Brain Drain

(Mother's first trip to Fenway)

I love a true vacation. Granted, whenever Father asks if I can wrap up my work work projects before the end of the month, I hem and haw that it may not be doable, but I've been able to take a break this week because of things beyond my control. And yes, I did spent all of June traveling and eating and sightseeing, but sometimes that can be exhausting.  That's why this week has been my favorite week all summer*. Even whilst battling the cold. It's the first week in a long time when I feel truly relaxed and I'm grateful for the opportunity because I know how rare these gifts are.  How have I spent this time?  I have watched four movies at the theaters (there were plans to go to the ICA- but give me the choice of Woody Allen + seeing two movies for the price of one + M&M pretzels OR contemporary art? come on). I cooked. I read. I sang Sweet Caroline at Fenway. I ate roti canai. And I did not sleep late.  What more could I want from a week? (um, one last SoWA with Ben and Esther this Sunday may just do it) It is unfortunate that the only other people not working during the day are Landlady Chang and DBomb (thanks, middle school teachers!), but hey, they make pretty great stand-ins. And this time next week, I'll be back to my usual work + dinner with people thing.

*The week in Korea was pretty great, too.

Schmear Campaign

Today, like most days, did not go entirely well.  For starters, this being-sick-in-July bit is really holding me back.  Head stuffed, I canceled dinner plans with TChu. (OK, I'm more upset that I canceled on Taiwanese food than on TChu, but let's keep that between us)  My few hours at work were generally futile so I called it quits early and decided to cook up what's left in my freezer before I move out this weekend.  That's where things got interesting.  I had my first attempt at making pate.  Without going to the grocery store.  So I was missing a couple of ingredients from every recipe I looked.  Midway through this attempt, hot oil splattered on both of my wrists.  That was fun, because when both wrists are burnt, it makes it hard to ice either one.  Running them under cold water was very therapeutic, but that also gets in the way of basic activities, like cooking and eating.  And then there was the time when I ran my wrists under scalding hot water instead.  In the end though, neither wrist will require amputation or grafting and the pate was pretty tasty.  So my awesomeness rating remains.

Fat Hot American Summer

I heart the New York Times for their special ability to make my eyes bleed.
(on the trend of riding private planes to summer camps at desolate, distant places like Maine and New Hampshire)

But some parents have already tired of this private-plane status infiltrating the simpler world of summer camp. [Nancy Chemtob, a divorce lawyer] once managed to get on a charter plane from the airport in East Hampton, N.Y., for $750. After listening to enough banter among parents about “who is flying, who is flying private, who they can get a lift home with,” she decided she “was done with Maine and the planes and all of the people.”

“It’s a crazy world out there,” she added. She now sends her children to camp in Europe.

Bad Medicine

I am sick this weekend and I am home home visiting the parents.  They are having trouble grasping the concept of disease.

(I take two ibuprofen)

Mother: Is being home really that painful for you?  Does being around us give you a headache?

---
I haven't seen Greydon in years, and with our impending new grad schools and moves, I probably won't for awhile.  That's OK for the both of us.  But I do appreciate a friend I can belittle without consideration of feelings and all that other mumble jumbo.

Moi: Good luck, loser.

Greydon: I hope you never get better.

Patient, Kind, and Irrational

An analytic mind can take the fun out of a lot of things, even something as fun as reading Korean love greeting cards (oh, you don't know about love greeting cards?  Koreans apparently love to send love notes and there is a whole section of really intense love notes in their card sections.  None of that watered-down Hallmark stuff.)

Moi: This card cover says You + <3 = Me.  But that's wrong, right?  Shouldn't it be You + Me = <3?

Ashley: Right, because by that logic, Me - <3 = You.

Moi: Exactly.  The transitive property.

Even though we figured that out, I'm pretty sure the tally still stands at:

Korean love greeting cards: 385,987,737
Ashley et Moi: 0.

Burn

It is July.  We are in the midst of a heatwave.  And parts of me are burning up.  More specifically, my throat.  It appears that I have beaten the odds and, sitting in my air-conditioned apartment, where I've only left a few times this week to work (I've mostly worked from home, but on the days that I manage to work in the office, I mostly sit in an office by myself, with the occasional visit from Josh or Doc Gollum), eat dinner, and have ice cream, I have caught a cold/flu.  I'm not sure what it is.  I just know that my throat burns and every hour or so, I go into a coughing fit.  How is this possible?  I don't know.  I have stayed away from crowds and children for the good part of the past two weeks, but somewhere along the way, something has attacked my immune system.  And now I'm sick.  And forced to spend even more time in my air-conditioned apartment.  Life isn't fair.

Annual Revue

Thanks to the wonderful flexibility of hospital bureaucracy, I had to have a performance review today with two weeks left in my tenure.  Luckily, Whitecastle made the whole thing as painless as possible.  We sat down.  We signed the papers.  And that was that.
 
Whitecastle: This is silly.  You know what it says.  Basically, you suck.
 
Moi: That's why I'm leaving?
 
Whitecastle: We can't let you stay here.

On the Hose

It should be obvious by now, gentle reader, that I love a good bathroom picture almost as much as winning at word games or an awkward professor story. So when I discovered that Malaysian bathrooms all come equipped with a hose within fifteen minutes in country-- the whole realization and the days that followed of figuring out what was going on-- that journey was almost as great as the trip itself.

Through much googling, guesswork, and a consultation with Genuine Muslim Friend Uzi, I've learned all about the hose (or "bidet spray") and its pros and cons. Ask me about it. We can talk for hours. Or at least 20 minutes. And since Uzi mentioned that while the hose was for ceremonial washing, it "wasn't so much a Muslim thing but a brown people thing," I thought I would also ask Whitecastle about it today. That was a poor idea. Apparently, one should not engage one's supervisor/mentor/employer in discussion of toilet accessories. Not with a performance review in a week.

Moi: So uh, in India, do the bathrooms ever have hoses?

Whitecastle: When you said you unlearned everything on vacation, did that include manners?

Moi: [Mention the wondrous hose discovery]

Whitecastle: I've been to Malaysia and I've never seen this. Maybe the places you stayed in-

Moi: It was in the classy places, too!

Heat

(traditional douhua, or tofu pudding-- this isn't the kids' play you get in Chinese restaurants)

Here's the thing about Taiwan and Malaysia (and even Korea): It was hot. I hardly went a day without an icy drink during my monthlong stay. Certainly in Malaysia, we had some kind of fruit "ice blended" at least once a day (I stuck mostly with ice teas in Taiwan). It was hot and humid and I sweated a lot every day. That's why, coming home last week, I stood at pedestrian pick-up at Logan, drained after a 20-hour-plus journey, and smiled.  An hour and a half earlier, I had almost missed my connecting flight and was the last passenger to get on.  I was so out of breath when I got to the gate that I didn't actually have words for the flight attendant, I just weakly held out my boarding pass and she re-opened the doors.  (Before my mad dash, I had asked an airport lady how far away my gate was from immigration [I overheard it was 15 min, I only had 7 to spare], to which she replied, "Don't think about it, just run!"  And so I did.)  I was still wearing my jacket, huge bags to each side of me, standing in the 90-degree heat, breathing in car exhaust, and happy because as miserable and hot as I was, it was mild and lovely compared to where I'd just come from. I was not sweating buckets. I could walk and not feel dehydrated*. For a whole week, I smiled and breathed in New England summer. So warm during the day, so cool in the evening, so beautiful. That is, until two days ago. This isn't cute anymore, New England. It's starting to feel like Taiwan. And if I wanted to put up with this weather, I would've stayed. And eaten more Taiwanese fried chicken.

*It's not that I didn't walk. I walked a lot. I just felt like Shadrach when I was walking.

Jumping the Shark

Halfway through lunch with my uncle last month, he told me that he forgot to mention that the seafood dumpling soup we were having (the name does not do it justice- it is a big dumpling rich with seafood wrapped in a delicate skin that swims in a soothing broth) contained shark fin.

 

Uncle: You don't mind that there's shark fin, do you?

 

Moi: No, I'm good.

 

Uncle: Because come on, right?  There are so many sharks in the ocean. 

So glad to be back on U.S. soil, with friends and family, for quotes like this:

Jeannie (when I asked her how she was adjusting to life at an all-girl school): I really like it.  But sometimes I get girls and boys confused. 

(this one actually happened abroad.  DBomb and I were discussing Midwestern friendliness versus Bostonian friendliness):

Moi: People in Boston are actually pretty friendly.  If you smile, they'll smile back at you.  Actually, sometimes people are a little too friendly and you wish they weren't.

DBomb: OK, that's not Boston.  That's living next to Boston Medical.

Dump Day

My 'hometown' of Taipei is a modern and progressive city.  It's the type of city where the use of Styrofoam is banned for carry-out containers, recycling and composting are heavily encouraged, and trash bags cost money.  People can only take out their trash at a specific time of day when the garbage trucks come by the neighborhood.  The trucks play a song as they ride by and arrive in the same neighborhoods at the same time every week night, so it actually works pretty well as a system.  But these policies may reduce waste and increase sustainability, but they also make life incredibly difficult for the casual long-term visitor.  Such as myself.  Since I was almost never in the apartment Royce lent me in time for the trash trucks and only had 1 large official trash bag, we tried not to produce trash (green) and often resorted to illegal dumping (not green).  Casual wrappers and every day trash often made it into the cans at the metro stations.  The box of cake that the ants discovered were tripled wrapped and shoved into the Sheraton bathroom trash can.  And at the end of my stay, our large bag of official trash was brought on a 40-minute journey (during which we stopped for breakfast- trash bag put inside a pink tote bag that Dwight gamely carried) to my faux-godmother's church.  That night, when we still had a few empty water bottles and junk paper to dispose of, we took one last walk around the neighborhood, each with a bag in hand, pretended to act surprised at the public waste baskets we saw, dropped them in the first two we saw, turned around just in time to smile at the neighborhood watch ladies, then scurried back before they could suspect us of anything.  Two years of graduate education in public health, and this is what I've become. 

Honor Roll

Two of my favorite things about travel in one rest stop (plus lots of things I don't like, like being moved to a different bus and not understanding what's going on): trying out foreign potato chips and purchasing random fried things I point out to discover the surprise inside (the contents turn out to be a slightly sweet but mostly savory potato-filled empanada).

I will be home soon. Everything to come then.