Try New Things, They Said. It Will Be Fun, They Said.

It's been a month since I left on my trip to move out here. The whole experience of moving to a state I've never been, starting a real-person job at a big-ass company... all new. And along the way, everyone kept telling me, "Have fun! Try new things!", as though trying new things would immediately lead me to the magical world of fun. Well ya know what? You all are a bunch of goddamn liars!!

For every new thing I've tried, not one of these activities inherently led me to have a good time. The people I'm with were sometimes pretty alright, but for the most part, really people? Try new things. I don't think so. 

New Activity #1: Make new friends with your coworkers!

My company has 10,000+ employees.  I figured it won't be too hard to meet someone I get along with. One day on the bus home, I was reading comics on my laptop and started to laugh. The guy sitting across from me asked, "What's funny?". I showed him the cartoon and we had a short and polite conversation about which department we work for, what building we work in, which neighborhood we live in, where we come from, etc. I learned that he moved to here pretty recently and he's eager to meet people and make new friends. Before getting off the bus, he asked me for my name and I obliged. That night, he looked up my work IM screen name, my work e-mail address, my work phone number, my internal work profile, my Facebook, my Google Plus, my personal e-mail, my Skype name, and (just a guess at this point) my blog. 

So if you're reading this, Carlos, here's a message: YOU SEEM LIKE A PERFECTLY NICE PERSON, BUT YOU ARE SERIOUSLY CREEPING ME OUT. 

So yeah, make new friends? Not fun. 


New Activity #2: Rock Climbing

Because I don't know too many folks, when 4 people I know decide to do something and invite me along, I say 'yes', and assume that the 'Try new things = have fun' rule applies. So when a few kids that I know and (kind of) like wanted to go rock climbing, I figure it couldn't have been too bad. 

We went here: 

Planet Granite in nearby Sunnyvale. The place is great! It's a huge gym with the capacity to have a lot of people climbing at once and a lot of activity. We first took a quick safety course, because forcing a person to take a 20-minute intro to tying knots means that you should be plenty safe if you put your life in their hands... right? I signed a liability waiver. I learned the fine art of belaying and after our (prep for the oxymoron) RIPPED & GINGER climbing instructor set us free, I figured I'd try climbing a wall. Here's the thing: you don't quite notice how high up you are until it's time to go down. And then you remember that the person you're counting on to safely lower you from 100+ feet down to the ground has only known how to do that for 30 minutes. NOT FUN. 

When I was finally down to the ground and done shaking, we decided to switch to climbing some of the smaller, non-roped walls, called boulders, that only go up around 15-20 feet. No longer paralyzed by the fear of plunging 100 feet to my death (at this point I could only break an arm or something)... I recognized something. No matter how much I hate this activity, after a year of aggressively attacking pull-ups and free weights, pulling my own weight up a wall isn't that much of a challenge. I'm pretty good at it. And it's not a bad thing to be good at! Consider the situation where you have to climb up a cliff. It's pretty imperative at that point that you can do it right. So in general, turns out I'm pretty good at something that I don't like doing and that made me sore for three straight days! (my arms are still in pain). 

Activity #3: The Santa Cruz Annual Clam Chowder Festival

This was another activity where the people were great, but the activity was just awful. The experience as a whole can be described in this image:

So we got down to Santa Cruz a little early to get tickets and find some brunch. 

First, we bought our soup-tasting kits. Each kit consisted of a little bowl and spoon, 5 tickets for samples of chowder, and two little ballots so that you can vote for your favorite chowder. Because nothing sounds more fun on a 70 degree day than eating lots and lots of thick, creamy, buttery soup in a large thick, buttery crowd. 

We decided to step off of the boardwalk for breakfast. This place included mimosas. Nice. 

So then we started to walk around the Santa Cruz boardwalk and festival 

Pretty soon, it was a super-packed festival of bad puns. 

There were easily some 40+ soup stands, and we made a lot of vagina puns. Decided that if I ever wanted to put a soup in this contest, everyone staffing the stand would wear giant, fake facial hair and call ourselves 'The Bearded Clam'. Gross, sorry. 

Some of the chowders were pretty tasty, some were novel (green chowder, chowder with Mexican flair...), and some were pretty bad. But it was really packed full of people that need to discover deodorant, I got kind of sick of chowder, and I wasn't into it.

Activity #4: Bollywood Dance Class

I should've known that this was a bad idea when I walked in and the front row of people were all brown. My equally awkward friend joined me, and we stood in the back, thinking that no one will notice if we observe a little more than participate. 

False. 

Because in walked the instructor, Mala. 90 pounds of pure terror who spent the hour screaming at us to 'GO HARD!!' no matter how obvious it was that I have no idea what I'm doing. 

I learned all of the Bollywood dance moves:

1). Jump up and down
2). Jump side to side
3). Flail your arms
4). Squat
5). Flail your arms while jumping up and down
6). Flail your arms while jumping side to side
7). Flail your arms while squatting
8). Jump while squatting while flailing your arms

I think I qualified as the definition of an awkward white person. It was a wonderful cardio workout. The music was loud and rhythmic. You get in a great workout when the tiny instructor is barking at you to pick your feet up higher, and you're willing to try as hard as you can muster just to stop feeling so damn awkward. In that class, I guess it doesn't matter what you do as long as you do it very aggressively.

Otherwise, things are all right. As predicted, I have remained far too lazy to move the giant pile of cardboard. My plants are still alive. I've started keeping things in my fridge, although I've nearly never had to cook for myself. 

I'll continue to try some new stuff while I try to find my way around this weird, weird place. Maybe I'll like something.