K: So, lately I’ve been thinking about the Japanese summer and how long it is.

C: Too long.

K: Right?  Because, like – okay, you all know I’m dramatic about the Japanese summer, but you all don’t know how dramatic I am. Because, right now today, I am literally thinking about all the times people have told me to go to hell, and I – I think “wow, a lot of people have told me to go to hell, and I feel like they really meant it because I’m there. This is what hell feels like.” The temperature in Japan – in August and September – is the temperature of hell. Throw in humidity. Because I think, when people are talking about hell’s fire, I always imagined hell to be a dry heat. No, no, no. Au contraire mon frère. Mon siblings. It is… humid. Hell

C: From all the evaporated tears.

K: There you go. From all the evaporated cups of water because I imagine they would – like, cups of water would appear and just, poof, evaporate and

C: Mmm. To torment you.

K: Yeah.

C: Like, “you’re thirsty, but you can’t have this water. Instead, it’s going straight into the air.”

K: Yes. To weigh down like a hot, heated… choking blanket. Because I feel like – so, in the – for those of you who were in L.A. in the 80s will remember the smog alerts. And it really felt like you were moving through the air. You could feel the smog. It was really bad. That’s how the humidity in Japan is. There should be humidity alerts, and they should cancel school. And they should cancel work. Because it is too hot and too humid to do anything. Now I’m going to let Chad speak because maybe he’s a little less hysterical than I am. But I don’t think so.

C: They don’t even cancel things when the typhoons hit unless they’re so severe

K: (laughs)

C: That they shut down the train station. And then most things still are not canceled.

K: Yeah.

C: They’re like, “check back in an hour and see if the trains are running yet.”

K: Yeah. So, if you’re going to be late for something because the train was canceled, that thing gets canceled, but not anything afterwards.

C: Yeah.

K: And the typhoons cause flash flooding, so, one day – this is a true story and I think I might have told it before, but I don’t know because it’s just so fantastical. I walked to work, and it was slightly rainy and windy – I walked to the train station rather, and it was slightly windy and raining. A typhoon was coming in, and it was the beginning of the typhoon. It’s a ten-minute walk from my house to the train station. By the time I got to the train station, it was a full-blown typhoon, and they had shut down the trains. And when I walked back, the streets were flooded. Because the street in front of our house often floods for – I don’t know why it floods, but I know that it does flood. And it floods to the point where we stand on our balcony – this is so kind of mean but funny – and watch people get stranded in the road.

C: Yes.

K: Because people have to literally abandon their cars. I feel bad for them because their cars are getting damaged, but it’s funny to watch them because like… what are you thinking? The road is flooded. (laughs) Why are you driving down this flooded road? Why don’t you stop? What’s even more bizarre to me is other people will pass these cars and get stuck just like the car that is stuck – I’m like, “you see a car” – the first car, I get it.

C: Right.

K: Fair play. You thought you could make it.

C: Right.

K: But when you see other cars stuck in the road from the flood, what are you doing at that point?

C: I think there was one storm last year that we saw 14 cars all flooded out at the same intersection going the same direction.

K: Yes. (laughs) I was just like – and it wasn’t like they all flooded out one at a time. That’s why we stand on our balcony because we’re interested to see – some wise people turn off because there is another road, and it’s just ten minutes longer, that doesn’t flood that you could go around and get to the same place as our road. Our road, like we own it. As the road in front of our house. So, I watch these people get flooded out at. But it was, like, seriously flooded. It was mid-thigh. I was talking in – like, I took my shoes off because I didn’t want to damage my shoes. And I was happy I was wearing a skirt that day and tights, and I just held up my skirt and my shoes and sloshed through the water. When I came in, you were like, “what happened to you?” And I was like, “typhoon.” (laughs)

C: Yeah, it’s something about the capacity of the sewer systems, and the throughput that they can achieve. Because I remember when I was in Texas – I spent a couple years in Texas as a kid – we had flash floods because the ground was so hard that it wouldn’t absorb any water if it was coming down too fast.

K: Yeah.

C: Like, even though it was dirt, it was raining too fast for the ground to soak up the water. And then it would flood to the… the storm drains.

K: Yeah.

C: So, we’ve got storm drains here, but they don’t take… beyond a certain level of water. So, when the rain stops, they do clear out.

K: Yeah, it clears out pretty fast actually.

C: But it’s common enough that our building has its own sandbags.

K: Yes.

C: So, the maintenance people put out sandbags when there’s a typhoon coming to block the water from coming into the building even though the building is elevated by about 6 inches from the street.

K: Yes.

C: For whatever reason.

K: Um, hello, you just said the reason: typhoons and the flash flooding.

C: So, yeah, I just assume there must be plumbing or something under there. Or an earthquake mechanism.

K: And, also, we live in an accessible building.

C: Yes, there are ramps and

K: It’s elevated for the ramp.

C: Yeah.

K: Which I think you think that, if it was on street level, it wouldn’t need that elevation.

C: I do think that if it was not elevated, it wouldn’t need a ramp to the elevated portion, yes.

K: Yeah.

C: But… typhoons have, like… had a major impact on our lives.

K: How?

C: Well, you had to get your passport replaced once because you had it in your bag, and you were

K: Yeah, I had it in my backpack in an outer pocket rather than the inner pocket, and I was walking out in a typhoon as I often like to do, which you do not like at all.

C: I do not like.

K: I’m like, “typhoon. Let’s go for a walk.”

C: But you don’t go down

K: I love walking in the rain.

C: You don’t go down to the river.

K: No, I don’t go down to the river.

C: We live about a mile away from a river. You don’t go down to the river when it’s typhoon.

K: Yeah, I used to go down to the river a lot, but it’s not that pleasant of a ride. I thought it would be empty, but there’s too many – so, we live in like… like how people live in a food desert, we live in a convenience store tsunami.

C: (laughs)

K: There’s like… there are literally 15 convenience stores that are within a ten-minute radius. Every – like, if you do all the convenience stores, if you stick a pin in our apartment and then drew a circle around where it would take us ten minutes to walk to – there are over 15 convenience stores in that radius. We literally have, like, convenience stores that are not even a block away from each other.

C: Yes.

K: It’s like – it’s sort of like the Starbucks phenomenon in the United States where they’ll have Starbucks on different sides of the street.

C: Yeah, we have four – four – convenience stores within one block of our apartment, and two of them are Family Mart.

K: Yeah. The same convenience store brand.

C: Right.

K: With the exact same stock.

C: Yes.

K: And… interesting – an interesting thing about Japan is, if one convenience store runs out of something, the others in the chain will not have it either. I don’t know how they manage that.

C: Just in time supplies.

K: (laughs)

C: I’m being serious, and I’m not making a joke. It’s the whole inventory prediction system that they use. So, if they mispredict

K: Oh, wait. I’m mad at 7-I Holdings. 7-I Holdings, if someone that works for 7-I Holdings is listening to me, you need to bring back your cookies. Like, the giant cookies with the caramel flakes and the macadamia nuts. Those cookies were the bomb. They were like the best cookie I’ve ever tasted. If you scroll back in time through our Instagram, I even featured them on our Instagram. They were the best cookie ever, and now they’re just gone. How you going to look keeping macha flavored cookies?

C: (laughs)

K: Who wants a green tea flavored cookie? They just sit on the shelf. They’re always in stock because nobody wants them.

C: Yes.

K: And they also did away with their giant chunk chocolate chip cookies.

C: I know.

K: Which were like diabetes on a plate – I mean, those suckers were sweeter than sweet. But when you’re craving “I just really want something that’s so sweet I’m going to pass out and go into a food coma after eating it”

C: (laughs)

K: That chocolate chip cookie was it. Because there were nights I could not sleep, and I’m like, “if I put this on a plate, heat it up in the microwave for ten seconds, pour myself a big old glass of milk, I’m going to be asleep in thirty seconds.” It was the perfect sleep recipe.

C: Yes.

K: And now it’s gone. And on top of all of that, it gets worse. On top of all of that – and mind you it’s the heat of summer, typhoon season, peak “I need comfort” – there is no chocolate ice cream to be had anywhere in Japan. There’s no chocolate ice cream. Not even at 31 flavors because 31 flavors chocolate ice cream is bitter, dark chocolate.

C: They call it chocolate.

K: But it is bitter, dark chocolate.

C: There’s Borden chocolate. There’s not the kind of chocolate that you like. You like Hagen Dazs chocolate.

K: There’s – and Hagen – no Hagen Dazs chocolate ice cream anywhere.

C: Well, we haven’t gone to the Hagen Dazs store. Because

K: Where’s the Hagen Dazs store at?

C: The Annex Building down at Sakae station.

K: Oh, who’s doing all of that?

C: Right, so

K: I bet you dollars to donuts – now I feel like going down there and giving them a piece of my mind. I bet you they will have fudge chocolate ribbon. I bet you they will have chocolate chocolate chip. I bet you they will have everything but plain old chocolate ice cream.

C: It is interesting the specialty brands and the limited time edition and all of that. I think we might have talked about this before, but the Kit-Kat store sometimes doesn’t have regular Kit-Kat

K: Oh, but they have macha Kit-Kats.

C: And purple potato and all kinds of, like, red chilis and just weird… some of them are tasty but still weird flavors of Kit-Kats.

K: Yeah, so

C: That’s their whole thing is “we sell Kit-Kat”

K: So, now I’m having to eat just vanilla ice cream. Because I like to eat a scoop of vanilla and a scoop of chocolate and them mix them together, and it creates like the perfect flavor of ice cream for me. Because the chocolate is too chocolate-y and the vanilla is too vanilla-y, so I mix them up and swirl them around. And if it wasn’t a pandemic, I would go to McDonald’s and get a soft-serve cone.

C: Right.

K: But the McDonald’s that we have to go to – because Japan has a weird relationship with ice cream. The one at the mall, it’s so rare that they serve soft-serve ice cream because they serve milkshakes that has ice flakes in it. It’s like – it comes out freezer burned. I don’t know what’s going on with that.

C: It’s a McDonald’s thing that… that’s more recent than when I was working there. When I was working there, the ice cream machines worked. This is just coincidence. I am not responsible for them working.

K: (laughs)

C: But now I

K: You didn’t ruin the whole system for everyone.

C: But now I see a lot of things from people on Twitter and people being like, “do you think the ice cream machines start out broken, or do they break them first thing in the morning?” So, I guess McDonald’s not having soft-serve ice cream is incredibly common despite them having the machines.

K: So, the one down the street from Ozone station in Ozmall always has soft-serve ice cream.

C: Well, and they have a drive-thru, so that’s one benefit of that one.

K: Yeah. So, they have a drive-thru, and they have soft-serve ice cream. Almost – I shouldn’t say always, I go there maybe once a month when I go to my doctor’s appointment or once every other month – so, always is like, I don’t know. I feel like maybe I shouldn’t be putting that out there because even going once a month, there have been times that they didn’t have ice cream.

C: Like, six or seven times a year, you can get ice cream there.

K: Yeah. Not even six or seven. Like, five out of six.

C: Okay.

K: Or five out of seven times. And this is – so, when I say Chad is down for me, you all, Chad is down for me. If they don’t have soft-serve ice cream, we cancel the entire McDonald’s order. And Chad does without his McDonald’s in solidarity for me not being able to get my ice cream.

C: Oh, okay. So, we’re going to talk soft-serve solidarity.

(laughter)

C: And summer.

K: Yes. (laughs) No, I thi – you don’t think that’s a big deal, but I think that’s a huge deal if you want to smack your lips around some McDonald’s.

C: No, I – I hear what you’re saying.

K: And then because they don’t have what I want, you’re like, “it’s okay babe. I understand I can’t have McDonald’s because” and you’re not saying it in a snarky way, you’re like “no, just cancel my order, too. It’s not fair that I have something that reminds you of what you couldn’t have.”

C: Well, because of your porphyria, you get such strong food cravings.

K: Really strong food cravings.

C: And then anything associated with that, if you’re not – if I’m eating something that I enjoy, like a fillet-o-fish sandwich – which is what I like – and you aren’t able to have the… the soft-serve, it just aggravates you… a lot.

K: It makes it really hard.

C: Ten years ago… there was a summer that you wanted soft serve every day.

K: Mmm. Yeah.

C: And it was from like March until August or something.

K: Yeah, it was a long run.

C: Every day you wanted soft serve.

K: It was a long run.

C: So, it started out when it was cool enough that I could just go to the mall and walk back – which is a five-minute walk

K: Yeah.

C: With the soft serve held in coffee mugs because it kept them perfectly perched.

K: Yeah.

C: And I did that so much that there was the woman who worked there – I don’t know if she owned it but she worked there – she got pregnant, took maternity leave, and came back after having had her baby.

K: (laughs) And you were still doing it for me.

C: And I was still doing it. Yeah.

K: That is super love. Super love. Because I can’t – in the summer, I can leave the house. Like, at all.

C: Yeah.

K: And, so, every summer, I fantasize about leaving Japan. Like, I will know – and we talked about this a little bit on the last podcast but not in depth. For me, I fantasize about – and you and I talked about it – I fantasize about being able to go to another country for a month or too. Like, I would love to rent a villa in Spain.

C: Mhm.

K: Because, in addition to New Zealand having some of the best tattoo artists in the world, so does Spain. So, Spain and New Zealand are like tattoo meccas. Like – and, in Spain, everyone’s tatted. It seemed like. There was just tons and tons of people tattooed.

C: Spain was interesting. So, Spain it was like… really skinny men

K: Super skinny men. Like, I wanted to feed them the beef that was sold everywhere.

C: Yeah, the pork that was sold everywhere. Because Madrid was

K: It was venison.

C: Madrid was pork.

K: Madrid was – I like pork, and I didn’t

C: Because it was al cured pork and… it was pork prepared in different ways.

K: You all need to go back and listen to our Spain episode because I don’t remember what it was, and Chad’s memory is horrible, and it’s not pork because I absolutely love all things pork. Fight me. You all know my thing on why I’m not a vegan. I have a blood disorder. I have to eat meet.

C: You are an obligate carnivore.

K: Yes.

C: So, it was really skinny men and plump women.

K: Yeah, all of them were like plush like me.

C: Yeah, and they would look at us like “what are you doing with a fat guy?” Like

K: Nobody was – everybody was looking at you like snack cake. Nobody was looking like “what are you doing with a fat guy?” But what was so weird is like… there is sk- I feel like their skinny to fat attraction because the big girls were not lusting after you. The few skinny girls we saw were looking at you like “mmm. Daddy, how’d you get so big? How’d you get so big and tasty?”

C: (laughs)

K: and I was like, “I will fight you. Do not come for my man.”

C: And then were like, “we take Jack Sprat and his Wife very seriously here.”

K: (laughs)

C: Because Jack Sprat, he could eat no fat.

(laughter)

K: Finish the thing. Not everybody knows Jack Sprat. You’ve just confused probably everywhere – if we have anybody under 30 that’s listening to it.

C: It’s an American nursery rhyme that I learned when I was growing up. Jack Sprat could eat no fat. His wife could eat no lean. And, so, between the two of them, they picked the platter clean.

K: And where you have it.

C: Yes, exactly.

K: But neither one of us are Jack Sprat.

C: No.

K: We are both picking our own platters clean. We are both voluptuous, luxurious rides.

C: Yes. So, I liked Spain, but I think that New Zealand would be a better summer option when we talk about this because it’s currently winter in New Zealand.

K: Yes.

C: and, so, we could be perpetually seeking winter. We could be like migrating birds except going the reverse direction: we want someplace cold.

K: So, like, my ultimate dream – my ultimate fantasy – is to live a nomadic lifestyle.

C: Yeah.

K: And to… buy houses in different countries and set them up. But, then, I don’t like… buying houses. I don’t like – that’s not my jam. I would rather rent someplace temporarily because I don’t want to pay upkeep on someplace I’m not, and I can’t tolerate the idea of someone being in a home I own.

C: Well and, New Zealand in particular is a problem. The number of people who own houses that are empty most of the year has really put a crimp in the housing market and made things unaffordable.

K: Yeah.

C: So, in New Zealand, they really do encourage you to just rent if you’re only going to be here a couple of months a year.

K: Yeah.

C: Don’t – don’t buy someplace to let it sit empty.

K: Do you want to put a pillow behind your back?

C: Nah, I’m good.

K: You don’t look good.

C: I am as

K: Well, you look scrumptious.

C: I am as good as I ever get.

K: Okay. You’re not as good as you ever get. I’ve seen you more comfortable than this.

C: I am as good as I get with my ankylosing spondylitis flaring the way it currently is.

K: Okay. So, I feel like… I would love to go to New Zealand. I have no desire to go to Australia or Tasmania. I’d like to go to New Zealand, and I would like to spend time in Sweden, but Sweden kind of freaks me out. At least, the part of Sweden we were in. I don’t know, maybe we should go to a different part of Sweden, but the part of Sweden we were in was very… one-population. And I like multicultural communities or communities where the majority of people have melanin. So, for me, I find it – because of my experiences in the south going up – I find it really triggering to be in spaces where there’s no color. Where everyone’s white, and I have to say, when we went to Sweden, everybody was super lovely. The food was so good. The food was bomb. Hotel service was bomb. Hotel brunch… breakfast thing – you loved it because – I think we might’ve talked about this before – was just like a smorgasbord of granola, and you are a granola fiend.

C: Yes. It was a literal smorgasbord.

K: Yes.

C: That was literally the name of it.

K: Yes. And I loved it because they knew how to cook meat well done, and they didn’t care about doing that.

C: Yeah.

K: And, so, they had really great – really great steak cooked well done. Perfect to my taste to where it wasn’t burnt but it was cooked all the way through. And it was just really a great experience, and I really enjoyed the museum there, and I think that it would be really interesting to go there and go there without Rasta because, when we went, we took Rasta with us. He was about 12 or 13 at the time, and he was fun to travel with, but I find that I enjoy traveling without him than I did – more than I like traveling with him.

C: Yeah. And that was Gothenburg, or, if you’re going to be a purist about the Swedish pronunciation, Göteborg.

K: Yeah.

C: So, Malmo has… a more diverse population, and that’s just the other side of the gap between Norway and Denmark. So, we spent a little bit of time in Copenhagen. And then we pass though Malmo taking a train to Gothenburg.

K: Yeah, and so there are some countries that the Black Lives Matter movement has made me – that I wanted to go to that I no longer want to go to.

C: Mhm.

K: And Belgium is one of them. Like, Belgium freaked me out with – so, the Black Lives Matter movement has been going for about five or six years. It’s not a recent thing that happened with Covid like a lot of people thing. And, before the outbreak of Covid, and before it became a really big thing in the United States, Belgium was trending because of their winter holiday black face festivals, basically. Not basically. Exactly. And, so… it was last holiday season that I was seeing all of these black face and really racist tweets coming out of Belgium, and I was like “wow. Wow.” That country just flies under the radar when it comes to race relations.

C: Right.

K: But I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me because it is one of the colonizing countries. It is a colonizer. It does have a history of slavery and human zoos and all of those kinds of things, but I had just always had it in my head that they were a sanctuary country.

C: Mm.

K: And…. They’re not a sanctuary country. Like, everything I thought Belgium was, it’s not.

C: Right.

K: So, everything I thought Belgium was – more Denmark than Belgium, but Denmark is unhappy about being. And we went to Denmark, and I didn’t enjoy Denmark at all. I felt like it was really overpriced and overcrowded.

C: Yeah, I think so.

K: And really – and really hectic. And then, too, it didn’t help that, like, anytime we went out at night, we saw people in the street. Like, hammered. So, maybe it was the time of year we went, but everybody was dressed up in fancy dress

C: We saw that in Sweden, too.

K: Mm. I don’t remember that.

C: Yeah.

K: I just put it all on Denmark. I got a really bad staph infection – Denmark was really bad for me.

C: You did, yeah.

K: Denmark made me super sick, and then you got sick. Right as soon as we arrived from the airport,  you ate a hot dog, and it made you sick. We were just sick the whole time we were in Denmark.

C: Which is rude because a hot dog making you sick is just, like, come on.

K: (laughs) It’s like what you get. (laughs)

C: No, it’s just like rude.

K: And plus, nobody in Denmark listens to our podcast.

C: Mm. Yeah, that’s an important thing.

K: (laughs) And now we’re going to get all these angry messages – “I listen to it on a VPN. You don’t know me.” So, I – I’m not trying to discourage anybody from going to Denmark. It’s just not on our listen. And I do want to go to Austria, and Austria has a really racist history too.

C: Yeah, I think most places do in Europe.

K: Everywhere in the world, they do.

C: Yeah.

K: Because Africa has tribal racism.

C: Yes.

K: And colorism. Like, every place has racist issues. I don’t want to go to Africa, and I don’t want to go to South America because we’re trying to avoid the heat, and I can’t think of like… any countries that it snows in Africa.

C: In Africa

K: Are there any countries that it snows in Africa? Does it snow in Africa?

C: It does snow in Africa. Like, Mount Kilimanjaro is in Africa, and that’s usually covered in snow. So, in Africa, you have to be at elevation for it to snow.

K: And I don’t do elevation.

C: Yeah. Just like in South America, Bolivia is really cold.

K: Is it?

C: Yeah, but it’s also at a really high elevation.

K: Yeah, I don’t – I don’t do elevation. Why don’t do I do elevation? Because of my lupus and porphyria.

C: Yes.

K: (laughs) So…. Okay, so, it seems like the – for my fantasies, like you’re on board with Spain just not in the summer because it was hot.

C: Yes.

K: When we went in the summer. So, like, we could winter in Spain, summer in New Zealand, fall and spring in Japan? Would that be – what would be your fantasy rotation?

C: Yeah, see, I think that would work when we’re having our fantasy rotation. And… I kind of know Japanese, but I would have to learn Spanish for Spain

K: Yeah.

C: And New Zealander for New Zealand.

K: Yeah.

C: So…. Because I’ve spoken to some people from there with the English, and… it’s New Zealand English.

K: Yeah, it is. Just like British English or Canadian English.

C: Yeah.

K: Or Southern English. Because you do not speak Southern at all. Southern confuses you.

C: Southern that’s not Texas. So, I feel like Texas is not

K: You do not speak Texan. You like to perpetrate that you do. Okay, go ahead and perpetrate. I’m going to give you space to perpetrate it. I’m sorry that I’m taking up and calling you out today.

C: I lived in Texas for three years in total.

K: How old were you?

C: I was 8 and 9, and then again when I was 17.

K: Look at the gravitas. Just listen to the gravitas. Look if you’re reading, and Rasta when you transcribe, please said “said with gravitas” so that our listeners know that your loving father said “8 and 9” with gravitas.

C: Well, those are formative linguistic years.

K: (laughs) Okay, break it down for me, babe. Come on, let’s go in. Go. Go, babe, go. I’m rooting for you.

C: No, if you don’t know, I can’t explain it in a brief time.

(laughter)

K: No, how are they – but, your lived experience, how are they formative? Because you know I’m accepting of everyone’s lived experience. (laughs) If you’re telling me that they were formative for your lived experience – and you lived there for your whole year 8 and your whole year 9?

C: No, I lived there exactly two years. Like, two years to the date.

K: Okay.

C: So, my theory is that they really didn’t like my dad at the military base we were at, so they were like, “get rid of him as soon as possible” and the army said, “two years is the minimum.”

K: Okay.

C: So, we were there two years.

K: Okay.

C: So, we arrived in December, we left in December. I think that I actually… was there for… most of 8, all of 9, and a little bit of 10.

K: Yeah. Because your birthday’s in October.

C: Right. So, it was just… interesting to learn new ways to speak.

K: But how was that formative for you?

C: Linguistically?

K: Yeah.

C: There are certain words that I feel like I still say with a Texan accent.

K: Such as?

C: Such as Texas.

K: How would one say Texas without – how is your Texas different than my Texas?

C: Well, it’s accented.

K: (laughs) Your Texas is exactly the same as my Texas.

C: Yup.

K: (laughs) If y’all hear a difference – because I say “y’all” and I’ve said “y’all” my whole life. But I love, now, that I have the habit of saying “y’all” because it’s so gender-inclusive and identity inclusive.

C: Yes.

K: And sex inclusive.

C: Yes.

K: And I love inclusivity. Inclusivity is sexy, baby.

C: Well, there’s the Pennsylvania local – the yinz.

K: What are you saying?

C: Yinz is a local dialect in Philadelphia that means y’all.

K: Yinz?

C: Yinz. Y-i-n-z.

K: Mm. I haven’t heard that.

C: I hadn’t either before Twitter, but then I saw it enough that I was like “okay.”

K: Twitter educates.

C: Yes.

K: (laughs) If you let it. So… what is your fantasy – take us through the year. Because we did my fantasy. So, like, my fantasy removed – clean slate, you get to pick. What countries are you picking and why? (yawns) Don’t make me yawn.

C: Okay, so, I’m a little bit boring because my fantasy is just that the climate control in our apartment would work well enough that I would not have to worry about the weather.

K: What does that mean? That you would have automatic – what? Explain it to me.

C: That would mean that the air conditioning and heating keep the apartment the same temperature all year.

K: Mhm.

C: And that we have anticipatory deliveries, so I don’t have to – I don’t have to order anything for delivery. Just, the right stuff arrives on the right days.

K: I don’t know what that means. Like, if I get a craving, the world anticipates my craving and delivers it to me?

C: Exactly.

K: Because the things that you order most are the things that my HCP has me craving.

C: Right.

K: I’m like, “how fast can you get it here?”

C: Yes.

K: Like, we can go ahead and say – I had 124 waffle cones delivered this morning because I’m craving waffle cones.

C: Yeah, only 120.

K: Oh, only 120. Well, I have another 4 on the counter because we went to Baskin Robbins and bought out all their waffle cones because I’m eating about 4 or 5 waffle cones a day.

C: Yeah.

K: And I’m like – nothing else in the world can replace this craving until a waffle cone.

C: Until it passes. So, we have boxes of stuff that were previous cravings, and they just

K: Yeah, like we have tons and tons of microwave popcorn.

C: Yes.

K: Because I was eating that a lot.

C: Yeah. So, we’ve been going through that for the last five years or so.

K: (laughs) Literally slowly but surely going through it.

C: Yeah.

K: Because I – when I’m craving it, I’m like – okay, we have 120, it’s time to order the next 120 to make sure that they’re here when I want them.

C: Mhm.

K: But now I’m waiting because I’ve seen how fast they can get here, and I’m like, “okay, I need to eat at least half of them before we order the next one to see if I’m still craving them.” And even with that measure or metric, we still have that happen.

C: Yeah.

K: (yawns) You are making this a yawn fest.

C: (laughs)

K: You yawned first, just for the record. And I’m not hungry because I ate 4 waffle cones before we started recording. 4 waffle cones and a bag of beef jerky.

C: Yeah. So, I guess for me, when I fantasize about living in different places… it depends on what I’m doing for work.

K: Mhm.

C: In terms of how flexible things are. Like, right now, if I were to go to Spain, I know that my job would… work with me on that. But it would be inconvenient, and I think that… I would be… put out a bit if I were there long-term. But if I were in New Zea-

K: Long-term being like a month?

C: Yeah, long-term being like a month. I think that I would have to be up at weird times for meetings and things so people could talk with me. But New Zealand, on the other hand, is two hours ahead of my office rather than two hours behind – like I am now – so it would just be a slight adjustment.

K: Mhm.

C: So, I think about that. I think about the access because one of the things that I really like about living where we do… is that there are grocery stores within walking distance – basically, anything is within walking distance.

K: I loved where we were in Madrid. Everything was walking distance.

C: Yeah, but we were in downtown

K: We had two grocery stores that were in walking distance.

C: We were in downtown Madrid in a hotel, so I don’t know… if we were there long-term, if we would have been in that

K: I’m sure there were rentals. Because we saw a lot of apartments.

C: Yeah, we did see a lot of apartments.

K: Above the shops and such.

C: Yeah. That – it would depend. I don’t know how convenient things are in New Zealand. I know that, when they shut down for things, that some people were having difficulty getting food and such without traveling long distances.

K: Mm. Yeah because the grocery stores were rather small.

C: Yeah.

K: and, so, the grocery stores in Japan – I feel like some of them are small, but some of them are very much American sized. But none of them have like… no, more like Casentino’s and Safeway, and then there’s a Costco, so I guess you can get like… mega shopping done here in Japan if you want.

C: Yeah, you can.

K: Here in Nagoya, if you want.

C: Yeah, you can. You need to have a car to go to Costco because

K: Because it’s out by the airport?

C: Yeah, that’s right. I think just for shipping purposes or whatever – or land or

K: So, if you could have magical shipping, you wouldn’t want to go stay at that place you went for the retreat in Germany? I thought you said it was really gorgeous, and you had a great time there.

C: It was really gorgeous, and I had a great time there, but that place is only open for mathematical research workshops run one week at a time.

K: Mhm.

C: So… that is not something that… that you can live at unless you’re a fellow, and then they have for fellowships where you live there for like 6 months.

K: So, is there any country besides Japan that you’d want to spend an extended amount of time in?

C: I think not just for the purpose of spending time there. I think there are places that, if I was going to do something specific, that I would like spending time there. If I was going to be doing… specific research or visiting specific people to… talk about research or… if I was going to go look at a place for research – there’s a theme here. I’m not quite sure what it is.

K: (laughs) Who do you want to research with?

C: Nobody

K: Is it math, or is it data engineering that you’re more interested in researching?

C: I feel like data engineering doesn’t require a lot of research so much as it requires practice. There are definitely theoretical questions in it, but it’s a very practical application of computer science. So, I’m not sure. Maybe book research. We talked about – on the previous podcast – that I … I am writing books, so I like to do research, and usually I do that online. But sometimes it’s nice to go places and get a feel for a place to write about it.

K: Mm. And are you like… would you be interested in doing writer retreats?

C: Yeah, I think

K: If we were living that level.

C: Yeah, I think so.

K: Really?

C: Yeah.

K: retreats where it’s just all about writing?

C: Yeah. Not long-term. Like, a week. Ten days. I think if it were six months, it would just be too much.

K: So, like, when you – are you talking about, like… what was that one you went to in Boston? Was it in Boston?

C: Yeah. Boston is the Muse and the Marketplace.

K: Would you enjoy doing that if we were living a traveling lifestyle? Because I plan to never step foot in the United States again.

C: Right. So, the Muse and the Marketplace is a conference, which is a little bit… bigger than I would be interested in doing. So, there are a couple of writing confe- writing retreat slash conferences – that are pretty well known. That are like Bread Loaf and thing – and those are more like 15 to 20 people at most.

K: Uh-huh.

C: Rather than… 600 or 700 people. Or the San Francisco one, I think, was like 200 people.

K: so, would you want to go to the United States again?

C: I don’t think so. So, I think – I think we’ve gotten what we have… what we need to form the United States. And, particularly, with the way it is right now… it doesn’t feel safe.

K: Mm. Well, nowhere feels safe. We’re not – just so everybody knows, we’re not planning any travel.

C: No.

K: This is just a fantasy exercise because I have cabin fever.

C: Yes.

K: Plus, I am being burned alive in my own home. Like, Chad had to beat our air conditioners into submission. I don’t know how you do it, but every year, there comes a point in time when I’m like, “babe. I can’t take it. We have two fans going.” And we’re bad humans, okay, we have two fans going, four ACs because there’s no central cooling, and – what is it you do? You do something that makes it cooler.

C: Yes. I do. So… the air conditioners are split units, and they have auto-regulation of the strength of the fan.

K: Power regulation?

C: Autoregulation.

K: Okay.

C: They self-regulate the strength of the fan.

K: Okay.

C: And what I do is I just turn off the self-regulation and tell it to blow hard all the time.

K: Does Rasta know how to do this in case – I the event something happens to you?

C: Yes. He does know how to do this.

K: (laughs) I know he does because when we’re in the office, I will call him up from his house and I will ask him – like, I will call him and I will say, “what the fuck did you do to my air conditioner? It is not blowing.”

C: Mhm.

K: And he’s like, “I don’t know what I did. I’ll come check it.” Because he’s so well-trained. And he comes up, and he’s like, “wow. Somehow, this got turned to heat. Somehow, this got turned down.” And it’s so cute because he’s always like mysterious because I – when I get frustrated, I just push buttons.

C: Yes, you are a button masher.

K: Yeah, so I just start mashing buttons, and then I call him up and I ask him “what the fuck did you do to my air conditioner?” (laughs) And he knows that means I’ve been mashing buttons, and I’m like “no, tell me how to do it. I’m listening this time.” And, like, he says a bunch of words, and as soon as I say “tell me I’m listening this time” my mind’s somewhere else.

C: Right.

K: And I’m just standing in the cool air.

C: It’s like, okay, “so here’s the buttons in Japanese…”

K: Yeah.

C: “So, you want to push the button that says wind strength.” You’re like, “but it says it in Japanese.”

K: No, I know tsuyoi.

C: Yeah.

K: So, I know how to push like strong wind.

C: Right. But there’s no button labeled that, so that will display on the remote control display when you get it

K: Yes, so my theory is mash buttons, but I don’t actually look at the controller.

C: Yeah, you don’t

K: I don’t look at the air conditioning unit.

C: Yeah, you don’t keep track of what – what you’re doing on it.

K: Yeah. I’m just like, “I’m mashing things.”

C: Yes.

K: And you trained – so, it’s so bad, we might’ve said this before in other episodes, literally the monitor on our door says “not this” “this” because it has a giant red button, and I always want to push that to let people in. And that will call the police.

C: I think for almost a decade, we had tape over it

K: Yeah.

C: That just said “no.”

K: Yes. And now it says “this” “not this.”

C: Yeah.

K: And there’s like sticky pads, and I still want to push it even though it says “not this” – I think “really? But was I thinking of this scenario?

C: Yeah. And it – it says “emergency” in red but in Japanese.

K: which I can read, but I’m not sure if I push – so, the problem is that it has a round button in the center of it, and then a big panel button. For two different types of emergencies.

C: Right.

K: So, I think… maybe if I just push the outer button, it will let the people in but not the inner button. And we have pushed it so many times, they were like “the next time you push that, we’re going to charge you because this is beginning to get ridiculous.”

C: Which is when we put the tape on it. It’s been many years since they’ve come out.

K: So, I’m such a bad human and jerkasaurus in so many ways – and I just own that – it’s not negative self-talk. It’s a reality. Because, yeah, I’m going to push this until I’m penalized.

C: (laughs)

K: Like… and it drives my sweet, loving, autistic husband to the edge – like, he’s like, “babe. Come on.” He – just… “babe.” That’s when I know he’s had it. He does this face. He closes his eyes, and he puts his hand sup. And he’s just like “just babe. Babe.” And he has a way that he says it. And it’s so mournful. He’s really good at looking sad because he’s got As, so his eyes are always puffy and red. He looks like he’s about to burst into tears at any moment.

C: Yes, I get chronic uveitis. It’s really, really fun for certain values of the word fun.

K: But it makes him look so freaking sad all the time. So, when he implores

C: (laughs)

K: He looks just like – he would be perfect for one of those commercials. Because we had this weird commercial on YouTube that we can’t figure out “are they talking to parents of depressed children?” It’s in Japanese, and it has Japanese writing on it.

C: It’s in Japanese, and it uses the passive phrasing.

K: Yeah.

C: And, in Japanese, when there’s passive phrasing where you just understand the context. So, you just

K: There’s no context. It’s just on YouTube.

C: Right. You just linguistically know what’s being said.

K: Yeah, and it’s just this little girl who’s obviously a model. And they made her hair messy to indicate that she’s depressed.

C: Right.

K: so, she’s standing there, no expression on her face, and it has the like… (imitates music) like that sad music.

C: Yeah.

K: I don’t know if that’s going to come across as sad music. And… it’s like what is this about? They should have used Chad.

C: They should have.

K: Because then it would have conveyed sadness. Because right now, you look deeply sorrowful because you’ve just been rubbing and rubbing your eyes the entire podcast.

C: I was – when I was a teenager, I was scouted for a commercial – a PSA – about child abuse. They were like, “we want you to do this commercial.”

K: And your dad was like, “no, too close to home.”

C: Yeah, basically.

(laughter)

C: He freaked out and said “absolutely no way.”

K: That’s so funny because your dad is so money-grubbing.

C: Mhm.

(laughter)

K: So, Chad and I have been together for over 21 years, y’all, so we have – like – we have well – like, mined all the stuff about his dad. He is not hurt by me calling his father money-grubbing. And, I don’t know, like… sue me. Because you can’t. Because your dad is very litigious.

C: Yes, but money-grubbing is an opinion. So

K: Well, and we have evidence of him begging us for money.

C: Yes. And stealing money from an inheritance that he was the executor of, and

K: Yes, which he admitted and is a traceable fact.

C: Being disbarred in several states for financial mishandling of client assets and things, so yeah.

K: And also marrying clients and such.

C: He wasn’t disbarred for that. It was just unethical.

K: Oh, it was just unethical.

C: Yeah. Exactly.

K: So, yeah, that’s a nice way to end the episode. Just bashing and banging on that dick. (laughs)

C: Well, and we’re just talking about dreams, so

K: (laughs)

C: I don’t dream of living in any place that I would encounter anybody that I dislike.

K: (laughs) So, your fantasy – just to recap it for everyone – is to live in a magical house that knows my wishes and knows your wishes and just does everything for us.

C: Correct. I would like to live in a house outside of time and place.

K: That would be awesome. We should write a book about that.

C: I would like to live in the TARDIS.

K: That is awesome. You should write a book about that.

C: I should write a book about that. I probably will.

K: Ohh. Slight snark in that. He does not like me telling him tow rite books. He owes me a book. So, I just have to talk about this real quick. Oh, no. Great he owes me a book story, but we’re going to save it for the Patreon because we have to save quality content for our patrons, so that way people will be motivated to go and visit the paywall.

C: Exactly.

K: So, we’re going to talk about it

C: if you think this was quality, head over the Patreon and realize what crap you’ve got here compared to that stuff.

K: (laughs) Talk to you next week. Bye.

C: Bye.

K: Or talk to you in a few seconds on Patreon. (laughs)