Falling in Love

Hello again all - been a busy last week in Tokyo as I get through more interviews for my research; aggressively hitting up as many NGOs as I possibly can, reading journal articles left right and centre, and trying to maintain the work/life balance. All is good though!

A couple of weeks ago I went to the US (again) for two purposes - to go to Chicago to meet Claire's family, and then to San Diego to go to a family (Claire's cousin) wedding. Obviously meeting the S.O.'s family can be a slightly daunting prospect, so figured I would try and get as many of them "out of the way" as possible all at once!

The first few days were spent exploring Chicago with Claire who was a very good host and excited to show off her city - I had been there once before in 2011 but I was very keen to return and do some of the things we did not manage last time.


I arrived mid afternoon having kept myself awake all flight so as to align myself with the local timezone, and so was a bit blotto when I touched down, but I surprised myself with how resistant I was to sleepiness, hitting what I think was my fifth wind by that point - time enough to have genuine Chicago style deep dish pizza (tasty) and a local craft beer (also tasty), lasting until around 10pm.

Chirpy as for someone who had been up for over 24 hours

The next day I was up and at it from before 6am, similar to Claire who had come back to the US almost a week earlier, and so we decided with our abundance of time to go to one of her favourite breakfast joints, Ann Sather - a Swedish restaurant that is something of a local institution. Claire had been raving about this place since long before this trip was even planned, and so we absolutely had to go. Famous for its cinnamon rolls, I got a breakfast burrito with cinnamon rolls as a side. There are stereotypes about portion sizes in the US, and this experience certainly made me think of this ("food for thought", if you will) - I struggled to finish the contents of the burrito + fruit, and Claire and I shared one of the two rolls, deciding to keep the other for later (ended up giving it to a homeless person). It was very good though, with a group of nurses behind us having a merry time and popping champagne at 8am - happy hour has a different meaning over there I think!

Enormous cinnamon rolls

After a quick pitstop at a nearby cafe (which funnily enough had done a collaboration with a Tokyo based roaster), we made our way into the centre of the city proper for an Architecture Boat Tour. Basically we were atop a big open top boat cruising the river with a docent who was explaining the various architectural icons of the city, tying in history, current events and engineering factoids - a worthwhile experience! We had goldilocks weather conditions, a "window" seat, and plenty of photographic opportunities (my camera is still dead as a Dodo, and I will remain cameraless for a long time I am sad to conclude), so with Claire's camera (gratefully) in hand, I went ham!

The Wrigley Building (1924) and another boat similar to ours

Wrigley Building and part of the Trump Tower

Chicago Skyline

Trump Tower (2009) - Chicago's second tallest building at 423.1m (he must hate that)

Apparently Chicago City changed a city regulation prohibiting the installation of names upon buildings after this was put in place

One of Claire's favourite buildings, the Marina City "corn cobs" (1967)

Cruising upstream

Buildings so tall you cannot see the ground - a far cry from Nelson! 

Constructive reflections

River Point (2017) - this building has some inventive engineering going on due to the presence of rail tracks underneath it

Construction never ceases!

An old retractable iron bridge

A very cute control house for another retractable bridge

150 N. Riverside (2017) - this tower sits on a small wedge, necessitating some incredible engineering

In the shadow of the skyscrapers

Piercing the sky!

The Sears (Willis) Tower, (1974), Chicago's tallest building at 442m, flanked by skyscapers

Thespian details on the Civic Opera Building

Remnants of Chicago's industrial past

Chicago cityscape

A more classic bridge control house

Showcasing the wedge design of the base of the 150 N. Riverside building 

Looking downstream towards the late

The Wrigley Building and the Chicago Tribune Building (1925) in the background 

Navy Pier, the highlight of my previous trip to Chicago (much to the disdain of Claire and her mum)

A very beautiful and multiform city

The tour was very pleasant and it reaffirmed how much I love Chicago - I certainly fell in love with it last time I was here as a bright eyed 17 year old from a city of 50,000, and so it was nice to be able to experience it again 8 years on.

After the tour we made our way to Millennium Park to see the famous "Bean", a huge reflective sculpture that is an icon of Chicago (somehow managed to miss it last time...)

Claire proved to be a very capable host and guide (no surprises there)

The bean! All shiny and reflective and chrome! 

Reflective distortions at the centre

Millennium Park also features a number of other artworks, including this one, a huge panel of screens that show faces (apparently of a number of ordinary Chicago residents) standing in a big, slightly sunk in fountain which invites people to walk through (there were a number of small children having a grand old time). The face also changes expression eventually to reveal a wet surprise for anyone who might be standing too close - fortunately I was forewarned!

"hoick"

Further in the park is the Chicago Art Institute, a massive complex that I couldn't possibly do to completion in just one day, so Claire and I flitted between the rooms that most piqued my interest - Byzantine, Greeco-Roman, Hellenistic and Byzantine Art ; Impressionists and the Armoury most of all!

Torso (he's been gravely wounded all over) of an Emperor

A NZ + Sheep joke was made here

The lighting (emphasised by black and white photography) of this sculpture room was haunting

A bit of Cezanne 

Some I don't know what fantasy-esque artwork

The Monet room

An enormous Seurat - took me back to seventh form art history

Swinging this sword a couple of times must have been an absolute mission, let alone in an entire battle

Samurai armour is good and all, but this just looks tanky as anything - must have been inconvenient to go to the toilet though 

An array of hunting weaponry

Some pretty 18th Century French glass paperweights we saw on the way out

It was then time for a spot of lunch before we went to meet a friend of Claire's, so to Potbelly Sandwich shop we went - a nice opportunity to sit down for a bit and watch the city go by.

We meandered about a bit longer in the city, heading eventually to the Hancock tower (344m), which has a cocktail bar on the 90-somethingth floor. Apparently to go to the viewing deck one floor up costs about the same as a cocktail in the bar, so why not be civilised and sit down with a drink while enjoying the view? Accordingly we met with Claire's childhood friend April for a cocktail while marvelling at the city below - despite the warmth it was relatively clear and we could see far off into the distance - apparently Claire and April could almost see their houses (it was all a mass to me)

That evening we met Claire's mum at a Korean taco place close by to her home, which does some killer fried fish tacos (though the prawn and pork ones were also great), before returning home for another earlyish night (though I was still impressed with how well I was fighting jetlag)

The next morning was a lazier one with me as Claire went off to the gym, giving me time to catch up on a book (history of the Plantagenet Kings). When Claire returned we got into some baking, making a berry and rhubarb pie for dessert that night (it was her brother's birthday that evening). Claire's brother and dad were travelling back to Chicago from the East Coast following graduation, and so were due to arrive that evening for a welcome home/birthday dinner, before we departed for San Diego the next morning, so Claire and I made sure to get some more bits and pieces crossed off on this day too!

I had identified a number of craft beer places nearby, so we wandered down to one of those via Oz Park (so called because of the number of Wizard of Oz statues there), eventually getting to the Local Option, for a glass (or two) of the local tipple, featuring a relatively fruity IPA followed by a very rich (and perhaps slightly stronger than I anticipated) vanilla stout - luckily we were only having halfs so I wasn't unduly affected! A salad bar followed, and then it was off to Claire's grandparents to meet them - and be introduced to molasses cookies (or treacle biscuits in my parlance), which were very good! Claire has done a very good job of choosing her grandparents, and I look forward to seeing them again sometime.

Claire and I were dropped off alongside the Lake to walk back home through Lincoln Park, which also has a free walk-through zoo, so we took a couple of moments to look at lions and zebra (not together thankfully!)

It was also at this park where I finally saw the animal I had most been looking forward to - to the surprise/mirth of almost everyone else - squirrels! We don't have squirrels in NZ, and while they are common as muck in the US, for me they are a very cute novelty and I was desperate to see them (as an aside when I was in the US as a 17 year old, the American students with whom we became friends were very amused when my team all stopped eating breakfast to rush to the window when it was announced there was a squirrel in the grass)

Impossible not to love

We made it back to Claire's place after a dalliance with the squirrel-folk, and I met Claire's dad and brother for the first time, before we had a great dinner (my first US homecooked meal) of softshell crab, salmon, fruit soup and salad, followed by the pie Claire and I made that morning. I'd brought a bottle of NZ sav with me which I think made a decent pairing with the fish, and a delicious time was had by all! Then it was off to an improv Shakespeare show, a troupe of four actors using Iambic pentameter in an improvisational setting, with the prompt (provided by Claire) of tiny house roadtrip. There were some very good instances of iambic being used and excellent on the fly rhyming at play, and the crowd was getting well into it - a very interesting take on Shakespeare for sure!


It was an early morning the next day (I was still waking up at 4am so this was fine), as we made our way to the airport for our flight to San Diego. A trip to the departures terminal at Chicago would not be complete without saying hello to the brachiosaurus skeleton they have (my childhood dream of being a paleontologist still emerges not infrequently), and before long we were in the sky travelling across half a continent.

Hello old (emphasis on the old) friend

So big you can't get it all in frame

San Diego was surprisingly mild, which was actually quite nice as I had packed relatively light, and the "horde" as Claire's mum so accurately put it converged at the hotel where we were all staying. One of Claire's cousins had written up a chart with all the familial connections and names which I began to try to commit to memory - very helpful (the downside of meeting the whole family at once is the volume of names goes up massively!)

The wedding was the next day, and as we had not only flown super early, but also gone back in time as we went west, the entire day was ours! San Diego is home to the USS Midway, a Midway class battlecarrier. Built at the end of WWII, it served in a number of conflicts and was the first aircraft carrier to be beyond Panamax class, meaning it could not go through the Panama canal. A lot of my family are aviators or involved in aircraft in some way or other, so I was in heaven being able to drool over aircraft, as well as being in awe of the scale of the carrier itself - not in a thousand years could NZ ever dream of having a ship of this size, so it was a very cool novelty for me. We spent a good long time navigating the underbelly of the ship, looking at the city on the water, which was capable of supporting over 4000 sailors and aviators at sea for extended periods of time - very impressive! Looking at usually mundane things like the laundry and kitchens was very interesting as one had to appreciate the scale of operations, to things like the storage for nuclear weaponry, which had a permanent marine guard (with permission to shoot to kill if a red line was crossed). One of the docents, who was a pilot in Vietnam had a huge wealth of knowledge about the ship and its operations, a funny guy overall, and wanted to move to NZ but found the immigration process for retired people rather difficult (I suggested he look into fruit picking, there's always a shortage there), and I found it both funny and frightening that these hugely specialised craft were reliant on a bunch of 18-25 year olds to work! All very cool, but really it was the aircraft which I was most interested in!

SNJ Texan, WWII airtrainer (NZ has recently acquired the modern version of this)

F4U Corsair, my favourite aircraft with a distinctive folding gull wing

Claire and I as Top Guns sitting in an F14 Tomcat (hopefully we don't need to eject as Goose and Maverick needed in the movie though, that ended badly)

Tomcat cockpit

Apparently Midway was consistently ranked one of the best mess halls in the US Navy

Peering down into the ammunition magazines

Cross the line and die, apparently

One of the huge (and noisy) engines of the Midway

Engine control room, a vital task to be sure

Navigating these would have been an absolute mare for a new member of the crew

F-4 Phantom and F/A 18 Hornet

EKA-3 Skywarrior

Interesting label for the tanks...

FJ 2/3 Fury and  F9F-8 Cougar

Piloting the T2 Buckeye jet trainer

Buckeye cockpit

Seabat, H34 Seabat and the SH2 Seasprite

Common sense but has to be said apparently

Looking towards the very front of the flight deck

To stand here when the ship was cruising would be quite the feeling!

With the ship's island in the background

Claire and I in front of an A-4 Skyhawk, the last jet fighter operated by New Zealand

One of the flight elevators

I was surprised how commercial the Midway was, especially when compared to the battleship USS Missouri in Pearl Harbour, but not so surprised as to not take part in the family photo featuring some very patriotic backgrounds!

My citizenship application is in the mail as we speak

All in all, the Midway was a great experience, and now I can say I have been on a battleship and an aircraft carrier, awesome feeling to be sure!

That evening we went out to dinner with the lot of the family, followed by drinks at the hotel poolside bar, more good times and opportunity to get to know more of Claire's family (and there are a lot to get to know!)

The next day gave us the morning and much of the afternoon to do our own thing, with the actual ceremony taking place at 5pm, so Claire, her dad, and myself went to Balboa Park to go to a couple of museums and galleries. Balboa Park itself is gorgeous, with some very cool Spanish architecture - it was apparently developed in 1915 for the San Diego World Fair, and is home a large number of art and cultural experiences. Themes ran from surveillance states to surreal Australian works and machine learning, to some more classic Renaissance work, so a varied and diverse experience to be sure!

The three of us being reflected by thousands of tiny portrait photos 

Renaissance era triptych

These are codenames extracted from Wikileaks of various US spies from across the decades

We had some great Mexican tacos for lunch (couldn't not have Mexican food when were no more than a stone's throw from the border), and made our way back to the hotel to play some card games with various uncles and cousins, try a twinkie (managed 1/4 of one) before getting ready for the wedding. Our Uber driver to the venue was hilarious, having worked on aircraft in Vietnam - he was very patriotic as you can imagine, and Claire's mum was an excellent sport in responding to his commentary - he was fond of NZ through his knowledge of it as a stopping point for US missions to Antarctica; a pleasant surprise to me!

Not a great "food" (not sure what I was expecting)

The wedding itself was lovely, taking place at a research institute/conference venue right on the beach, giving us a stunning (read: very bright) ceremony, but gorgeous all round. There was much merriment, good food, attentive waiters (one in particular is due to visit NZ and so kept coming by to get more information in return for wine - I wasn't complaining!). We had plenty of dancing and fun, and I like to think we scrubbed up nicely! Wearing the Kiwi tie pin Claire got me for my birthday last year was a win, as numerous people recognised it, and therefore me, as a New Zealander, and so I was very pleasantly surprised by the number of people who had either been, or were planning to go, or in the case of the barman, had spent time in Nelson! Score for Claire on that part! I was also put in the extended family photograph, which I was not expecting, but very happy to take part in, so I figure that means I didn't make a complete mess of meeting the family!

The sun dipped beneath the horizon, dancing continued and merriment increased, but eventually it came time to head on back to the hotel, pack, and get ready for a 5am wakeup and journey back to Tokyo. Jetlag was still on my side here, and so I found it a relatively easy job, but by no means was I wanting to head back quite yet - I had been reminded of my love of Chicago, and had discovered a new love in San Diego, which is a very beautiful city (notwithstanding the parts that reminded me a whole lot of Breaking Bad). All in all I had a great time visiting, and am very grateful to Claire's family for hosting me and making me feel welcome; I look forward to a future visit in the not so distant future!

Unrelated to the US, but I had a friend, Hamish, visit from NZ for a few days. He came here in January 2018 for a videogame tournament, in which we were both gifted a t-shirt for taking part in an interview, so it was required for us to recreate a photo (taken far better the second time too)

Winter 2018

Summer 2019

This month coming will be a little light on adventures (my bank balance will thank me), and an opportunity to get stuck into my work well and proper, but be sure to come back before long, as there will no doubt be some surprises and other adventures taking place!

Til then, stay frosty!