we meet a posse of young-ish runners this morning.
here are two thoughts they inspire:
i receive greetings for a non-existent birthday from a professional organization i no longer belong to.
failure of information management, if you ask me.
and the vote goes to... <drum roll>... genki japanese restaurant!
the lady says to us, tell me if i'm mistaken. did we not have you just a couple nights ago?
you're not mistaken, we tell her. we love you.
anyway, the junket ends tomorrow and then it's back to the grindstone.
hymns to my heart's content. including the gloria patri, whose awkward strains and beloved lyrics surface from long-term storage. jianti zi and fanti zi interchangeably and unself-consciously alternate on the slides alongside painfully incompetent english. it is a time capsule of a church service and quite attractively vintage.
i eavesdrop on a mother and her young son (he's 7? 8?) at the bus-stop.
do you know the library accepts my bus card as identification? that's why i should bring it to school, he says. no you're not, his mom says. not until you learn to be more careful.
when is the bus coming? i hope i won't be late, he says. you will most certainly be late, mom says. we were late leaving home and you didn't hurry.
back and forth we go, as functionally utilitarian as we come. i drift to another time and another young boy with the same unquestioning trust blithe hope and optimistic cheer. never mind the carelessness, i want to say. never mind being late. very quickly, oh so quickly, his voice will deepen and he will stop taking the bus with you!
our sins they are many his mercy is more
very thankful that his mercies are profuse despite all that i am and am not
and also that they abound anew unsought and to overflowing
i need to say less of, really? i get to enjoy this? and more of, wow, thank you!
W goes to her eternal home, another centenarian that i say goodbye to.
why did you choose this discipline? a young man asks me. the subtext being, why this generalist role that lacks the cachet of its specialist cousins? i say, because it is of all the disciplines the widest most expansive and most inclusive.
because, amongst all of them, this is the one where i may serve to the end, if i so choose.
Aug 2019: i crack my lower molar on a mussel in the seafood soup at oyster & chop in auckland. the pain subsides over the next days.
Nov 2019: the dentist tells me about xrays root canals and crowns and frightens me into (largely uninformed but common sensed-based) refusal.
i skive off for the next six years but pluck up the courage to return to her today. because tartar has a tendency to become a whole shellfish body part over time.
Aug 2025: the dentist tells me if the fractured tooth is not giving me trouble then we can leave it alone. i tell HOM, she has grown up! much relieved and much delighted with the cleaning and polishing. my grinders are rejuvenated.
HOM attends a dinner-and-tell-you-about-my-product affair and now he is burping durian.
as if the private durian fests are not enough. there ought to be a rule against serving durians in dinners open to the public. because you have durian lovers and you have those of us who must smell you.
the washer repair technician was very friendly so i asked him if he could replace my LPG cylinder nozzle as well and he happened to have a spare nozzle in his truck so he did it, mum tells me.
what amazes me is the kindness of random strangers that God in his mercy provides to my octogenarian mother who lives on her own and appears to be thriving nevertheless. it counts as a minor miracle, if you ask me.
my mother went to her eternal home yesterday, L's daughter writes to me. thank you for looking after her.
i feel relief. L was a frail centenarian in a tired earthly tent.
i feel loss. L was graceful and beautiful despite infirmity.
i feel grief that washes over me unexpectedly.
above all i feel grateful that i walked her final years with her without failing her.
i finally cave and install the hanyu pinyin keyboard. that's it, i tell HOM. i will from henceforth be spelling out my chinese messages. efficiently so but i will now therefore be unlikely to ever acquire true literacy in the written chinese characters beyond visual recognition, owing to the path of least resistance and all that.
so i wander the shops and get seriously tempted to buy A the next dress / plush toy / hat / li'l bag and HOM firmly restrains me every step of the way. as he should! gaudy whatnots an' all! frivolous flimsy an' flighty! a mother would not buy them for her daughter! but a grandmother, now! a gramma is allowed to buy stuff just because, surely?
update: J2 says i may buy her a couple of cute outfits. this may strain the definition of cute.
he: i want to correct all the known faults and make this home future ready.
she: i like wabi-sabi.
there you go. that's why renovation ranks up there with major illness divorce and death.
the speaker is eighty, retired from a lifetime of bible translation. her voice is strong and, when she sings, she carries the tune yet. her message rambles (i suppose if i get to share at eighty i would ramble too) but remains consistent. my God called me and was faithful and will remain faithful. here i am, Lord!
would that i would walk my path with the same vigor and joy, P! when i think of the saints who have gone before, you stand there with the best of them!
like a secret thrill like a big hug like a warm cuppa chocolate
going on leave for the next two weeks with no plans to go anywhere
oooh cross-stitch! oooh books! oops renovation!
yes!!
chinese ghost stories - lafcadio hearn (1887): quaint tales told in lyrical prose.
irish ghost stories - ed. maura mchugh (2022): neither bizzarre nor ghostly enough. i stop reading after 1-and-a-half stories.
japanese ghost stories - lafcadio hearn (1890s): back to quaint tales in lyrical prose.
somehow quaint is the word du jour. i must be missing something.
our first in 45 years.
at once exhilarating ear-splitting exciting and exhausting. also bewildering and disconcerting. names crawl out of the woodwork faster than i recall who their owners are. quite often the owners go unrecognized as memory and current reality do not match, not by many kilograms. this applies most especially to the gentlemen.
as high school reunions go, this one pretty much satisfies stereotype.
thanks to google, it does appear that there really is nothing new under the sun. what i experience has been agonized over by others and AI helpfully summarizes their discussions for me.
i order laksa at the airport food place.
i remember your order from your last trip, the lady says. no noodles and extra everything else.
yes! i reply happily. i hope it's the no noodles extra everything else she recalls and not something more personal oops.
i am suddenly unable to post photos to the blog.
whyyyy?
surely this is cruel when one has got used to photos representing a thousand words.
the workmen start hacking tomorrow!
things we discover as we prepare for our sixteenth move:
both with charmingly olde worlde tourist trap pockets although of course penang is much larger and much more established.
ipoh has that hard-to-top japanese genki restaurant.
penang has e&o which is not possible to top, as far as hotels go.
ipoh's churches are housed in industrial looking shophouses. penang's churches meet in expansive neo-colonial properties. i get the same underlying current of aliveness at both.
ipoh's bakeries are pretty much done by early afternoon. in penang they are called patisseries and you can buy cake at 8 PM yesssss.
ipoh has traffic lights and little green and red men. penang has jaywalkers.
food is good at both. i am unable to comment on non-food attractions, having only explored food.
i read this with some trepidation after a steady diet of lightly written non-US fiction of the heartwarming genre and some (US) investigative journalism of the ponderous variety.
the book turns out to be well-crafted pleasantly entertaining and unselfconsciously grounded in niceness. the overriding theme is lives redeemed over time by living and i most of all enjoy the absence of (typically de rigueur) dark themes of the post-modern persuasion (read: gut-punching betrayal devastating loss or supreme pain).
conclusion: as bijoux a work as any of the japanese-korean books with more a bit more interesting writing. worth a read!
mum loses her cellphone but manages to borrow a 'phone to contact people to help her.
every night before bed i revise the 'phone numbers of seven people, she tells me proudly. my friends (5), my neighbor downstairs (1), and yours.
this is brilliant i think. some of us have no idea what our own number is, never mind seven other people's.
mum loses her cellphone and many people mobilize to help look after her shopping access the shop cctv call her 'phone (unfruitfully) and plan to bring her to get a new set before she finds the offending item at home.
all i can say is, how kind people are!
we look for white goods for the new old place today.
fortunately for us HOM is systematic and meticulous in researching options merchants and prices and can hold his own knowledgeably. because me, i am a sucker for sweet-talking sales people as long as they are not too smarmy. and most fortunately God blesses us with a down-to-earth sales guy who gives us his rock bottom prices like a gentleman.
it is exhausting nevertheless. we'll go shopping for tiles and fixtures and paints! the designer chirps. we have no wish to go shopping, i tell her witheringly. that's why we came to you.
HOM and i bite the bullet put down the deposit and sign on to our biggest scale renovation yet and realize with gradually-growing equal-parts delight and trepidation that we are committed to moving back to the old place. by year's end, if all goes well.
may God bless this next phase.
yee-hah!
time was when one wore a plain blue mask in the procedure room and nowhere else.
six years down it is a niche fashion statement cum survival tool. as i report to HOM:
the bus it be full
the people they be coughing
fortunately, mask
what i wish i can play:
... in the junk drawer. for full moon celebration cakes going back ten years. the type that parents give to celebrate their baby's first month and that you redeem by bringing to the bakery to exchange for cake.
that's a lot of cake we forgot to get to eat.
for today's activity i hand-tear up my diaries dating from '87. what i say is, they need to make paper products that are easier to dismantle. people who want to manually shred their lives are often too old for paper cuts and related annoyances.
after the diaries i courageously discard 37 years' worth of employment papers appointment papers and promotion notices. there is no longer a paper trail of my contribution to the economy.
in final news, more photos magically appear to be digitized.
i spend some more time today de-cluttering the bookshelves for no obvious gain. i tackle decades' worth of administrative binders files and envelopes and am repeatedly tempted to stuff them back into the shadows. perhaps i give in to the temptation too.
i need to have a goal to this death cleaning, i think. what exactly am i trying to achieve? clearer shelves? a better filing system? to discover lost worlds? in my mind i think i would like to clear out some (lots of) garbage filed over the years and hallowed by age. i would also like to discard half our collection of sticky cables but i am paralyzed by potential future need.
in other news, more photos crawl out of the woodwork for digitization.
after today we will be in the second half of the year during which one can legitimately look forward to cooler weather vacations celebrations get-togethers and christmas. i've only been waiting all year for this!
E and i are down at the foot of our block for his evening ablutions. here is the background: i like my solitude. (that is to say, i don't like to talk when i am tired or if the weather is hot.) E likes his solitude. (certainly he likes big dogs more than he likes little dogs.)
enter, stage left, a woman and her little dog. E and i stand to attention and hope she moves off, although out of courtesy i attempt a half smile across the distance.
woman and dog approach. how is your dog? my dog doesn't really like other dogs. is yours a boy or a girl? is he neutered? my dog doesn't really like other dogs. she repeats as she gets closer and closer.
really, i think to myself. if your dog doesn't really other dogs would you mind leaving me and my dog to our evening activities? E, bless his doggy heart, does not show any interest in the little dog, as expected. and yet it takes us minutes to be disencountered.
it's epic all right. riveting and jolly exciting too, like watching it on screen. it helps the pace that the chapters are short and snappy and he gives you just enough foreshadowing to keep you hooked. i am glued to the book for the chapters leading to his arrest.
the writing is verbose but the story is thrilling and the prison terms are satisfyingly long.
until i read that the perpetrator received a presidential pardon this year. come on, guys. are you serious? (not bolton's fault, obviously)
... by which i survive the internal medicine housemanship rotation, back in the day.
in other news, half of the bookshelves have been (modestly) decluttered but i find myself continually sidetracked by the contents that i mean to prune.
will i need the stuff inside the books? (actually they are hopelessly outdated and you know it)
will i ever read this again? (no, you only read e-books now, remember?)
the conclusion of today's döstädning is that the shelves look somewhat unchanged. i need to ask the two questions and cull again.
a commentary on acquaintance pets' monickers:
in between decisions, HOM and i.
do we endure painful (exciting) (costly) renovation and finally move to the bigger place so we can gladly welcome J1 J2 and the extended rest of the family when they visit?
or do we behave rationally stay put in a comfortable situation for most of the year and suffer the tight squeeze when visits happen?
do we commit to another move when we can no longer climb stairs?
how do we solve the problem of an elder dog with short legs in a home with many steps?
watch this space, is wot i say.
looking for information will never be the same again.
you ask a question incorporating your parameters and AI helpfully churns out a list of reasonable answers that you use to get started on your deeper search. or you ask some follow-up questions and refine the list and get started on your deeper search. how to i minimize my kitchen pipe blockages? which robot vacuum is most cost-effective and easy-to-use and that i can buy from harvey norman? which louis cha quote is the chinese minister referring to?
what i like is the way i get to learn about things i do not know i do not know.
what i need to bring is some wariness and willingness to double check. and questions!
i finish this on the flight back from shanghai in between judge dee mysteries. pleasantly bijoux for a nice quickie read but the astrology stuff throws me off. it flows in the style of we'll prescribe you a cat.
