Sunday, August 27

Welcome To Pleasure Point


The famous Pleasure Point (was looking very flat this afternoon)

My new (very small) house

This beginner break (creatively known as 38th Avenue) is right at the end of my street.

Caution: Surfers Crossing

To avoid Santa Cruz's insane crowds, my housemate Jay and I surf at night. We wear glow sticks to avoid running each other over (I'm red, he's blue). The thing about surfing at night is: it's hard to see the waves (but once you get up on one it's sublime).

Tuesday, August 22

I'm Here

Ok, after a hellish journey (don't even ask - I would have preferred it if there were snakes on the plane) I've made it to Santa Cruz. My new house is great - a tiny A-frame right by the sea. I'll put up some photos when I get my act together. There are many ways I could express how close to the ocean I am (number of steps, etc) but the best way to capture it is this:

I can hear the waves when I go to sleep.

Anyways, new contact details are:

360 36th Ave, Apt A
Santa Cruz, CA 95062
USA

Cell phone - 831 325 7801 (but cell phone reception is crappy in my new house, unfortunately)
Landline - 831 476 5505
Work - 831 471 9000

E-mail remains daniel.nazer [at] aya.yale.edu

Thursday, August 10

Up Up And Away

This time next week - assuming the world's problems do not intervene - I'll be flying to the US. I'm busy wrapping up my affairs. This includes donating my old laptop to East Timor Women Australia (who currently have a temperamental machine still running Windows 95). So my next post will likely be from Santa Cruz. No doubt it will involve surfing in some way.

In the meantime, here's a Boards of Canada video, a paradigm example of what some have referred to - perhaps derisively - as "Danmusic".

Enjoy!

Boards of Canada - Dayvan Cowboy

Some Danmusic

Saturday, August 5

Melbourne Golf

It looked like it was going to rain.

But the rain didn't change our plans, so much as impact on their execution. Paul and I still payed golf but it started coming down by the time we reached third hole. On the fourth it started pouring hard with a dark sky showing no sign of relief. By the fifth hole, we were the only people left on the entire course (which had been crowded). Paul wanted to keep going and, since he was in a thin cotton sweater and I had a sort-of-waterproof jacket on, I could hardly be the person to wimp out. It got so wet toward the end of the round that the ball would barely roll through the water on the greens. At one point, Paul sent a sky high chip onto a green and it stopped dead on landing. It landed with such a splash it could have been a fat guy in a belly flop competition. I almost fell over I laughed so hard. When we got to the ball we saw it had made a deep crater in the soggy green.

I scored a 64 which would be great for a round of 18 holes but not so good for the nine we played. My sneakers took more than a week to dry out and my pants and shirt were filthy because, while walking down a gentle hill, my feet slipped out from under me in the mud. Paul,who didn't even have winter gear on, was shivering in his car on the drive home. And it was his idea, remember.

All in all, with the pouring rain - and the Trams that run through the middle of the course - it was a very Melbourne game of golf.