A is Australia (and arguments, too)

Ah, Australia. After 4 weeks in SE Asia, being back in a Westernized country feels like a really good thing for several reasons.

1) Fresh air. My respiratory system totally had it with motorbike exhaust, burning coconut husks and smoldering incense, so much so that I arrived in the land of Oz with a sore throat and a stuffy nose.

2) Clean water. Not only can I drink from the tap again and brush my teeth without bottled water, but I can actually open my mouth in the shower. It is the little things that make a big difference.

3) Pizza! Actually, any version of real Western food. After rice and noodles and noodles and rice and rice and rice and rice and noodles, I was ready for something else. As it turns out, my first meal in Australia was Laksa Noodle Soup. Go figure.

At the same time, there are several reasons why I'm not so certain about being here.

1) It's not a quite as foreign as the rest of the places I have traversed on this journey. When you combine that with the fact that this is the last leg of my trip and that we have now turned a New Year, well, it just feels a little different to be here.

2) My boyfriend, who is living and working in Australia and the reason that this country was tacked onto my trip. He is not only a workaholic, but he is content doing the same things over and over and over again. My exploratory side feels like it just came to a grinding halt in a sharp contrast to the previous weeks. At this point it is hard for me to tell the difference between suddenly acquiring a new and very different travel buddy after weeks of going solo and what very well may be...

3) an ill-fitted and failing relationship. While, I have yet to acquire the ability to tell the difference of such, I have no doubt that time will sort it out for me. Until then I'm learning how to be ok with all the arguing we are doing even when it is about the stupidest thing in the world.

Case in point: Celsius to Fahrenheit conversions.

Now before I get started, I should probably preface this section with a very simple portrait of myself and my man, so here goes: Me, Woman; Him, Man. Hopefully, that clears up any confusion.

Last night we went out to dinner with friends. One a born and bred Aussie, the other a long time American friend who had just arrived from NY. This dynamic inevitably led to the old Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion conversation as we discussed weather patterns and the mean temperature of the ocean (i.e., would it be comfortable to swim in the ocean?). Now, for those of you who have not had to make these conversions since high school or college, there are 2 main ways to go about it.

1) There is a rather clunky-in-the-field equation that goes like this: F = 32 + 9/5C. Basically, it involves a fraction and a rather ugly, although not difficult, fraction. The reason that fraction isn't so difficult is because 9 divided by 5 is 1.8, which is essentially 2 and 2 is a nice, round, whole number. Very easy to use whether you have a pen and paper handy and whether you like math or not. It also leads us to our second method.

2) Double the degrees Celsius and add 30.

Now before I ask which one you would use, let me just prove how similar these 2 equations are. Say it is 25C and you want to know what that translates to in degrees Fahrenheit.

Equation one tells us F = 32 + 9/5(25C) = 77F
Equation two tell us F = 2(25C) + 30 = 80F

Or, suppose it is 15C and, again, you want degrees F.

Equation one: F = 32 + 9/5(15C) = 59F
Equation two: F = 2(15C) + 30 = 60F

As you can clearly see, the answers are more or less the same - only being off by a couple of degrees. Now, if you were a chemist, or an engineer, or a computer programmer who was programming sensitive data, engineering something to spec or alchemizing a potent formula, I would recommend you use the first equation, but when you are trying to figure out if the ocean is swimmable in the middle of a dinner conversation and you want a quick and reliable method, use the second.

This is where he and I differ. Or, maybe this is where we are the same, I'm not sure, but let's tackle first things first, shall we? We differ because to me there really is no noticeable difference between 77F and 80F. I mean there just isn't any difference other then the look of the numbers. In reality, my body feels about 3 temperatures ranges, which we can call Hot, Comfortable and Cold. When you tell me it is 80F, it really only gives me a general idea that the weather is in the upper range of comfortable, but it actually depends on the conditions. It could be 80F with driving wind and rain or it could be 80F without a breeze in sight at 4 o'clock in the afternoon on asphalt that is reflecting back all the sun it has absorbed the entire day long. Regardless of the fact that the weather man says the temperature is 80F, those two things feel really, really different. For all intents and purposes, this is because temperature is an average, or an aggregate of it's surrounds. It is not exact and therefore I need not be exact, either.

Try telling that to a man who loves only numbers. Actually, I believe it is not so much numbers that he loves, but the number-ness that truly does him in. Numbers actually only represent other things, they aren't the things themselves, but what they represent is unchanging. 1 is always 1, every single time. 1 orange is the same amount as 1 pony and the same as 1 microbe, even though they are vastly different things, with different weights, proportions, uses and associations. One can represent many, many things, but it is only ever a single, solitary thing. Thus the reason, that my guy believes that 25C can only accurately amount to 77F, not my estimate of 80F.

As for where we are the same: Well, we each hold a very stubborn belief in our ideas and constantly seek people who attune to a similar fancy. Less and less that seems to be each other.

He says I try too hard. I say he doesn't try hard enough. He says relax, I say grow up. He says pedal harder, I say I'm pedaling as fast as I can. He says sex in the morning, I say sex as night. He's all elbows, I'm all knees and lately we've been asking each other why it is that we are together. We seamlessly connect on the answer: We have no idea but we're not ready to stop trying...and so it goes, two stubborn people trying to live their lives together on opposite side of the world and arguing almost every step along the way.