pressing on with the count:
11. the main con continues to be elusive
12. HOM to the rescue as de facto project manager troubleshooting guy and part-time electrician. his earlier education coming in useful, i say
13. another permit appears to be missing
14. and the cabinet measurements need rescuing
in other news, and in the fine tradition of murphy's law as applied to home renovations, the car breaks down today in the course of duty.
i meet him after work.
me in a dress, he in longs.
we pay the peak-hour toll into town.
we dine on sake and sashimi.
and head home for coffee.
niceeee.
we plan a quickie trip across the causeway for the long weekend, HOM and i.
wake up early zip over have breakfast at ah koong coffee at oriental shop at mid-valley lunch at new lucky then massage. don't forget the hanjuku cheesecake from lavender. good plan, eh!
we manage the wake up early bit. the live traffic camera shows a solid line of car lights to the border.
we go back to bed.
in additional news, the cement screed is finally poured. yesssss. one month late, but i tell HOM it definitely feels like we are renovating and progressing now.
my friend comes back from the camino walk. i begin to realize, with something of a dawning pain, that i may have a list of dreams more than a to-do list:
the whole point about forgiving someone, i realize, is not to figure out if they deserve it or not but to remember that i do not but am freely forgiven anyway. it helps to also remember that forgiving is not forgetting and i need not heroically try to inflict amnesia upon myself.
if i don't watch out i will really become a crotchety old woman. the old bit is already there i just need to be crotchety.
it is amazing how many of my ruminations circle around the elders. when i become a venerated elder i really hope i do not need to be served up with a garnish of helpless forbearance.
at the exams today and a number of people tell me separately that i examined them at various points in the past.
when you've been around the block several times your past eventually catches up with you, is wot i say.
i also say my bark is worse than my bite, as evidenced by the fact that i do not recall actually examining any of these present luminaries of the fraternity, as well as the fact that i consider them my friends these days.
continuing the list:
6. we discover neighbor's pipes in our home (ikr, who designs things this way?)
7. neighbor's pipes (in our home) might be leaking. cue near-apoplexy on everyone's part
8. work stops because you need water to cut the walls, apparently (duh?)
9. smart wall switches are sized differently from regular switches (the wall cutter did not know this either)
10. and the dji robot vacuum narrowly avoids being barred from export due to them thinking we are processing a drone
this is a good place to quote Ps. 94:17, slightly out of context: unless the LORD had given me help, i would soon have dwelt in the silence of death.
sand in my sock.
the modern twist to the princess and the pea.
and the update to the sand in my shoe. considerably harder to remediate too.
and there was evening, and there was morning, another day. quite breathtaking.
and the renovations plod on.
here is E when he does not want to walk.
clearly a dog who knows what he does not want.
1. stop work order
2. main con sprains his back
3. a/c con punctures the water pipe
4. main con's grandma dies
5. super typhoon ragasa
and counting.
unless the LORD build the house, those who build it labor in vain.
Ps. 127:1
after a week of categorically slower internet speeds HOM contacts M1 and then runs through a complex series of fruitless trouble-shooting over the next couple hours before the young man at the other end says, you need to upgrade your router firm-ware. at which HOM climbs to where we stash the router digs out the 8-year-old credentials and presses on the update button and voila! we are back in action!
all of this to say, always know where you squirrel away your device passwords and know what to do when the young man says you need to upgrade your firm-ware. either that, or you marry the local IT support guy.
plodding and ponderous and also page-turningly tense.
the characters are truly unlikeable: the victim wholly deserves his desserts three out of four siblings are hypomanic or personality disordered and the hangers-on are unprepossessing and unreal.
the overarching theme appears to be the old wuxia revenge worked out in a western clime. if i were an asian immigrant to the u.s. this book would totally depress me.
HOM scratches thru the nite.
he: i must be catching your chronic urticaria.
me: huh? <smashes a fat mosquito.>
recently abandoned books:
the trust - m.c. eccleston (2022). i pick this up because the blurb says for fans of richard osman but she in no way writes with osman's flair.
the way of all flesh - ambrose perry (2018). wordy, like alphabet pea-soup.
the killer across the table - douglas & olshaker (2019). not sure what the writer is trying to achieve with a most uncharismatic subject.
people from my neighborhood - kawakami (2016). bizarre without kawaii. that's all.
the woman who wanted more - vicky zimmerman (2016). depressingly middle-class american. for recipes and food, stick to ruth reichl, i say.
in my seventh decade i no longer feel obligated to finish a book once i begin it.
i discover a pretty hair clip in the deep recesses of the car.
me: nice! i must have dropped this some time back.
HOM: is that yours? i don't recall you having something like this.
me: is it not better that i should have lost something like this?
fascinating and quirky ode to that lifelong dream of mine, to do nothing.
morimoto is unapologetically vegetative in his approach to exertion and involvement. the fascinating bit is how he strikes a chord in so many souls who take pleasure in helping him do nothing. the quirky bit is the unexpected nature of his many endeavors: providing a warm body to file divorce papers with or being the recipient of rambling monologues or simply being a human alarm clock. for someone so against the tide of industry he is insightful and warm in his observations of human nature.
what i don't understand is how he ever exerted himself enough to marry his wife.
another couple strings snap in the piano. this is happening with painful regularity.
and yet it is greatly beloved well treasured and lovingly played, this stately beauty of ours.
even if the piano tuner knows us better than most other people.
God and God alone created all these things we call our own
from the mighty to the small the glory in them all is God's and God's alone
God and God alone is fit to take the universe's throne
let everything that lives reserve its truest praise for God and God alone
God and God alone reveals the truth of all we call unknown
and the best and worst of men won't change the Master's plan
it's God's and God's alone
- phil mchugh
flipping thru my old song sheets and found this. painfully and comfortingly apt in the face of turmoil and mindless oppression.
after the rain and along the canal.
it occurs to me that the sides of the canal are well irrigated by canal water these days and sprout sporadic tufts of exuberant vegetation. faintly resembling some body parts.
a linguistic guide to communications.
kbt - kaya butter toast
fkt - fried kway teow (although my friends prefer ckt for char kway teow)
ytf - yong tau foo
pb - peanut butter
xlb - xiao long bao
dtf - din tai fung
all food related, as best as i can recall.
the body aches the head hurts the arm wants to drop off.
ouchhhhh (gingerly)
i am seriously considering abandoning dose 2.
i miss my usual bus stop this morning and tumble out at the next stop all groggy-like to begin my speed walk back to civilization. everything looks unfamiliar and new and different until i realize i am looking at the dear old building from the opposite direction to how i normally look at it. (duh!) maybe one should miss one's stop from time to time, if only to acquire a new prospect.
in other news, i miss the bus in the rain this evening owing to texting on the phone. that sinking feeling is so déjà vu.
in a ditty, what i do for work today:
on the way in, i miss my stop
on the way out, i miss my bus
because he is too swarthy to be called newspaper boy.
time was when he showed up in the early hours on his bicycle with precarious towers of daily news and held up one elevator car going floor to floor flinging them out. you walked the dog around his timing to avoid becoming hostage to the never-coming elevator.
these days he shows up a wee bit later on his shiny red motorcycle a shorter tower and is done in under the time it takes me and E to dawdle up the slope.
the times they are a'changin'. what surprises me is that the papers they are still a'comin'.
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.
