Auckland can't come soon enough!

The trip to Auckland is now just seven days away, and fortunately for me, it really couldn't come at a better time. You see, it turns out that the lovely folks at the Department of Immigration aren't done giving me the run around, and I kinda sorta need to vacate the country for a bit.

It started a few weeks ago. I received a letter from Immigration that stated that my sponsored visa -- the one that I was on with my previous employer -- was about to expire. "Not a problem," I thought. "I already sorted that out in April when I went to the US and reentered the country on a tourist visa. They must have sent this by accident."

Yeeeeaaaahhh, it was no accident. Two Fridays ago, I got a call from a woman at Immigration, who was clearly miffed that I had not heeded her letter and was still in the country. I protested: "But I switched to a tourist visa in April!" Sadly, she clarified, based on a technicality that I won't explain here (and that no one had bothered to explain to me!), I wasn't on the tourist visa for which I had applied, for which I had been granted approval, and for which the Australian government had happily taken my application fee.

"Balderdash!," I thought.* "What shall I do now?" I complained. I started to get a little short. And then paranoia crept over me as I began to picture the Australian Federal Police closing in on my position, Minority Report-style. Were they using this phone call to triangulate my location???

*No, that word didn't actually go through my head. I can't remember my exact thoughts in the moment, although I'm guessing they were more of the obscene variety. But I like that word: balderdash. Good word. Underrated. I don't think I'm using it correctly, but whatever, it sounds like a good, non-offensive expletive. So to very roughly paraphrase U2,** it's a word that obscurity -- or perhaps just good sense? -- stole from society, and I'm stealing it back!

**Coming on the heels of my last post, guess I'm really into "very roughly paraphrasing" these days. And is that redundant, to "roughly paraphrase" someone?

A minute or two into moaning and griping, I realized there was a relatively easy solution at hand: I was shortly going to Auckland! Why not use that opportunity to get off this cursed sponsored visa once and for all and reenter the country on a Work and Holiday Visa, which means (as the name might suggest) that I can actually work? I presented this solution to the woman, and she seemed happy with it. Done and done!

So! Come next Tuesday, armed with the Wallpaper City Guide Auckland,* I fly out and spend five days in and around the city.

*I won't bore you with another entire post on guide books -- and anyway, I have neither the time nor the inclination -- but as you may recall, I also opted for a Wallpaper guide book for my trip to Melbourne last year. I decided to go with it again for this trip, although after looking back at my own thoughts on the Melbourne book, I'm beginning to wonder why in the wide world of sports I went with it for this trip too. Besides the fact that the book is pretty, I found it to be useless! Limited information... inadequate maps... food and entertainment options that are completely out of my price range... you name it. Yet I was suckered into buying it again!! Ahhhh, the beauty and temptation of a well-packaged product.

Don't have much idea what I'll be doing quite yet -- I'm hoping (pretty please?) that Wallpaper will help me out there, although I'm also staying with a distant relative who can point me in the right direction -- but for the sake of my legal status in Australia, this trip couldn't come soon enough.

A postmortem on Movember... in June

Yes, I realize that this upcoming November is closer than last November, when I paticipated in Movember. And I realize that the video below was made over three months ago, in March. Needless to say, we move slowly here. But I just came across this video again and, well, I love it.

I love the music, as does every other Andy in the world. I love the progression of pictures showing my moustache grow (at a painfully slow rate).* I love the Goulet picture(s). And I love, love, love Keith Hernandez smoking in the dugout.

*As an added bonus, I don't think my hair looks the same in any picture.

So without further ado! From the man who so gloriously recapped a fantastic New York weekend in a 6:38 video, from the man who will soon unleash an absolutely epic video of his visit to Sydney on the world(maybe?), and from the man who is long overdue to update his blog, I give you Andy and the Molestache:

Getting back on that Twitter horse

Maybe it's because I've been living, breathing, reading and writing anything and everything to do with marketing over the last few weeks. Maybe it's because after a break of a month or so, I was ready to give it another go. Maybe it's because you can't go longer than three minutes these days without being exposed to it. Maybe it's because I finally realized that it might actually be in my best interest to be shackled to the confines of 140 characters.

In the end, I can't directly place my finger on the 'why'. Why's the sky blue? But to very roughly paraphrase Scott Storch: I took roughly a month off, and now I'm back up in the Twitter.

(There's no good place for this tangent, so I'll just do it here: There are some awful, awful, awful comics about Twitter floating around the Internet. I searched for a good 20 minutes before settling on the one in this post, and even then, I'm including it somewhat reluctantly. I actually seriously considered using a comic that was in Spanish, just because, well, I guess I could pretend that it was funny. Maybe I shouldn't have included a comic at all? I don't know. Maybe. I just felt like I needed something else in here besides 400 words about how I'm getting back on that Twitter horse.)

In my first go with Twitter, I got it, I think. At least for the most part. This time, I really think I get it, maybe a little more. I'm not sure I know what that means. I certainly don't expect you to know what that means. But, yeah, I think I get it. So I'm getting back up on that horse, and am tweeting like a mad man. Caught up in my new-found zeal, I've ditched the bug-ridden MadTwitter desktop application and have supplanted it with TweetDeck, which may ultimately send me into sensory overload and turn my brain to mush,* what with its grouping and search capabilities (not to even mention the synchronization with Facebook).

*Kinda like what's happened with my Google Reader account. Haven't been under "1000+ new items" in months. And the longer I let that go, the more daunting and demoralizing it becomes.

So! In case you don't already, feel free to follow me. Or just view the updates in my little widget on the right sidebar here. Let's see where this takes us.

Late on the Lake Show, and a remembrance

Woooooo!!! WOOOOOOOOO!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! LAAAAKKEEEEEEEEERRRRRSSSSSS!!!

Oh, wait. That's right: the Lakers won the NBA Finals a week ago. A week ago! And I'm just getting around to it now. Dammit.

I wish I could say that witnessing Laker victory from 7,500 miles away is just as sweet as experiencing it a bit closer to home, even from the East Coast of the US (as I did in 2000 and 2001). But it isn't. Not even close. I mean, which scenario would you choose:

(A) Watching the game in a crowded bar with dozens of rabid fans.

(B) Following the first half of the game at work via nba.com and Lakers Nation's Twitter feed (which was superb, fortunately) and then watching the second half in a quiet pub in Sydney at 11am on a Monday.

This isn't a trick question; it's an easy answer. But unfortunately, I don't have a choice in the matter. I had to take Option B. Although I guess I can't complain. Coming here, I knew I'd be making some sacrifices -- just as I knew I'd be getting a whole lot of benefits in return -- and I guess this is one of them.

I wasn't nearly as close or as emotionally invested in this Lakers team as I was in the 2000 or 2001 Lakers. Those teams... those were the championship teams that I loved the most.

Ironically, a year after those two titles, while I was on my first trip to Sydney, the Lakers won another one. And to make that championship even sweeter, they beat the hated Kings in a brutal seven-game Western Conference Finals on the way to their three-peat. Yet just like the 2009 Lakers, I didn't have nearly the same connection to that team.

Whatever. It's still awesome. I'll take it.

You know what I really miss, possibly more so than the thrill that would have come from being closer to this victory? Chick Hearn.

This is the Lakers' first championship since Chick died, just a few months after they swept the Nets in 2002. And seven years later, I can still remember coming off the plane from Australia that August, stepping onto US soil for the first time in half a year, and being greeted by my Dad, who almost immediately told me of Chick's passing.

I miss everything about Chick. His sing-song voice. His sayings. The excitement he brought to the game. His thinly-veiled loathing of Stu Lantz.* His connection to the Lakers, and to the city of LA.

*I have no proof of that, but I swear you could tell he didn't like Lantz, and I'll go to the grave believing it.

I can still close my eyes and picture Chick calling games, hear his voice. We'll never have another one like him, just like we'll never have another Vin Scully. So as the Lakers wrapped up Game 5 in Orlando last week, that was one of the first things that came to mind. Because as great as it was to see them notch up their 15th NBA title, it would have been so much more sweet to hear Chick calling it.

I'll let Chick close it out for us:

Thank you, Steve Nootenboom

A week and a half since my last teaser of a post re the job. Hmm. Didn't mean to go so long to follow up. Well. Let's do that. The job.

As you're all steadfastly loyal readers of this blog (surely!), you know all about my travails of the past several months: Lost my job. Couldn't find new job. Found pseudo job. Almost lost all hope. And now, I've got a real job! One that pays!!

To fully appreciate how we got here -- well, more just to appreciate the title of this post -- let's go back to September 1995. Yeah -- nearly 14 years ago. My freshman high school class had a retreat to some camp a few hours outside of LA. To be honest, I can't even remember where it was. Big Bear? Lake Arrowhead? Maybe one of those. But what I do remember, what left an indelible impression on my young mind, was that Steve Nootenboom came to speak to our class.

Nootenboom was a motivational speaker, and he fit the Matt Foley-esque mold* of motivational speakers in every way possible: He was exuberant. He was passionate. He was verbose, going on (and on and on) much longer than any of us (teachers included) cared for. He desperately wanted to connect with us. And connect with us he did, probably more so than he could ever realize. In fact, he said one thing in particular that, for whatever reason, has always stuck with me: If you want to get a job, if you want to break into a new field, if you want to try something different, you have to offer to work for free.

*Actually, that's not a bad comparison. Because when I think of Nootenboom after all these years, I think of a skinny version of Chris Farley's Matt Foley. Honestly. Yeah, I'll allow for the very real possibility that time has completely warped the image of him in my head. But let's go with that image.

Accepting the "offer" for the pseudo job the other month, this very thought crossed my mind. I can't say it's why I took the job, but maybe a week or two into it, the connection occurred to me. And I thought just how ironic it would be if I actually got a job out of working for free.

Working with FG, one of the clients for LV (the website development firm I've been working for),* I formed a rapport with the head guy. And in a meeting a few weeks ago, he casually mentioned that he was looking for someone to head up the marketing efforts for the new site we were putting together. It sounded interesting and something that I could be good at, so I offered up my services. He responded enthusiastically, and we scheduled an interview.

*For the sake of retaining my anonymity on the World Wide Internets -- and I have a variety of reasons for doing so at this stage -- I'm not gonna refer to these businesses by their full name. The client will be FG. The website development firm will be LV. These are actual acronyms.

Since last October, I've been on more interviews than I care to recall. Some were awkward, some were intense, some were friendly, but all were relatively formal. My interview with FG was over dim sum.* My future boss and I talked. Some of the discussion touched on my past experiences, some of it touched on ideas I had for the company, a lot of it was just pleasant chit chat. We had some good food. I tried chicken feet for the first time, which were really good, although with so many bones, quite a chore to eat.

*Called "yum cha" in Australia. No idea why there are different names. If someone wants to look it up, please feel free to let me know.

Lunch ended with a job offer: Spend the next several weeks developing and starting to implement a marketing plan for the company's new online business, and see where we go from there.

After all the uncertainty, after all the stress, that's all it took. I'm still shocked by how quickly and simply it all went down. So one more time, I say to Steve Nootenboom: thank you!

Throwin' some quick toss Kleinballs

The original idea behind the Kleinballs was to give you some quick, punchy thoughts on a variety of disparate topics. Me being me, of course, I've recently gotten a bit verbose with some of them. Not today, however, because I gots things going on! And I need to get some of them off my chest.

A FREAKING JOB!!! ONE THAT FREAKING PAYS!!! I GOTS ME ONE OF THEM!!!!

I ate chicken feet on Tuesday. A laborious chore to consume, with bones everywhere, but well worth the effort. Surprisingly moist and tender.

It's been comfortably over a decade now, but his words have always lived with me. And now they've paid off. So to Steve Nootenboom, I say THANK YOU.

Amazingly, the three above items are all connected. Some of you may be able to find the link between two of them. But how are all three intertwined? I'll fill in the blanks, and give more info on this job (that pays!), next week.

Current Lakers score: 88-60, with 9:15 to go. My lord, if they win the finals, that would be the ultimate icing on a week that's already been stupendous. (Oh, wait, I forgot: the NBA Finals go on for three months. Never mind.)

Needing to renew by visa but not knowing my future job situation, I booked a one-way ticket to Auckland the other week, for July 7. And now that I have a job (that pays!), I'm gonna make it a quick trip, and have booked a return flight for July 12. No idea what I'll be doing there yet. Maybe this will bring another venture into the wide world of travel books? I'll let you know when I know.

Congrats to Randy Johnson on win number 300. Now, to all those who think that we'll never again see a pitcher make it to that milestone: J-Poz has his rebuttal, and as always, it makes far too much sense.

The reason for my rushed post today? We gots a threeeeeeeee-daaaaayyyyy weeeeeeekennnnnddd coming up for the Queen's birthday! (Although it's not really her birthday at all. For all the basics, see my reading notes from last year.) A group of us are off to Hawks Nest, about three hours north of Sydney. Should be a nice, long weekend of doing nothing at all. Can't wait.

Next week: a job (that pays!).