time we saw a TV set (and we saw lots), no matter what was on, the only topic the media were talking about was the Jon-Benet Killer Guy, and (this part was the subtext) Isn't He a Great Big Freak! Even after it was plainly demonstrated that he could not possibly have done the crime, he was *still* all over the TV news, looking creepy and blank and weird. The story stopped being, "This is the guy who we think did it," to, "He's just weird and we think it's creepy/fascinating."
Anyway, onward. Next day, Wednesday, the convention was starting. Excitement mounted. I was looking forward to seeing Brian and Anita again, and meeting some of the other EDGE authors who were going to be there--and I was starting to panic at the prospect of my one panel for the day, the "Mix and Match Writing Challenge". Little did I know, as I curled up that night, lulled to sleep by the comatose offerings of local radio, that this panel item would prove even more alarming and scary than I thought!
Posted by adrian at 08:22 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
September 26, 2006
Trip Report Part 1: Getting There is None of the Fun
I should have known it would be a bad trip when, even as we sat in the cavernous emptiness of Perth Airport's International Terminal at 4am, waiting for the Singapore Airlines staff to open the check-in counter, the headache was already grinding away in the front of my head.
By the time we reached the stifling humidity of Singapore, riding countless travelators to get around, and with four hours to kill, the headache was one bad mofo. I suggested to Michelle that we get some painkillers. Finding a shop in Changi Airport's extensive mall area proved more of a challenge than we expected, but find one we did, and got a packet of Panadol paracetamol. Panadol is a common brand of painkillers in Australia, and, in a place where all major signs are in three languages (English, Chinese and Singaporean), familiarity is a comforting thing. I popped two Panadols and waited for the pain to settle down to a dull roar.
At length we piled onto the flight that would take us from Singapore to Los Angeles, on which we had seats in the "Executive Economy" section up the back of the plane. Executive Economy is like a kind of upgraded economy class, where you get more leg-room, the seats are wider, and there are only two seats abreast--which means no third person sitting next to you who wants to get up and go to the loo in the middle of the night, or who insists on reading a broadsheet newspaper in the fully unfolded mode. I have to say that if you're like me, ie, calamitously overweight, the Executive Economy deal is absolutely worth it. It did nothing for the headache, but it prevented 80% of all the other aches that go with being stuck in regular economy class for more than 12 hours.
I did wonder, during the 16-hour flight, why I couldn't get any damn sleep. God knows I was tired enough. Oh well, I thought, I'll check out the inflight entertainment options, of which the most novel was the "Learn a Language" tutorial, where you get a choice of a lot of different (mostly Asian) languages. I picked Mandarin Chinese, which I'd always thought looked very interesting. Once you pick the language, you get a choice of four options, where you can choose from lessons in numbers, calendar stuff, simple words, and basic phrases and dialogues.
This was all fascinating. The numbers 1-10 were straightforward enough, and then it turned out that numbers higher than 10 were straightforward combinations of the basic ten numbers, pausing only to provide different prefixes once you hit 100, 1000, and upwards. Once you pass all the lessons and activities for this category, you then get to play a species of Space Invaders in which you get prompted with a given number in words, and have to shoot down an invading flying saucer with the matching number in digits written on the side (there are several such saucers going at once, so aim is important). I did awesomely well at this, and went on to do just as well with basic words, days and months--and only came a cropper when I tried to tackle the simple dialogues, which were way more complex than my achy head could manage.
By the time we reached LA the headache was, if anything, worse than ever, and now I was also a bit dizzy and woozy, feeling very out of sorts. Once we cleared Customs and Immigration and emerged into the main lobby area, Michelle fetched me some water and I took two more of those Panadol tablets from Singapore.
We had to get to Anaheim. It turns out that Anaheim is almost an hour away from LA. We found a shuttle bus service, bundled aboard, and, even though I wasn't feeling at all well, set off--only to stop twice more to pick up two other passengers--boon companions Kenny and Alan, who also happened to be going to LA Con IV.
At length, we left LAX and entered traffic, tooling along the bumpy roads. While we all chatted happily, I started to get a bit concerned. That dizzy, woozy feeling I already had was worsening, and starting to turn into motion sickness. This was a disaster. Once you're on the freeway in LA, it's very hard to get off again; exit points are few and far between. You can't just pull over onto the side of the road if you need to. Worse, I knew I didn't have anything on me, or in either of our carry-on bags, that I could use as a barf-bag if I needed to. Hmm. Nothing like the kind of escalating panic you feel as you start to contemplate these issues to make your existing feelings of swirling illness even worse. And at this point, we were barely even halfway there. Could I hold out? I've been plagued with motion-sickness my whole life, and one of the worst things about it is that it doesn't always happen: most times I travel just fine. But sometimes, particularly on bumpy roads, things can go pear-shaped.
Finally I had no choice but to ask the driver to find some way off the freeway, and he got to work navigating across several lanes of traffic into an exit lane. Meanwhile I was quietly freaking out. The dry heaves kicked in, and I knew I was pretty much done for: it would not be long before the dry heaves turned into the main event--and we were still nowhere near an exit point.
By the time the driver found an exit point, it was, as we say in Australia, "on for young and old": with both hands clamped so tight across my mouth and nose it was like they were welded in place, I'd started actually vomiting. Fortunately, because I hadn't eaten anything on the flight, there was nothing to hurl, and I could just barely contain it.
The driver found an off-ramp and we left the freeway. I heaved again and this time, despite my best efforts--well, you get the idea. Eventually we were parked in front of a liquor store, and I was doing my best to unload into a garden bed. Kenny and Alan took off into the liquor store to get some water. Michelle stayed with me. The driver, a good guy who could not have been more sympathetic, looked after me, too. I felt wretched. Wow, what an arrival!
For the rest of the trip I sat up front with the driver, this time armed with a plastic shopping bag, just in case--and I did need it. I sat slumped against the window, wanting to die, praying I could keep from heaving again. At some point I saw a sign indicating we were in the City of Anaheim, and suddenly there were other signs promoting Disneyland everywhere. Then, even though we were nearly there, I lost it again. The bag helped, but not enough. The driver that night would have some cleaning to do, and I felt thoroughly awful about that. Once he delivered us to the hotel, and I staggered out, I asked Michelle to give the driver a huge tip. Meanwhile, my shirt and pants were a mess. Before we went inside I grabbed a fresh shirt from one of the suitcases and (since it was now nearly 10pm), went somewhere dark and changed. Alan and Kenny said they'd catch up with us later, and the driver made sure I was going to be okay before leaving.
Then we went inside the hotel. The very first thing we saw, as we entered the Anaheim Hilton, was a gigantic yellow inflatable Pikachu the size of a plane hanging in the hotel lobby. It turned out the hotel was at that point hosting the World Pokemon Championship. The place was crawling with kids and their parents. That huge Pikachu, when you're feeling sick and out of sorts, and achy, and embarrassed, was really really weird and freaky.
Michelle parked me somewhere comfortable while she went to check in. That sorted out, we headed upstairs to our room. Finding our room took some doing, but we managed. I ducked into the shower. I no longer felt sick, but I did feel shaky, and still woozy/dizzy, like I might fall over at any moment. The shower was terrifying, not because of the heat or the water pressure, but just because I thought I was going to topple over and break my stupid neck at any moment.
That all taken care of without having come a cropper, I joined Michelle back in the room, where she had made a curious discovery: those Panadol painkillers we picked up in Singapore turned out to contain caffeine. In fact, each tablet contained as much caffeine as a regular cup of espresso-type coffee. I've been off caffeine now for over a year; it was one of the things I gave up in the course of trying to figure out why I kept getting headaches. Even though it definitely looked like caffeine wasn't the problem, my blood pressure improved, so I've stayed on the decaf ever since.
I'd had a total of *four* of those tablets within the previous 16 hours. Michelle and I were shocked out of our minds. Once, some months back, I accidentally had a fully caffeinated "long macchiato", a coffee featuring two shots of espresso and a dash of steamed milk. I was sick as a dog for two days, feeling shaky, dizzy, and very very hyper. "What the hell is caffeine doing in painkillers?" we said, staring at the treacherous box. We since found out that caffeine in painkillers is actually quite common in North America; it's just not common in Australia.
In any case, we had arrived. We could catch our breath, relax, and watch local TV--the guy who falsely confessed to killing Jon-Benet Ramsay had just arrived at LAX from Thailand--and that was as bizarre in its way as the humongous Pikachu downstairs had been.
That was Sunday night. The convention was due to start on Wednesday. And, despite everything, we couldn't wait.
Posted by adrian at 08:20 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
September 11, 2006
Placeholder Post
Hi folks--
Michelle and I are back from LA Con IV. It was an astonishing, memorable trip for us both, and I plan on writing about it, but not until next week. Michelle and I are on holiday, recovering from the trip, and just enjoying each other's company.
More soon. Stay tuned.
Posted by adrian at 07:19 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack