Category: culture Page 2 of 11
Lorena and Kelly made it to London last night. They had a great flight, saw the Aurora Borealis as they flew past Iceland, landed at Heathrow Airport late morning and made it to their Bed and Breakfast by 1:30 PM London time. That got a little rest, went out and got some dinner, took this photo of a lamppost by a picturesque church and then made their way back to the BnB to make an early night of it having spent the entire previous night on the plane. When they were looking for something to eat, the found a restaurant named Wahaca (Oaxaca) that is part of a chain in England. Even if that was done by Mexicans trying to spell the name phonetically so that Englishmen can pronounce it right, it is just wrong! 🙂 I am never again going to make fun of the way English is spelled improperly on their signs. Never. I do hope they get to try it out though.
We live in interesting times. The most notable non-presidential election of my lifetime is scheduled to take place this coming Tuesday. I am not wildly involved in any of this, but like to know what is going on. I do not trust any of the traditional news sources–we have not subscribed to a paper and ink newspaper for a couple of decades now and we do not have a television. That leaves the internet and, to a much lesser extent, the radio. Fortunately, I think it is possible figure out what is going on better than any time in my lifetime. I will continue to depend on non-traditional news sources and continue to vet my current sources at the same time I look for new ones.
Lorena and I got married on a beautiful fall afternoon at El Tio in Monterrey 26 years ago today. Grateful.
Yesterday was my 63rd birthday. It is a strange and interesting time in life and the world. The New Year whether counted from one’s birthday, January 1, or some other important annual even like the start of school or a church convention is a time for reflection. For some reason, this year more than many in the past, I feel a need to reassess what we (Lorena and I) do. We have a few short term goals we want to accomplish like Lorena’s degree and some remodel projects, but in the whole scheme of things, they are not so consequential.
I have professional and financial responsibilities to meet over the next couple of years, but they are not so onerous. I also have some side projects I want to complete. The main one is the coffee bean project, but I also really would like to do some work with my new friend Stan on his Raspberry Pi. All those things considered, I am seeing how it might be good to figure out what to do when I retire in 3-4 years. Do we stay where we are? We like it here, but we are the kind of people who believe there is a place we are “supposed” to be. We need to give it some time to figure out. It is nice to have events like birthdays so this kind of thing comes onto one’s radar.
Beside all that, I had a great, but very quiet birthday. Both the kids called, I talked to Grandma Conchita on Skype, Lorena cooked me a really nice, too big, New York steak and a carrot cake, and Kiwi sat on my lap more than she should have given that it diminishes my work output fairly dramatically.
I have flown in and out of Portland International Airport more than any other airport for my entire professional life. Honestly, PDX had lost its luster over the years as the Portland culture seemed to coarsen in lockstep with the aging of the quite famous PDX carpet. While the city of Portland and the State of Oregon maintain their unparalleled beauty, (well, that is true for the City of Portland, only if you do not look too close) the coarsening of the culture has not abated. That can not be said about PDX anymore. Most of my travel was pre-remodel and now they have the new carpet installed. It is a joy to fly in and out of here now. It is not really up to the level of our beloved RDU airport, but that is really just a regional airport so might not be a fair comparison and PDX is almost that good anyway.
After taking the first few flights since returning to the Pacific Northwest out of SeaTac airport to China, Boston, and Phoenix–a truly horrible airport situated in an impossible place–we have decided we will fly out of Portland whenever possible and only fly out of SeaTac when we need to see Kelly before or after the flight. The drive down to PDX is really beautiful and not even close to the horror of driving through Olympia/Tacoma/Seattle traffic. It is a whole lot easier to get to PDX from the north rather than the south, so we are grateful for that. too.
I started a new job last week. I flew to Boston to get started with the new company. I had a good number of firsts while I was there–at at Wahlburgers, stayed at a bed and breakfast, flew on JetBlue, and gave a talk at Harvard. I have to admit that the best of all of those was flying on JetBlue. I am a big fan now. The work looks like it is going to be very interesting, but there will be a LOT to do, especially as I get started. The plan is to travel to Boston once per month for a week at a time–maybe a little more than that as I get oriented. This time, I am at a medical device company, but there are really no FDA compliance issues yet, so I will not be hung up in paperwork ninety percent of the time. The problem is a hard one, but it should be fun and interesting, too. I ordered a new computer, a really nice one and everyone has treated me really well. It is a small startup with big ambitions which is exactly the kind of thing I like.
Photo by Derek Thomson on Unsplash
Grandma Sarah was a pharmacist. She loved to stay up on the state of knowledge in the medical field by reading the scholarly (and popular) literature and with the continuing education required to maintain her license. She always got a lot more continuing education hours than was required. Because our family has tended toward the fanatical end of the coffee drinking spectrum, maybe more in terms of quantity than quality, Grandma Sarah stayed abreast of the research on the ills and benefits of coffee drinking.
That all being said, it has been kind of shameful that the kids have had less than stellar coffee brewing equipment. We got them each a K-Cup coffee maker that can also perform single brewing from grounds. I am not sure these are the most brilliant coffee machines in history, but they are definitely adequate and are profoundly better than what Kelly and Christian had before. One thing that I had not figured out about the K-Cup thing is that they definitely compete with the traditional brewing of a carafe of coffee just because you never have to through away half a carafe because your coffee drinking ambition was moderated dramatically after your first three cups. And it is WAY cheaper than buying it at Starbucks.
Kelly has gone to a new schedule where she works only four days every other week. That is a fine thing because she can take trips on her bi-weekly three day weekends. This week she flew to see her friend Sally in Washington D.C. She has sent a few pictures out–not nearly enough–that reminded me that there are some great things to celebrate that brings a tear to the eye for some of us in fly over country. This one is at the Lincoln Memorial. One that I especially appreciated was the Vietnam Memorial–not the wall so much even though I did appreciate it and found a name of a person whose brother I knew who had died, but the one of the soldiers with their combat gear.
It really is a wonderful place. I have never been to the Smithsonian, but I want to go some day. My problem is that every time I have had a chance to go, it was a choice between that and the National Art Gallery and I have always chosen the art.
We are enjoying Tempe a lot. Lorena went with Christian to buy new tires for his car and to do some other shopping. The thing we notice is how “alive” this place is–maybe it is the time of year and the amazing weather (not too hot), but we are glad to be here right now. Christian is taking us to a new taco place he just found that is authentic in the way we measure Mexican authenticity. He said he had the “street tacos.” What else would you order in a truly authentic Mexican restaurant–especially for the first visit–so you can have a common metric against which to compare other “authentic” Mexican restaurants. Can hardly wait.
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Lorena took this picture in a mall parking lot, waiting for the stores to open. We are down in Arizona visiting Christian, waiting for our friends to get here from Chula Vista, and wondering why everyone does not want to live in Arizona with its fabulous weather, unique culture–heavily influenced by Mexico and Mexican food, and lots of things to do and see. I know we might think differently in the heat of summer in a few months, but right now it is very, very nice.
Thanks to Bonnie and Kiwi for holding down the fort for us back home.
I have been about 40 lbs. down from my high for over a month now since Jon W. and I first started our weight loss plan a little after Thanksgiving last year. It is good I am down and not going back up, but it is not so good I have been stuck for so long. I would like to say that I am on this plateau just because my metabolism has adjusted, but that would not be entirely true.
The reality is that, after three months of great progress, I am finding it hard to stay on my low calorie diet (I found I can lose weight if I stick to under 1200 calories). I keep falling off the wagon on the weekends. This is a very bad sign because I have a trip to Phoenix coming up followed by a trip to Canada for work after that and a trip to Mexico in early to mid summer which, given the family into which I married, will involve lots and lots of red meat. Based on my track record, none of these bode well for my diet.
I really and truly want to build on my current level of diet success. I have hit a new level of healthy blood pressure and cholesterol measurements, the reacquired abilities to put on my socks without asphyxiating myself and to actually cross one leg over the other when I am sitting down, and the ability to wear clothes I have not worn for years. I do not want to lose that. So, having succeeded in the past with a low carbohydrate diet, I have decided to switch to that for the next few months of barbecues, carnes asadas, and eating in restaurants.
The last thing I have decided is that, if Jon is game, I want to extend our battle plan to one with an indefinite end (maybe until death, but that is actually kind of definite). I was thinking if I did this until the end of the year, that would be good enough. Now though, even when I get down to my desired weight, I am pretty sure I am going to need to keep on keeping track.
I really did not have a lot of bandwidth today to be reflecting on life, but due to and serendipitous juxtaposition of events it came to my mind that we live in peculiar times. Overnight, new things turn into institutions and just as quickly, fall into oblivion–Facebook, Barack Obama, Kombucha, and on and on. Everything is not like that. Degrees that have hard math in them will still get you a way better job than degrees with minimal math, Washington still grows the best apples, and Jesus is still the same and always will be. Still, it feels like stuff is moving really, really fast politically, morally, economically, and every other way I can imagine. Some of it is for the better (Obama is gone and Hillary is not president), some of it is for the worse (California in general), and some of is hard to tell (Trump).
All this might be because I am just getting older and time seems to be passing more quickly. In all this, the thing to which my reflection left me is that the need to do meaningful things with what time I have left and to not be absorbed by the Borg seems more urgent to me than ever. I wish I would have had this sense of urgency at a younger age. One thing for which I am very grateful is that I did have a strong sense of urgency with respect to the way we raised our kids. We did not get it all right and we failed at more than a few things, but it was not because we did not give it our best shot.
So, the upshot is that there are some opportunities coming up for me that will force me into some interesting decisions. I want to make sure I do the meaningful thing–something I have been given to do, rather than what is easy or even fun.
We did not get a picture that really did these fireworks. We certainly were not expecting a professional fireworks display off our back balcony. This part of the world is very enthusiastic about their fireworks in a way that exceeds any place I have ever been including Mexico. They were very nicely done and very colorful. We hope they do it every year at Christmas time.
I got back to Seattle almost two hours ahead of the scheduled arrival. The departure time got pushed up from 11:30 AM to 11:00 AM. Who ever heard of such a thing. The other thing that seems completely out of sync with my experience is that from my first ride from the airport to the hotel in Shanghai to my last ride from the hotel to the airport in Beijing, all the driving was quite sane and careful on very good roads. I am sure it must be that I was not in the right place to experience the wild driving about which I have heard, but they would have to up their insanity by several orders of magnitude to arrive at what I have experienced on numerous occasions in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon.
We went from SeaTac airport to drop Kelly off, home for a quick change and then on to church followed by a five hour nap. Then I went to bed at my normal time and got up at my normal time. The jet lag had way less effect on me than what I remember from trips to Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia. Maybe it is because I am getting old and do not need much sleep. The whole trip, the nuts and bolts mechanics of it anyway, was about as benign as any Asian trip I have ever taken. I do not know if I relish the idea of going on a super regular basis, but I do not dread the idea anymore. It will be good to go back and see the very kind people with whom I worked when I was there, too.
Kiwi was fit to be tied when we got home. She had stayed by herself for two days while Lorena stayed with Kelly. It was good to see her, but she let us know she was displeased; in no uncertain terms.
I am sitting in a hotel room in Beijing, waiting to catch a shuttle to the airport to return to Seattle. This was a very interesting trip. I guess it is to be expected that my impressions of China are fundamentally different from my expectations before I arrived. There are lots and lots of very good things about China. I have made good friends and look forward to my next trip in a few months. There are some things about China that are unsettling. I need to think about them a little and it is all so foreign to me that I do not have an opinion. I think, like Mexico, there are some parts of the culture I will never understand because I am an American. The other thing is that China is so big and diverse, understanding things in one place is meaningless when you go to another part of China, maybe not even so far away. It has been a wonderful trip although it would have been nice to bring Lorena along. Lorena has been invited, so maybe we can make that happen.
We have been running since I hit the ground in Shanghai Pudong airport day before yesterday. There have been lots of surprises on this trip, mostly to do with the very modern and extensive infrastructure that is ubiquitous both in Shanghai and Suzhou. I know I am traveling and working in the very centers of commerce and industry for which China is known in this day and age. Nevertheless, it is very impressive.
My other, maybe bigger surprised is the decorum with which the drivers that got me from Shanghai to Suzhou have exhibited. I have to say it has been somewhat more aggressive driving that in the U.S., but no where close to the craziness that is Monterrey, Mexico. That being said, I just got her and do not know much yet, but I have certainly enjoyed the experience so far.
From the picture of the view from my company’s office in Suzhou, you can probably tell there has not been much time to take many pictures. The timing of our meetings and the weather (torrential, North Carolina/Florida quality thunderstorms) have not cooperated in that regard and I am not sure much will change base on my schedule.
The other marvelous thing I have experienced here is the food. Last night we spent several hours at a Korean barbecue place that makes me think it would be great to own one of those Korean barbecue tables with the charcoal pits in the middle and the automatic shish-ka-bob rotators. Who knows what they are really called, but whatever it is, they are really cool. I am going to investigate.
The new header I put up (you can still see it here when I change it again). It seems appropriate that this was the view of the mountain out our window this 16th anniversary of the cowardly murder that took place at the Twin Trade Towers in New York in 2001. The header picture was taken at 6:00 AM and the picture to the left was taken an hour later. It all reminded me of that power of God. I read a factoid yesterday about the power of hurricanes, that an average hurricane expends way more power than the sum of all the man made power in the entire world for an entire year. Looking out the window and reflecting on the understanding that Mt. Ranier thousands of years overdue for an eruption it makes me realize how small and inconsequential is the raging of men. I understand the Mount St. Helens explosion was 1600 times as big as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World Wart II. This coming eruptions of Mt. Ranier is prognosticated to be much bigger than that. It is never too early to get one’s house in order.
All that being said, I think some seemingly inconsequential events are much bigger deals in light of eternity and judgment. I was thinking of what a great thing it was for Kelly to receive the benefit of an amazing and spiritually edifying trip to visit family in Mexico. But, on some levels, even more than that was an after church dinner to which we got invited at Bob and Gena’s house yesterday. We were very grateful to be included in that. I went from there straight home to the computer to work on contract work–good, helpful work that will save lives. I missed the afternoon Gospel meeting because of that and could not get past the thought that seemingly small spiritual things are so much more important and powerful than whatever else is going on in our lives have a greater eternal impact than world events and work. Even these world shaking events like terrorism, hurricanes, volcanoes or the solving of sickle cell disease pale in comparison.
Several months ago an Amtrak train derailed that Kelly was scheduled to catch for a ride to visit us in Centralia. She was stuck at the train station, but a mysterious and very handsome Englishman who smoked Gauloises cigarettes gallantly talked to a couple who had an SUV to take them along with an old married couple to Centralia, Portland and beyond. There was an old married couple and a hatchet in the door pocket of the back seat. If that is not a murder mystery, I do not know what is. Kelly had a great time and got this picture in an email today. She will probably never see them again, but she has a great story.
Google, in the minds of many, is pretty much the devil. I have started to come around to that opinion myself. There are lots of people who believe this. The problem is there has never really been any other option. After the most recent spate of ignorance and draconian overreach when Google fired a guy for expressing an idea that is objectively true, I decided to see if I could bail out of use of the Google search engine because, in my opinion, they censors what is good and true to promulgate evil. I found out that is kind of a hard thing to do. There are some searches for my work at which Google is better than anything else available. That led me to the idea that I need to minimize my Google searches to those for which there is no other alternative.
The good news is that I found a solution. I wrote earlier (here) about what I believe to be malfeasance on the part of Mozilla in their treatment of a very good man. That man, Brendan Eich, got fired from Mozilla for unconscionable pretexts. Because he believes in and supports “traditional marriage” (just marriage for non-double-speak people), he got fired from Mozilla. He immediately started a competing browser company named Brave. I tried that browser when it first came out, but it really was not ready for prime time. I tried it again today because I was so feed up with Google and Mozilla and I have to say that if it is not yet ready for prime time, it is very, very close. In addition, they have a way to set my browser (I use DuckDuckGo to avoid Google for the vast bulk of my searches) and Google only for those where it works best–stuff where they cannot impose their extreme hard left-wing bias. Brave facilitates all of this and I am grateful. Check it out. Don’t get swallowed by the Borg.