Lee was born 11:31pm on Wednesday - 7 lbs,6oz, 20.5" - Jennifer & baby are coming home today. We are all very excited & grateful.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Monday, November 19, 2007
Firsts
I recently returned from a work trip to Hong Kong and am still suffering from a bit of jet lag. While I’ve been to Asia several times, this was my first trip to Hong Kong, which I found exciting and overwhelming at the same time.
Every business in Asia seems to have their front doors locked requiring one to be buzzed in. In Shanghai they have them, in Taipei they have them and the Nike offices in Hong Kong have them too. The receptionists working for Nike are accustomed to Americans visiting from the corporate office and upon arriving on the 26th floor of an enormous office complex I was buzzed in immediately by the receptionist. Dorothy, I think her name was, waved me in and the second I crossed the threshold she exclaimed, “We have new bad man here.” It caught me off guard and I wondered if I should be running for cover. But, she said it with such pride - the way a snooty parent might when introducing a child freshly admitted to an exclusive pre-school. I was lost. Dorothy could see this and kept repeating herself, each time a little louder. By the third time she was standing with her arms outstretched gently flapping while shouting, “bad man, bad man, you see bad man.” I could smell the fish she’d had for lunch adding to my confusion.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know ‘bad man,” I responded. I was to meet with Connie and asked if she was available.
“Connie, here. You see ‘bad man, you see bad man.”
I smiled and sat down and much, much later found out that Hong Kong is hosting the filming of the latest “Batman” production and evidently has most of the locals worked into a frenzy.
Because of the time difference one tends to feel sleepy all day and wide awake all night. The inclination is to finally fall asleep just after midnight only to wake up at 4:00 am as if it were the middle of the day. It was on one of these early morning awakenings I began considering other “firsts” associated with this trip. Here are a few.
The factories I visit like to take us to either lunch or dinner and tend to jockey for meals with the other factories. Dinner is the priority, with lunch the consolation. There are always too many factories and not enough meals to satisfy, or for me, the other way around. It was during a lunch of dim sum in Hong Kong with one of our polo factories that I experienced another first. I’ve had pretty much all the standard Chinese fare ranging from wonderful vegetable dishes and spring rolls to a plate of live baby clams covered in a light red sauce. Their shells chattered as the tiny mollusks twitched and shook and I couldn’t bring myself to try them. So I guess, technically, I didn’t experience this dish first hand. This took place in a city outside of Shanghai where we were paraded through a fish market on the ground floor and asked to choose what we’d like to eat. Most of the fish were still alive and the place smelled much like a pet store. While the locals scurried around pointing at the various tanks and plastic buckets I searched for something a bit more vegetarian. “Do you maybe have a salad,” I asked?
“Salad? We have, you choose,” answered our host pointing to something white with holes in it. It was rectangular and I think it might have been a stomach at some point in it’s past.
At my lunch in Hong Kong however, I wasn’t offered anything still breathing and the food wasn’t swimming in green, murky tanks in the basement - at least not that I saw. Mid-way through the meal a traditional Chinese soup arrived. It was a clear broth with a bit of pork, some egg, and a vegetable or two. Not far from our own chicken noodle soup, but with pork. I took a few bites and thought to myself, “Not bad. I could even enjoy this.” My thoughts continued, “We really lucked out with this lunch. Good spring rolls, dim sum with scallops, fried noodles.” I breathed a sigh of relief and looked down for another bite of soup.
It wasn’t the coarse black hair floating just beneath the surface alone that sickened me. Nor was it the thought that I’d already eaten half the bowl leaving me wondering, “were there others? Was this a singular incident or did this hair resting gently next to a hunk of pork have company? The thing that really bothered me though, was the gaggle of Chinese factory workers surrounding our table, looking on with anticipation, asking, “How soup? It delicious? You like?”
. . .more to come
Every business in Asia seems to have their front doors locked requiring one to be buzzed in. In Shanghai they have them, in Taipei they have them and the Nike offices in Hong Kong have them too. The receptionists working for Nike are accustomed to Americans visiting from the corporate office and upon arriving on the 26th floor of an enormous office complex I was buzzed in immediately by the receptionist. Dorothy, I think her name was, waved me in and the second I crossed the threshold she exclaimed, “We have new bad man here.” It caught me off guard and I wondered if I should be running for cover. But, she said it with such pride - the way a snooty parent might when introducing a child freshly admitted to an exclusive pre-school. I was lost. Dorothy could see this and kept repeating herself, each time a little louder. By the third time she was standing with her arms outstretched gently flapping while shouting, “bad man, bad man, you see bad man.” I could smell the fish she’d had for lunch adding to my confusion.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know ‘bad man,” I responded. I was to meet with Connie and asked if she was available.
“Connie, here. You see ‘bad man, you see bad man.”
I smiled and sat down and much, much later found out that Hong Kong is hosting the filming of the latest “Batman” production and evidently has most of the locals worked into a frenzy.
Because of the time difference one tends to feel sleepy all day and wide awake all night. The inclination is to finally fall asleep just after midnight only to wake up at 4:00 am as if it were the middle of the day. It was on one of these early morning awakenings I began considering other “firsts” associated with this trip. Here are a few.
The factories I visit like to take us to either lunch or dinner and tend to jockey for meals with the other factories. Dinner is the priority, with lunch the consolation. There are always too many factories and not enough meals to satisfy, or for me, the other way around. It was during a lunch of dim sum in Hong Kong with one of our polo factories that I experienced another first. I’ve had pretty much all the standard Chinese fare ranging from wonderful vegetable dishes and spring rolls to a plate of live baby clams covered in a light red sauce. Their shells chattered as the tiny mollusks twitched and shook and I couldn’t bring myself to try them. So I guess, technically, I didn’t experience this dish first hand. This took place in a city outside of Shanghai where we were paraded through a fish market on the ground floor and asked to choose what we’d like to eat. Most of the fish were still alive and the place smelled much like a pet store. While the locals scurried around pointing at the various tanks and plastic buckets I searched for something a bit more vegetarian. “Do you maybe have a salad,” I asked?
“Salad? We have, you choose,” answered our host pointing to something white with holes in it. It was rectangular and I think it might have been a stomach at some point in it’s past.
At my lunch in Hong Kong however, I wasn’t offered anything still breathing and the food wasn’t swimming in green, murky tanks in the basement - at least not that I saw. Mid-way through the meal a traditional Chinese soup arrived. It was a clear broth with a bit of pork, some egg, and a vegetable or two. Not far from our own chicken noodle soup, but with pork. I took a few bites and thought to myself, “Not bad. I could even enjoy this.” My thoughts continued, “We really lucked out with this lunch. Good spring rolls, dim sum with scallops, fried noodles.” I breathed a sigh of relief and looked down for another bite of soup.
It wasn’t the coarse black hair floating just beneath the surface alone that sickened me. Nor was it the thought that I’d already eaten half the bowl leaving me wondering, “were there others? Was this a singular incident or did this hair resting gently next to a hunk of pork have company? The thing that really bothered me though, was the gaggle of Chinese factory workers surrounding our table, looking on with anticipation, asking, “How soup? It delicious? You like?”
. . .more to come
Friday, November 16, 2007
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Food Storage
Family--I just wanted to let you know that the price of wheat is expected to go up considerably after December. There are estimates that it will double, so if you need some for your storage, this would be the month to get it. You can usually walk in and do a canning session. If anyone needs me to go and work for them, let me know. Love you, Mom
Monday, November 5, 2007
Recollections
Hopefully you all will enjoy this exercise as much as I did. I am working on extending my memory. Here are some of my earlier memories from California:
My teacher leans over my shoulder as I kneel on my desk and manipulate my hands so that I can learn to tie shoes. She kindly tells me about two bunny ears and how they cross and then voila, I have a pair of tied shoes. It was frozen bliss there in Canada. On the other hand, my first day in California kindergarten was a rude awakening to the hard gang culture that was already bubbling up at such an early age. The year was 1975. Bell bottoms were the rage. Apparently, for my kindergarten teacher, eating was the rage also. This enormous fat lady walks in and begins to explain to the class, remember, it is my first day but everyone else is halfway through the year with this same teacher. We moved in February, I think. So in she walks, and begins to explain that the class has been misbehaving too much. The next one to misbehave, she says, will wear diapers and drink a bottle in front of the entire class. I am sufficiently cowed to not say a word. The next day, Rene, a rowdy boy of questionable English skills, must have misbehaved. My memory doesn't extend to what he did to enrage the teacher. I was certain that the teacher was going to pull his pants down in front of the entire class to apply his diaper. Quite frankly, I was mortified by the loose morals the California culture was presenting to me at such a young age. Instead, the teacher decided to save my impressionable mind and applied Rene's diaper on top of his pants. She then held him and forced him to drink a bottle in front of all of us. Rene never recovered. Even in tenth grade, I, and I am sure all of my classmates from that fateful day, would look at him and see him wearing diapers. Luckily, I never wore diapers and must have made it through the rest of the year with minimal problems because I don't remember a bit of it. Although, maybe I am repressing something. Wouldn't you?
First grade and I am the only blond headed child in a class of thirty. My parents, aiming for a well rounded education but not quite understanding the code words of political correctness that even then were invading the educational system, enrolled me in a bilingual class. Their impression was that I would walk out of the class speaking not just English, but perfect Spanish as well. Ole? The real purpose of the class was to teach thirty or so migrant children how to speak English, not so that one lonely Canadian with misguided parents could learn Spanish. Needless to say, I did learn many Spanish words. The majority of them would have earned me a serious spanking had I chosen to use them around my parents. Maybe, I would even have had diapers applied. Even though they didn't speak Spanish, I am sure they would have had a fairly good idea what the words meant. And they didn't mean, Hi, how are you? The family rumor is that by the end of the year, I was speaking fluent Spanish. I think, in reality, by the end of the year I was just blabbing words that I had made up because I had just spent an entire year with no one to speak to.
The one exception was my wonderful teacher Mrs. Obeso. She obviously could speak Spanish. I was her favorite. Maybe because I was scared she might put diapers on me also. I was unused to being surrounded by people who wanted to diaper me up. Later, several years later, I realized she was actually an extremely nice person. She always spoke highly of me to my parents and soon they were convinced they had an Einstein on their hands. Can you imagine the pressure? Where was there to go from this high pedestal? Although, well meaning, Mrs. Obeso put me in a bad place. She spoke highly of me because I did well on all my tests and in all the class assignments. I did better than all of my classmates, I firmly believe, because none of them could even understand what was being assigned. It is easy to excel when the competition no habla.
My teacher leans over my shoulder as I kneel on my desk and manipulate my hands so that I can learn to tie shoes. She kindly tells me about two bunny ears and how they cross and then voila, I have a pair of tied shoes. It was frozen bliss there in Canada. On the other hand, my first day in California kindergarten was a rude awakening to the hard gang culture that was already bubbling up at such an early age. The year was 1975. Bell bottoms were the rage. Apparently, for my kindergarten teacher, eating was the rage also. This enormous fat lady walks in and begins to explain to the class, remember, it is my first day but everyone else is halfway through the year with this same teacher. We moved in February, I think. So in she walks, and begins to explain that the class has been misbehaving too much. The next one to misbehave, she says, will wear diapers and drink a bottle in front of the entire class. I am sufficiently cowed to not say a word. The next day, Rene, a rowdy boy of questionable English skills, must have misbehaved. My memory doesn't extend to what he did to enrage the teacher. I was certain that the teacher was going to pull his pants down in front of the entire class to apply his diaper. Quite frankly, I was mortified by the loose morals the California culture was presenting to me at such a young age. Instead, the teacher decided to save my impressionable mind and applied Rene's diaper on top of his pants. She then held him and forced him to drink a bottle in front of all of us. Rene never recovered. Even in tenth grade, I, and I am sure all of my classmates from that fateful day, would look at him and see him wearing diapers. Luckily, I never wore diapers and must have made it through the rest of the year with minimal problems because I don't remember a bit of it. Although, maybe I am repressing something. Wouldn't you?
First grade and I am the only blond headed child in a class of thirty. My parents, aiming for a well rounded education but not quite understanding the code words of political correctness that even then were invading the educational system, enrolled me in a bilingual class. Their impression was that I would walk out of the class speaking not just English, but perfect Spanish as well. Ole? The real purpose of the class was to teach thirty or so migrant children how to speak English, not so that one lonely Canadian with misguided parents could learn Spanish. Needless to say, I did learn many Spanish words. The majority of them would have earned me a serious spanking had I chosen to use them around my parents. Maybe, I would even have had diapers applied. Even though they didn't speak Spanish, I am sure they would have had a fairly good idea what the words meant. And they didn't mean, Hi, how are you? The family rumor is that by the end of the year, I was speaking fluent Spanish. I think, in reality, by the end of the year I was just blabbing words that I had made up because I had just spent an entire year with no one to speak to.
The one exception was my wonderful teacher Mrs. Obeso. She obviously could speak Spanish. I was her favorite. Maybe because I was scared she might put diapers on me also. I was unused to being surrounded by people who wanted to diaper me up. Later, several years later, I realized she was actually an extremely nice person. She always spoke highly of me to my parents and soon they were convinced they had an Einstein on their hands. Can you imagine the pressure? Where was there to go from this high pedestal? Although, well meaning, Mrs. Obeso put me in a bad place. She spoke highly of me because I did well on all my tests and in all the class assignments. I did better than all of my classmates, I firmly believe, because none of them could even understand what was being assigned. It is easy to excel when the competition no habla.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Chancho!
Msaon Ord started calling me Chancho several months ago (Nacho Libre for the non Jack Black Aficionados). Anyway while walking through downtown Austin a few weeks ago I saw the mask, and knew what I needed to do. I ended up staying up till midnight making the cape on 10/30. It has been a while since I have dressed up for Halloween, but had a great time. Viva Chancho!
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