In good company

I hope this early September finds you functioning well indeed. I am well.
I spent last weekend in Melbourne with Hyeshin. She moved down there with her sister and sister's kids. It was a nice, chill weekend. Eating a lot of food, without having to cook, and doing an inordinate amount of driving. They bought a car and are..um... uncomfortable drivers, and so I volunteered to chauffeur for shopping and do some teaching. My first time driving on the left side of the road but no accidents occurred.
The week passed quite well, due to a good hump in the middle. Not that kind, you dirty-minded soul, I'm talking about Wednesday. A couple of us went to a bar that was having trivia night. We got well into the sauce but lasted the night. Unfortunately, our cocky-med-school egos were crushed as we got 8th place out of 10! All's well, since luckily we scored some free beer and deathly slushies at the end. Afterwards, we were feeling rambunctious and so drove over (I put my bike in the trunk of a guy's car... don't worry, we had a DD) to Ben's house - he actively didn't want to go out because he was studying. We spent many hours there, idling away the late night with dares (someone ate a whole Habanero!), drinks, and other jejune activity.
The rest of the week, in atonement for my Wednesday indulgence, I was a good boy. Thursday and Friday I was at school until at least 6pm (from 8am) studying. The weekend was very low key. Dinner at Ben's house with scrabble, as per usual, markets, and some study. By low key, I mean boring.
I will use this forum, at the moment, to do something quite unusual not bitch. I will, in fact, do whatever the opposite of "bitch" is about a company - two companies, in fact.
1st) My Arcteryx backpack's buckle recently snapped. This beautiful pack has been with me through thick and thin the last 4 some years and I'm not letting go! I went to their website, filled out a generic form for part-replacement (they didn't ask for receipt or date of purchase or anything) with my address in Australia. I didn't hear from them until 2 weeks later I got a package from them, from Vancouver on airmail-shipping, containing 2 replacements! No fee, no confirmation that I even own one of their backpacks!
2) I received for my birthday last year a sweet backpack-bike pannier combination bag from Arkel. The straps on the side started wearing thin and eventually broke. I emailed Arkel and set up communication. We wrote back and forth for a while, established that getting it fixed here would be cheaper than shipping it back to their HQ (Toronto). They found a company that specializes in bag repair, reimbursed me my shipping to the company and today I received the bag, fixed, with no bill!
I have to say it nearly brings tears to mine eyes seeing such quality customer service - all previous experience was with airline companies and Verizon, so I guess anything is better. Also, both from canada and specialize in 'gear'..hmm.
Smarmy Environmental Diatribez
There's a treasured anecdote in our family - one that was overheard one doctor saying to another at a medical conference. This particular doctor lived in Texas and was lamenting that he has such a nice fireplace in his house that he doesn't get to use often since it's so warm in Texas. So he mentioned to the other doctor that sometimes he turns on the air conditioner in his house, so he and his wife can sit in front of the fireplace.
!
My family loves and loathes this story, since we take it as a symbol for American at its worst. Air conditioners are an atrociously wasteful device that we have lived without for quite a while. Marketed in the post WW-II American Heyday as a status symbol, it has become seen as a necessity.
It is a very impulsive little device, indeed. I have often witnessed people walk into our personal discussion room, for instance, warm from their ascent up the stairs. They instantly turn on the AC because they are hot -that second- and then 10 minutes later they are cold. The human body is remarkable at dealing with temperature changes (it can be fine between 55-100 F, naked in the sunlight, one Physiology text book mentions) and the temperature nerve fibers stop firing (i.e. "I'm hot!" or "I'm cold") after a couple minutes of consistent temperature. I think if everyone waited just 10 or 15 minutes before turning on heat or cold, they would save a lot of energy and headache.
Another beef I [my family] have with AC in how it depicts Americana is that it is a tool of isolationism. You are necessarily boxed in, separated from other people, by having your AC on. Windows rolled up in the car, sealed tight in the house - it furthers the distance that is already too prevalent in society.
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
Our tutor is a neurology-PhD student and... really weird... so we get to learn lots of interesting stuff from her. We got onto the topic of addiction, one Monday morning. The way addiction works, as I understand it, is thus: a certain X enters your body. Due to the physiological/neurological affects (more the latter with narcotics), a map of memory neurons are laid in place throughout your nervous system, from lower parts to higher order sections. These neurons remember the sensation and so fire off impulses in order to get the sensation repeated (craving). With every use of X, the pathways between the neurons get better, as well more memories get laid in - thus increasing the cravings. Now, to get a bit deeper, the way these neurons lay down these memories is through the release of specific neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters are little chemicals (like adrenaline, for instance) that help transmit a signal. For addiction, the amino acid glutamate (the same thing that brings the deliciousness in MSG, it is important for memory and excitation) is released in addition to dopamine (pleasure transmitter). This is, like more nerve conduction, is strongly dependent on Calcium. So they have a drug called MK-801 that can inhibit the influx of calcium, thereby preventing release of glutamate. So I can take some MK-801, inject some heroin, feel the amazing high but not have any addiction, craving, or sensory memories of taking it (I will still remember taking it, just not the specific pleasure). This allows people to give heroin as a pain-reliever (it's an excellent one) without worrying about addiction. Naturally, my crazy mind went on a different train of thought and came up with this: you could give this stuff to someone before doing something really bad to them, like torture, and they would have any sensory memories of the torture. This would negate the whole point of punishment but could possibly amplify the horror if done effectively. Anyway, I thought that was cool.