April 23, 2008
Pneumonia, with a side of costochondritis - probably because of all the coughing.
The timing sucks - I have too much to do!
Ick.
April 16, 2008
Today is Last Day to File Your Income Tax Day, also known around these parts as my birthday! So in honor of said birthday, I decided to stay up an entire 24 hours. Just to see if I could, and also to better savor the birthday feeling.
12:01 a.m. Birfday! Birfday! Another year older (ugh), though not necessarily wiser. Eat ice cream to celebrate.
12:45 a.m. Wow, you can watch Law and Order marathons at all hours of the night.
1:15 a.m. Get call from my dad (Chinese in italics)
Dad: Hellooo? Helloooo?
Me: Pa? Is that you?
Dad: YES! This is your FATHER! Happy birthday!
Me: Thank you. You remembered. (My dad is notorious for forgetting my birthday.)
Dad: Yes, I had our secretary remind me this year. Are you having a good lunch? Did you get yourself something good for your birthday meal?
Me: Pa, it’s 1 in the morning here.
Dad: Oh, I thought it was 1 in the afternoon. Because it’s lunchtime here at the office.
Me: Pa, there’s a 12 hour difference. 1 in the afternoon there is 1 in the morning here. (My dad lives halfway around the world; I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve told him that)
Dad: Well then, have a good time at lunch…
4:00 a.m. Oh look, an Eff Oh (picture taken later during the day)
Pattern: Koolhaas, by Jared Flood, from IK Holiday Gifts ‘07
Yarn: Debbie Bliss Pure Cashmere #10 (Orange), 3 skeins. Size 6 and 8 Denise interchangeables, and size 8 Inox DPN’s
I love the hat! I love the pattern. I wish I could say the same about the yarn. I mean, it’s cashmere, and I like it OK, but I wasn’t impressed by the yarn. First, there’s only about 49 yards per skein, and to me it didn’t feel any softer than baby cashmerino. Maybe I was expecting too much, but cashmere! I have to say though that the cables really pop with this yarn.
I CO 96 stitches instead of the called for 104, and made 5 repeats of the pattern because I wanted the hat to cover my ears. There are a few boneheaded mistakes, but they’re near the top of the hat, and I was too lazy to rip back. I did run out of yarn at the very top, but couldn’t justify buying another skein of the DB, so I used leftover orange Lamb’s Pride worsted - you can kind of see it in the picture. I like it - it looks like the hat has a bright(er) orange dot on top.
March 31, 2008
Last week, while hanging out with Nana in Detroit -
Me: May I drive the car for you, Nana?
Nana: No, you’re not familiar with my car.
Me: I know how to drive, Nana.
Nana: You really should practice driving in the parking lot first.
March 20, 2008
Hi there! Been a while, hasn’t it?
El Salvador was great! I had a good time with my students, co-workers, and the folks from Voices across Borders, the group which facilitated the trip. When we left here, there was so much snow. As I turned onto Chris’ street (I was hitching a ride with her to the airport), I found myself sharing the road with a snowmobile. Just look at the contrast between frozen Erie and San Salvador.
The bulk of this trip was spent traveling around rural areas, meeting with the community, and doing health and physical therapy workshops in collaboration with students from the University of El Salvador. I came back tired, very tan and filled with respect for the Salvadorans’ warmth and resiliency. My Spanish though, is still mediocre. A few highlights and random observations from the trip:
- There’s a lot of things in El Salvador that remind me of the Philippines. The people are hospitable and slightly fatalistic (as in, God will provide, even if we’re in deep doodoo). The pollution in the city is really bad, but the pollution makes for spectacular sunsets.
No one knows how to drive well, traffic signs (and traffic lights) are mere decoration and pedestrians put their lives on the line when they cross the street. Also, politics is a really, really popular topic - many of the locals I spoke to seemed to be more well versed on the US presidential primaries than some of the people I was on the trip with. Disparaging the government seems an equally popular pasttime as well.
- The disparity between rich and poor is pretty astounding. One day, on our way home from a planning session, we drove by this…I can only describe it as a shanty town…. The bus driver told us that the houses (more like giant boxes, really) sprang up overnight after someone printed an ad in the local paper that you could stake a claim on this piece of land. Of course, the landowner denies he ever authorized it, but the people refused to move. It’s been over a year since this started, and there’s still a lot of shacks. Without running water or electricity.
- You will get fried and crispy if you spend 15 hours in the back of an open pick-up truck. Especially if you miss a spot/s while slathering on the sunblock. The irony of this whole thing? While I’m trying to find some shade, Pat, who’s sharing the back of the truck with me, is busily slathering on suntan OIL. Because “we all have to die of something, and I’d like to die warm.” Heh.
When the wind hits you just right though, as you’re careening down the highway, it feels like you’re flying.
- We managed to take out the power of an entire village one night. Because someone needed to bring a hair dryer (and a curling iron) while we were out in the middle of nowhere rural El Salvador. This understandably caused a lot of consternation among the townspeople, especially since we didn’t tell the village chief that someone from our group caused the power outage because she JUST HAD TO HAVE good hair.
- I have a newfound appreciation for running water and a flushing toilet. Staying with families in the countryside meant living in places without running water. Or a toilet. This was the outhouse for the family I stayed with. The door to the outhouse was a garbage bag taped to one side of the structure. There’s also a pig on the premises. To help with the umm….composting. Now, I pride myself on being a super laid back traveler, able to adapt to almost anything. The pig was a bit much though.
To be continued. In the meantime, some more stories and pictures here.
February 25, 2008
It’s a bit weird to see that baseball season is only 45 days away when it’s eleventy million degrees below zero right now and there’s tons of snow as far as the eye can see.
In the meantime, I’m off to El Salvador for work, where it’s eleventy million degrees above zero! Catch you later!
February 17, 2008
A list of things I never expected to encounter while I was in Nashville recently for some work stuff -
1. getting evacuated because of a tornado
While the rest of the country was busying itself with Super Tuesday, a number of tornadoes were tormenting the Nashville area. Unfortunately, because the conference I was attending was held inside a hermetically sealed, climate controlled biosphere - the convention center, hotel, and connecting mall were all enclosed by a plexiglass dome! - I had no idea that outside, the winds were howling and the rain was pouring. Until 1:00 a.m., when the fire alarm went off, and the hotel staff started pounding on doors to evacuate the hotel. We were led to the bowels of the hotel basement, along with other sleepy/ grumpy/ bored hotel guests. I think the evacuation was more of a safety precaution and the hotel wasn’t in any real danger of being swept away by a tornado. However, I would’ve been much less grumpy if the fire alarm didn’t proceed to go off 2 more times in the dead of the night!
See? Hermetically sealed!
2. seeing a 10 foot plant walking towards you
The day after the tornado evacuation brouhaha, while my friend Jill and I are catching up, I spot a tall, leafy plant walking towards us. I have to do a double take. Turns out, it’s one of the attractions in the convention center. The plant’s actually a performer covered in leaves and green make-up, walking on stilts and manipulating another pair of stilts as “branches.” Really cool, and at the same time, slightly creepy looking. Particularly when she wraps her leafy limbs around posts and makes like ivy.
Needs a lot of coordination, also, lots of green make-up
3. actual knitting happened. Complete with finished product!
I’ve been in knitting ennui lately. Dreary weather (I am ready for winter to be over!), crazy work schedule and the occasional life blues have all conspired to sap my knitting mojo. So imagine my surprise when I actually finished something!
Pattern: Bloody Mary by Sandra Park
Yarn: Koigu KPPM color #12060, 2 skeins. Size 2 Crystal Palace bamboo DPN’s
This was my first time working with Koigu. There’s already a lot of love out there for Koigu. Let me join the bandwagon. Koiguuuu, so soft and squishy and nice to knit with. The yarn was a generous gift from Amy’s mom 2 Christmases ago. This particular colorway was so color-rich that I was afraid it was going to pool like crazy. The slipped stitches of the Blood Mary pattern though, seems to have done the trick. Also, I really like how the slipped stitch rib leaves these raised ribs. Yeah, it’s a pair of ribbed socks, but it’s got some pizazz!
These socks had been languishing in the unfinished pile for a while. I started them in September 2007, when we went to the Finger Lakes Fiber Festival. And then they just sat there, unfinished and neglected. These were supposed to be my travel knitting when I went to Manila (and the butt numbing 27 hour plane ride that accompanied that trip), but I couldn’t bring myself to knit much during that trip. So they sat neglected some more.
Unfinished no more. Bring on the knits!
February 3, 2008
While in Manila a couple of months ago, I managed to fit in a trip to Macau and Hong Kong with my aunt and uncle. I finally (finally!) uploaded pictures from that trip to Flickr.
sensory overload
Macau is an interesting place. Up until 1999, it was a Portuguese colony - the European influence is pretty evident still in the food, in the place names, and in the architecture. There are also lots of churches. The most famous landmark happens to be the Ruínas de São Paulo (the Ruins of St. Paul) , the facade of a 17th century Portuguese cathedral.
Ruins of St. Paul
Macau is now a “special administrative region” of China. China may be run the fruits of the proletariat revolution, but in Macau (and Hong Kong too), capitalism rules the day. The last time I visited Macau, it looked and felt like the poor backwater cousin of vibrant, cosmopolitan Hong Kong. Now, Macau is all tarted up, being billed as “the Asian Las Vegas.” Casinos galore - gigantor ones, with Las Vegas pedigrees like the Venetian and MGM Grand, dot the cityscape. All filled to the brim with gambling Asians. It was strange seeing all these slot machines in Chinese.
we’ll take your money in any language
Hong Kong, on the other hand, is as bustling and crowded as I remembered. Only, there seems to be three times more people who want to breathe the same air as you. More pictures here.
In the meantime, I’m off on another work trip.
January 22, 2008
A little less than three years ago, I was at a conference in Chicago. I happened to be staying with my friends Andrea and Jim. I knew that Andrea knitted, because I had seen samples of her amazing skill. At that time though, knitting was pretty much a foreign word. I didn’t consider myself to be particularly crafty nor creative, and knitting seemed to be one of those things crafty and creative folks did. Besides, I prided myself on my being uncoordinated.
However, I didn’t count on being bored out of my skull at this conference.
So, I convinced Andrea to teach me to knit. She very patiently taught me to knit on some bright yellow acrylic yarn and a pair of mismatched #8 straights. She guided me through many false starts, and admired my first hole-y swatch. And then the next day, we trooped over to the local book place and got a copy of Stitch and Bitch. I came back home, convinced that I had forgotten how to knit. I cracked open my copy of Stitch and Bitch, and was pleasantly surprised that my brain remembered how to make stitches. I took that as a sign that I should look more into this knitting thing.
To Andrea, who showed me how two sticks and some yarn could bring so much fun, happy birthday!
January 13, 2008
Hello Internet! I’ve missed the smell of your breath in the morning.
I returned from Manila several days ago - it was a good trip overall. Manila is still crowded and chaotic and smoggy, but also vital and laid-back, home to my family and home to the most perfect mango in the entire world. I made sure to eat lots of those while I was there (along with lots of other yummy food)!
My family takes food very seriously - one of the great things about visiting is my food whims were catered to wholeheartedly.
An exquisitely decorated paper house - so Angkong has someplace to live in the next life
Being home was nice because it’s home and no matter how much time passes between visits, there are things that look familiar and feel familiar and that’s very comforting. It’s nice seeing friends that you’ve known since grade school and just picking up right where you left off. Being home was hard too because it meant being privy to some relationships and dynamics that are evolving and changing. Although I’m sure everything will be OK once the dust settles, it hasn’t yet, and that unsettles me.
At any rate, one of the more interesting events while I was in Manila was all the ritual surrounding my Angkong’s wake and burial. Angkong was Buddhist, but none of the rest of us practice Buddhism to the extent that he did, so the family actually had to consult with friends and monks from the local temple to see to the ceremonies and sundry “props”. It was all very, umm, interesting. I started telling some of y’all about it, but figured that pictures would be easier -
An exquisitely decorated paper house - so Angkong has someplace to live in the next life
A paper airplane - to herald Angkong’s arrival. Note Angkong’s picture on the side of the plane, and also the bags of paper money in the background, so your loved one has money to spend in the next life.
There are more pictures here. There’s still a number of stories and impressions I have from that trip which I hope to post in bits and pieces over the next few days. Before work stuff totally overwhelms me.
December 18, 2007
Popping in to say hi and to thank y’all for your kind words and wishes.
Still here in Manila. The trip back was a butt numbing 27 hours. Internet access has been sporadic because my dad’s place is a technological wasteland. This is after all, the very same dad who refuses to learn how to use email and still prides himself on owning a working rotary phone. I have taken to hanging out at the local Burger King when I can for the wifi access. Hee.
Angkong was laid to rest this past week. During the wake, I discovered many awesome things about him. Like how he used to be hotshot basketball player, and how he was an apprentice Chinese medicine herbalist. The wake was a rather long one, because even in things like death, there is feng shui to be considered. And Buddhist rituals to be performed. Some of which made us seem like crockpots to the untrained eye (and ear). Like the non-stop chanting and the paper house and airplane. Details will have to wait until later, I’m afraid.
Most common things said to me so far - (Chinese in italics, as usual) -
“My, you look fat!”
“You’re a PT? I’ve got a pain right here! What do you think it is?”
“I’m surprised you still know how to speak Chinese! I thought maybe you’d become an American idiot!?”
It’s been good to see the fam and catch up with old friends though. It feels like everything has changed and nothing has changed.
