living better

one of the things about being alone is that you can ignore what others might point out. being with someone, you have a second pair of eyes which see events from another angle. those other eyes might notice what you don't, they might ask why something you accept is the way that it is. being alone you can ignore looking into the mirror, but one day you feel the other eyes and you are finally are forced to look and see what you have missed.

i have known for years that i have allergies. i spent almost two years starting each morning with a steroid inhaler. it kept recurrent bouts of bronchitis at bay, i would wake up unable to breath and would draw the gritty meds into my lungs, calming the clamped pressure that built up over night. this was about managing the symptoms rather than dealing with the cause, which was never clearly identified. it was clear that fresh beer, breads and dairy were all issues, but because i was sickest every year at the solstice a sad rumor of grinch-like christmas tree allergies circulated.

just after christmas 5 - 6 years ago, i was suffering once again. my general health was in question. i was gaining weight for no reason, i was exercising but could not maintain, when not exercising i was fighting to catch my breath, i was fighting mood swings and fatigue; all of which made me truly tired. it also impacted those closest to me; it's hard to live in a situation without solution. a solution was accidentally found one day, but it was too late to correct the underlying damage.

almost randomly i picked up a book that advocated removing large elements of the standard american diet to improve your health. i am not normally a person that corrects issues by elimination; i prefer to actively manage than draconian cuts. but i decided to give draconian management a try and a week later i stopped using the inhaler. by removing the things that were silently making me sick, i found i felt much better. all of my symtoms quickly disappeared, and i was the healthiest i have been in my adult life.

then i moved to malaysia, and as with all large changes i formed new routines. i remember the morning of the tipping point. i was driving and decided i could go to a bakery for breakfast, the decision was more about the need for comfort food then nutrition. i knew if i turned i would indulge in things i was better to avoid. this was the proverbial slippery slope, but i lied to myself reassuringly saying, "if it becomes an issue, i will stop going". even as i said it, there was another voice with a chuckle saying, "yeah right".

knowing your limits is a good thing, but even when you do you can still rationalize; for a while. i have slowly fallen back into the old spiral, and i have been paying the price. i have been living on antihistimines to manage recurrent coughs, nasal sprays for rhinitis and antacids for reflux. mixed in are my old friends joint pain, fatigue and weight gain. a few nights ago, i again woke up in a pool of sweat and with a mouth full of stomach acid. this is the first time in weeks that has happened, but its also the first time in weeks i didn't do my nightly regiment of imported medications. waking up choking is a really strong indication of the need to reconsider the idea of comfort foods.

so i have made a decision, it's time to listen to that little voice i have been ignoring. my sister and my mother have diagnosed auto-immune disorders, my other sister is having symptoms identical to mine and i clearly need to admit that having less than average is not acceptable if i am not average. i started making the changes i have avoided two days ago and i woke up this morning feeling the best i have in a year. i spent yesterday feeling clear and bright, i woke up early this morning and remembered how it felt to get up without being tired.

the downside is that i need to seriously alter my life. i need to avoid the sticky glutens that have inflamed my insides. i need to eliminate the things i crave, even if they are comforting they are not feeding me well. this can not be a 6 month change, it has to be for the long haul. i need to decide that no matter where i live, i need to follow the rules. the rules are not hard to follow, but they are easy to break a little bit at a time. the new rule is that even a little bit is bad.

elimination is the only way to a better life, i knew this before and rationalized it away. i think i need a mirror to make sure i don't forget this time.

happy drunk

there are moments that lead to unexpected places, happy moments that lead to tragedy, and the opposite. i was on a plane a few months ago, flying to the US for business and talking to a seat mate about life and happiness. which is when the random eastern european guy sitting on the other side of me stumbled his way back from the restroom. he was drunk when he got on the plane, and had been drinking unsteadily since take off. his completely broken english had only gotten worse as white wines were added to the fire, but his desire to speak had only increased. where do you think this moment was leading?

as he attempted to climb into his seat drunk guy braced himself firmly on his wine glass and tumbled forward. the drink was projected into my seat, it's wine splashing into my lap and onto my ipod. a drinker falling over is not uncommon and spills happen on planes, something about being bounced around at 37,000 feet while moving at 400 miles per hour has a way of helping both happen. i should have expected it, and that i could have protected the ipod better than putting it on my lap. i cleaned it off, drying it with my blanket and decided soon after it was time to get some sleep. drunk guy was dosing off, i thought i should do the same.

it wasn't until i got to the transit lounge that i took the ipod out again. the second song didn't play, neither did the fourth or the fifth; the feeling of dread crept into the transit. i decided to wait and see if more drying time would make a difference. i mean, how much damage can a cheap australian chardonnay do to a consumer electronic device. the answer was clear when i got to the US and found i was without tunes on the drive home. my ipod was dead, drunk guy was long gone, i was driving listening to the sound of my own wheels. time to decide on next steps.

being in the US, i decided to go to the mall before i left. being a US mall, it was not stacked 5 stories high, this single fact made the trip better than average fro me. i took full advantage of the ease of moving around and began looking for a new ipod. in the huge electronics store i convinced myself that my 80 gig classic should be replaced with a 64 gig itouch. i hadn't considered the purchase at all, but i was alone and bored. i decided even if it was a mistake i would enjoy it anyway. sleek, shiny and sexy, it was time to upgrade and try something new.

after a few weeks of use, playing with downloaded apps, using it as an instant on micro-laptop to do IMDB and wikipedia searches on the couch, and listening to music converted through the sadly un-slick itunes, i had come to the conclusion that i should have made myself the target of a drunk spill a long time ago. the only downside to the touch was lack of internet connection while mobile. the device lost all its charm and glamor when it was away from wifi.

it's a happy coincidence that the holiday season was coming, it allowed me to do the only sensible thing; buy myself a present i didn't actually need. i am now the proud owner of an iphone, a slightly fatter touch with a 3G connection ensuring always on internet. so i own yet another phone, yet another computer device, one more thing to carry and track. i have my blackberry as primary phone and the touch as a music device, but i love my iphone. it is a near perfect computer device.

i was asked if i got mad at the drunk guy for spilling a drink on me or for turning my ipod into a paperweight. i might have years ago, but now i think of the question as funny; why would i get mad at someone for a mistake? life happens, spills happen, things get wet and never dry out. songs are lost and can not be recovered. when it happens you can get angry and fume about it, you can spend time thinking about a random person you will never see again, or you can go out and buy a new toy.

if you are really lucky, you can go out and get two toys. my mom used to say, better to much than not enough.

the drunk guy certainly was working on that plan before the spill, why shouldn't i do the same afterwards.

festivus season

part of living in a foreign country is giving up the cues related to the traditions at home. this might not always be the case, if i were living in europe easter would be a shared tradition with the same springtime cues of softening weather and newly grown flowers. but attempting to get into the christmas spirit by listening to the playfulness of monkeys in the jungle, competing to be heard over the muezzin's melodic adhan (call to prayers), is harder than it sounds.

tropical days, monsoon storms and sweaty nights all hinder the ability for an american to sense the impending return of the giving season. after spending an afternoon of frustration at a local temple of commerce. the strange part of the trip was realizing that other than a few other mat salleh, no one else there was christmas shopping. there were lit trees, fake presents, signs of santa and carols playing over speakers, but most people were there to do back to school shopping.

the trip began and ended in the cork screwed patterns of congestion which derive from asian expectations of difficult lives. the roads, parking garages and escalators which are keys to the malls here all move in patterns of reversed decent. i was reminded of dante's inferno, the decline into the levels of hell with the warning "abandon all hope, ye who enter here" can only be appreciated after a trip to malaysia's malls. liberal arts students in catholic colleges back home should be required to travel here before exams. it is the only way to truly understand the meaning of the divine comedy.

i have pending invitations to holiday parties. one i think i will miss is tonight, it is for the dongzhi (extreme winter) festival. the invitation came from an tamil mom who is making tangyuan for her chinese kids. the whole yin and yang aspect of this holiday has a strong draw, but the need to celebrate the lengthening of the days when the difference between winter and summer is only 20 extra minutes of equally intense sunlight is lost on me. the symbolism of reunion that the sticky balls of rice evoke might be better savored alone.

tomorrow night i am going to a festivus party. a celebration will be hosted by an iranian amercian athiest and will be celebrated with stark lack of decorations, airing of grievances and feats of strength. this is clearly a no miss event that is core to the expat holiday season. the guys back in the US add in street hockey and liberal use of alcohol, this will be replaced by low contact wii sports and culturally sensitive non-haraam beverages. as long as someone raises their voice and possibly throws food, it should provide the feeling of a trip home for the holidays.

this will bring me to the end of week hunt for legal turkey. the normally halal favorite of benjamin franklin has a reputation of improper murder in malaysia. the symbolism of needing to search for dinner with an approved death certificate, on the celebration of a prophet's birth does make me smile. what would a holiday be without a question of the legality of the main dish.

i will end the day listening to the jungle outside, hearing rumblings of distant thunder and thinking about christmas morning in the US. as i watch the sparkles of light through clouds i will think about opening of presents, shoveling of walks, driving to the in-laws to exchange gifts and trade custody of kids. the true nature of christmas is best understood while watching it from half a world away, yet another event that is only truly experienced by watching it from the outside.

winter solstice is the shortest day of the year. it is celebrated across the globe in many different ways. the semi-dry festivus for the rest of us is the one i am looking forward to, for others i should just look away.

saying nothing

it’s been months since i have published. the time has passed and i have had random moments and thoughts, but they have passed without being considered. i have been busy, i have written but allowed the words to be lost in a crash and unrecovered when restarting, i have gotten close and then reconsidered the desire to hit continue. something has stopped me from writing; i can’t seem to commit to the process. i need to figure out what, because my writing had become more than just a thing to do in a café.

i was given some advice last year. the advice was that my writing was too long. i needed to keep it short and get to the point. the advice was professional, and made sense coming from someone who read all my emails on a blackberry, but it has impacted this writing also. i no longer have the time to sit and craft a long message that no one is going to read. i enjoy the process, but it feels like a waste. i feel the muse moving away, pushed because she is impatient. she wants to get to the point, but it was never about getting to the point; it was seeing where the journey would take us. the muse has been driven away by the boredom and frustration of waiting and i remain on the wandering path.

i read a book a few weeks ago on a plane. the book started as a discussion of why talk therapy is a better solution to alternative psychological states than drugs. the basic premise was that talking allows people in need to get in touch with the deeper cause of their issues. when patients come in to discuss a recent tragedy, they tend to also discuss long ago events. they spend time passing through their lives one painful memory at a time. the author was advocating a culture of listening rather than medicating as a solution to finding solutions.

beginning to write was a way to talk things out. at a time when i was experiencing so many new things, and reconsidering many old, i found digital words to be therapeutic. capturing the moment, thinking through the entire thought, felt right. too many moments had simply passed away and were fading over time. it felt empowering to stop and remember, to realize that new moments were happening and would not just fade as easily into the past. events could be shared, if not immediately then someday in the future when someone took the time to listen.

but part of writing is about trust. trusting yourself to let go and allow yourself to open up, and trusting your readers to listen to your words and not filter then through their preconceptions. we all have cognitive structure bias, those thought patterns that allow us to skim along and make fast judgments in a chaotic world. we hear what we expect to hear, see what we expect to see and add or subtract as needed to fit the world into our comfortable pre-conceived forms.

the issues start when you realize that your readers do not have the same bias as your own. i had a college professor who did an exhibit the semester after i took his art appreciation class. i went to the exhibit with a friend and we stood in front of the work displaying willows on a snow covered field. my friend commented that the work was just about white trees, but i sensed something different. the professor had lost his wife and daughter in a car accident a year before, and as i looked at the center trees, i saw the blackness of the deep forest behind. the work was about the dark depth and the importance of the individual trees, two that i sensed to be missing from the stand on that cold winter day after a new snowfall.

other people’s biases impact our work, they stop them from seeing the truth, and after a while you wonder if there is any reason to keep talking. if they are just going to read their lives into the work, why do you keep making the effort? if you do work you may not publish; no risk of going public ruining it. you need to learn to stack your art in the corner and let it wait for a difference audience.

maybe i have been avoiding writing because i had nothing to say, or maybe because i didn’t trust myself to open up enough to make the process worthwhile. but it could also be that the thoughts are not ready to be added to the cornered pile.

then again, the real issue could be that sitting and doing nothing is easier than working on something that would be read through filters of bias.

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

there is an old irish saying: "say nothing, till you hear more". sometimes, less really is more.

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planning relaxation

the end of ramadhan is closing in. next weekend is a double-long weekend, and those of us who do not need to "balik kampung" have made our plans to exit the smallest of the asian capitals in search of relaxation. in my case the plans are a trip to asian bohemia. the trip has been suggested, tentative, mostly-committed, replaced, tentative, mostly-cancelled and finally booked. the expected relaxation is based on the prospect of being able to order foods and have them resemble the origin cuisine, as well as sitting in a brew pub and playing checkers. it is sad that i need to fly three hours to a country with a barely working economy to get fresh beer and an acceptable italian dinner.

this morning started with a quick dash to the embassy for a visa. the standard method of doing this is to have a travel agent have a runner pick up and drop off your passport. these professional line-standers, make the process appear simple and efficient. the busy professional focuses on their work and life while someone else negotiates the bureaucratic minutia.

this didn't work for me for two reasons, first is my general horror at the idea of handing my passport over to anyone who leaves eye contact. my passport is my history, and my future, i have no interest in having it lost because i was too lazy or spoiled to stand in a line. i keep my passport in two places, locked in a safe and hung around my neck. the need to hand the passport over to a face behind a glass wall is stressful, but to hand it to a random guy on a motorcycle who i don't know, that one is just too much for me.

the second reason is that my malaysian IC expires this week. i have been approved for my new IC, have the visa in my passport and am now ready for step three in the process. step three is where i need to give my passport and IC back to the government for the second time in the process. this will allow them to swap one piece of plastic with my picture and title for another. i need my passport and IC to keep me legal in malaysia. a secondary, but real, benefit is that as i enter and exit i get to use the "expat" carpeted lane, rather than the "other passports" cattle queue. with the exception of blocked lanes caused by the abu dhabi womens cricket team, having this express lane is major plus.

so the morning was planned for a quick dash. the embassy "officially" opens at 9:00, so i went to have a coffee and do email before that. i had visions of slipping in after the initial rush, paying to expedite the process from the standard 2 day, to the much more convenient "right now visa". the fees are paid in RM, and compared to the simplicity of getting a entry visa in the bali airport, they are expensive. then again, the visa i just got for china was even more expensive, could it be the more communist a country is the higher they have jacked up the fees?

when i pulled up to the embassy at 10 AM, the crowd of visa waiters sweltering in the sun could be seen from two blocks away. they were pressed against the locked gate, and spilling into the street. i avoided the crush and sun, but that put me at the back of the line. by the time i got a deli-counter number i was 30 tickets back in the queue. given the complete lack of respect for the ticketing system, people just forcing their way to the window and conducting business, it was clear that the quick dash was out of the question.

all in all, it's done; step one, that is. the "right now" visa is apparently no longer available. the clerk told me it was never possible. i reminded her that she was the one that helped me with it two years ago. she smiled and said, "it is no longer available, they now must to go back to vietnam for processing". the salary impacts of taking away the chance to process "expedited" visas locally was a source of pain; if the grimace of regret that accompanied the smile was any indication.

i need to return to have a hopefully approved visa added to my passport. that is two days in the future. in the mean time, there is work-work that will more than fill up the week, an IC to have replaced and i noticed a lack of open space in the passport. it looks like i need to go to the american embassy and get the second set of extension of the pages in the past 4 years. visas that take up a full page are a serious waste of space. needing a new set of pages is one more impact of planning a relaxing weekend away.

wednesday morning is then another sweaty wait at the communist embassy with no visible security, and then a trip to the capitalist embassy where service is smooth and easy, but the process to pass though security is a minimum to two scans and the prospect of a cavity search. the communists have a thin wooden door, and the capitalists have ten foot thick walls. i am not really sure which system is better, they both have elements that could help the other.

can someone explain to me why i am not using a line-stander? this really is a lot of process so i can go to a comfortable cafe and have breakfast that includes sausage made from the animal god created for the breakfast plate. relaxation, simplicity, cafes on the lake, brewpubs, pho and music CDs for RM 1 (USD 0.28)....

yup, its worth the process.

toppatha muffin

i was watching sea-angel eat a muffin this morning, it was wrapped in a tall sheaf of paper and was presented as one cone like shape. the comment was that the muffin was strange, the fact that it was pink was enough for me to know that, but it was the taste and shape that caused the comment. it made me think of the top-of-the-muffin episode from sienfeld, part of which was the hint that taking the top of the muffin, the part most agree is the best, and leaving the bottom is a sign of upper-class greed and veblenish conspicuous consumption.

i have recently made a change in my morning habits. i have stopped stopping for a pancake and a series of chawan kecil and have replaced that with a faster stop for bungkhus caffeine in the malaysianized-seattle style. along with my americano i have found a banana chocolate chip muffin is the perferred source for morning calories and taste. but i have also found that much like the second round of espresso at the bar, the bottom of the muffin is just too much.

i love this muffin, it's better than the muffins starbucks has in the US. those are overly sweet or sadly low in fat and taste. starbucks here is also sadly halal. this is strange to me given the clientele in my sbux who are almost exclusively chinese and expat. the store i am going to is one of the first sbux in the country and has a small but loyal following. i have tried to argue the logic of catering to the market and providing something in some locations that will make the customers you have happy, while not impacting those you don't have. maybe i need to do some market surveys to prove the point, someone needs to lead this charge.

the muffins are good, but just too much. i don't want them smaller, but i have not figured out what do to with the bottoms on the days that enjoyment is second to calorie control. i was reviewing a document with someone, and offered the bottom of the muffin. as a gentlemen, i could have offered the top, but i did not expect acceptance of the offer, and the top is honestly why i purchased the muffin. there was acceptance, with a questioned look of "just the bottom?" she then proceeded to finish the bottom with a gusto and clear appreciation for the sweetness.

so this is the question i have been going over in my head? is it better to offer to share the bottom of the muffin or to suppress the pains and keep the bag closed until you are past the difficult point of sharing what might not be seen as a genuine offer. my grand mother would have said that i should have offered to top of the muffin and eaten the bottom. i could have, but the thought of passing on the top and taking the bottom would be all the more painful if the top was then brushed off. offering to share comes with the triple risk of acceptance, displeasure or rejection. we are taught that acceptance of an offer is a good thing, but when the top of the muffin is involved, do you really think that is the case?

the odd taste and shape of the pink muffin is clearly that there is no depth of muffin culture in the country. a few malay-ified chains are bringing muffins in, but the roots of this penetration are not deep enough for people to know the difference between good and bad. the choke hold of paper wrapper had done the ultimate harm of making the entire muffin into the less prised "bottom-of-the-muffin". the bakery has come up with a way to counter the culture of gastronomic greed that comes from focusing on tops which have naturally exploded out of the pan and cooked with wider exposure to the ovens heat. these higher demands produce the better quality of the exceptional tops.

the cramped version we saw was sadly malaysian. kept encased in paper, hidden from the heat, not allowed to expand and grow beyond the restrictive wrapper. no one in an open and honest environment would actually want a bottom only of the muffin, and here we have the clear example where rather than having the exceptional allowed to show itself, all are being kept in the lowest common denominator restricted space.

if you won't help me get starbucks to carry a breakfast sandwich not built on chicken hotdogs, please help me with this. let people know that malaysians will not except bottom of the muffins only. help create a culture where its acceptable to have tops and bottoms.

if you help, i will listen to my nana and be more open with my muffin. i won't just offer the bottom, it will be the fair (or at least game theory based) "i split, you pick", or even the other way around. team work is needed when dividing the top of the muffin.

driving tension

standing in a airport store; i am watching those around me to make their purchases, last minute items with the local city name emblazoned on them. trinkets taken as memories or nearly forgotten gifts for others. it's not uncommon for me to be doing more than one thing at once. cafes, stores and queues are such natural places for me to consider life and profile the lives of others. both are done in the background, happening as the foreground moves past seemingly by itself.

holding a postcard (to be used as framed art) and and a hat i will probably never wear, i look down and see a book that grabs my attention. "traffic: why we drive the way we do (and what it says about us)" by tom vanderbilt. i shift my overweight messenger bag on my shoulder and consider the cost of schlepping one more paperback halfway around the world.

i began this trip with nearly empty bags, i am leaving with them stretched to the limit. a starbucks mug purchased as a "personal cup" for my daily caffeine break was left behind to ensure the tension of the zipper did not exceed safety specs. i am down to carrying items on my back that should have been stowed as checked baggage. but i am standing with a growing list of last minute purchases, and this last one promises to explain why we are the way we are. there was really no choice in the matter, the weight of a paperback never out weighs the promise of enlightenment.

first admission first, i regularly switches from left hand drive to right, i have been known to drive at double the posted speed limit and i have taken to reading gender and ethnicity in my temporary homeland by viewing the car and driving style from a distance. i was also carrying three new books on lie detection through microexpressions, a subject i learned about by watching psychological-CSI series "lie to me". i have also written a previous post on auto profiling. i take all of this to mean that i am trying to better understand people; including myself. here is a book that will show me how to read people even better at 73 miles per hour.

the scope and breath of this book is amazing. there are discussions of driving in the US, amsterdam, australia, china, india and random other places over the world. the fact that i have experienced the traffic in so many of these places first-hand made the conversation all the more interesting. a point well made in the book is that driving styles are cultural and are based on the rules and order of the larger society. driving may be a universal skill, but it is also a newly learned one which take cues from the drivers social environment.

there are an amazing number of things to take away from this book, many are completely counter-intuitive. an example is that a bicyclist who uses hand signals is more likely to be hit by a car, which goes against all road safety lessons i have learned and taught. the reasons, proven by studies referenced in the book, is because the drivers would actually see the cyclist as a person and begin to seek eye contact. this both slows their reflexes and brings them closer to the cyclist. this desire for eye contact is touched on throughout the book, and comes with a revelation that humans have evolved to travel at no more than 20 miles per hour, above which we lose our ability to track items and make effective use of social cues to ensure safety.

over 20 miles per hour we also begin to sample the world rather than reading it fully, this filtering process allows us to lower the amount of information we take in from the stream of input passing by our windows. as we go faster we selectively disregard elements of the environment, including road signs, pedestrians and other cues which do not trigger the risk warning systems tuned by evolution to warn us of approaching dangers.

the major point i walked away from the book with was that driving is boring, which most humans have a low tolerance for and to compensate we do two things. the first is to zone out during the act of driving, going into a semi-trance where we may simply not remember how we got from one place to another. these blank spots appear to be tied to driving while tired, suggesting that we are not zoned out as much as moving rapidly while napping behind the wheel of a very dangerous object with both mass and velocity. this is a scary suggestion for one who does as much tired driving as i do; and yes i do have moments of "how did i get here".

to counter the boredom we find ways to add driving tension, by making it more challenging. someone might choose to do this by increasing the speed, closing distances between ourselves and other vehicles, adding handphone conversations, email or IM exchanges or scanning for music on your ipod. for some of us in the lower extremes of boredom tolerance, or is that the upper extremes of fast-task-switching, we may elect to do multiple of these at once.

i was absently considering this as i drove home this week. i was listening to blues on the ipod, having a conversation with someone in the office and cruising down a street i manage with little conscience attention. that is when the motorcycle cop magically appeared at my side window, then slowed to point at my headlights. i have been waved at multiple times for my "always on" head lights, but it looked like this time i was getting pulled over. after stopping i found that the issue was not the headlights, but that driving while on a handphone really is illegal in malaysia. i then discovered that i should have gotten a local license 3 years ago, although i know of no expat who has ever done this. it has never come up when negotiating prior speed traps.

the indian officer and i had a nice chat. i showed him the book on traffic from my bag, told he that he was right to give me a ticket because it was a distraction. i controlled myself from explaining that i might actually be safer with the phone conversation because otherwise i would be without the tension required for me pay any attention to the road. i heard myself think, "you know officer, i could be asleep at the wheel, but speeding and using the phone keep my ADD at bay and allow me to be safer". my recently acquired filters kicked in, finally i may have learned that less really is more.

in the end, the officer asked me if i "wanted to compromise". shockingly this didn't mean i could pay the fine (tip) immediately, just that i should use the hands-free i had in my bag, if i needed to talk and drive at the same time. i was let go with a handshake and a smile. i drove away hoping to bump into my new friend in a cafe soon, i would like to have a longer conservation about traffic over a beer.

the way we negotiate driving is cultural, it may be related to language in the way we perceive the flow of information and expect things to follow rules so we can only half listen. adding tension might be the same way some play with words to add irony or dual meanings. needing to modify the level of complexity might help you deal better with the chaos and pace of the world around us.

but sometimes adding the tension can also help you to make new friends; unless you drive into a bridge abutment.

asian quietness

i have been in asia for 4 years. four years is enough time to graduate high school, it is enough time to graduate college, its more than enough time to graduate a masters program. but, i am not sure if four years is long enough to watch a culture and try to figure it out. it’s never really the big things, but the little ones that make me wonder like this. i am not saying i have not learned to read a situation, but sometimes i wonder if i will ever really understand.

last week i was reading a contract and discussing modifications. most of the language was completely boilerplate, and could have been written by anyone who had globally been educated to write the boringly board language of legalese. some of the language was definitely not standard, it was identifying. it had clearly been written by a dry member of one asian group. i made a comment, and with a telling smile the nicely mixed vendor told me i had read it correctly. reading between the lines has become simple.

seeing in line is also simple. this afternoon i was driving to a drink and took a side road to avoid jalan bangsar rush hour jam. a little left, right, left move that can avoid 15 minutes of creeping. as i approached the last turn i saw a small car ready to make the same left move. i took my foot off the accelerator, expecting to simply slow and swing around the corner. but the car in front came to a complete stop, and then hesitantly waited, and waited, and waited for a wide open opportunity to continue.

other than guessing gender by pony tail, i could not see the driver. but i did not need that to know that she was brought up in another malaysian group. there was no sense of absent-minded privilege or needless drive to prove direction, there was only the ability to sit and wait for the safe next move. i considered swinging around at the first and second option to move, but i waited until my predecessor crept out so i could quickly move forward and past.

these situations happen all the time. i am able to anticipate and accept situations as they come up. but this past weekend i was in a situation that i could not come to terms with. as i quietly sat and considered it, i bubbled with a need for explanation. finally i burst all self control and stood up demanding, “why are you people so quiet. don’t you understand this is supposed to be fun?”

i was in the office on a saturday night, finishing months of work which i had not been involved in. we were releasing to the internet and had staff globally ensuring we were stable. this is a bi-monthly exercise in tension, it’s the time you need to move the fastest, but it started with bags of food and snacks; something to keep the energy up. but the asians (from malaysia, india, iran and egypt (not asian but on the border)) sitting with me did not seem to be enjoying it, they were sitting as quietly as any other day showing no visible sign of enjoyment.

my solution was simple, i found music on my portable drive, copied to my sadly tunes absent laptop and began to play it as loud as possible. the weak dell speakers were adding to my sadness when i realized a set of speakers passed down through three moves back to the US were sitting in an empty office. i went to hunt them down and plugged them in. garbage, offspring, lenny kravitz and radiohead were my bass pulse for the next few hours, it helped my spirits and made me feel like i was sitting in a US development group, where people enjoy success and loudly wait for opportunities to work, something i don’t experience here.

most of them appeared to ignore the night’s soundtrack; i saw one guy open up a little and smile, but no one swayed to the music, sang or even discussed the bands. one near-westerner did say “cool” on an IM, a suppressed support for the chance to find enjoyment in life; quietly hidden in the need to be proper.

maybe i should have found a way to understand this by now, but i just can’t do it. life needs a soundtrack, death is quiet. i still don’t understand how this can be confused.

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

at least i would have thought someone picked up on the fact that each person who owns these speakers ends up getting moved to the US to work... now let's see who is next. but, then again none of those people were ever quiet.

*** and ***

the only workplace i can think of that has the beat of life i miss from us development communities is the borneo ink shop of my recent scaring. no wonder i keep thinking about going back, they have the life i am missing.

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

barber school

one of the reasons i love my job is that its not really a job, it’s a career.  this might be a subtle distinction for some, but for me it is a clarifying element to every day i spend working.  it helps me take the long view on the daily grind, and allows me to see that even when i am doing things i don’t enjoy, there is an upside.  that is, i can learn something from the experience, every experience even the ones that are no fun as they are happening.  as i continue to learn, i am better prepared for the next thing that comes down the pike.

but at moments, i do question the worth of it all.  when i was a developer i knew i could always go and find another job, or even another career.  it might not require the long days and nights, might not have as heavy stress and could allow me time to focus on life not work.  when i thought about this, i was normally under serious stress; deadlines looming with worried clients and code not working as expected.  in these moments, i had visions of goose, asking maverick for the number to that truck driving school, so they could drive the big rigs.  the idea of a less stressful life, one without a high speed pass on the tower just for the hell of it, was appealing.

but unlike goose, driving the big rigs was never for me.  driving would get me to work, not be work itself.  i always had monster drives, with clients who were 100 mi away from home, and who required serious face-time.  that meant long cycles of living in hotels and commuting in all weather.  NPR and mobile phones were the two saving graces of this, both allowing me to stay connected while mellowing on the move.  but driving eliminated the two things i wanted to be spending my personal time on, learning an instrument and reading.  i knew both where possible, i have a friend who kept a keyboard next to him as he commuted.  he could practice one handed scales while he drove.  i had other friends who listened to books on tape, but my books never seemed to be available.  there was never a large enough market for the books i read, to be able to pay someone to read them to me.

i now live 20 minutes from the office, with a mostly empty road that allows me to drive twice the posted speed limit.  this is my shortest commute since riding my bike to the beach, something i did because it gave me a total of 5 workouts a day.   but, there are downsides, first NPR takes longer than 20 minutes for a full summary of the news and worse there is no NPR to listen to in malaysia.  this is the country of no real news is the news; where a weather report is one worded as “hazy”.

other downsides are that i still don’t have time to learn an instrument or to read as much as i buy on frequent bookstore trips.  the office has a collection of wanna-be guitarists and a wanna-be instructor.  it also has very little time to move from talking about lessons to the actual lessons themselves.  we keep threatening each other that now is the time to begin, yet-another-deadline is the only thing stopping us. 

unfortunately, my reading habits are also still too eccentric for commercial recordings so i can read and drive at the same time.  with the exception of david sedaris’ “santaland diaries” that i drove through a few months ago.  they were the notebooks of a gay elf-with-attitude suffering through a holiday season in a department store.  i loved listening to them, i am sure you can see the commercial appeal they would have.  it was felt good to enjoy mainstream material.

there are moments when i think about doing other things.  as i was driving to work last week i considered all the skills i have mastered over the years and how they would serve me well if i did what i have always threatened to do.  as i said, i was never driven to drive the big rigs.  the school of choice for me was barber school, where i would learn to cut hair and give a shave.  barber school would allow me to run my own business, providing a service to customers, customers who continue to grow hair that needs to be cut.  the worst mistakes could be corrected by waiting 8 weeks to allow it grow out.  

other than the crying child, there for his first big boy haircut, there is little stress in the barber shop.  it’s a place for men to hang out, listen to the news on the radio or a game on a small tv in the corner.  it’s a place for men to socialize while waiting their turn for the chair; where everyone as equal as the egalitarian “regular boys haircut”.

it’s also a place where long gaps of time pass with little or nothing to do.  which sounds like a great retirement gig for me.  no nighttime conference calls, no stressful meetings where business people and lawyers discuss direction from 4 continents, no KPI for staff, no requirements harder than asking if it should be “tapered in back”.  barber school has always been something i would pull out of my pocket like a set of worry beads.  i would roll it around in my hand for a second, and realize that if i am too busy to read or pick up a guitar, then there is no way i have time for a two year training program that allows me to hang a red and white pole outside a storefront.

i love my job, there is still so much to do and learn.  barber school just needs to wait until i retire, which will could be sometime after i have read the books waiting on two continents.  besides, the days of the barber surgeon are sadly past. that was the job i would have enjoyed, it was when barbers were allowed to pull teeth and amputate body parts.  my day-and-night career allows me to symbolically do both of those. 

i already aggressively cut hair every day, what else could i want?  other than NPR during my drive.

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

can you image a barbershop i designed?  pictures from around the world, bookshelves full of books to be shared, nice couches, good coffee and a wall mounted TV tuned to CNN or an EPL game.  we would have open wi-fi and a PC in the corner so people could google, wiki or imdb answers to debates between patrons.  clearly, the proprieties must be observed.

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

masked man

i have been sick for two weeks. last week was a migraine that my doctor told me today was not a migraine, but was the first step of infection by a virus. the blood work has come back and for the 5th time in as many years i still am not a diabetic, and the current cold is not a cold but allergies or asthma brought on by the double whammy of the virus i appear to have conquered and the KL haze which has settled over the city just in time to irritate my weakened system.

all of this brings me back to the use of two different anti-histamines a-day. one for the lungs in the morning, the other for food irritants at night. i am also adding in a strong drag of steroids to start my day. smokers wake up and take a puff to start their day with the smoke they crave. i am puffing on a plastic tube filled with corticosteroids to manage my immune response, calming the bronchial irritation that flares because of simple dust. all of these meds do nothing more than allow me to catch a full breath, letting me walk around the office without needing to grab onto furniture to stop from falling over from the lack of oxygen. without the meds my lungs close and i struggle with limited lung capacity.

i almost hate this quality of life medical condition i have come to accept. auto-immune disease is in the family, a sister has lupis and a niece has alopecia universalis. so, on the scale of overactive immune responses, i think i have gotten off lucky. i have a system that reacts to dust and smoke, and considers consumption of carbohydrates as an invasion by foreign troops. it is not a surprise that a few beers in a bar with co-workers, one who was smoking, on a friday night tied in tightly with the latest burst of immune response. being run-down from the flu, sleeping in air-con and eating other carbs all at the same time appeared to be just too much, but the beers were the right choice at the wrong time.

so i have come to accept that i have to rely on self control, avoiding the things that i enjoy and crave and a healthy dose of meds to help lower the body’s response to simple things that most tolerate with ease. i don’t mind the inhaler, it’s simple to get up in the morning, open a cap and take a deep cleaning breath. i don’t mind the meds, although the ones that work for me are only sold in the US and i need to have them imported by traveling family and staff; smuggling over-the-counter drugs that allow me to breathe. these things are simple and invisible; no one notices what i am doing. it’s a quiet and personal battle.

it is visible, the steroids cause weight gain, but they also allow me to exercise, so if i can balance the breath-in and sweat-out, than even this can be hidden. laziness of not taking the meds or not exercising the weight off is the risk i am now facing. but it is not the most visible of the humiliations i am now faced with. my doctor has prescribed a new weapon in my arsenal of protection. she suggested i go to the pharmacy and ask for a filter to keep the dust of the hazy KL weather from entering my lungs and causing me to become irritated in the first place. 

i am now walking around town with a micro-pore filter mask, a respiratory valved face mask; it is white with a large 3M printed on the front. as i walked from the pharmacy to the car i received a new type of smile. the people of KL are now presented with a large, white, bald man in brightly colored shirts who appears to be over-reacting to h1n1, the halal name for swine flu, which was declared by the local newspapers this morning as a pandemic. how little they know that i am not worried about flu at all, i simply can’t breathe the hazy air in this city.

i am sure i look dumb, i am sure they have no idea why i am really wearing the mask, and i am sure i don’t care. taking a deep breath is much more important to me than how silly i look walking around town. following the lesson i learned from my 10th grade science teacher, while sitting in a lifeguard tower years later, “form follows function”. the odd haircut and the bright colors are choice, but breathing is a non-optional requirement. if the people think i am over-reacting, they at least have it half right. i have been told i need filters for years, i finally have one.

i am now a masked man; let the breathing return.

speak slowly

after living in asia for three years, after buying numerous language and phrase books it has become clear that i will always communicate the best in english.  being fluent in another language has not been a goal since college spanish showed me that i had a lack of talent, or focus, to get a new language.  i had hoped to be able to find a second language in asia which i could become functional in.  functional is not fluent, but it would allow me to interact in a polite way, and be culturally sensitive.

i have been improving lately.  i have a dictionary i have been carrying, i am trying to read road signs rather than just looking at the pictures and scanning for english subtitles, i have sat and watched malay shows when the television is mysteriously set to those stations on clean sheet day.  i don't understand it all, but i don't think i would even if i understood all the words.  i do notice that the shows seem more like "father knows best" then "boston legal".

but, no matter how much i improve i still find that at times, speaking and speaking slowly are two different things.  i have been lulled into a comfort zone, one of my own creation.  a few weeks ago i ordered a meal in at KFC, but for the first time i did the complete transaction in malay; and for the first time i got what i wanted without the looks of confusion i am accustomed to.  i have to admit, there were a few words in there that i had no idea on, but i smiled and confidently guessed at the meaning of the words, surprisingly i guessed right and got the meal.

this was on my mind while i drove to the office and after passing my first tool booth with a solid "selamat pagi" i looked down to see the gas gauge on E and the dummy light brightly lit.  the fact that malaysian roads are geared to collecting taxes rather than enabling the driver to stop for gas or caffeine on the way into the office was one of the constant reminders that the US does make life easier than malaysia.  i did the math and decided i could get to the most convenient gas station, the one 20 minutes away in the same town as the office.

as i got to town, doing my favorite U-turn off the high way (that's the design, this country loves it's U-turns they way my home town loves its rotaries) and made the choice to get gas before work so i would not forget and be in the same situation of need on the drive home.  i pulled into the station and walked into pay before pump.  the malay girl in her petronas green and white looked at me as i handed her my RM 100 and said, "sepalau pam".  she looked at me strangely.  damn, i had done it again.  i was trying to say pump 11, and i had said pump ten... ten... sepuluh what did i say?  palau is island, i just asked her to pump one island.  okay do the math, quick she is watching... belas not  puluh.  i looked out the window again to see the number and said, "sebelas, pam sebelas".

the nice girl behind the counter smiled at me and asked me in malay, "awak cakap [something] bahasa malayu [something]?".  i replied "saya cakap bahasa sekit-sekit", opps... another mistake i have made before, i just said "i speak the language very sick, rather than very little.  "ahhh, maaf, cakap sedekit-sedekit".  she smiled again and kept going in malay, this time picking up the pace and going faster.  "[something] [something] berapa lagi malaysia" 

this one i had to take from context, i was struggling to keep up with the early part and was tossing words away as i failed to understand their meaning, but the last part was how long in malaysia, i was sure of that so i replied as quickly as i could.  "tiga hari".  she was moving behind the counter as i said it, she came to a stop to turn and look at me, the other girl turned also with a quizzical look on her face.  i knew i had made a mistake, the first girl switched to english, "three days"?

this time i was embarrassed, i searched for the word.  how often do i say year, it's not really part of my bahasa pasar (market language) vocabulary.  'jam', no that's hours, oh i have it, "tiga tahun".  both expressions changed to understanding.  i was slow but i was trying.  she shockingly started speaking in malay again, but i had lost all confidence.  too many mistakes for one stop at the gas station.  in english i asked her to speak more slowly.  i remembered all the times i have had non-native english speakers tell me i speak to quickly, and i realized that we need the ability to modulate our pace to the skills of the listener.  this must be the skill we have naturally for children, we go slower and use easier words to help them get the new language skills.

they say it's easier to pick up a language when you are a child than as an adult.  i don't think its a natural ability of youth.  it could be the effect of not having a primary language to confuse you with the assumptions you carry from it.  it could also be the lack of another language to fall back on when in need.  this simple conversation would have been learned long ago if no one in malaysia spoke english.  most times even when i start in bahasa, people switch to english so they can practice.  i am left wondering if being polite and functional is a goal at all.

it has been "tiga tahun", and i have not learned bahasa malayu.  but, i have learned that if people wanted me to learn it they would speak it to me slowly enough for me to have a chance.  and if i want to be understood, i should take a second or two more and think about what i am saying.  asking to put money on pump one island rather than pump eleven does confuse things at the gas station. 

so, let's try this again and see if we can all just speak a bit more slowly, regardless of what language we are using.

parent trap

my head seems to be hitting on a recurring theme.  it's so strange when that happens, you are having conversations across multiple days and people bring up a thread that overlaps with another from the day or week before.  over time the clothe forms and the pattern appears.  single threads interlock and you realize the shape and feel of the thought.  the conversations had no connection, the other persons themes have nothing to do with each other, but within my head i keep returning to the same pattern.

i collapsed into a chair yesterday, tired, happy and ready for a sip of grape to balance the steam i had just finished.  i had the smell of jasmine on my skin and image of a beautiful flower in my head.  i looked over and saw the smile of an old soul.  dark intelligent eyes were looking at me, they were connected to young body and a happy smile.  we struck up a conversation, my new friend was a bundle of contrasts, he is forward and shy, reminds me of my son and has an old name that means "gentle soul" or "smooth brow"; both of which appeared true.

as the conversation flowed, i was reminded of my childhood and the stress of parenting and parenting of parents.  i was reminded of my favorite mother's day movie the parent trap.  not the remake with lindsay lohan, the original with brian keith, maureen o'hara and hayley mills.  the first thought was of the grandfather played perfectly by charles ruggles, he leads the supporting cast by quietly commenting without commenting.  this is a skill my own distant grandfather chuck had mastered, but one i will need to keep trying to find.

i was reminded of one of my favorite scenes of the movie between the grandfather and the grand daughter who he has realized is not the person the rest of the house believes she is:

>>>>>>>>>>>>

Charles McKendrick: [Susan starts sniffing the coat he is wearing] My dear, what are you doing? 
Susan Evers: Making a memory. 
Charles McKendrick: Making a memory? 
Susan Evers: All my life, when I'm quite grown-up I will always remember my grandfather and how he smelled of 
[smells his jacket again] tobacco and peppermint. 
Charles McKendrick: Smelled of tobacco and peppermint. [starts chuckling] Well, I'll tell you what. I take the peppermint for my indigestion and as for the tobacco [looks around to share the secret] to make your grandmother mad. 

>>>>>>>>>>>>

later, i was eating dinner with a friend who was talking about dating and trying to be the person that the right man would want to be with.  she has friends who believe that men want the flashy, sophisticated and pampered women they spend so much effort becoming.  my friend worries that the men she knows are focused on room service rather than backpacks and zip lines.  i asked when she watched the parent trap, did she like the mother who comfortably slipped into jeans or vicki the woman so clearly uncomfortable outside of designer fashion.  i know that during the camping trip i love as she is driven off by sisters, who bond over shared torment.

someone who wants the vickis of the world will get what they deserve.  the future will be one of high maintenance, shallow personality and the inability to cross a river to climb into a tree house and sweat in the afternoon heat while watching gibbons play in the jungle below.  it comes down to choosing what you want in a life.  do you want to go to a constructed resort or to have a genuine adventure?

this morning i read the thoughts of a friend who was talking about the themes of conflict and loss that we use to celebrate what should be the deepest love of our lives.  i had to smile, it is clear to me that there are smiles in the world and beyond, even when they come with sadness.  i again came back to the parent trap, which for me proves that the people in our lives can help us be happy by giving us space.

>>>>>>>>>>>>

Verbena 'Ever's Housekeeper': It's none of my nevermind. I don't say a word. 
Mitch Evers: [turning to leave; deadpan] I know, you never say a word to anyone. 

>>>>>>>>>>>>

being the child of divorce, and experiencing divorce as an adult, i watch the parent trap with a sense of recognition and hope.   i see two people who clearly remember why they liked each other in the first place.  they live on separate continents, and it works for them.  i don't believe the end where they get back together, but i do see that they will be friends.  rather than keeping the kids apart they will realize that the children are the priority, even if this means having to accept someone you could not accept in the past.

the trap keeps creeping into my head.  i want to watch these happy characters find themselves.  people seem to see the easy device of driving off the evil step mother as the theme of the movie.  that's not it at all for me.  it's getting to the place in life, like the grandfather, that you know when to keep quiet and allow those around you to make their own decisions and when to finally step in.  just as the grandfather does with his overbearing wife when he saids:

>>>>>>>>>>>>

Charles McKendrick: Louise, for once I'm putting my foot down. Now let them alone! 

>>>>>>>>>>>>

i wish i could go to a "best buy", but the local "black sails" video store just doesn't have old movies about families.  for now i am stuck with my memories.

shyness is nice

sometimes you realize you just have a different world view.  growing up half a world away, being older and more weary than most of the people around you, and having completely different music in your head can show you how true this is.  have you ever found yourself singing a song in front of someone and realizing they have never heard it? the person listening in may never have heard the band or song, they have no idea the singer was influential in your life, or the generation you came to age within.

this just happened to me, i am sitting at a table in a crowded cafe.  there are people all around me, there is music playing over the noise of conversations, kitchen sounds and staff saying "hi, good afternoon" as people walk past the front.  i heard a song this morning, and went to wikipedia to look up the band, that led to youtube and the song again.  the smiths are one of those seminally important bands for a kid that grew up in a preppy town, attended a preppy college and found alternative music during the anti-alternative years of the reagan administration.

the sounds of morrissey's lyrics and johnny marr's guitar are both haunting and comforting when they are viewed from the time and distance of maturity.  the intelligence of the prose were mulled over so many nights ago; they came at a time when life had a narrowness that was just beginning to be opened by books.  they are now viewed by experience.  a song like cemetery gates with lyrics that invite you to come together with

A dreaded sunny day, So I meet you at the cemetery gates

Keats and Yeats are on your side, While Wilde is on mine

is perfect for the liberal arts major who is being shown the classics for the first time.  gone are the pop artists of youth, the world of substance is opening.  with it you find a band that makes you feel that intelligence and passion are both allowed and normal.

now add to that songs like girlfriend in a coma, that taps onto an emotion that anyone going through early adulthood will have felt, 

Girlfriend in a coma, I know, I know - it's really serious

There were times when I could have "murdered" her

(But you know, I would hate, Anything to happen to her)

i can remember singing this as loud as possible in my dorm room, feeling the depth of the emotion, enjoying the fact that someone else could feel it just as clearly as i did.  that someone in the world had put a voice to the emotion.  i have sang this same song again over the years, but maybe never as loud.

other songs just make me smile, no matter how many times i have head the words i break into a grin and love the fact that morrissey could be comfortable enough to record some girls are bigger than others.  the oblivious to shame song that starts:

From the ice-age to the dole-age

There is but one concern I have just discovered :

Some girls are bigger than others

Some girls are bigger than others

Some girl's mothers are bigger than other girl's mothers

and then ends with the offer of a lifetime:

Send me the pillow ..., The one that you dream on ...

Send me the pillow ..., The one that you dream on ...

And I'll send you mine

songs like this can make you feel good even at times when you might need to be more guarded and aware of your surroundings.  like driving back from a late afternoon family gathering when you reach for the volume button to turn up the beat to sing along with the band.  it is common for the kids to hear morrissey's lyrics; they have grown up with them.  most of the car sings along as a happy reflex, done without a second thought; until you realize the kids have been joined by your mother in-law.  she is sitting behind you and is clearly wondering why you and your nine year-old daughter are so happily crooning these lyrics of comparison.

but the song that made me smile today was ask.  i am close to sure it is one that the pretty chinese girl sitting next to me had never heard before.  the half turned head with the hidden smile, one meant to not be shared with her lunch mate, was just for us.  the words that had come from my laptop where:

Shyness is nice and shyness can stop you

From doing all the things in life you'd like to

i did not understand this song when i first heard it so long ago.  i needed to see more of the world, to meet more people with different world views.  doc savage was trying to teach us about the world he had seen, but we were unable to grasp what he was saying.  even with the smiths to back up his stories, we didn't have the experience or openness to accept the message.  as i look over and see a smile, so many years later, the next verse comes across so clearly:

Coyness is nice and coyness can stop you

From saying all the things in life you'd like to

google jobs

i woke up yesterday to an email with links to something on google.  this isn't all that uncommon, people send links all the time.  but these links were different.  they were to jobs, and the email suggested that the jobs sounded like they were written for me.  as i looked them over they were tempting.  the roles looked interesting, i would be in the US again close to my kids and i would be working for the number one cool internet company right now.

google is the new microsoft in our space.  by comparing them to microsoft i show the path of my maturity along with the internet.  i started at a time when 4GL was the hot TLA.  sqlwindows v powerbuilder was the argument around the table when new projects were kicked off.  VB, COM, DCOM and .Net changed all of that for me.  i was known as someone who had my full drink of kool-aid.  i studied internals and obsessed over patterns and performance.  i was there when MVC was added to MFC, i studied EJB 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0 and agreed each time that design by a committee of competitors is the right way to kill a good idea.

i am old and i have been around the block.  i have the bookshelves and dead company t-shirts to prove it.  i know that c# is literally cool, and can remember the birds of a feather breakout in a smoke-covered LA that the Project 7 team explained it.  that was the same week that i learned the internals of generational garbage collection, the same topic i used this week to explain why a precieved issue was not.

google is the company that most geeks want to work for now.  they are a hip company with a list of top ten reasons you should work for them.  if you read the list, you can see why smart people want to work there.  they are hot and sexy, of course people are attracted.  but why would i be attracted.  i have a job, its one i like and one i am not really ready to leave.

work for me is more than just a job.  i have a career that i love, i have had a series of jobs that i have loved, good times and bad have happened, but when i look back i remember that i have been successful, happy and in control.  i have tried to do the things that i love, to focus on having fun and enjoying the work, the challenges and the victories.  i used to say that one day i would retire to a job as a barber, i thought it was the perfect job, even if you make a mistake the hair will grow back and you get another chance, but tastes and cuts change over time, so experimentation and discovery is built in.

i replied to the email and said i wasn't sure about applying.  the ads looked good, and the change of pace sounds exciting.  but change for change sake is not what i want.  i have a team i care about, i am busy and i learn something almost every day.  i have already stayed in this company and this role longer than i expected and the ADD side of my head would love something new.  but actively seeking that something is a distraction i don't need right now.  

even when things present themselves, sometimes you need to say no.  you might be saying no to the promise of something better, to the expectation of improvement or to the internal drive that is pushing you to consider the offer.  if prior booms and busts didn't teach me this before i came here, malaysia certainly has.  there is always the promise of the next big thing.

the reply i got on the email thread was a question, "how do you know you are good enough to get it if you don't try".  this is when you realize the person knows your buttons well enough that they push them the way a touch typist strikes the keys; clear, strong and effortless.  creating desire even when you have no interest is a talent, one that is built up over time.

so, i am working on the top ten reasons not to apply. 

1) ....

    

taupow lifestyle

one of the things about working the hours i work is needing to plan. i have staff who i need to plan careers with, i have capital expenditures which need to be considered and budgeted. i have annual international child movements that requires more planning than almost any professional task of the entire year. but the most frequent planning exercise i need to conduct is driving back to expat land, feeding myself, and remaining available for long distance conference calls at very odd hours.

i remember a time when work would slow down as the sun slipped below the horizon. this was not always the norm; driving home during a blizzard on a conference-call, hands clenching the wheel in an effort to calm the fear of passing large trucks without a stable grip of wheels to road, was known to have happened in the past. but most nights i would stop in the grocery store to get the final dinner ingredients, and would come into a noisy kitchen just as dinner prep moved to construction mode.

food used to be something built, planned a week ahead or thrown together based on what was available, dinner was an event of coordinating multiple schedules, tastes and moods. the process would start for me with a conversation on the ride home. it started with a question, "what do you want for dinner?" the riddle was that the question was not what it seemed on face value, it was not what i wanted that was in question, but if i would accept what had been decided upon. this was my first zen lesson, one that i failed miserably.

living alone has made this process much less complex. i now have factors what need to be weighed, it is now all about what i want for dinner. i can make the choice, just from a shortened list of possible selections. gone are the tacos, quesidillas, crepes, stews, steaks, pancakes and waffles of the past. the years of declaring easy nights as yoyo (you're on your own) have faded away; the term has taken a whole new meaning.

the peace of not having to choose is gone, and the choices are far fewer than in the past. cooking for one, with a crazy work schedule, barely functional kitchen and aversion to parking underground and taking an elevator to a supermarket takes it toll. i have realized that in the past few years i have changed my definition of buying groceries. i am living a taupow lifestyle.

the key to taupow living is to know your local restaurants well, make friends and purchase in bulk when you go. mom always said that food was better the second day. that might have been a way to convince her children that old food was better than new, but somehow i still believe her. flavors do seem to melt together over time. this might be why i have the love of leftovers; which is such a negative term, mom always said, "saving the best for last".

i was talking about this with a friend and she said, "i like to eat taupow, so i can just eat out of the containers". i broke into a big smile, that's it exactly. the KL lifestyle totally works for the expat living alone. you move in with clothes and little else. you find a menu you like and you start eating there, over time you steal 5 or so spoons and you start bringing containers home to eat directly out of them. no need to wash a plate; much less pots and pans. you can watch a "local copy" dvd and relax, rather than standing at the sink and busting suds. even your once a week maid likes it, she only needs to wash 5 spoons and water glass.

[malaysians if they use a utensil will use a spoon, knives and forks are for rich people, all you need in life is a soup spoon. many just use their hands, which explains the sinks in the middle of restaurants, but that's a different blog]

i am now in planning mode for the kids to arrive for the summer (people in KL have no idea what summer means, the weather is always summer here, and the kids are not out of school in july and august). that has me wondering if i need to change this behavior. i downshift much of my lifestyle when they are here. but i can sense that almost it's time for the negotiations to begin again. i am no longer going to be on my own, i have three personalities and tastes to accomadate.

thank god we have hawker stands. its like take out without needing to go home. it is perfect for yoyo every night. everyone gets to eat what they want, with 20 micro kitchens cooking everyone can happy.

KL has issues, two are mall based grocery stores and a lack of cooking stores, but it has just meant a change. learning to take away the best of what you can, and relaxing at home are good things. they are things the taupow living have given me. lets hope the kids still agree.

something permanent

yes, it's done. i am now one of those who are inked. the design is maori, the pain was less than i expected, the final result is not what i visualized; but it is something i like. the major question from people has been, "what does it mean?" getting to an answer that satisfies is not that easy for me. i suppose that's because the real meaning of the tattoo is not visual, it is not a function of the tattoo, but it is a function of what it represents.


i had said for years that if i found a design i liked, i would be fine with getting a tattoo. someone close to me would remind me that ink:

1. is not a common expectation for upper management types
2. is not something my preppy irish catholic style embraces
3. is known to be toxic; and can cause health issues
4. can not be easily reversed, even if it is later desired

this list makes me smile, both for the advice and for the ability to transpose these same reasons on other acts that people may choose to indulge and hide.

now the fact that i have done things like begin to shave my head for the pure reaction and enjoyment of it, or move to asia following a decision process lasting 3 seconds, its clear that i have the capacity to go in a direction that others don't expect. but shaving my head and living in the east rather than the west are both choices which i could reverse just as easily as i have made them.

as we were finishing the tattoo, my leaning artist asked why i didn't ask her to create a tattoo that told a story. the options she suggested were icons which represented my family, the kids and my ex-wife. i smiled weakly and decided not to explain that in many ways the images were tied to them already. but the language of the iconography is simply not something a travelling maori would be able to read. the ink is deeper than that.

i spent 10 years as a temporary worker, the day to day expectation that unless i excelled i would be expelled was the driving force to focusing on delivery. making sure i exceeded expectations so that i was in control of the decision on staying or going was core to my professional-life. we did it all for the passion of delivery, openly chanting to our clients, "it's all about the love!"

those days ended years ago, it is no longer all about the love. the love has grown old and passed. the ability to control the departure was removed. folding up shop and moving on was destined to happen. giving up the rooted life for one of travel and change was a reaction to the shifting of soil that had eroded and wasted down into the passing river of time.

now i live in a country that is not my own, i am learning a language that i will be able to use with almost no one outside this country, i have an apartment and car which are not the ones i own 12,000 miles away. i have added weight to the baggage i would now need to fill to move on, but books, t-shirts and guitars are individually light, even if the aggregate mass is not.

but, i now have something that i will carry with me. i was required to sign a contract saying i understood this could not be removed. i allowed a stranger to pierce my skin and inject permanence into me, creating scars that show. openly placed where i can not hide them from others, a signal that my time in asia has been real. i now have a dark band of scars on my arm which i might be able to cover, but which are clearly there any time i expose myself.

i have embraced the permanence that i have been unable to see as a part of myself. the clean white pallet has taken its first marks. these lines, curves and points may not be quickly readable by others, but they are for me. as my skin continues to leak excess ink, as the colors begin to fad with my personal pigment, as the image settles into its long-term state, i am reminded that not everything is temporary.

the next questions is where will the next permanent scars come from.