The freedom to sing

In the past four months, I’ve had visits with each of my favourite cousins. That’s really amazing, considering they all live on the other side of the Pacific Ocean!

The best thing about them is that when we go on road trips, there’ll be certain songs that come on the radio/music player in the car. And we’ll simultaneously and spontaneously start singing along, without hesitation or embarrassment.  It’s pretty neat to be able to have people in your life with whom you can belt out cheesy 80’s songs as naturally as breathing.

To be the second opinion when you doubt your spouse

It had been about 20 years since I last talked to her. She sounded the same, but I had forgotten her particular diction, prefacing each question with an insistent “Celia!” as if she was interrupting me talking to someone else at a cocktail party, even if it was solely she and I on the phone.

 

I’d just visited Nancy’s sister in Brussels a couple of weeks ago, and she was planning to visit Brussels for the first time later this summer. So she called me to compare notes.  What airlines, what city to fly into, etc. Nancy had never traveled abrd, so her concerns were understandable. It reminded me of what it would feel like to be in the shoes of a newbie traveler; I’ve traveled so much that I’m quite jaded, and take much about it for granted.

 

But the more we talked, the more I realized this wasn’t so much a research call, as a quest for reassurance.  Her husband had done his research, but she didn’t quite seem to trust his homework.

 

I smiled wryly when the lightbulb flickered on. I’ve done the same thing to Joe. “You don’t believe when I tell you something, but when someone offers you the same advice, you simply accept it unquestioningly!” Touché. It felt a bit awkward. Not only was I probably going to be the subject of Nancy’s husband’s “See I told you so,” indignation, but when the dispute stemmed from someone doing travel research and planning, I felt more guilty, even as an disinterested bystander.

 

“Oh, Nancy actually doesn’t want to go,” said Nancy’s cousin who had provided my phone number to Nancy. “She’s scared and intimidated by traveling.” 

Again, to be in the shoes of someone who . . . doesn’t want to travel. I can’t quite understand it, but I acknowledge that it takes all sorts to make up the diversity of the human race, and that would include people have the resources, but not the desire to travel.

 

I’ve been kind of worried that I’m losing my ability to feel joy and wonder while traveling. On this most recent trip (which included the visit to Nancy’s sister to Brussels), I felt like it took me way too long regain my travel ‘sea-legs’. I kept getting lost, which was shock to my innate ability to navigate by instinct or by map or landmarks. I didn’t take enough photos. I was stressed out and impatient. I had slackened off on trip planning arrangements, which meant I paid a bit more than I needed to for train tickets, and subjected poor Joe and Biker to the unnecessary burden of biking 80 km on 3-speed bicycles, instead of 7 speed ones; and rushed to White Hart Lane straight from the airport, only to find out that match had been moved to the next day.

 

But it was OK, by the end I’d mostly come around. I ate jellied eels, and swam in the Serpentine, where I lasted ten strokes before fizzing out like a melting cube of champagne  (It was about 30 degrees F outdoors. At least it was five strokes longer than I lasted in Crater Lake.)  We Velibed along the Seine.  I didn’t get to put my name down as ‘Albert Heijn’ when wait-listing for a restaurant table in Amsterdam, but at least I remembered to take a photo of the chocolate- and rainbow-colored sprinkles which I discovered that the Dutch sprinkle on toast as part of their nutritionally complete breakfast (After all cold cuts, cheese and bread can only get you so far)!

 

The small ‘aha’ moment of the sprinkles was as exciting to me as the first whiff of skunk was to Biker’s 9-year-old son three weeks later, as we were driving along the Central California coast. “Let’s roll down the windows, I want to smell more skunk!” (They don’t have skunks in Thailand, where they live.)

 

It’s wonderful to see kids amazed by the first time they smell skunk  and relive that moment from your childhood; it’s an incredible relief that as an adult I haven’t completely lost that capacity for being amazed by the little things you only learn about when you travel. If Nancy goes, I hope she finds out that you are never too old to discover the joy of travel.

Bon appetit, poulets!

It’s snail season, so we’ve been encouraged to put some effort to picking out and getting rid of the snails in the community garden. In the past I’ve simply squished them underfoot, but one of my colleagues who raises hens for eggs told me chickens love snails. So I picked snails from my garden plot and put them in a lidded yogurt tub one morning and brought them straight into work. When I went by his cubicle, he wasn’t there. So I left them on his chair, and then emailed him that I had left the him some snails as snacks for his chickens.

He emailed back with this:

“Rita and some of the others in Customer Sales and Marketing often bring me goodies like cookies or other sweets. Imagine my surprise when I opened that yogurt container. Those are really healthy looking snails. The hens will love them!”

I hadn’t been thinking: I guess I should have wrote a post-it note and slapped it on the yogurt container instead of email, since he might not check his email before opening the yogurt container. I’m also lucky he’s not squeamish, i.e. if he’d been an uptight kind of senior manager . . that would not have bode well for me!

“Healthy snails. . .” that’s actually not the type of compliment a gardener wants to hear. And then he told me the next day his hens didn’t particularly care for the snails, which was odd because the flock of hens he had last year were crazy about snails. But he was kind enough to bring half dozen of eggs anyway!

I told my mom this story and she said: “You are funnier than the story.  Giving people snails.  Next time you can bring weeds for their compost.”

Annoyance tax

There was an interesting article in the NYT Sunday magazine the other week with a punchily titled “A Tax on Annoying Behavior?’ The premise was “What if we could impose a tax or fine on certain negative externalities to discourage people from generating those externalities. With such a tax, “. . . we would probably do less [of those damaging things] if we had to pay for them.”

It’s a theme that I daydream/fantasize about, often. I suspect many people do as well, even if their pet-peeve externalities are different from mine.

(There already are ‘taxes’ on externalities, but in some cases the revenues don’t cover the actual costs, or cannot be applied to directly to mitigate the cost of damages. Or in many cases, there is no practical way to collect the tax.)

A couple of my fantasy taxes/fines (transportation-related, of course) are:

1) Bike carcasses on locked up on bike racks:
Where there are clusters of bike racks, you often see bikes locked up to racks amputated of parts: front wheels, rear wheels, frames. Some deadbeat owners never return to retrieve/unlock the bike carcasses, as I call them, from the racks. Their lack of responsibility in unlocking and removing bike carcasses really annoys me. The owners should be fined.

Externality 1: As the unused/abandoned bike takes up a useful bike parking space, it is a waste of public resources. It’s also a nuisance, as it may reinforce the impression on bike thieves that the area is vulnerable for easy pickings.

Externality 2: Extra work is imposed on maintenance folks who should, but rarely, forcibly break the locks to remove the carcasses. Yes, it’s probably a hassle to have to come by car to take the bike away, since it can’t be ridden. Yes, it’s probably easier, or even cheaper to buy a new bike than to buy and install missing parts. But this is littering writ large!

A fine should be imposed on owners of locked up bike carcasses who do not remove their bikes from the racks within a reasonable time period, say 3 weeks. The financial fine should be substantial enough to motivate the owner to respond quickly. (In theory, if bike registration were mandatory just as it is for cars, all owners would be traceable, and the fine could be sent by mail.) An additional incentive would be to provide a rebate for owners who do remove their bikes upon notice, scaled to their promptness in doing so.

Plus some good could still be salvaged from those bike carcasses: by donating them to worthy fix-and-donate bike non-profits; there’s at least one in any urban area. My local favourite, Bike Exchange, is run by Jack Miller and Dave Fork, two of the coolest pedallers I know.

2) Fines for drivers who cause incidents/accidents which generate congestion:

You’re free-flowing on a freeway when traffic unexpectedly slows down. Some car has caused an incident, and the rest of the passer-by traffic is slowing down for (a) safety: in case the driver or responders are standing around; and/or (b) curiosity: what kind of car (s), and what type of driver(s) were involved? How gruesome was it? Humans can’t resist looking at crash scenes.

Whether the incident was an avoidable one (i.e., negligent driver at fault), or “unavoidable” (i.e., unexpected mechanic malfunction), the fact remains: the incident caused a traffic jam. Other people who were driving along were inconvenienced; they were forced to travel slower than they should, and expected to have to. Extra fuel wasted, increased pollution, wasted time are all externalities. The driver(s) who caused the incident should be charged a fine for causing the congestion (externality). The fine would be based on the vehicle-hours of delay generated, which can be calculated and/or measured based on the volume cars driving by in the vicinity and the decrease in speed relative to before the incident.

The prospect of such a fine should influence drivers to be more careful to avoid causing incidents and the attendant congestion. The revenues from these fines would be used for operational improvements for the roadways (i.e. more communication to drivers to enable them to avoid downstream congestion caused by a incident, etc.)

I wouldn’t mind some sort of social fine either: highlighting the embarrassment or shame of the at-fault driver for literally causing a scene that so many passers-by are slowing down to stare at. That should also change the driver(s)’ behaviour to drive more safely. Maybe it would be in the form of an indelible ink bomb on the car (like those used for money stolen from banks)?! (I personally impose my form of this by staring pointedly at the culprit driver as I drive by, although s/he is totally unaware of it. But it helps me vent a tiny bit of my frustration with the unexpected traffic jam.)

If you’re wondering if annoyance taxes exist in real-life, see below:

Cigarette tax
Do cigarette taxes really cover the cost of treating lung cancers, and laundering the smell that clings to clothes and furnishings? What about the externality of the yucky whiff of a lit cigarette that drifts towards me from the pedestrian in front of me? If only I could collect a penny from him as the fine for the annoyance he has caused me, as I overtake him in order to be upstream of his smoke – the annoyance tax.

Congestion pricing
There’s two versions: (1) the option for solo-drivers to pay to drive in the Express/HOT lanes instead of the mixed-flow lane traffics, since traffic in HOT/HOV lanes generally moves faster during peak periods (Bay Area freeways); or (2) to drive into/within in a CBD (Singapore, London.) You can either see it as a tax on the act of causing congestion: if you don’t want to pay, then don’t add to the congestion by driving at that time/place. It can also be seen as elitist: you can pay for the privilege of using the faster lane. This is the more common perception, hence the nickname ‘Lexus lane.’ Some claim that it is unfair to low-income drivers, who can ill-afford the fees.

In either case, the fee is intended to discourage demand of the road capacity and thus reduce crowding. There are alternatives though: drive at a different time, i.e. at off-peak hours (when there’s no or lower fees), a different route (which could be a longer distance, but has more capacity/less congestion), or best of all take transit, walk, or bike. Carpooling is an option for the Bay Area – you can drive on the HOT lanes and bridges and avoid paying if you have 2 or more in your vehicle. (3 people for the Bay Bridge.)

I have no problem with this kind of fee. But irrationally I hate the two-tier security check queues at airports, where people who have are traveling business or first class tickets (or paid for pre-screened security clearance programs) get priority to bypass the queue and go through first, and leave the rest of the passengers feeling like second-class citizens, fuming with frustration at how inordinately slow the regular queue is processing. Even though it’s no different conceptually from automobile congestion pricing!

Luddite compliments

This was too funny. . . on Monday I went to a cafe to do some writing (not editing, but writing raw in my journal).  Someone at the next table said to me “It’s so charming and unusual to see someone write with pen and paper nowadays!” And it was true, there was a laptop at every other table in that cafe. Of course this being in Silicon Valley . . .

But this probably true all over the Bay Area. Especially in the winter when most people tend to stay indoors, due to the cold. It is a bit of a nuisance though, all the cafes are perpetually full and not being able to find an open table. For the last three times I’ve gone to a cafe, it took me a while to find a seat. People are usually nice about splitting a table though. 

The whole start-up, work anywhere culture has made squatters out of cafe customers. People lingering with their laptops, even to surf the net, if they’re not doing anything concrete.  Even if you’re engaged within your own mental bubble with your gadget, you still want to be share the physical atmosphere with other breathing human beings, I guess.  

Holiday gift of company and time

I’ve been very lethargic this past holiday season. We didn’t do a Xmas newsletter at all.  No lights went up, and neither did the advent calendar. We did the lagniappe rather late. 

I made Joe do all the shopping for Christmas presents. That’s pretty drastic, considering how he loathes to shop. But I still got what for me is the best part of Christmas: wrapping the presents. I love raiding the stash of used gift-wrap from previous years to wrap new presents in the vain hope that maybe this will be the year the recycled stash will be depleted and we would be forced to start using virgin new gift wrap next year. The challenge of gauging the just-the-right size paper for the item, without too much excess to avoid trimming it down.  How to strategically positioning the paper to minimize the sight of creases, rips and scotch tape scars, etc. Editing the old label on the wrapping paper so that it says “To From Joe; To From Linda”

But I did feel a bit guilty for being so Scroogey and Grinchy; so in a fit of desperate inspiration, I came up with the following gift certificate letter . . . which I have only managed to send to half of my intended recipients (folks who would normally get an Xmas letter from us.)

Friends and family who got this reacted so fabulously, I’m publishing it here as well. If nothing, I figured it was the gift of a chuckle. I did two versions, one for friends/family, and a more sedate version for work colleagues.  I thought about doing a version for out-of-town friends, i.e. there are some things that can only be fulfilled in person. But it was hard enough to get around to posting this here . . .

****************

Seasons Greetings!

This Christmas, I’m not getting you anything that can be gift-wrapped, because I have no ideas whatsoever for the perfect gift for you. I’m lazy, I’m cheap, and I can’t overcome my anathema of Christmas carols played ad nauseum in stores. Besides, you’re better off without the reindeer mug with petrified peppermint-hot-cocoa mix, pungent bath salts, or the snowflake-shaped candle, which I could have resorted to, if I caved in to the convention of gifting for the sake of giving.

Instead, this greeting/message represents a far better alternative for you: a gift certificate of my time. Time is money, but the currency I offer you is my invaluable assistance, my undivided attention, my entertaining company, or some priceless combination thereof. The side-benefit of this offer is the chance for me to spend quality time with you.

We all have busy schedules. We are also isolated, by distance, or even by bad traffic and poor transit. It is that much harder to make the effort and time to spend with each other. It’s ironic because I make a living making transportation system improvements.

Redemption of this gift certificate is by your request to me at any time in 2013, subject to my ability and availability, and whether it will be sanuk (fun) to fulfill your request.

Below are some examples of redemption: this is not an exhaustive list. You may request other items or favors for my consideration. (No illegal or unethical ones. Morally dubious, maybe.)

1. Trip-planning: you need ideas on where to go, what to do, and where to stay in (fill in name of country I’ve been to.)

2. You need a ride to and from the dentist for your wisdom-teeth extraction.

3. Your delayed flight from Shanghai arrived at 3 AM at SFO. Transit has stopped running. You may call me up for a ride from the airport.

4. You spotted your ex at a party with a new partner who is twice your height and net worth. You may bawl and/or bitch to me, and I will commiserate with a sympathetic ear. Even at 3 AM. (So long as I’m not picking up someone from the airport at that time.)

5. You need to vent about your work-related issues: pointless bureaucracy, clueless colleagues, excessively long meetings. I will commiserate with discretion.

6. You need help decoding a menu or map that’s in Thai, Chinese, French, Spanish, Italian or German. (Accuracy not guaranteed.)

7. You want to attend an opera/Amharic poetry reading/Monster Truck Jam, but can’t get anyone to go with you.

8. You need to deliver something via sustainable transportation (bike, transit, walking.) I may subcontract this to my friend Anne.

9. You need a ringer for your trivia team.

10. You need someone to volunteer/work at your fund-raiser event. I will do so with charm and efficiency. (Fulfillment subject to my approval of the cause.)

11. There’s a unique restaurant you really want to try and you can’t get anyone to go with you because it features bizarre ingredients (all ingredients start with the letter ‘v’) or an unusual setting (involves climbing 7 flights of stairs.)

12. You need a bridesmaid, or a secular marriage commissioner at short notice. (The former is conditional on the dress.)

13. You’re trying to decide if you should take the new job you’ve been offered, stay at your old job, or start your own artisanal toothpaste business. I’ll listen to, bounce ideas, and analyze with you. (Results, however, are not guaranteed.)

14. You need someone to do the swim portion of a triathlon a training buddy to bike, swim or hike with you. (I ABSOLUTELY do no running.)

15. You want to take a class in music sight-reading/foraging for mushrooms/Bollywood dance, but can’t get anyone to sign up with you.

16. You need to put together a menu for a ten-course Chinese banquet, where the diners will include one vegetarian, two people allergic to shrimp, and one person who will eat nothing with onions or eyes.

17. You need help editing your writing: resume, memoirs, grant proposal, etc. (For the latter, I’ll even throw in checking the math.)

18. You need help harvesting produce from your backyard. (Especially if some of it is going to a local food bank.) If you need help weeding, I will subcontract this to my grandmother Lydia.

19.  You need a babysitter for 3 hours while you and your partner go on an adult date. (I will not change diapers. However, I will let your kids jump in puddles – you are forewarned.)

20. You’re looking for perspective on being only child, the superiority of fruit at farmer’s market over supermarkets, why black is a terrible color for clothing/accessories, the advantages of regular soap over anti-bacterial sanitizer, why you should always carry reusable chopsticks and swimming goggles, etc . . . I’ll give you an earful.

21. You need someone to explain and discuss the birds and the bees with your pre-teen.

22. You want to travel on your dream-trip, but can’t get anyone to go with you – visiting forts in Rajasthan, hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, a week in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, a road-trip across the lower 48. (But if it’s the Taj Mahal or the Forbidden City, you’re out of luck.)

Happy New Year 2013! 

Uzbekcelia

Lagniappe 2012

SPOILER ALERT: We’ve been really slow about getting the lagniappes out this year, so half of you haven’t received them yet. If you don’t want to know what’s on it yet, stop reading here.

1. Glad You Came – The Wanted
   Super Senbei and Friends in . . . Metropolis Island Part Two (see Dr. Slump manga on reverse)
2. Take It Easy – The Eagles
   There is now a statue of a man standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona.
3. Almost Home – Triumphant Quartet
   Heard this on the radio while driving from Raleigh to the Outer Banks.
4. I Believe –  The Book Of Mormon Original Broadway Cast
   Liked  the “All About Mormons” South Park episode better.
5. Falling Slowly –  Glen Hansard
   Always wanted to use this song in a lagniappe but forgot until it came to Broadway this year
6. Ride Of The Valkyries – Richard Wagner
   Finally saw Apocalypse Now.
7. สายล่อฟ้า (Sai loh fah) – Asanee – Wasan อัสนี-วสันต์
   Speed metal just waiting to be the entrance music for a Thai relief pitcher.
8. Love You Like a Love Song – Selena Gomez & The Scene
   This year’s “I Should Be so Lucky”.
9. I Am The Walrus – The Beatles
   Heard during Olympics; inspired Craig Kilborn reference to the immortal Pooh Richardson.
10. Things have changed –  Curtis Stigers
    KCSM represented
11. Libiamo, ne’lieti calici  – Verdi’s La Traviata
    Saw a lot of opera this year, but this is for Patryk singing this while we were driving around for Darlene and Nick’s wedding, or was it walking around NYC at 3 AM?
12. Leaving Las Vegas – Sheryl Crow
    Joe drove from Fremont Street to Death Valley after fried chicken monstrosity at Hash House A Go Go.
13. The Scientist – Willie Nelson
    Should have been anthem for California’s Proposition 37.
14. Biggest Part Of Me –  Ambrosia
    Celia found this TIME-LIFE opening act more interesting than Alan Parsons Project
15. Summertime – Ella Fitzgerald
    Like Rigoletto, Porgy and Bess has twisted characters and plot, but we couldn’t miss Audra McDonald in this.
16. Goodbye Horses – Garvey
    “It rubs the lotion on its skin, or it gets the hose again.”
17. The Painted Desert – 10,000 Maniacs
    Requisite soundtrack for Petrified Forest National Park.
18. 2000 Miles –  The Pretenders
    The rare “Christmas” song that we would voluntarily play year around.
19. Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours – Stevie Wonder
    Sitar opening in memory of Ravi Shankar.

Movement and Circulation

I keep thinking that I didn’t do much traveling this year, but that’s not entirely correct. It’s true I only went to two places I’d (sort of) never been to before: North Carolina and Virginia. But I did also go to old stomping grounds: Vancouver, NYC, Washington DC and Hong Kong.

FREQUENCY

A week in Hong Kong completely spoiled me.  I never had to look at a schedule, since MTR comes every 5 minutes or sooner, the bus comes every 10 minutes or sooner, etc.  When I came home, the first day I went back to work, I was screwed up because I missed my light rail train, which meant I missed my Caltrain connection. This added 40 minutes of waiting/transfer time on top of the 30-minute travel time. “What do you mean the train doesn’t run every 5 minutes?” I was indignant in my jet-lagged haze.

The second day I went to work, I simply jumped on the next train that showed up on the platform. “Hmm, why is this train stopping at San Antonio?” I thought it was part of the revamped Caltrain schedule. Then the train approached San Carlos . . . “Hmm, it doesn’t seem to be slowing down to stop. Oh, it’s not stopping.” It ended up stopping at Hillsdale. I was lucky, the next southbound train that I could take from Hillsdale to San Carlos arrived 3 minutes after I got off, so I wasn’t too late for work.

Of course, there’s similar issues on New York subways: if you don’t pay attention and hop on the Express train by mistake, it may skip the stop you want, in order to get between major stops quicker. Which happened to us once on this trip. But since we were being tourists not on a schedule, it didn’t matter.

WALKING SPEED

What I have noticed that’s common between both Hong Kong and New York City is the average pedestrian walking speed seems a lot slower than I remember. I attribute my walking fast to a habit acquired early in childhood: having to keep up with my longer-legged (older and taller) cousins in Hong Kong, or risk getting left behind and/or lost.  This has made me appear to walk at a freakishly fast pace relative to everyone else in more laid-back places, like Bangkok and the Bay Area. When I visited NYC for the first time in 1994, it felt like a homecoming of sorts in spite of the place being completely alien to me: I walked at the same pace as everyone else, so I fit in.

The equally frenetic and driven pulse of both HK and NYC seems to have mellowed out a bit. Slower walking – I attribute to people fiddling with their smartphones as they walk (a universal phenomenon): they’re distracted and walking slower.  (Of course it makes them more susceptible to getting their smartphones snatched and stolen by thieves, or getting run over. I’m sure somewhere out there, there has been an incident where a motorist who was texting collided with a pedestrian who was texting, and it’s undetermined who was at fault.

FRIENDLIER

People in both cities have also become a bit more polite, driven by the need for providing good customer service for tourism-driven economies. I used to think salesladies in Hong Kong the rudest people on earth, especially coming from Bangkok.  Now they are just helpful as sales clerks in Thailand.

On this latest trip to the Big Apple, I found a fake rhinestone and blue fur tiara in the floor of a taxi-cab and wore it everywhere the rest of my time in NYC. New York being New York, no one bats an eye an anything. It was perfectly normal, just as someone walking a brown goat on a leash with a pearl collar down lower Broadway was normal. What was surprising was how people were downright friendly. My tiara attracted seven ‘Happy Birthdays’ from strangers, as well as a “Congratulations, let me see your ring . . . you’re already married!?”

AUTO-PAY TOLL

I’m surprised at how few people use auto-toll to pay for tunnel fees in Hong Kong. None of the taxis we rode used it. None of the folks whose cars we rode in used it. You’d think they’d have incentive to use it to save time. I wonder what why.

LEFT-RIGHT-LEFT

One of the enduring legacies of the Brits in Hong Kong is the left-hand drive. Usually that also functionally dictates how people walk on the left hand side of the road as well. This usually leads to passing or faster traffic on the right, no? But Joe noticed something odd on this trip to Hong Kong: on escalators people who stand are on the right, and the people who hurry/walk up the escalators are on the left, like we do here in the US. Why is that?

COINS

Every time I visit my dad, I end up sorting and ‘cashing in’ all the coins he’s collected since my last visit. It’s my three-in-one good deed: (1) I reduce the clutter in his house; (2) I put coinage back into circulation, which reduces the need to mint coinage; and (3) I get some local spending money without having to deal with the mordida of foreign exchange commissions.

Last year, when I visited him in HK, I accumulated enough to pay for a very nice shabu-shabu dinner for five adults with all the spare change. I had to lug the coins to HSBC first though, where they charged him a percentage fee for coin counting and converting it to banknotes. (I really need to educate my dad on using Octopus card to pay for the small purchases, and avoiding the whole spare change problem.)

This visit being so recent on the heels of my last visit, Dad hadn’t squirreled away as many coins. I couldn’t take them to HSBS, so I sorted the $1, $2, $5 and $10s into piles of $100, and then took them to the customer service booth at different MTR stations on different days to load them onto our Octopus cards.

The 10-cent, 20-cent and 50-cent pieces were more of a problem. I can’t take those to MTR and no one else really wants them. I finally hit on the idea of using to buy drinks from vending machines. Machines can’t protest. Joe got Schweppes ginger beer, which is really not as good as Bundaberg. I got a Schweppes grapefruit soda in honor of my colleague Lauren, who had told me she missed those from her time as an exchange student in Hong Kong. I did the obnoxious thing and had Joe snap a photo of me guzzling it on his smartphone and then emailed the photo to her!

BIKESHARE

We tried out Capital Bikeshare in Washington DC: our first time ever using a bikeshare service. It worked pretty well for us as tourists. $7 for a 24-hour membership, and you can sign up for an account right at any kiosk with a credit card. Rides of 30 minutes or less are ‘free’, so we just biked between pods and parked.

Even the glitches and trouble-shooting worked well. You get issued a new code each time you check out a bike to unlock it. The code can either be read on screen or be printed out on a slip of paper. If the kiosk has run out of paper, and you didn’t memorize the code from the screen, all you have to do is wait 5 minutes, when the code expires, and then log in and get another code issued.

Another glitch we encountered was when we wanted to return a bike, but couldn’t because all the pod parking spaces were taken by existing bikes. You could look up the next nearest pod with available space to park your bike.

The equipment was OK. Many had bells where the clicker was broken. Some had seats which were impossible to adjust. But for short rides, those nuisances are tolerable.

I got Joe to take a photo of me on my bikeshare bike in front on the White House, which may be ironic. I understand that few people ride their bikes past Tiananmen Square anymore, it may even be illegal?

There’s lots of pods, close to most of the tourist attractions. I hope the Bay Area version will eventually be as dense/good/critically massed. I have to admit I was a bit of a doubter on bikesharing before, but now I’m sold on it. But I wonder how I would use it as a local, as opposed to a tourist. Why wouldn’t I simply buy myself a beater-bike?

SHUTTLES

We also rode the DC circulator shuttle quite a bit, to get to and from Georgetown, since Metro is not close by. It works pretty well at $1 a ride.  Although the maps are slightly confusing (some show outdated routes.) While underground Metros are usually faster, surface buses have windows on the streets, allowing to you discover things you otherwise wouldn’t know about.

TRANSLINK

We got to ride Translink for the first-time ever in Vancouver! It may sound silly to consider this a major accomplishment, until you consider how many times I’ve been to Vancouver in the past couple of years, and still not manage to check it out. I was impressed with the frequency of the trains, almost as good as MTR, even during mid-day.

CLIPPER

A shout-out to VTA; for having upgraded their Ticket Vending Machines to enable Clipper card financial transactions. I had given up on doing any web-based transactions with my Clipper card (definitely no auto-load!) because their user-interface and customer service is so crappy. I was buying my monthly Caltrain pass in person at the customer service window in my office. Sometimes there would be a queue – I get irritated with having to wait in line. Now I can use my credit card to add cash, or buy fare products (not just VTAs, but other transit agencies’ as well) or just to see my account balances simply by walking to my neighbourhood light rail station.

Hey, did Clipper card change its name from Translink because Vancouver copyrighted the name?

When you become old enough to appreciate opera

As mentioned in a recent cross post, my grandfather died twenty years ago, while my most of the family was attending a wedding in Switzerland. As the patriarch of a large family (13 children and 32 grandchildren with my grandmother), his passing had quite an impact.

Grandfather was very fond of opera. I never knew how he acquired the taste for it, but he was a very cosmopolitan man. Then, Bangkok was a Western-culture backwater relative to La Scala or Bayreuth, so any occasion to see opera he appreciated keenly.  He also had no compunction about buying 10 tickets whenever there was some sort of performance coming to town, and then requiring all his progeny to accompany him.

Once, it was a film of Don Giovanni (Kiri Te Kanawa was in it) being shown at the Alliance Francaise on a weeknight.  “Can’t I stay home instead and not go?” I grumbled to my parents.  If you were a fifth-grader like me, wouldn’t you have preferred to stay home and watch a Chinese martial arts TV show, rather than a bunch of bewigged fops singing in a language you didn’t understand with music you never heard?

“No, Grandfather bought tickets. We have to go.”

I was bored sh-tless. Even worse, I was really cranky that I was missing my TV show, and I vented my feelings by kicking the seat in front of me. Something Ramona the Pest would have done. As I was wearing my sturdy school shoes, they made very satisfying thumps. My parents scolded me afterwards.

Today, I still feel guilty for having disturbed whomever it was who had the misfortune to sit in front of me that night. Because I’ve evolved to become one of those people who carry a folding fan to the opera, not because I have affectations of looking like a cartoon-dowager-at-the-opera, but because it serves a practical purpose: to tap people to let them know to shut up or stop using their smart phone while the performance is going on. Now, those are the sources of crankiness for me!

The next command attendance from Grandfather was better: a live performance of Hansel and Gretel, the opera by Engelbert Humperdinck (not to confused with the pop-singer of the same name.) At least this opera had a plot I was familiar with. But even more eye-widening for me was the double cross-casting: the role of Hansel was played by a woman, and she was Japanese. I find out now that the role was always intended for a mezzo-soprano. But the sight of an Asian singing in a German opera, I spent the whole night trying to wrap my head around that concept! This was an inkling awakening to the concept that you didn’t have to be white to be cast as a white character . . .

My grandfather was very lively and energetic. He walked fast and didn’t like sitting still. When he was felled by his first heart-attack, he was not happy to be trapped in a hospital bed for days.  “Go and buy me some opera, like Rigoletto or La Traviata,” he groused.  My aunts searched high and low for cassette tapes of opera for him: Bangkok was the kind of town where you could buy pirated cassettes of Teresa Teng or ABBA on any street corner, but Verdi was like hen’s teeth.  Eventually they found some. Grandfather gained a modicum of solace listening to opera on a walkman while imprisoned in his ICU. Unfortunately, at this age he was also rather deaf, so he blasted the volume to the max.  This disturbed the other patients in the ICU, so they had to move him to a private room!

The autumn after Grandfather died, I bought a student subscription to the SF Opera, at 75% off the regular price. It seemed too good of a bargain to pass up, so I splurged on orchestra seats.

In keeping with the spirit of Chinese ancestor worship, I took Grandfather along with me to each opera, in the form of a photo of him. The more conventional offerings to our dearly departed are food and fake money, but I felt he would enjoy the opera just as much. This gave me a modicum of solace after his death, by doing something that would make him happy. The last time I had seen him was after I graduated, just before I left for the Trans-Siberia train ride. He had been very disappointed that I was going to graduate school for engineering afterwards

By then, I was in my early twenties. Attending the full season of opera, as well as seeing other musicals (this was the golden era of Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera and Miss Saigon), I found myself enjoying opera: how the music, acting, staging and even the singing in a foreign language could convey such emotional arcs that were universally understandable and moving.

(Likewise, when I went to Suzhou for the first time in my mid-twenties, I was enthralled by all the gardens. I was blissfully content to sit for hours in each one, just savoring the atmosphere. If I had visited Suzhou at an earlier age, I would have been really bored by the gardens. So I’m glad I visited them when I did, at a point where I had matured enough to appreciate them.)

I could just as easily credit Merrie Melodies cartoons for sowing the seeds of familiarity with operatic chestnut tunes, but I think the early exposure from Grandfather’s forced-fed introductions to opera had one very important impact on me: I was not intimidated by the idea of going to opera, or any other sort of live cultural performance.  I went one step beyond: I have no problems going to see a performance by myself, because there’s no way I could get 10 of my nearest or dearest to go with me! And I do often go solo; sometimes Joe would just have a more enjoyable afternoon watching football at home!

I actually almost never go to the SF Opera anymore, the hassle of going up there, and the cost, etc.  But earlier this month, I saw Rigoletto for the first time. I never knew what the plot was about, all I knew was the “la donna e mobile” song.  And at 50% off Travelzoo discount, we splurged on box seats! I went with Truc; she’d never been to the opera before, and wanted to go, but didn’t have anyone to go with.  “Anytime you’re going to the opera, let me know because I want to come along.” Truc enjoyed it, although I told her she was a bit spoiled for sitting in box seats for her first-ever opera. From here on out, if she sits in orchestra or nosebleed seats, it won’t seem as good.

I did bring Grandfather’s photo along as I usually do when I go to an opera, but now I really missed him being around. I wish I could have asked him why he liked Rigoletto so much. The storyline is a bit more disturbing and complicated than the usual tragic-lovers tale. Were there particular elements he particularly empathized with?  I did like it though, so much, I wanted to go see it again the next night, even by myself, but the discount was no longer available so I didn’t go.

Funny thing is, I was telling my other friend Robynn afterwards about going to the opera. “Oh,” she exclaimed. “I’ve always wanted to go to the opera. But I can’t find anyone to go with me.” If only I’d known!

Or, if only everyone had a slightly eccentric grandfather like mine.

lazy link rail

Twenty years ago, my cousins and I rode the Trans-Siberia Rail from Beijing to Moscow to attend a wedding in Switzerland. We recently recapped and reminisced over email; and I even scanned in digital photos from the old 35 mm negatives (what’s that?). It’s posted on T’s blog here and here. That trip was the infection of a terminal case of travel bug for me.

Ten years ago, Joe and I crossed most of the Eurasian landmass, but at a lower latitude: following most of the Silk Road. It was a major 6 month trip.

Now, I keep telling my current employer: whenever you feel you no longer need my services, my exit strategy is to go to South America for 6 months.

I honestly don’t know when that will be.