random things

i know this is out of character for my blog, but people have been sending me these on facebook so i got to thinking about my own list:

• i was conceived on the beach i later worked on
  
• my grandparent’s opposing religious views factored into my existence beyond the first trimester
  
• i once hid under my bed so i didn’t have to go to kindergarten, a full police search was conducted of the area
  
• at six, i ran away from home by climbing out my window; i walked 2 miles to my grandmothers, crossing a highway to get there
• i was asked to leave the cub-scouts because i was an over-achiever; i finished the project and demanded something else to do
• i was late for my first communion mass because i walked myself to church too slowly
• in fifth grade i was a crossing-guard, the US version of a school prefect
  
• my basketball career ended in 6^th grade when i found out i could not go left; not being able to shoot or jump might have been an issue later
  
• i passed algebra and geometry, but learned no math; i did it by inductive reasoning
  
• my worst subject in high school was typing; my teacher told me “whatever you do, don’t take a job that involves typing”.
  
• i was traded off a beach softball team, and put in charge of the keg, when kristin libby came to the game late.  she was the girl i was semi-secretly in love with in elementary school; she was also a much better softball player
  
• i nearly drowned twice as a child; once was the most amazing sensation of my life
  
• i saved all three of my siblings from drowning, my brother needed mouth to mouth; that was the day i decided i should be a lifeguard
  
• i saved four other people as part of the job, one was another member of our staff who tried to do a rescue without a torpedo, i didn’t know it was him until i pulled his unconscious body to the surface
  
• i selected my college because someone told me i wouldn’t be able to get or stay in
  
• i did more work in the first week of college than my entire high school career
  
• a nun in college called me a heretic; she was absolutely right
  
• i very loudly told the same nun she was a bitch in a crowded hallway; i was also right
  
• i have liked strong women since the morning a girl kicked my ass during a swim test; she knew i thought she was weak and made me suffer for it
  
• i graduated in 4 years; but by the end of the first semester i knew i would succeed, so i relaxed and enjoyed school
  
• i accidentally received a dual major from a school that does not give them
  
• i have done the heimlich maneuver three times on choking victims; twice they were complete strangers
• i have destroyed 4 bikes by being hit by cars over the years; i slid a foot from a tractor trailers wheels a few years ago when i crashed my bike during a rain storm
• i was three weeks from the paris island, and my plan to fly helicopters for the marines; when i was crushed by a tractor and broke both legs
  
• i took an accounting job as break from education before law school; coding killed law
  
• i became a software engineer because i didn’t want to be a manager
• i once offered a friends wife my services as a birth partner, he was scared.  i added USD 10,000 to the offer because i wanted the experience; she said no
• i started a consulting company with two partners, bought one out, brought another one quietly in, but i realized i had lost them all so i shut the company down
• our company motto was, “it’s all about the love”
  
• the fastest i have ridden my bike (down-hill) is 62 miles per hour; you should have seen the expression on the face of the driver in the car in front of me
  
• my favorite smells are baby heads and labrador paws; one of them reminds me of smart-food popcorn
  
• i own 5 guitars and can barely play; i keep saying this is the year i will learn
  
• i was happy with my spanish in college, my grades were three D(s) and a C, that C was SWEET!
  
• i want everyone to speak one common language; i am hoping we can agree on spanish
  
• i travel and have complete conversations with no shared language; i later remember it all in english
• i feel more like a european than an american; but i am home when i get to the US
• i am looking for ways to gain dual citizenship within the EU; the irish descendant program failed, ideas are welcome
• i love bruxelles and hope to live there someday; sydney loses only for lack of french speakers
• after living outside the US, i can see why people dislike americans; bad PR
• my grandfather was a member of the PGA and owned a golf course;  i don’t play
  
• i have been in asia for three years and have not been to thailand; i refuse to go alone
  
• having barbeque pulled pork, fresh beer and a dog are the things i miss living in a muslim country
  
• having my kids sleep over is the thing i miss the most about the US
• a nightmare for me would to be without a book; this is much scarier than being naked
  
• i have three hand phones in my messenger bag today; my forth is in my office waiting for me to take it to the US
  
• i tend to buy things in pairs; books i wish i could buy by the pound
• i have three laptops; one for work, one for personal use, and another just for pictures and music, i keep the count stable by giving the kids one when i buy another
  
• i have the best office in our company; it was constructed for the former prime minister of malaysia
  
• i added a video conf, running machine, guitars, computer books, and a pull-out sofa; all of which mahathir didn't have when he sat in here
• my allergies taught me that we crave things that are bad for us; you would think my catholic education would have done that

the fact that these are more or less in chronological order should tell you more about me than anything in the list.

dreaming again

i told someone last week that i didn't dream.  it has been years since i stopped.  i went from vivid, colorful, lucid dreams i could control and later remember, to no dreams at all.  the stop was sudden, and tied to other events in my life.  i have always understood the correlation, and have just come to accept the fact that my dreams had left me years ago and that i was now simply living during the day.

my former night-times where not an alternative life, but they were an enjoyable piece of who i was.  i can clearly remember dreams which i had as a child.  i remember when my dreams switched from black and white to color.  i remember when i began to control my dreams, changing their flow if i did not like the direction in which they were headed.  i had pleasant recurring dreams, the nocturnal version of re-watching favorite movies.

i have mentioned that i do not dream, and people have told me that i was but i was not aware that i was.  this sounds like a zen question concerning a tree falling in the woods.  with the tree, it fell even if no one heard it.  with the dream, if its not experienced it doesn't exist.  you can't find the dream laying on the floor of your subconscious rotting away covered with moss and insects.

one of my friends in the US just told me about the new drug she is on to improve daytime balance.  the side-effect is a decreased night time balance in the form of nightmares.  being as strong as she is, she is keeping a journal of the negative images.  if i know her at all, she will embrace the nightmares and understand them before she allows them to scare her away.

so i have been living with the acceptance of life without dreams.  i missed falling asleep to images of random video as i drifted off to sleep.  my compensation was to fall asleep on the couch, dvds left running.  the downside was waking up hours later, and realizing i had not rested because i had been listening to the sound of the dvd menu looping over and over every 17 seconds.  my own form of auditory induced apnea.

but i have dreamt for the past 6 nights.  vivid, wonderful and comforting dreams.  it is like an old friend returning and giving you a hug.  you welcome them back and want to hear all the stories they have to tell.  i am waking up with new memories that haven't happened in the real world.  it doesn't change the fact that i am happy to have them.

someone told me that dreaming is the process of forgetting.  others think that dreaming is the process of cementing long term memories so they can be retrieved later though association.  both theories work for me, the former is a garbage collection routine, the latter an offline update of a non-clustered index.  the software engineer in me is fine if its either or both.

i am just glad those night time cycles are again being put to good use.  i am not speculating on the deeper meaning of dreams returning after the absence, but i am happy to have the garbage collected and to have my indexes updated.

asian openness

i have been having a running debate with a friend for the past few days; and with myself for much longer.  the debate centers on the  relative levels of cultural openness that the asian and western life allows... or is it expects.  let's set the stage here by having me stipulate, i try not believe one way or the other is correct.  but, hope we can admit that having grown up in one it is hard to understand the other.

this thought has been front and center for me for the past few weeks.  it was sparked by a chance meeting in a parking garage.  i walked up to an auto-pay machine that had a family standing around it waiting for the elevator.  the 6 year-old son stood in front of the machine pretending to push buttons.  you could see the desire to actually use the machine.  the painful suppression of those urges was clearly visible to a father of boys with much less restraint.  i smiled at him and handed him my card to put into the machine.  he burst into a smile and looked at his mother for permission.  i said to him, "go ahead, it's fine" 

when we were done paying my fee, i turned and handed him a ringget for his help.  his mother, a pretty chinese woman, reached into her bag to hand me something in return.  i thought i might be receiving a card and an offer for a future coffee.  that was destroyed when she said, "you should try my product, it is a juice that will help you lose weight". 

the first time i was publicly told i was fat was years ago in the US.  i was in boston, shopping for running shoes in a store owned by a famous marathoner.  i had just won a 10K race, and was quite happy with my fitness level.  the shoe guy looked at me and suggested i give up my nike air-max and try a new balance saying, "these are very popular with heavier runners".  

who the hell was he talking too?  wait, it was me.

the juice lady had just taken this to a whole new level.   sure, the shoe guy knew i was trying to be fit and the juice lady could have been confused by the bag of nachos i was taking home for dinner during conference calls.  but even by deliberately open-western standards, telling a complete stranger they are fat is considered rude in most of the world.

i have come to anticipate this over the past few years.  i have been asked by women i barely know if i want to "see if we work", if we do i can get them a green card to the US.  i was asked by a neighbor one morning at 8 AM while riding down the elevator clearly dressed for a run (shorts, t-shirt and a water bottle on my belt), if i was headed to the pub.  when asked why she thought that she replied, "well, you are white, i just assumed".  

i was asked on a first date what it was like to be a "sex-addict".  i put my fork down on my salad plate and stared into the woman's questioning gaze.  i hesitantly asked, "do i seem like a sex addict to you?"  images of wilt chamberlin and david duchovny floating in my head.  i watched her expression change to confusion.  she slowly replied, "well, all mat salleh are... aren't they?"

it would be one thing if this meant that all conversations can just be direct and open.  they can not, in fact, much here is kept hidden.  it's just that mat salleh are fat, drunk, sex addicts who have no feelings and can asked for money or employment permits with no previous connection. 

it is okay to gossip about people if they are seen together, but you can not ask a married person a question about their spouse.  it's okay for people to share salary and bonus information, but when someone resigns they consider the new employer's name P&C.  it appears to be standard to escalate an issue to a manager, and then become upset if the manager acts on the information.

i have sometimes wondered if it's considered acceptable to lie, as long as the person you are talking to knows your lying.  i wanted to ask someone, but i wasn't sure if they would tell me the truth.

i was talking to a friend the other day.  he was telling me that he is amazed by western parents.  we treat our children as friends, and accept that they have free will and desires of their own.  he told me his parents would not accept his getting an apartment and having his long-term girlfriend sleep over.  this is not a high school or college student.  it's a professional who travels internationally for work and has real responsibility in his life.  

if you can not be open with the people who are closest to you, why would you be open with anyone?  this is like making love with someone, striping away all barriers, sharing the most intimate parts of yourself to form a connection with them; then listening to them go into the bathroom, close the door you barely realize exists and clicking the lock to keep you out.  this small sound can be deafening, because it locks away any trust you thought had been opened.

if asked they might say, "it's just a small matter".  but it's not, not to someone that struggles to remove their own barriers.  hearing the click of the lock, watching the practiced blankness of guarded expression, or having someone tell you something that simply fails the test of "plausible deniability" is common place here.

my father taught his kids, "you can ask any question, but you need to be able to deal with the answer".  this is a lesson that is clearly not part of the culture.  but he also taught us  to respect distance while accepting people for who they are.  this is a lesson i would not survive here without...

maybe i need to bring my father here and let him loose.  that would be an interesting experiment.

/**********************************************

short footnote: 

i did ask the juice lady if she thought this was acceptable behavior, she handed me a second flyer with before and after pictures of her in a bikini.  she told me the product had helped her and her husband both loose weight.  i told her she might be able to soften the pitch if she started with the picture of her in a bikini, both before and after were very nice.

she stopped as she huddled her clan into the waiting elevator.  she smiled at me, pointed to her number and suggested we could discuss it over coffee.

***********************************************/

scar scared

before last year ended, i went into a place for the third time and scheduled an appointment.  i had been there with my daughter last year, and a second time to ask questions, but the last time i went to get an appointment.  the appointment was today, and i have been stressed increasingly as the date approached.  what the hell was i doing?  why did i want to make this choice?

the choice was to get a tattoo.  i have gone back and forth on this for two years now.  somehow, something i never wanted to do before had a strong draw.  it started one day at the pool with my, beautiful indian former girlfriend.  she had a tattoo on her back that looked wonderful on her.  it was a strange contrast to both her skin and her personality.  i still find it strange that the tattoo was the chinese character for tranquility.  given she was tamil and based on the symbol.

since that day, i have been considering today.  8 weeks ago i climbed three flights of stairs, made an appointment and walked away with a slip of paper that has been stuck on my refrigerator's door.  that scrap has been a daily reminder of the scheduled meeting with permanent ink.

my daughter was here last year, and left with a row of tattoos on her back.  she also choose chinese characters.  she called on the way home to tell me about them, there was excitement and satisfaction in her voice.  i could tell she saw this as the first act of her adulthood.  she had made a choice that was going to be her's to wear for the rest of her life.  she was happy that we had allowed it, and that she was capable of carrying out the decision.

i know, your saying "how can you allow your teenage daughter to do something like get a tattoo"?  you may not know my kids.  if you do, you also know they have strong and capable minds of their own.  besides, she was putting a needle with ink into herself, not one filled with drugs.  the thing that was going to stay with her was a row of marks on her back, not a child or an STD.  in the grand scheme of things, we were happy with this if it helped to eliminate something that would be worse.

why is being friends with your kids and letting them make their own choices considered bad?  best-case she loves it and you trusting her with the power of choice.  worst case, she hates it and and realizes that things can dumb; even those that seem like a good idea at the time.  the latter would be a valuable lesson, the former is what we ended up with that day.

so here i am; in a crazy way following in my teenager's footsteps.  i am going to a place full of chinese guys with tattoos all over them.  they remind you of a group of young yakuza on the way to a life of crime.  but spending even a few minutes with them shows you they are talented young guys who have somehow found the pleasure of using their body as a mobile canvas of self-expression.  impressionistic artists rather than violent crime members; but it is obvious how the mistake could be made.

finally today came, and i wondered if i would find a way to avoid going.  would i choose to not choose?  would i have a change of heart and construct some simple excuse to not sit for hours while ink is pushed into my skin by electrically controlled needles?  the time inched closer and i knew i had to move to make my appointment.

i walked in right on time, they looked at me and said, "you had an appointment with who?"  the artist wasn't even there.  my appointment had been lost.  there was a 10 minute search though manual files and a box of old registers.  there were two staff members, guys who were not brothers but looked a lot alike.  i was told it was just the duplicate glasses they wore that formed the illusion of siblinghood.  in the end, they proved i was telling the truth and was not just a walk-in trying to con my way into an quick artistic scarring.  

"boy" had made a mistake and not written the appointment down.  they offered to let me punch him in the face.  i appreciated the offer, but declined.  then again, these were people i was going to pay to stick me with needles, i didn't think giving one of them reason for retribution was a healthy start to the relationship.

i was vindicated, but i am still un-scarred.  i had waited for 8 weeks, and my time with virgin skin continues.  i feel like a teenager, anticipating something that adults warn to consider more than once before doing.  people have told me not to rush into this, others have suggested i should just get drunk and do it.  it makes me think about the first time...  hmmmm, let's not go there.  

now, there is a piece of tracing paper sitting on an artists desk, waiting to have my tattoo drawn.  i will need to build myself up, and walk up those stairs one more time.  all of this to do something i wondered if i would ever do. 

why do i want to do something haram?  well, it's not haram for me is it?  which is probably exactly why i am doing it.  (un)fortunately, there is no one to tell me not to do it.  i am making my own decisions, and if i make a bad one i will wear it.  this is an act of self expression, a statement to the world that i will not be able to simply cover up.  placement is key to this, but let's wait to discuss that.

just like my daughter's, my elected scar could be the first of my adult acts.

first cut

you know you have been in a country long enough when you run out of normal conversation items.  language, food, weather, politics; these are all subjects that have been discussed and discussed.  naturally, you move onto other things.  you are accepted a bit in the community, and people understand you are interested in knowing the differences between your home community and the community in your adopted home.  then, without even trying you stumble over something that you realize has opened up your view of the cultural differences in ways you never expected.

this happened to me recently, and the enlightenment is both interesting and disturbing.  i was talking to a malay and asked about the twelve year old nephew's "bar mitzvah".  this, of course, was meant to be a joke.  i assumed the malay community would have a ceremony for welcoming an adolescent male into adulthood; but using the jewish word for the transition was meant to be funny.  i actually should have expected the person to not have known the word, or to mistake the meaning, but the conversation that followed was really not what i meant to discuss.

to understand, you need to grasp the dynamic of a open and direct westerner talking to a shy and reserved malay (muslim).  over time, living in a different culture, you learn to avoid some subjects, or to talk about subjects without talking about the subjects.  but this one, it one just came pouring out like breaking the front of a fish tank.  there was no way ignore the soggy floor with fish flopping around once the misunderstood word broke the barrier.

when i said, "bar mitzvah", the answer was, "well, you have seen the malay boys walking around holding their sarong in front of them like a tent".  i had seen them walking and holding the skirt-like material out at arms length.  it had never bubbled to the top of the list for me to ask about.  a few beats passed, we were both confused and considering what the other was talking about.  we had clearly stumbled into an area of danger in the conversation.  during the semi-awkward silence, the wheels where spinning.  what was the relationship between passage into adulthood, a tented sarong and a jewish word used as a joke.  then it hit me...

i asked, "do you mean they are having a bris at 12"?  

there was certainly no way bris was a word that would be understood, but i could simply not say the word circumcision.  besides the cultural discomfort, the consideration of the trauma (physical if not emotional) resulting from having the most sensitive part of male anatomy cut when he is old enough to remember it for the rest of his life is... well, i just had to retreat into a word what would give me a moment to process the idea.

circumcision is common in the US, it is less common world-wide.  a bit of research following this conversation found that 30% of the global male population has been de-skinned; of those 68% of them are muslim.  i was told that it was obligatory and that it is required at this age.  as usual the research does not match the local understanding.  circumcision is not within the quran, it is haddith.  it is also not a rule, but a suggestion, one that is based on suddah (the trodden path).  the most interesting element of this is that the tradition is not arabic, but jewish.  the muslims follow the practice based on the early islam communities time in medina where they picked up many of the jewish traditions.

i came to terms with circumcision a "long time ago" following a question i asked my mother.  she sat me down and explained a few things.  things which influenced my own decision to include my son in the ranks of the clean-cut male community.  but there are those that are not as supportive of the procedure.  some people feel making the decision for an infant is equal to torture of the child.  torture that can scar them emotionally, the physical scars are assumed, for life.  they also worry that the elimination of sensitivity in that area will reduce the enjoyment of use at a later point in life.  read the wikipedia article on circumcision, its very interesting.

but, waiting until puberty?  why would anyone allow their child to wait until a time when they will remember it?  worse, to do it at a time where the body part in question has begun to find reasons of its own to become active.  boys this age tend to react largely to random thoughts and by simply waking up in the morning.  what is the rationale?  i was told by one person that they were supposed to wait because they were muslims; not true it is purely a malay cultural tradition, one that follows other polynesian (read pre-islamic) standards.  someone else told me young men do this so they are clean for their future partners, confirming my assessment of the practice.

a cynical western view on this steps into clear view.  the evidence, go research if you don't agree, says the following:  

rather than conducting the procedure in the first days of life as done in the west, as the jews and other muslims do, malays wait until the male begins to mature and show signs of sexual development.  his family tells him his penis is dirty and needs to be partially removed.  they then publicly, this used to be done as an open ceremony in middle of the kampung, and now is marked by tented sarong, perform the act.  for the next few weeks anytime he as a thought which would cause him to grow, there is severe pain.  the lesson beyond needing to accept that he was dirty, is that sexual thoughts will bring pain and suffering.  some in the west consider it torture at 7 days of age, a time that we do not remember, how do they feel about this delayed practice that is remembered.

i can't seem to stop thinking about this.  it's like pulling up to a car accident and slowing down to look.  i know it's wrong, but we rationalize slowing down as being done to see if you can help.  helping here would be to say, if your child will have this done, do it at a time when there is no lasting memory.  let him believe his private part was always clean and to have no memory of anything else.

otherwise the lesson is he is dirty, sex is bad and this pain is all related to the jews.  maybe i do understand malaysia better.

last lecture

i was talking to a co-worker a few weeks ago.  she asked if i had read the last lecture.  i had never heard of it, and she told me it was a series of lectures that carnegie mellon does with its professors.  they actually call it the journeys series, the idea is for a professor to give a lecture on any topic they want to, but to bring a life lesson to the audience.  the lecture is to be something they can leave for the others.  the conversation was out of context and was not really clarified, but it was clearly a suggestion.

i spent the afternoon catching up with another friend yesterday.  the conversation left me with questions of on connections, purpose and legacy.  i felt a nagging emptiness; a feeling that there should be more to my day than lunch and a trip to the mall.  where was the purpose and greater direction that i craved?  i had eaten lightly during the meal, and i felt a craving for more.  but i knew it was not food that i wanted; i was looking to be filled in another way.

i needed to go to the mall for two children, boys on different continents who had asked me in different languages to replace now-broken presents from the past.  each were asking for the same re-present, and in both cases i was more than happy to provide.  adding a trip like this to my day was a gift to me, it gave me something outside of the empty KL weekend.  i am a parent to one of these boys, and a surrogate of sorts to the other.  in KL children i don't know strangely call me uncle.  in belgium i have a child to whom i am an adopted uncle, he naturally calls me by my name.  in the US i have children who thankfully call me dad.  i miss this odd collection of family, and sending presents is a tiny symbol of regret for not being there.

family first, even when the family is 6 or 12 timezones away.  changing my day, adding a trip and purchase knowing a smile will result is more than enough to get me going.  

as i walked, i thought about the craving, i thought about the distance and the desire to get there.  it was then that i realized my thoughts had taken me in the wrong direction.  i was going on the same old road which was in the wrong direction.  i shook my head and knew i had to turn around and change direction.  this is the benefit of having a map in your head, you can see landmarks and realize where you went wrong; you can adjust and recover.

before i went to make the promised purchases, i went to the best bookstore in the country.  last weekend was spent in malaysian and malaysian-copied border kedai buku, but i was drawn to the top-floor japanese store that i love. i spent an hour walking around and snatching up titles.  i looked for a few books which i couldn't find, i forgot to look for others which might have been there, but i found 9 books covering eclectic subjects.  i took titles on badly behaving saints, beautiful people's procreation, matters of culture, history of god and a little bit of politics.  as i walked to the register, i was counting the books and calculating the cost.  i wondered if i was taking too much.  the aching in my arms might have been a sign, but the woman in front of me turning and saying "you sure like to read!" made it clear.

as i shyly looked down and thought of something to say, i picked up "the last lecture".  i remembered the question, and realized the suggestion made in a quiet and indirect way mattered.  i turned to the woman who had just commented on my full arms and asked if she had read it, she said, "no, but i saw the video, ... what a sad story".  i cried last week watching a movie of a dog's life and its inner meaning to his family, i wondered if i needed to consider the life of a man.  it wasn't a choice, i just added it to the pile of thoughts.  this small book completed the filling of my bags.

i took my purchases, went to do my re-present collection and decided to have a delicious dinner with my books.  i drove over and took three in with me.  the other two were to ease into the life lessons that a last lecture would bring.  once i started reading, there was no stopping.  randy pausch wrote with openness and clarity.  he was writing to give his children memories and lessons when he would not be there to give them personally.  thankfully, those lessons have been shared with all of us.  it's a book that i will hand to people i care about.  it is something you share with people you love.

i finished the book today and immediately had two thoughts, the first was something i already know, but sometimes rationalize away, "there is no time worth wasting".  the second, is the real lesson of the book, "the person next to you is more important than you are".  you need to live your life for them more than yourself.  it is easy to allow prior hurt, current anger or fear of the future to cloud your ability to live.  i closed the book and considered those two lessons.

in this short and fragile life, being able to smile is just not enough.  it takes getting up and moving to begin to live.