Props to the Spirit of Freedom on their customer service

Recently, I wrote about my snorkeling experience on the Great Barrier Reef, specifically on board the Spirit of Freedom dive boat. I mentioned how my experience might have been better, and I finally decided to go ahead and send an email to the company in that regard. I suspect they don't get many snorkelers-most people who sign up to live aboard a dive boat on the GBR are going to be diving, after all, so I imagine they don't focus a whole lot on what to do with snorkelers other than make sure they make it back on the boat. While that's a GREAT start, I think there are some easy ways that they could make a single snorkeler feel a little more comfortable. Anyway, I just wanted to say that within 24 hours I received not one response but TWO acknowledging my email and thanking me for my suggestion. So, way to go, Spirit of Freedom! I don't know what you'll actually do with my suggestion, but thanks for at least making me feel like you care.

Maybe a reader could book a trip with them and report back to me. I'm sure somebody could find a legitimate way to write this off in the name of research!

What I'm Reading Now-August 15th edition

I wanted to break this up and do a separate post from my August 14th post for two reasons.

1) These are long-ass posts when I do them all together.

2) I felt like the subject matter of the previous reviews should have it's own post.

So, continuing on, here's more on my latest reads:

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones -I picked up this book because Michael over at Books on the Nightstand raved about it in a podcast and Ann followed up with a positive review as well; it's a book I would have probably been interested in but never actually read otherwise. I bought it in the airport at Sydney, not realizing that the author is a native of New Zealand and the book was published in Australia, so that was a nice surprise to find that I had a book that was somewhat relevant to my travels.

To summarize quickly (I know I'm not good at this, but I'll try!), it's about a group of island children who are introduced to Charles Dickens' Great Expectations by their new teacher who reads the book aloud to them in class each day, bringing to life a whole new world, completely unlike anything any of them have ever experienced. They live somewhere in the South Pacific, close to Australia from what I could gather, perhaps New Zealand, but I don't think a location was ever specified. There is a civil war of sorts going on (perhaps if I were up on my world history I would have been able to figure out where this takes place) and the book takes a rather dark turn that I hadn't expected. The narrator is Matilda, one of the students, and she is enthralled, fascinated by Great Expectations, particularly it's main character, Pip. As Pip becomes more real to her than her culture's beloved ancestors, more real than God Himself, Matilda's mother becomes increasingly uncomfortable with Mr. Watts, the new teacher, and his chosen material which leads to unfortunate circumstances colliding to create a misunderstanding between the islanders and enemy soldiers, and things go downhill from there. The book is basically broken up into two parts, Matilda's life on the island before things go bad and Matilda's grown-up years, off-island, after.

I have very mixed feelings about this book. I wanted to love it since it had received such rave reviews, but, honestly, I kept forgetting that I was reading it. It wasn't that it was bad, it just wasn't anything I was ever excited about getting back to. I would be looking around the house, going, "I need a new book to read," and then I would see this book and go, "Oh yeah, I'm already reading a book." At the same time, I think it is worth reading, and I feel like there are a lot of things right below the surface of this one that I am just missing, like if I just sat down and really thought about it for an hour or so I could get all my thoughts together and come up with a great appreciation for its profound nature. Matilda is who she is in large part because of Mr. Watts, her teacher, and Mr. Watts is a complex character whose story takes an unexpected twist. It's hard to say too much about this without giving things away. I'd say go ahead and give it a read. It's an easy read, and I can see how it has the potential to be a book that you would really love. I may have to go back and re-read the second half again.

Bonus! Mr. Watts asks the adults of the village to come to class to share their knowledge. They can talk about anything they want, whatever they know about, and at one point Matilda's mother talks about the digging habits of beach crabs. She imparts this wisdom:

"'Wind and rain are on the way if a crab digs straight down and blocks the hole with sand leaving marks like sunrays. We can expect strong winds but no rain if a crab leaves behind a pile of sand but does not cover the hole.

'If the crab blocks the hole but does not scrape the mound flat there will be rain but no wind. When the crab leaves the sand piled up and the hole unblocked the weather will be fine. Never trust a white who says, "According to the radio rain is on the way." Trust crabs first and above all others.'" I think that's pretty sage advice. Now I will have to do some reconnaissance work and see if Hawaii crabs follow the same rules. Don't hold your breath waiting for the results though.

So, for the readers who found my blog by searching for "why do hawaii beach crabs dig holes" and "sideway sand shuffle crabs" perhaps this would be a good book for you to read! Or, perhaps not since I just told you all that it says about crabs.

**Updated 6/2/09 to include

Other reviews (many much more well-researched than mine):

Chris--Book-a-Rama

Chartroose-Bloody Hell, It's a Book Barrage!

Marg at Reading Adventures
Heather J. at Age 30+... A Lifetime of Books

Getting Started in Value Investing by Charles Mizrahi-Finally! I have been trying to read this book since...well, let's see, it was due back to the library on July 29th when my renewal expired...yeah, I'm THAT person, ok?? I'm not proud of it, but the library gets their money from me, so it's all good in the end. (Also, I had to share it with the cat, and he's a slow reader-all that math wears him out.) I'm sure that Mr. Mizrahi would say that paying $7.50 (my library's maximum late fee for an overdue book) for a library book is not a good example of value investing, but I'm not claiming to be his star pupil here. I almost didn't read this book (on several occasions) but I'm really glad that I did. I think it offers a lot of good advice, it breaks down a lot of the confusion about all those numbers you see on financial statements, and it does it all in layman's terms.
Mizrahi tells you how to look at a company and decide if it is a good investment, meaning if you put money into it, will it be worth it in the long haul. He is not talking about playing the market, he's talking about investing Warren Buffet-style and watching your investment grow over the years. There are a lot of common sense things that sort of correlate with how I've been choosing companies to invest in thus far, which made me feel like I'm not a complete moron and I do have a good general sense of what I'm doing...sort of.
I like to invest in companies that I like, companies that I would want to own, which is basically what you are doing when you buy stock in a company. Yeah, I could make lots of money in big oil or pharmaceuticals, but I'd feel icky about owning them. Not that there aren't some great aspects about both, but overall, it's just not my bag. Also, I want to be able to understand what a company does-Starbucks sells coffee, Home Depot sells building materials, Bank of America lends money, etc. I have a basic understanding of how they make their money, and that's another thing that the author and Mr. Buffet both advocate. If you can't figure out what they do or how they earn their money, don't invest in them!

Another piece of advice that Mizrahi gives is buy companies that are doing well and have a history of doing well. If they are not currently doing well, see if you can figure out why-did they have some huge capital expense this year, like equipment upgrades, that is draining all their cash but should result in better figures next year, or are they on their way out of business because they can't compete in their market? I think now is a tricky time to be trying to figure this out since virtually everyone is experiencing lower revenues in the current economy, so current figures aren't necessarily going to be representative of historical figures, but there should be some standout companies that are able to weather even the current economic storm, and those are the ones that you invest in!

Where I perhaps haven't been doing the best job, and where a lot of people get hung up, is picking stocks that are not overvalued. The author lays out a detailed process for figuring out what you should pay for a stock and explains it all very clearly, but I'm still a little confused about this part. I made an Excel spreadsheet and typed in all the numbers they gave in the example in the book, and I got my answer to match their answer, so I knew all of my formulas were right, but I'm just not convinced that I'm plugging in the right numbers, and that was the only problem I had with this book. For most of the examples he gives, Mizrahi has corresponding financial statements or bits of financial statements so you can see where he is pulling numbers from, but for this part, he just tells you what the numbers are for the given company, and I'm not sure that I'm not calling something by one name when on a financial statement it goes by another name. Google and Reuters team up nicely to provide financial information about companies (as an example, go to Google Finance, type in GOOG and hit "Get quotes." Now you can see Google's stock info. If you scroll down you will see "Financials" and "Key Stats and Ratios." Click on the "More ratios from Reuters" link and you get this. Between these two sources, you should be able to find all the numbers you need to come up with a valuation for a stock, but don't do dumb things like I did and enter the "EPS (TTM) vs TTM 1 Yr. Ago" figure (29.33) in your spreadsheet where you should be entering the EPS (15.22) or it will be wonky beyond belief. See, if you're scratching your head going, "What the hell does all THAT mean?" then you should read this book. By the time you get done, you will actually know!) Where was I? Oh yeah, Google and Reuters team nicely, but every once in a while you run across a company for which this information is not available (I think this tends to be for foreign entities), so then you have to go find the company's annual report and look at their financial statements on your own. While the basic layout and accounting principles should be the same, each one is still unique in its own way, and that's where I run into problems, especially when dealing with foreign terminology. Does this count as revenue? Should I count that as a capital expense? Do I need to know gross revenue, operational revenue or net revenue for this calculation? So, I don't know. There is still a lot for me to learn, but I feel like I learned A LOT from this book, and I now have a good basis to build on. Speaking of investing, I might actually invest in this book since I think it would be one that I would refer back to frequently, and I think the advice will remain pretty timeless.

Why I'm telling you to go read someone else's blog

Heather J. over at Age 30-A Year of Books posted a review about Genuine Men: Journeys in Stories and Stills. I haven't read the book myself, but from what I can gather, it celebrates positive male role models, and isn't that something worth celebrating these days? Heather has asked people to comment with stories about their Genuine Men, and so far it's a great read. So, grab your box of Kleenex and head on over there to read about some Genuine Men and nominate one of your own. Feel free to leave a comment here as well!

So, as if this isn't great all by itself, Heather is giving away a copy of Genuine Men: Journeys in Stories and Stills to one of her readers after September 2nd, so get on over there and acknowledge one of the great men in your life!

What I'm Reading Now-August 14 edition

Night (Oprah's Book Club)by Elie Wiesel-This is a memoir of a holocaust survivor, and what can you say? Whether it was a good book or not is irrelevant; I think it should be read for it's truth. It's not trying to entertain, it's not trying to tell a clever tale; it's trying to tell one man's truth of what he went through in his journey from one Nazi death camp to another and it's beautiful and terrible and should be acknowledged. For what it's worth, I did enjoy it, if enjoy is, indeed, the right word.

I am really drawn to books from this era and, particularly, this subject. I'm not sure why; I guess I just find it fascinating, maybe because it's one of the most human moments in history. It's a terrible human moment, but it's also one of the most triumphant if you look at it from a survivor's perspective. The things that they went through are unimaginable to most of us, and yet they made it through somehow, whether it was through faith, skill, support of friends and family or just pure luck they made it through and lived to tell about it, tell it to all the world so that it would not be forgotten or ignored, which was largely Mr. Weisel's motivation.

The one thing that struck me about this book was the lack of emotion with which the author portrayed events like being reunited with his father after a selection day during which camp officials go through and select who is fit to live and who should die. At first I was surprised by this; I expected tearful reunions and separations fraught with worry and hysteria, extreme fear coupled with knee-buckling relief but none of that was present. Everything was very factual and sparse and to-the-point, and I think that's probably a reflection of the hopelessness and desperation and sheer exhaustion that was brought on by their circumstances. At some point, celebration is pointless because you know the victory can be taken from you at any time. At some point fear is useless because it uses up too much valuable energy. It's not that those emotions weren't experienced, but I think the expression of them became pointless if not simply impossible. This reminded me a lot of another book that I read a while back called When the Emperor Was Divineby Julie Otsuka, which told the story of a Japanese American mother and her children who were sent to an internment camp in Utah during WWII. It was simple and stark and deeply emotional without ever portraying that emotion. Emotion is pointless. What happened happened, and what you or I or the author or the characters involved (real or fictional) felt about it doesn't change a thing. It still happened.

Other bloggers who have reviewed Night:

Nymeth-Things Mean a Lot

Marg-Reading Adventures

Interestingly, this brings me around to what I like about the book that I am currently reading, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: A Novelby David Wroblewski, and I will cover that in a separate post when I get done reading it. Also, I am reading it on my Kindle, which I think I want to cover in a separate post. For right now though, I will say that I really like the writing. There have been several scenes which have blindsided me emotionally, and I think it's due to the same style of writing mentioned above. Everything is very sparse and simple and laid out as it is, no frills, no explanation of emotions, just the acts of emotion, like a father resting his forehead against the side of the coffin that he has just spent all night building for his child. You're reading along and you're doing fine, you're doing fine, and then BAM! You're crying and you have to take a break to pull it together. In fact, I'll bet you're doing it right now, aren't you? I'm telling you, that father with the coffin thing gets to you.

The Perfect Burning Man Accessory

Ok, so I know it's cutting it close to bring this up now, but the lovely Julie, over at Silversmyth.com , makes these cool little wire man pendants, and every time I see them they remind me of Burning Man. Since the 2008 Burning Man season is about to commence, I thought I would mention this. This might be a cool thing to wear as you journey around the desert checking out works of art, communing with other Burning Man attendees. If you aren't an artist yourself, but want to participate in the artistic contribution, maybe you could buy a whole bunch of these and give them to people you meet as you make friends and build memories. (I understand things work on a barter system out there, so perhaps you could get a beer or some sunscreen or something in return.) If you are going with a group, you could get them as sort of a group memento to remind you all of this amazing experience. I mean, photos are great, but you don't want to have to carry those around with you all the time; and let's face it, you are probably going to be drunk (or something) in a lot of those photos-you definitely don't want to carry THOSE around with you everywhere.



You can wear jewelry everyday, and every time you look at it, it will remind you of all the fun you had and you can smile. At work and having a bad day? Look at your little wire man and remember your crazy trip to Burning Man. Smile wistfully and think twice about spitting in your customer's food. Stuck in traffic? Contemplate all the little coils that make up the little wire man and how representative that is of all the different twists and turns in life and how all those twists and turns resulted in all those people finding their way to Burning Man for one crazy summer in the desert. Smile and shake your head at the wonder that is life and think twice about ramming that jackass in the Hummer who just cut you off. In the hospital, recovering from some drunken debauchery at Burning Man? Press the button on that morphine drip and pass a few hours being mesmerized by all the little coils. Smile drunkenly. See? Not only is it a cool piece of jewelry, but it helps promote world peace!



Alternatively, I think this would also make a good gift for somebody you know who has attended Burning Man and found it to be a life-altering experience (or even just an extremely awesome time). It would also be a good gift for yourself if you just want a good conversation starter-"Hey, that's a cool little man! Where'd you get him?" (But it would be cooler if you had a good story to go along with it! Hmmm...maybe you could talk Julie into making little swimming men or little weight lifting men or something else that says something about who you are. It's sort of like having a tattoo, but you can take it off at the end of the day!)

Some final thoughts on Australia

These are just random bits that I couldn't really fit in anywhere else, but I still wanted to mention them, and then I'll move on.

-What they call "lemonade" we call "Sprite." If you want a lemonade, you have to order a lemon crush.

-To all the young men of Australia: Pull up your pants. You look like morons. Seriously.

-To all the young women of Australia: If you are dating these morons, you deserve a slap upside the head. Stop perpetuating the moron...ity...ness. Whatever. They look like morons. Stop encourging it. They will never amount to anything because they are going to spend so much time worrying about keeping their pants from falling down they won't be able to give their full attention to anything else, including you.

-Australia has weird crows. They make this bizarre sound, kind of like a baby, a baby that is trying to lure you into the tall grass where you will be set upon by a pack of hyenas. If I can figure out how to get something up on YouTube, I will put up my video of the weird crow call. If I can't, then just use your imaginations.

Yay me!



-There is A LOT of graffiti in Australia, at least in the parts that we visited. I noticed this especially in New Castle and on the train ride between New Castle and Sydney. The graffiti monsters are rampant over there! Catherine, over at She Never Shuts Up, pretty much sums up everything I feel about graffiti, so I'll let you check out her musings on it here.

-In the same post, Catherine also touches on words that are fun to say, which brings me to my next point. Australia has a lot of place names that are just fun to say. Woolloomooloo, Wagga Wagga, Ulladulla, Wombat. Okay, the last one isn't a place name, but it's still fun to say! Also, Wagga Wagga always made me think of Fozzie Bear ("Wokka wokka!") This was not the only Muppets connection that I found in Australia; there was also a store in Sydney that we kept walking past named Wagamama, which I had never heard of, but I thought it was fun to say. (Apparently, I am out of the cool loop. Foxie, over at Dreaming of Ferraris was blogging about her desire to hit up a Wagamama on her next visit to London AT VIRTUALLY THE SAME TIME THAT WE WERE IN SYDNEY. How wierd is that??? Cue Twilight Zone music.) So, everyday, we'd walk past it and after about 1/2 a block my husband would stop, look at me, and patiently wait for me to say, "WAGAMAMA!" and then snicker like Ernie (another Muppet!)for the rest of the block. Once it was out of my system I was fine. Until the next time we walked past. I don't know what the actual pronounciation is supposed to be, but in my head (and whenever I shouted it out on the street) it sounded like the Muppet performance of "Mahna Mahna," the YouTube version of which I cannot embed, so you'll have to go here to check it out. Just remember to replace "Mahna Mahna" with "WAGAMAMA," and you'll have a good idea of what my husband was dealing with on the streets of Sydney.

-There is a general straight-forwardness that I like about the Aussie people that we, in America, are seriously lacking. At the Wildlife World or the Aquarium, I can't remember which, there is a crocodile display. You can go upstairs and look down into the display, and at the top there is a sign that reads, "If the fall doesn't kill you, the crocodile will." That's it. There's no waiver you have to sign saying how you have been fully warned of the dangers of hanging over into the crocodile pit due to the possibility of falling in and the bodily harm that might ensue should you find yourself injured at the bottom of a crocodile pit. You don't have to release the company; their children; their heirs; their successors, assignees, trustees, agents or any other thrid party that might in any way shape or form be affiliated with them ever in case of any injury resulting from said inappropriate placement of one's body in relation to said crocodile whether or not said crocodile, his heirs, replacements or agents was negligent in the method of his attack on your intruding body, which negligence shall be defined as but not limited to any failure to hiss, posture, snap his jaws or in any other way warn of a possible pending attack and shall NOT include the crocodile's bellowing in a manner likely to persuade the invading person that he is indeed an alligator, not a crocodile, thereby confusing said person about what animal will actually be attacking his dumb ass.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Aussie's are a lot more straight forward about stuff. I like that.

-Since we were there in winter, it was pretty chilly outside everywhere we went. There is also a lot of outdoor seating, which, when combined with the chillyness of winter, can make for very uncomfortable dining. The Aussies, however, have embraced the heat lamp. Almost every establishment that we passed that had outdoor seating also had at least one heat lamp throwing off a welcoming warmth to passersby. I don't know why I haven't seen more of this in America. Maybe the places I've always lived have just gotten too cold in the winter to bother. After all, when it's 40 below, a heat lamp on the sidewalk just isn't going to cut it.

-The local news is always worth checking out. While in Newcastle I read about Ely, the koala who had gotten his head stuck in the grille of a speeding car that had mowed him down while traveling at a high speed. Luckily, Ely was not fatally injured and is recovering at the Australia Zoo. Unfortunately, Ely was also diagnosed with chlamydia, which is a real downer, seeing as how it is koala mating season. Ely, you might want to pay a little more attention when you finally get back out there, both on the road and off.

"Life's too short to read bad books"

This advice was sagely given to me a few years ago by my sister-in-law. I have a hard time not finishing a book, even if it's not great. Being the eternal optimist (or something) I always think it'll get better; surely they wouldn't have gone through all the trouble of writing, publishing and selling this book if this is as good as it gets! Well, it's been hard, but I've been trying to take my SIL's advice and move on if a book isn't good. It just makes me feel like such a quitter though!

Anyway, all of that is to say that I have removed the following books from my What I'm Reading Now sidebar, so if you were waiting with bated breath for a review...well, obviously you have more patience than I do. Congratulations! And sorry if the book you were interested in disappeared without a review. Partial reviews of Wilderness Tips and Latticework can be found here and here, respectively

Wilderness Tipsby Margaret Atwood-I just didn't care. This is a collection of short stories, and while I wouldn't say any of them were bad, I just wasn't interested in reading any more.




The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the Worldby Michael Pollan-I had to return this to the library before I ever got started on it. I imagine this will make it's way back someday, as I still have every intention of reading it, but for now it just isn't meant to be.






The Road (Oprah's Book Club)by Cormac McCarthy-Never got around to this one either. I've checked it out several times, and despite rave reviews from friends, I just can't quite force myself to sit down and start reading this.



Latticework: The New Investingby Robert G. Hagstrom-Library time was up, and I feel like I got all that I was going to get out of this book. I like the general idea behind it, that investing encompases more than just dollars and cents, that you have to step back and see the big picture in life to see how to apply lessons from different parts of life to various other parts of life, that everything is connected.

So, I guess none of these necessarily falls under the "bad book" category, some just weren't good enough to keep me interested.