GALFROMDOWNUNDER UPOVER

The view from my homestay in Kaneohe, Oahu First, a mini movie review ... I'VE JUST crawled out from under a crocheted cushion after 'viewing' the Wachowski Bros (Matrix) 1996 movie, '"Bound." I don't think I'll sleep tonight, I'll need a stun gun and a Valium to close my peepers... which were closed for probably 60% of the movie. Extreme suspense, violence, Joe-Pesci-at-his-damndest dialog, a severed digit (or ten) thanks to a pair of garden clippers, plus a rather topical twist: a lesbian couple star as the glam Bonnie and Clyde. Topical, because I've just seen "Brokeback Mountain", this year's darling gay western flick. 'Bound' has terrific acting and plotting, highly recommended. Warning: it contains some serious Vaseline-covered lens action. I'm now holed up in Oahu, via the Big Island, Kaui and Maui, as the guest of Bike Friday customers Ralph and Bernice. Ralph is the Bike Friday Club of Hawaii leade

This story originally appeared on the Bike Friday website (now on the Internet Archive) MOVIE CLIPS UDPATE Dec 2006: See this interview on ... YouTube - click on the movie below. “I MAKE an instrument for the future, but alas, in the present,” laments David Hannauer, pulling various egg-shaped pieces of clay from their protective socks. Laid out before me is a small ensemble of his vast ocarina collection, “small egg-shaped wind instruments with a mouthpiece and holes for the fingers”, according to my laptop dictionary. All but two are the careful handiwork of David himself, who dreams of the day he can get enough people interested in this quirky, glorified whistle to form an ocarina “choir”. David hails from a family of musicians – he was a child cellist, his mother is a volinist, his sister plays with the Brooklyn Philharmonic orchestra and his dad sings. Happy birthdays and Grace at the Hannauer house were always rendered in pitch-perfect six part harmony. Born to

I used to maintain a LiveJournal blog called gfdu just for my book and work kudos, but being a Customer Evangelist means there's no distinction between work and home life. That journal was also a repository for some very interesting shots and story from my readers who visited some of the people mentioned in my book - including the guy in the front cover! Take a look

Galfromdownunder in Hawaii 2006 PHOTO GALLERY AND MOVIE CLIPS The Gal's Hilo Photo Gallery First week in Hilo (5 Mb Quicktime movie) Biking Hilo's Old Scenic Highway (8 Mb Quicktime movie) Sorry to rain on your mental image of Hawaii ... Gray skies. Rain every ten minutes. I'm wearing a pair of long johns. A-ROH-HA! (as my Shanghainese father would say). I hallucinate that I never got on a plane at all, that I'm still in 34 degree Eugene, Oregon, about to put on five layers of hi-tech thermals to go check the mail. No wait ... the windows here are wide open. All eight of them. I'm mincing around in a floaty islandy dress I splurged on just yesterday (30% off – how could I refuse).There's a cacophonous bleating of small, rubbery critters - coqui frogs, I'm told - coming from the bowels of the jungle outside my window. I'm scratching a moonscape raised welts on my arms and legs despite the fly screens and my chemical warfare repellent. I am on Hilo, on t

During my 10-day silent and gruelling  Vipassana  course my brain was doing so much unfettered plotting and scheming that I hatched a game plan for 2006 (2007, 2008 ...). See below. Are you an empty nester? Do you have a spare room or sofa where the Galfromdownunder , Bike Friday scribe and Customer Evangelist could lodge, experience your town, get to know you, do her travel slideshows and book readings - and *PAY* you something for the privilege? I have been trying to come up with ways to experience more of the USA and meet more of the wonderful Bike Friday community without bankrupting myself or Bike Friday, and I suddenly hit on this idea: telecommute my way around America! Most of my work is now done online - in fact, I am probably writing this from my bedroom or holed up in a cyber cafe in Botswana. Many BF customers and friends have invited me to stay with them over the past 4 years - I've enjoyed every moment of these stays. I've even been able to reciproc

For some reason, I am not into costume parties. The only time I jones'd to dress up was as a pillbox-hatted Singapore Airlines stewardess complete with drinks tray at my local rave club*  ... except I never found the uniform on eBay. So I can't quite explain how my Lego-lovin' friend Steve Ransom talked me into attending a StarWars costume party. I should have known better - it was set for 1pm on a Sunday afternoon in a friend's loungeroom. What kind of crazy stuff ever happens at 1pm on a Sunday afternoon in any friend's loungeroom? Can you believe I did this?  So here I am, at a Star Wars party in Eugene, Oregon. Amazing what you can do with a pair of Planet Bike bike tail lights, a bit of electrical tape, a piece of dark mesh and a flasher's trenchcoat... I arrive and the first sign that something is amiss is Steve is in non-costume. Wait, he brought his Hasbro light saber. I only made it halfway across the living room floor - my knees were killi

Thanks to Rich Lopez for sending me this interesting anecdote from a writing school... +++ Remember the book "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus"? Here's a prime example offered by an English professor from the University of Phoenix: "Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. As homework tonight, one of you will write the first paragraph of a short story. You will e-mail your partner that paragraph and send another copy to me. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story and send it back, also sending another copy to me. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back-and-forth. Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. There is to be absolutely NO talking outside of the e-mails and anything you wish to say must be written in th