Just regular folks.

After I ovulate, I enter the 2nd half of my mood cycle when I get all moody and grumpy. So yesterday, I grumped around the house and stayed inside all day. Not so conducive to a good mood. Jeremy had to work late on Thursday because of daylight saving time, US and Germany both save time, but SGP doesn’t – so all of Jeremy’s teleconferences get shuffled around. Also my wrist is getting worse, I think I’m surfing too much (I’m typing this with only my left hand), but it means I can’t knit or play piano, so my beloved hobbies are shelved for a while.

Today, Kate and I were suppose to hung out at our pool together, but she had a restless night with pretty strong contractions, so she went to see her doc – false labor. So the kids and I hung out together wit her at her place in the afternoon. As we left, Vince spotted a playground with a shallow wading pool and as I was talking to Jeremy on the phone, he “accidentally” fell in – with all his clothes on. Then we went to the store to buy some new clothes and he stripped naked right at the checkout line. Go figure.

I was asked to write a personal reflection about my English Lit. Advisor at Haverford for a scrapbook to be given him at his retirement party. I was nervous about writing something for the English department, since my “academic” style writing is a bit rusty, but I thought I would share the results with all of you.

The anecdote about Professor R. that comes first to my mind is as follows. I recall going into Professor R.Â?s office as an advisee early in my junior year with some plan, now forgotten, to escape or to minimize the requirement that I take two classes covering the period after 1800. I left his office enrolled in a class on slave narratives, but not before prodding him about why Henry James was absent from the curriculum. I had always enjoyed reading Henry James in my free time, and often saw him referred to as a figure of great importance in American literature, but I rarely saw any Henry James on any syllabus. James was my idea of palatable post 1800 literature (although I did end up enjoying the slave narrative class). The next year Professor R.Obliginglyy taught the class I was looking for, more or less. Henry James ended up sharing the top billing with Thomas Pynchon, preventing me from escaping post-modernism in my senior year. I enjoyed the class, including the coerced introduction to Pynchon. But beyond the direct pleasures of the classroom, the syllabus set off ripples that extended into the months and years before and after the class itself.

I spent the summer before the class reading up on James and Pynchon in preparation for the high page count syllabus. As it happened, I had an accidental room mate that summer, Chip, who was also much interested in Thomas Pynchon. We were thrown together in an unfamiliar city by our affection for a pair of best friends, and ended up rooming with each other instead of the objects of our affection. This disappointing turn of events gave us more time and energy to devote to our reading, to get to know one another, and to discuss Pynchon. I am always reminded of our summer together when I see his name in the paper, as he has since made a name for himself as a novelist. When I got back to Haverford in the fall, I convinced my freshman roommate and close friend Alan to take the class with me. Our discussions of the course material followed a trajectory not dissimilar to SlothropÂ?s, from initially focused to finally diffuse as we moved through the semester. Finally, since reading out loud from Pynchon and James featured in our courtship, my wife, Doris, has fixed on the idea that she should read something from each author. After 10 years of trying, she has not yet finished anything from either one. But perhaps once our kids are in college in another 15 years or so, she will find the time and stamina. Or perhaps one our kids will beat her to it. In any case, the ripples from the initial inclusion of Pychon with James on that syllabus continue to follow me, and each of them brings Professor R. and his class back to my mind.

Jeremy is so proud of himself. He bought these matching pajamas for the kids a few days ago and finally convinced them to wear them on the same night. Cute, huh?

Today we talked to Ping-ping and axed the swimming lessons, Vince just really wants to play in the pool. He’s a little to hyper to actually have real lessons. Perhaps we’ll try later.

We also went to the Appletree to figure out about Vince’s tuition for the January/Feb/March term. Singapore schools go on holiday for 6 weeks starting on Nov 18, so I wanted to make sure everything was in order before the school shut down. Turns out that they are having a holiday program (1.5 hours a day for 2 weeks) starting the week after Thanksgiving that I think I’ll sign Vince up for. We met Ms. Eileen who will be his teacher next year and she’ll be teaching the holiday program. I’m nervous about it, Jeremy will be in the States when the holiday progam starts. Blah, blah, blah….

Went to IKEA and bought some Xmas decorations. It’s going to be a blowout celebration here in The Warren condo complex. I’m even thinking of ordering a “real” Christmas tree. Where do you think they ship them from?

Then I went to find a blender. I need to buy a blender, food processer and mixer, but everytime I go to the store, the line to checkout is 15 people deep and there is only one person ringing up the sales. I HATE THAT STORE.

This itches all the freaking time! It’s from ONE ant that bit me about 6 weeks ago. About a week ago, I thought it was all done with and healed and then my histamines kicked in and staged a second allergic reation. I swear, I want to cut off my toe.

Red Woods and Giant Sequoias in Central Colorado?

Last Saturday (10/15), Rena and I saw a lot of Red Woods and Giant Sequoias in Central Colorado. They are gigantic and always majestic, just like those Red Woods in the vicinity of Red Wood City and Giant Sequoias east of Fresno, CA. However, the major difference is that, what we saw are trees of ~35 million years old and have tall tree stumps only. They are there because they are all fossilized and petrified. Today, they scatter all over the field in this National Monument – Florissant Fossil Beds – at Florissant, CO. Some of them even have man-made canopies to shade the sun and to protect them from rain showers or snow falls.

Several facts worthy of mention are:

About ~35 million years ago, this valley had lush ferns and shrubs thriving beneath the towering Red Woods and Giant Sequoias. The weather was warm and humid. A volcano nearby erupted several times. First, it killed most of trees and also created a mud dam. Without any outlet, an ancient still lake, Florissant Lake, was formed. Later, the volcano erupted several more times and it showered the lake with more ashes. The ashes carried vegetations, insects & animals and sank into the lake covering the dead giant trees layer by layer. Gradually, these trees were fossilized and petrified. Until fairly recently, due to tectonic plate movements, the earth’s crust slanted to one side and emptied the lake where tall tree stumps were buried.

Butterfly fossils, not amber butterflies, are very rare. With ~45 known butterfly fossils around the world, 15 of them were discovered here.

Tsetse flies occur today only in tropic Africa. Exciting enough, people discovered a lot of Tsetse fly fossils here in this National Park – a place like nowhere else in the world, except very recently in Germany.

Praying Trees and Medicine Trees – Along Routes 24 & 67 and around the Park, there are a lot of Praying Trees and Medicine Trees that American Indians in this area once made use of. There are Ponderosa Pines which distinguish themselves with 2 or 3 shoots in their leaves. Indians tied down the growing trees, at selected locations, to the ground to make their Praying Trees for religious ceremonies. Today, it looks like a giant octopus with a lot of arms hugging the ground and spreading out in all directions. Conversely, the Medicine Tree always has one vertical, deep cutting scar on its trunk. The Indians used to extract its barks for nutrients and minerals. Some of the scars are more than 400 years old. The scars on the trees, together with the tree rings, have been used by Archeologists as a means to precisely trace back in time. There were a lot more Medicine Trees inside the Park than today. Most of these trees were cut down to support the nearby gold mine at Cripple Creek, CO decades ago. Today, it has only ~500 Medicine Trees left inside the Park. From its very beginning in 1873, there were a lot of people came to this place and went away with some valuable fossils from public lands. At the same time, they gradually took away some of our past, piece by piece and fossil by fossil. To stop looting and plundering that took place, President Nixon signed legislation to create this National Monument in 1969.

Aspen trees (a kind of poplar tree) – Aspen trees bear a lot of seeds but few survived, let alone growing into trees. Therefore, it multiplies itself through its roots. And because of that (not from the seeds), they are not all that diversified. As a fact of fact, they are not only genetically identical and but also living very closely to each other. In this Park, there are a lot of them clustered together at different places. Within each cluster, either they are all dead; or all healthy with colorful fall foliages; or already passing their fall foliage season (without any leave on them at all). Closely, they live together and die together, under the same environmental stresses. While living, they behave identically as a cluster at different locations. By observing them, it is a natural way to scare the Hell out of un-necessary cloning.

noel

I am thinking when things settle down a little bit. I probably will take night courses at nearby community colleges. Don’t know where at this time.

The subject may be English, History or Psychology. Haven’t decide yet! Always good to learn something new.

Dude. Weddings are always a bit funny. This one on Saturday was no exception…

So this was Cheong and Nancy’s wedding. I honestly don’t know them very well, but I like weddings and so I went. I know hime mostly thru Choon and Pei-Sun, so they went along with Shwe and Xin. We all sat at the same table for dinner, and of course, Choon and Pei-Sun’s favorite pastime is bugging me about women. Pei-Sun knew a lot of the people at the wedding because Cheong is in this Christian Choir Club that Pei-Sun is in (although she’s not Christian) and she’s having fun pointing out all the single women at dinner. Some of them came over and sat down in Choon’s chair while Choon was talking to other people that he knew there, so I talked to them, and Pei-Sun would ask me of my opinion after they left. ha.

so fast forward a bit to the part about the bouquet toss… being Asian and all, the couple decides not the throw a bouquet but a pair of mashumari dolls that were in a wedding outfit. They were going to throw the girl doll to the guys, and then the guy’s doll to the girls, but unfortunately they didn’t realize that both of the dolls were attached to each other somehow, so they decided to do a combined mens and women’s toss.

Of course, I caught it. It came straight at me. I was standing in the back but I’m one of the taller people, but all I pretty much had to do was lift my hand as the dolls probably would have hit me in the head.

Everyone congratulated me and I walked away thinking that my part in the wedding was done. But no Cheong and Nancy called me back to take some pictures with them. I walked away for the second time but they called me back one more time and i got this sinking feeling in my stomach.

They announced to everyone that I was to give the dolls to “the nicest girl in the crowd”. Great! I did not particularly want to do this. My first thought was to give it to a kid of another friend that was at the wedding. I could have given it to Nancy as one person was to remind me of after the fact. but I was like, “Fuck it, might as well do something with it. So I decided to give it to this girl. Winnie, who had come by to chat with Pei-Sun earlier at dinner.

I think pretty much everyone was shocked that I did that. I mean, honestly, i knew maybe 11 people at the entire wedding, and I’m giving the dolls to a girl I just met like 15 minutes earlier. I’m pretty sure Nancy and Cheong didn’t expect it. Pei-Sun was happy that I did it. I probably would have asked her to dance regardless of the doll thing. I just like dancing at weddings, and, well, you need a partner to dance with. That’s not to say that she was chopped liver or something. She’s definitely pretty damn cute. She has a certain elegance about her that’s sorta classic. I guess the other random thing is that she breaks all stereotype for me since she’s like, reasonably tall – probably like 5.6. Choon teased me about that later

but yeah, well, we went back to our respective tables, and finished dinner. Everyone was clamouring for me to get her phone number, but I figured the mass embarassment had at least secured me a dance later on in the evening, so I just wanted to let everything settle down a bit first.

So yeah, we danced a little later in the evening. Well I guess I should say that we half danced, half talked. Found out that Winnie worked as an assistant in a law firm, and is a piano teacher on the side. She plays piano for the Choir Group. But she lives in the city which is too bad I suppose. She’s cantonese, and quizzed me a bit to which of course, I totally didn’t understand. Found out she plays tennis, but it doesn’t look like she can make our weekly tennis gathering on tuesday nights.

In the end tho, dunno if anything is going to happen. I guess I might be too American for her, and she might be too Cantonese for me. I never did get her phone number either, but I don’t think I would be hard since obvious we both know the bride and groom.

In the meantime, I’m sure I’m going to get it tomorrow at tennis. laff. should be interesting. We’ll see what happens.

Sorry I haven’t blogged recently, I have a few minor complaints, I think I’m putting on a few pounds, Vince has been a handful recently and I have this weird ant bite on my toe. It’s so aggravating because insect bites on toes are incredibly hard to scratch effectively and now it’s this one-inch wide pus filled itch center. Ugh, just go away! Go away! Also, I’m pretty sure I have tendonitis in my thumb from all my knitting and piano playing and lifting kids and extreme web surfing, so I’m bummed because I have to lay off my hobbies for a while while my thumb heals.

On Friday, I went to the Paragon to meet up with Kate for lunch. But Vince really would have none of it, bouncing off the walls, chairs, messing up the chalk-written menus. Blah. And Kate is 8 months pregnant and wanted to go to all these different places and Vince just didn’t want to go anywhere, he just wanted to have cookies. So I had to abandon Kate downtown because Vince was being so demanding.

The Paragon is a hoity-toity mall, full of Versace, Cole Haan, Miu Miu crap.. Sometimes I try to get all excited about buying something nice, but then I stand in the middle of the store and look at all this crap and then I walk out. I mean, who wants to spend their hard earned money on a crystal Nemo which needs to be dusted every week?

The Paragon also had a very, very well stocked Christmas display. See? Edda and I met Santa! OK. Edda’s not too excited.

This weekend we mainly hung out at the house. On Saturday, I went to my one-on-one knitting class. I was all optimistic because I found someone who was willing to teach me knitting, but it was OK. Actually, she taught me crochet, but I don’t know what happened because now I’m home and I don’t know what I’m suppose to do with my skeins of yarn. Oh well.

And Saturday afternoon, Vince didn’t want to go to his swim lessons, I think they are a bust now too. God, I hope he likes his new school. Otherwise, I’m just going to be at home with the two of them for the next 1.5 years! Help!

So in the good name of home-schooling, today we started to learn to read. One letter words, I and a, two letter words, at and in, three letter words cat, bat, mat, bin, tin… etc, etc, etc.

Seems like all my weekends are busy these days. dunno why.

This weekend I’m skipping working at the bike shop. I’m going to a friend’s wedding at MemChu in Stanford. Should be fun.

Sunday I’m going to go do this ride up in Napa. It’s some winery tour. 60 miles. I haven’t ridden in a long time. but it should be okay. It’s flat.

Friday, Was Lynn’s brithday party. We all went up to San Mateo to eat at a posh japanese place and saw the movie Prime afterwards. It was good. but a little more serious than I thought it would be. But it definitely had it’s moments. I can’t seem to decide if Uma Thurman is hot or not.

Friday was also Eid! which marks the end of ramadhan. Arif and co can eat again! I ended up fasting the last week again, but it was sorta cheating since daylight savings kicked in and i could eat an hour earlier.

Work is picking up too. I relaly should be more on the ball about it, but i’m lazy.

Hanging out at Choon’s before the wedding. I’m sleeping over at their place soo much these days. pretty much every weekend. laff. even have my own toothbrush at their place. funny. I Choon is thinking about (finally) buying a house! He’s the one with the hookup in Atherton. He’s been eyeing a house ever since i met him at Sun in 1999. He just hasn’t bought one because, well, he thinks housing prices are way too high and the market would crash. of course, we’re probably closer to that point than in 1999, but now that he’s married and probably wants kids sometime soon, i think he might be semi-forced into it.

also I hung out with Joy yesterday. We went to go see the Dali Lama who was giving a speech at stanford. It was prettyy funny. it was on the basketball court, and the lama sat at where one of the baskets would be, and the front row was where midcourt was. The talk itself was okay. There wasn’t really an agenda so the lama sorta went on about random thoughts for an hour. he basically said, “it’s your perception of reality that clouds your mind, so realize this”. Also it was sorta funny, because he mentioned that he didn’t think meditation was that useful and that he didn’t study very much as a kid because he didn’t think it would be very useful.

Joy is doing well. She’s getting married at Stanford next Oct. so we talked a lot about that. We haven’t hung out for awhile. so it was nice to catch up a bit. She’ sorat been incognito a bit.

that’s it. later!

All:

Rena and I are not craving junk food, or to put it more nicely, fast food. But, once in a while, we do go there where Rena is hooked on dollar-meals they offer – dollar-salads, dollar-fries, dollar-baked-potatoes, dollar-cheeseburgers, dollar-chillis, dollar-drinks, dollar-apple-pies, etc. Dollar-this and dollar-that, you name it. Anything more than a dollar is automatically tuned off in her mind. So far, it really serves us well.

Well, on the other hand, in our hotel, it is the dollar-laundry that dominates our routines. It is a dollar for washing and a dollar for drying. I don’t know why there is a slightly larger washer in our hotel’s laundry room. This is the favorite. Under Rena’s influence, we usually wait until this one is free. For drying, it is even more interesting. With energy conservation and thermal efficiency in mind, Rena has already figured out what kinds of optimal mixing of clothes it requires by using the minimum number of dryers. So, we usually are busy doing just that, moving out fast drying clothes at different times while putting the wetter ones at selected moments into number of dryers. Just like dollar-meal, it works wonder. Though, it can be somewhat complicated.

There are two more dollar offerings going on in our daily routines. One is the half-dollar-air and the other is the dollar-car-wash. Self service half-dollar-air for tires, together with the dollar-car-wash, posts even more challenges because its quick unwinding meters. It only lasts about a minute for two and four quarters respectively. With half-dollar-air and dollar-car-wash, completing these chores within a minute is challenging enough already, let alone listen to my dear “Holding-Hands” continuously echoing the time into my ears. (By the way, “Holding-Hands” is an expression for “other half” in my native tongue.) With my nervous heart pumping, one can imagine how difficult it can get. Using half-dollar-air, the dilemma is that I can’t see things near and far clearly with just one pair of glasses. In order to see air nozzle on the rim, I need to take off my distance glasses. However without my distance glasses, I can’t see anything a bit farther and, most importantly, readings on the meter. Alternatively, with dollar-car-wash, there are too “many choices” to choose from. Usually, it has rinse, soap, extra rinse, extra soap, wax, dry cycle, etc. Just planning to finish washing within a minute by getting the right optimal combinations (allocating enough seconds for selected cycles) based on our vehicle’s dirtiness is already a mind-boggling exercise. Let alone execute it.

To untie these binds, of course, one can always buy oneself the gift of more minutes with more quarters, but this option is usually off my table.

I hope there is no more clever business man who is capable of contriving additional dollar-business services successfully. Otherwise, I am sure, sooner or later, I am going to be sucked into and become part of. But, with one exception, I hope Rena’s dollar-cake business that she is dreaming of never gets off ground or can find some traction while cruising. Hopefully, I don’t have to lose a great number of my shirts or gobble up all her cakes. Either way is depressing.

Oh, I forget to mention things about using coins for our dollar-businesses. First, of course, it needs to get enough coins somewhere. Sometimes, it is a real drag. Second, Rena has to screen out the ones commemorating the State of Wisconsin because they may have an extra leave on their corn stems that they can fetch, at least, 2 Grand for each quarter in the collector’s market. Naturally, she would like to keep all of those just in case. In order to do that, I have to drop whatever it is that I am doing and come to her side because, due to her eye sight and without glasses on, she can’t see any engraving on the coin. As a casual coin collector, partly for her folks in China, she also would like to keep the new one(s) just released. The fun part is that we are not sure of which one(s). Without knowing exactly, she has a tendency to keep them all. Then getting more coins is about to happen.

Well, with all this, the only reasonable last hope is waiting for the inflation to start and come through in big way and a dollar ceases to be a dollar. Even with that, disheartenly, many double-dollar-businesses may spring up everywhere like cultivated mushrooms in “dark” and “cool” places. At that time, with at least 4-8 coins to carry, it may offer few reliefs.

Strange enough with all these dollar-businesses floating around us, I have my own indigenous dollar-business going on. Frequently, I buy power ball lottery tickets with, guess what? a dollar. Hopefully, with luck, I can afford to un-wrap this collar (dollar) business around my neck and free from it once and for all. My dream of winning lottery is rather simple and straight forward – this bar can’t get much lower. Can it?

So far, “buying lottery ticket” is still going on strong till the fat lady sings – Ain’t over yet. But, even with luck, sometimes, I wonder, I may have to come to terms with the effects of this thriving dollar-business for the rest of my life. It is because I have lived through all these years of knowing my “Holding-Hands” pretty well. Meanwhile, I marvel at her thrifty mind and mature somewhat to be appreciative. Otherwise, the double-dollar-business may be just around the corner. Who knows when it’s going to land?

But, at least for now, every little bit helps. Doesn’t it?

noel