travelling fool, part 2

Better late than never!

The Summer of Travel continued on to Boston, for my friend Mike’s wedding! Boston is a city I really like. Yeah, the streets don’t make a lot of sense, which is the kiss of death if you’re as navigationally-challenged as I am, but it’s got a lot of character and a lot of history, plus a lot of good places to eat.

Weddings are a good excuse to see friends and pig out. The ol’ Houston gang turned up to wish Mike well. Here’s a rather grainy picture ganked from Oki of the gang at Dali’s, a really good tapas place.

The wedding was perfect. The bride looked radiant, the groom didn’t look too bad either. The wedding banquet was fantastic (yum yum!) You’ll have to take my word on the food because my camera died at the banquet.

 

travelling fool, part 1

This has been turning out to be the Summer of Travel. There has been much airport hopping and snacking on bad airport food. Also the inevitable travel delays that crop up when I take to the open skies - the Travel Curse is strong in that one and so forth.

Here’s where I’ve been the past several weeks.

At the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco. Doing some trail building and trail maintenance work at several national parks in the Bay Area, as part of an American Hiking Society crew. A great excuse to see national parks. Getting dirty and doing heavy manual labor isn’t so bad if you wake up to sights like this -

I’ve now added park ranger to my list of back-up career plans. I have this urge to set up a tent and just live in the Muir Woods.

A few of the people who were on the trail crew had never been to San Francisco before, so I got to tag along and do some tourist-y sightseeing.

We were able to stay at the Presidio for a few nights. It turns out that George Lucas is leasing some parts of the Presidio for Lucasfilms. Of course as soon as I heard that, I HAD to go see! My membership in the nerd union would’ve been revoked if I left without having my picture taken at the Yoda fountain.

Notice that the Ravelry shirt made it into the picture too!

 

on the upswing

Umm…hi!

Been a while, hasn’t it? First off, thank you for all your well wishes. The pneumonia, stubborn little thing, has been banished. Unfortunately, allergy season is in full swing. Blech. Better sneezing and sniffling than wheezing and gasping for air though.

Things are generally on the upswing. To fill you in quickly - The Bodies exhibit was just in Pittsburgh, and my co-worker D and I drove down to see it. We’d been meaning to see this for a while, but waited until the day before it ended to actually go. Apparently, lots of other people were slacking too. Witness the line to get in -

Since I teach a gross anatomy class, I was pretty interested in their preservation techniques and how they staged the exhibits. The Bodies exhibit is very similar to the Body Worlds exhibit I saw in Houston, but this one is put on by a different group, and I guess there was some controversy associated with it coming to Pittsburgh.

Then off to the Bay Area for work-related stuff. Busy and slightly brain cell killing, but I love the Bay Area! I got in some great aikido training (the bruises were totally worth it!). And you see signs like this on the BART -

Finally once I got home, look at what was waiting for me!

Mmmm…yarn! My beloved Houston SnB’ers recently had a yarn swap. I was telling Amy that I was just a teensy bit jealous that I wasn’t there to join the fun, and lo and behold, Kelly and the girls sent me a box of bright yarn goodness. Thanks, guys! Y’all know just how to make a girl feel loved

 

Detroit interlude

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.

 

slumming in El Salvador, pt. 1

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.

 

unexpected

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!

 

trippity, trip, trip

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.

 

2008 already? Damn!

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.

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.

 

super quickie

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.

 

bittersweet

My Angkong (grandfather) passed away the other day. I’m flying back to Manila tomorrow morning - the soonest I could wrap up work odds and ends. He was the only grandparent I had left. He tolerated all of my quirks and sarcasm with an affectionate shrug when everyone else in the family were raising their collective eyebrows. When I was younger, we spent many happy hours watching basketball on TV, screaming at the referees for real and imagined bad calls. I will miss him so much. I’d already planned to spend the holidays in Manila anyway (where many members of my itinerant family still live), but this homecoming will be bittersweet.