priorities

i meet with the pest control man. we'll need to spray under the cooker hood to flush them out, he says. and we'll be attaching the poison pellets here here and here. our company uses the organic spray, he adds. there's a pepperminty smell that's nothing like the pungent odor of other products.

i don't really care if it's organic or inorganic or if it smells minty or pungent. just tell me you WILL GET THOSE COCKROACHES KILLED. BEFORE i move in. please?

productivity (loss)

what i miss so much:

• smoothly flowing traffic
• freely available free parking
• coupons & price matching
• returns, no questions asked
• amazon.com, prime shipping

i don't quite get it

so, we're gunning for 6.9 million people and a GDP growth of 2 to 3% a year. what the past decade of growth has brought, as far as i can see, has been great congestion superimposed upon a groaning infrastructure upon a scaffolding of sky-rocketing inflation with an increasingly short-fused populace struggling to find the life in the work-life equation whilst navigating safety-hazardous subway systems or, if they are luckier, bangkok-style roadways. if GDP growth brings a slew of painful changes and little significant benefit, why are we so afraid of GDP contraction if it could mean a little more space a little less time on the roads and a little more time to breathe?

keeping the faith

you matter because you are, and you matter to the end of your life. we will do all we can not only to help you die peacefully, but also to live until you die.

- dame cecily saunders

bcls

i drag myself to the cpr recertification course on saturday morning. good luck to you, people warn me darkly. may you succeed in compressing the mannikin's chest without collapsing yourself. the trouble, i explain to HOM, is that my entire body weight may not supply the minimum mass required to activate the sensor in the mannikin's chest.

the compressions turn out great. beautifully timed and just the right depth, which in any case is just the only depth my weight can achieve. where i falter is in the breathing. specifically, in the head-tilt-chin-lift-pinch-nose-blow-hard-without-getting-light-headed part of the test. you practically have to break his neck hyperextending it, and he's got a nose the consistency of hard plastic. and also, it doesn't help when his left ear gets dislodged halfway through resuscitation.

score board

six wakes and one baby shower since repatriating a month and a half ago. it might be nice to attend a wedding or two, i begin to think.

my Lord and my God

why did Christ have to suffer for our redemption? a young friend asks me. if God loves us so much why did he not love his son as much? it is a rehash of the good old question, why does a good God allow so much pain? because, i tell him, it is in Christ that you see the fullness of God in one. when you see the purity of a life gloriously unstained by sin and shame, and as you see the depth of a love that will not let you go, then you begin to see the cross. Bonhoeffer says, if you want to see what God is, in his wrath and in his love, look at his Son.

requiem

Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. looking at this in the quiet of the chapel as we keep time with the family of the dead, it occurs to me, as it never has before, that this is more than a statement of our faith. it is, in an inexpressibly comforting way, the statement of victory and a harbinger of good things, the oil of joy for the ashes of sorrow. Christ has died and is risen. our loved ones die and will rise again. thank God for the Son.

item writing workshop

they give us a lecture on mcq-writing. make sure you test important concepts, they say. make sure your stems make sense. have homogenous distractors, avoid confusing the candidates. no true/false dichotomies, no all-except constructs, nothing in the first and second persons. DO NOT, on any account, mislead the candidate.

i wonder. why do we expend so much effort at the tertiary level trying to craft the fairest mcq paper when our candidates have all survived diabolical mcq's in the earlier years of their educational journey?

again

our shipment is delayed a second time. when does delay cease to be a minor inconvenience and become legitimized into an actionable lapse? or do shipping companies not have to answer to any schedule outside of a paper estimate?

to be honest, four knit tops two yoga bottoms and two pairs of uniqlo jeans get a bit tired after a couple months. 

cognitive overload

i spend this week at an educators' conference. time was when they told us to teach and we taught, someone says, and now we discover there's supposed to be a science to it. yep. it's enough to paralyze all your good intentions. you spend half a lifetime acquiring content and now there's the delivery method to parse as well. theory is well and good, my old friend says, but we are trying to impart an art. perhaps the old apprenticeship wasn't that far off.

uniquely mars

the way men park the car and forget where they did it.

taste paradise

the shark's fin soup is ambrosial. so is everything else. in a very rare flash, and for a very short moment, when you look at the astronomical bill you actually think it is justified.

a psalm of Moses

a thousand years in your sight

are like yesterday when it is past

and like a watch in the night...

let your work appear to your servants,

and your glory to their children.

when one's eyes have glimpsed a little of the glory of King

the primary desire becomes that one's children may glimpse it too.

geek heaven 2

what the technology makers need to learn but have not, but what apple has perfected, is that DESIGN MATTERS. the technophiles may be looking for the fastest the biggest and the most advanced, but really some of the rest of us would like it to look better than the current big gawdy plasticky monsters that the fast big and advanced come in. say, sleek sharp and in brushed aluminum.

geek heaven

HOM brings me to the computer mall. i see laptops and charging stations and backup systems and speakers and cable management schemata and dongles and whistles. i feel somewhat dazed. to be honest, i whisper to HOM, what i relate to best here are the smartphone covers.

yeahhh!

fifteen of us around the table some young some older one white-haired. the discussion is wide ranging the jokes come cheerfully the lessons aplenty. it brings me back to student days when we had a gung-ho band of residents and a bunch of trainers who were in it for various intangible returns. 

it's like the old days, my friend says. there is something seductively glorious about intellectual sparring free from political overtones. i have not enjoyed myself this much for ages.

footprints

i meet two old teachers from med school. over many years they have become my friends. they remain excited about what they do, as they remain engaged in the issues of the day. they have helped shaped what i am.

what an incredible privilege, i think, to be able to help shape someone who is not your child or your direct responsibility. try to forget the frustration, i tell my young friend who has just begun teaching. one day you will be remembered for your legacy. make it a good one.

-_-

end of my second week at work and i am bushed.

ebm

reflecting on our car handover tutorial, i must say the salesgirl did a great job. the lesson was logical and well paced and afforded multiple opportunities for clarification. the material was delivered in a relaxed unhurried manner that allowed auto idiots to internalize information about car lock systems automatic braking algorithms media console technicalities and even engine details among other things. 

my point is, this very effective teaching session built upon principles of marketing and common sense sure puts some of our evidence based methods of instruction to shame.

epiphany sunday

家家有一本难念的经, a friend told me once. every family has its special sorrow. what joins us in our humanity, and often obscured, is our common weakness in the face of life's punches. we sometimes forget, and we sometimes willfully forget. but i am learning that when i willfully remember, i learn gentleness and i know relief.

modern consumerism

we collect our new car today. time was when the salesman handed you your keys shook your hand wished you good luck and off you drove into the brave unknown with your new set of wheels. all in five minutes flat. today our orientation to the vehicle's exterior is a stand-alone module after which we get run through the navigation system the display console the safety features the locking and unlocking and the etc. HOM and i feel exhausted after the tutorial. it is as much as we can do to remember how to turn the keyless engine on to drive ourselves into the brave unknown.

my dream car, as opposed to this monster that i have no desire to drive, is looking more and more like a small capacity small volume manual hatchback with nothing fancy on board. definitely without the keyless entry feature, which strikes me as an electronic malfunction waiting to function.

HOM's dream feature, it turns out, is the keyless entry bit.

ouch

body aching in previously quiescent sites on account of its first dip in the pool in five years. the bikini finally begins to earn its keep i suppose. 

sabbath's end

end of my first week back at work. it feels nice enough i guess, to re-engage as my own person primarily and not as someone's mom or wife or whatever. on the other hand, the hours for getting errands run and stuff done are suddenly severely and mercilessly curtailed.

finally

after seven years of home visits during which i hope unfruitfully for one of these.

24 hour self-serviced laundry center with an in-house coin-changing station in the heart of the action. what would make this place perfect would be free wi-fi at that nice communal table in the middle. that, and retroactive existence, say by a couple years.

new year resolution

in line with the calendar, my own reservations notwithstanding, my resolution for the new year is to be kinder. not in the way of leaving-the-seat-untaken kinder but more in the way of reaching-out-and-tapping-the-other-person-and-saying-here, have a seat kinder. not in the way of stepping-aside-out-of-your-way kinder but more in the way of saying-let me help you with that, i've got an extra hand kinder.  and not in the way of keeping-quiet-and-not-disturbing-you kinder but more in the way of let-me-get-to-know-you-better-tell-me-about-yourself kinder. God knows i receive enough of the second kind whilst retreating tactfully behind the first.

thanks

husbands, love your wives... nourish and cherish...

eph 5:25, 29

the thing is, when you are the recipient you don't always remember or think of it or do other than receive it pretty much in the course of things. it makes the task graver and the loving heavier, to nourish and to cherish unknown unseen and unsought. 

at the end of a long year and at the beginning of an unknown possibly longer year, slàinte. thanks for nourishing and cherishing and partnering. i'm glad we are in this together.

new year's day

she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed to the LORD and wept in anguish.

-1 sam 1:10

today is like an arbitrary divide. what makes a new year cleaner and more pregnant with hope than the old one that has passed? old pains carry over in the way that pains do. old relationships persist in all glorious dysfunction. difficult things and people remain difficult.  the cock's crow heralds weakness and defeat as well as sunrise, as it has.

thank God for the NT counterpoint in matt 5:4.

blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

anakephalaiosis

that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ...

eph 1:10

no pain uncounted

no bitterness forgotten

his heart breaks before mine and with mine.