Chinese Zodiac

There’s a Chinese restaurant near our house that serves authentic Shanghai cuisine. We dined there last night. It’s a small place, tastefully decorated in deep blues and lime greens. On the walls are large framed prints of advertisements for cigarettes, pomades, medicines and teas, featuring pretty girls in cheongsams in the fashion of the Thirties. The prints bring to mind Ang Lee’s latest film of wartime Shanghai, ‘Lust, Caution’.

The paper place mats are printed with the animals of the Chinese zodiac, along with the lunar years to which each animal belongs, and a capsule summary of the attributes of the humans born in those years. The zodiac cycle being one of twelve years, it follows that the Gregorian calendar years for each sign is separated by this interval, so that for the Dragon, for example, we have 1916, 1928, 1940, all the way up to 2012.

Chinese horoscope

The place mat also has a note that if the diner was born before the year 1900, he or she should add 12 to his or her birth year to determine the correct zodiac sign. Born before 1900, indeed! That would make that diner at least 107 years old today.

But not to worry, for the years printed on the place mat go as far into the future as 2012, thereby preparing for the advent of diners yet unborn.

These Chinese restaurants, they think of everything.

Back Alley

Beautiful fall day. Clock reverted to Pacific Standard Time this past weekend. Took a stroll in downtown Millbrae, and grabbed a couple of shots of a back alley.

Collars

For men only, here is a bit of trivia that may come in handy. Old credit cards, cut into the right dimensions, make excellent replacements for collar stays. The ones that come with the shirt these days are often too thin and flexible to be of any use. They may curl up and give your pointed collar a scruffy and comical look.

Of course, if you are a button-down kind of guy, this information is not meant for you.

Lunch Wagon

It is near the noon hour when the truck, with its quilted aluminum sides, begins to circulate through the neighborhood. The first hints of its presence are two bars of the tune from its musical horn, which is both evocative and familiar. Da-da-da-dum-DUM, da-da-da-dum-DUM.

Click here

The truck stops wherever its owner knows, or can surmise, that there are itinerant, and even possibly undocumented, workers having their lunch break. It carries to them an assortment of food items that are both inexpensive and appealing to the palate, and especially those palates partial to the maize-based, hot-chili-pepper-flavored, heavily leguminous diet of people from south of the border.

The tune that the truck plays to announce its arrival originated during the Mexican Revolution of the early twentieth century. It is simple and cheerful, though the words that accompany the original song are not exactly innocent.

Here are the lyrics:

La cucaracha, la cucaracha
Ya no puede caminar
Porque no tiene, porque le falta
Marijuana por fumar

(The cockroach, the cockroach
It's not going to walk
Because it does not have, because it lacks,
Marijuana for to smoke.)

All Hallows

In the dream, he is sitting with his back to me. We are in a café somewhere, and sunlight floods the place. The details of the cafe are in sharp focus, as often happens in these dreams of mine. The chair in which he sits has a wrought iron back in an arabesque pattern, like the ones seen on balcony railings of older apartments.

From where I am standing I see only the back of his head, the black hair slicked down with brilliantine, carefully combed to a duck tail. Across the table from him is a woman, who wears dark glasses against the glare of the sun. Their right hands meet on the table top, which is of rose-colored marble. Perhaps there are coffee cups or wine glasses near at hand, but this detail is not clear or important, for the scene is transformed when the woman smiles. Her smile lights up her face. Her lips are a deep scarlet.

I stand there as an observer, not approaching them, and for all that I know or care they may be completely unaware of my presence.

A child in rags appears. She looks about seven or eight years old. She stands there barefoot and dirty, with her hand held out to the woman.

The man tries to shoo child away, with a brusque gesture. The woman knits her brows, looking across at the man. She says, ‘Give her some money.’

The man reaches into the pocket of his trousers and pulls out a handkerchief. As he does this, a shower of gold coins falls down to the tiled floor, but noiselessly. The little girl starts to pick up the coins, and then suddenly there are scores of children all around, grabbing at the coins.

The man and woman get up from the table, pushing their way through the crowd of children. As they walk away, I see that the woman is wearing high heels, and nylon stockings with seams.

The children gather up the coins. There is no sound. Only light.

At this point, I awaken.

Groan

Exasperation –

The computer malfunctions

So again I’m lost

Fig Tree

This twenty-five year old fig tree in the garden produces some delicious figs.

Like this one.

Hope

Ever more swiftly

The days and weeks come and go —

Spring will soon arrive

The Mirror

Pores become larger -

hairs sprout from inside one's ears

winter is fast approaching

Fall Colors

Wildfires

The disastrous wildfires in Southern California have kept us glued all day to the television. The conflagrations have reduced hundreds of homes and other structures to ashes, and the end is nowhere in sight. One person has perished, and thousands have been left homeless. Whipped by powerful and unpredictable Santa Ana winds, the flames are testing to the limit the state's ability to keep them in check. Let's hope that the weather changes soon, that the winds will die down, and that moisture will give the firefighters a chance to contain the multiple fires.

Santiago

This is a shot taken when we were standing outside the Hospital de los Reyes Católicos, kitty-corner from the famous Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, in northwest Spain. It's your typical tourist picture, and had likely been captured many thousands of times from the very same spot. The components are Old World, picturesque, with elements of history, and religion, alongside ancient and modern culture, and perhaps even myth as well.

If you look closely, you will see along the hills in the background that there are new houses either being built, or recently completed. A cluster of three of them in a row appear no different than tract homes seen in our American suburbs. A larger house in the middle distance is much higher than its neighbors, and shows the current European trend towards large skylights. Its roof tiles are modern and regular, unlike those of the older buildings in the foreground, some of which have become discolored over the years, and indeed show signs of decay and tufts of weeds along their courses.

The climate does not allow whitewash to remain white for long in rainy Galicia, and you can see the stains of mildew on the walls of the older houses, which stand cheek-by-jowl alongside houses that have, at least on their façades, a cleaner look.

The street on which the foreground houses stand is very steep and narrow. Some of the houses have wrought-iron balconies, others have roof terraces. The street lights are, of course, electric, but their design suggests that before the advent of electricity, they may have been fueled by natural gas, and maybe even tallow.

To the right are visible the decorative pillars on the outer wall of the Hospital, and the stone of which they and the supporting base are made is grey and weathered, much in contrast to the incongruous modern spy camera mounted a metre or so below, which points down towards the street, and whose coiled cable forms an elegant calligraphic lower-case letter 'g'.

On the wall to the left the pillars are of a newer design, and one might suppose that they were either added later, after the originals had crumbled through age, or the entire lighter-toned stone structure might have been erected next to the original wall centuries later; a couple of windows lower down seem to favor this second thesis.

In the street below two commercial enterprises are visible. Their entrances are surmounted by canvas canopies which appear to have been well-maintained. One is a restaurant called "Las Huertas", and the other is a pharmacy. Between them is a "No Parking" sign. A couple of people stand outside the restaurant, looking at the printed menu outside. They appear to be locals rather than tourists, who have all recently dined at the quite impressive refectory within the Hospital de los Reyes Católicos.

Trash

From outside come the steady beeps of the garbage truck as it backs into the cul-de-sac. But we don’t call it a garbage truck these days. The environmentally correct term is ‘waste management conveyance’.

On alternate Thursdays three trucks arrive, at different times, to pick up respectively 1) household trash including garbage; 2) the recyclable items, paper, cardboard cartons, plastics, glass, and metal; and 3) garden cuttings and yard waste.

It used to be that the plastics and glass had to be placed in one bin, old newspapers in another, and paper items and cardboard in yet another. Things are simpler now – mixing disparate recyclables in the same bin is permitted. Presumably sorting will take place later at the recycling plant.

The trucks are large. These days each household trash truck is operated by one man. He drives and does the picking up all by himself. In the past there used to be three men, one to drive, and the other two to run around pushing large steel bins on casters, into which the contents of householders’ trash cans are deposited, usually with a considerable amount of noise, all up and down the street.

One never sees women doing this kind of work. I am guessing that the physical strength required to lift heavy trash bins may be the reason.

I would often be awakened by the noise of trash collecting. Some Thursday mornings I would wake with a start upon realizing that I had forgotten to put out the trash container the night before. But that sort of oversight happened only infrequently, I’m happy to say.

I have settled into a ritual on Wednesday evenings. I go around the house collecting all the rubbish I can find: old magazines and newspapers, wastebasket contents, empty or near-empty plastic water bottles, plastic bags filled with shredded paper from the paper shredder. Using a hand-truck that I had acquired specifically for the purpose, I wheel the cumbersome bins of recyclable items up the driveway and over to curbside for the next morning’s pick-up.

The job is harder if we had a house party the previous weekend, as we just did.

Old Friends

They are those

who listen

and help where able

when needed

They are those

whose voices

are the most pleasing

on the phone

They are those

older now

who once were children

beside us

Overcast

Today the sky is overcast, cumulonimbus and stratocumulus extending a gray aspect to the afternoon. Showers are forecast. I have set up my video camera on a tripod out on the deck to record at 3-second intervals so as to speed up the cloud action.


The sun is filtered through the clouds, and here and there it does shine through. The resulting light is quite marvelous, giving the landscape a glow that can best be described as ethereal.

P.S. Good thing my wife was alert when it began to rain. She got my equipment back indoors just in time.

Dragonflies

Through the long summer

they came to visit our pond –

but where are they now?

Art Show

It’s been some years since I exhibited any of my oil paintings, and it’s gratifying to have three of them on display again. They are at the clubhouse of the retirement community across the Bay where we have lately been spending time. I do not yet have any photos of them for posting here, but one day I’ll get around to it. There is a very active art association at the community, with talented artists in various media whose works are also being exhibited. I plan to spend more time over there, and do more painting. It’s the time I need, always. More time.

* * *

There you are, sitting in a small restaurant enjoying lunch, when a car stops outside. You do not hear the brakes, nor the car’s motor. Instead what you hear is a deep, gut-numbing boom from supercharged loudspeakers from within the car, a steady throbbing that seems in close sync with your heart rate, and is no doubt intended to emphasize certain sounds that pass for music. Or singing, or, yes, the thing they call rapping. The words are unintelligible, as though barked in an alien tongue, but there are those for whom the words are consequential, even meaningful. The bombardment continues for the better part of a minute, until mercifully, the traffic light changes, and the car moves on, leaving us poor diners to finish our meal in the welcome, and quieter, hubbub of the restaurant.

Autumn

A leaf from the maple

falls upon the deck

with a solidity

that surprises –

not a rustle

nor a whisper

as you might expect,

instead there’s

a robust

plop.

Paintings

This is an oil painting that I made after visiting Italy in the nineties. It's the pretty town of Orta San Giulio, right on Lake Orta in the Piedmont.


This is a view looking north on Kearny Street in San Francisco. That's Telegraph Hill and Coit Tower at the top.

Home Again

Unsteady and slow

thrilled to leave his bed at last –

he takes his wife’s hand

The Moth

Clinging to the window glass

with the light from my room reflected

in its incandescent eyes,

the little moth displays five,

and only five, skinny legs.

Why five? I wonder, leaning closer

to count again –

where is number six, little moth?

how came you to lose one?

And will you, like a crab,

grow a new one in time,

as strong and nimble

as the one you lost?

Soldier on, little moth,

may courage

be your companion

while you still

have life.

Landscape awaiting rain

Look, Columbus - Cumulonimbus

Today's skies as seen from our balcony

Generations

How quickly they grow up. It seems like it was just a couple of years ago that they were babies. But one is in her second year of university, and the other in her final year of high school. And we see our future as their future.

Styrofoam

We bought a couple of lamps recently: a floor lamp and a table lamp. These were manufactured, of course, in China, where else? But proudly designed to U.S. specifications, and containing so far as we can surmise, no toxic ingredients.

The lamps, like so many other household appliances nowadays, come in large cardboard cartons, and are kept in place within the cartons by molded blocks of lightweight white material which help protect against breakage or damage. This material is generally called Styrofoam, but that is a brand name which has taken on a generic life of its own, like Kleenex and Band-aid. The correct term, as I was able to discover on the Internet, is polystyrene foam.

It is used for things like single-use coffee cups, life jackets, insulation, and things of that kind.

In the course of opening the cartons and assembling the lamps (yes, there was some assembly required, though the task proved not to be too arduous for your average senior citizen), bits of the Styrofoam came off and flew all over the floor, like crumbs. These tiny bits of material are very difficult to clean up. They are ultra-light, and they tend to be attracted to almost any surface in their vicinity: upholstered furniture, trouser legs, fingers, shoes. Trying to sweep them up is a hopeless task. The little beads fly every which way except into the dustpan, and the act of sweeping seems to generate a stronger static charge, making it even more of a chore to shake off.

And to make matters worse, Styrofoam is not ecologically friendly. It may not dissolve back into the earth for hundreds of years, though there now appears to be a way to use bacteria to assist the process.

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Some beautiful cumulus clouds today.

The Rudest Travel Book Ever Written

If you have never heard of Mrs Favell Mortimer, this is a good introduction to her travel writing.

Non-PC travel writing

Late Afternoon

My first and only BMW

Yangon

Rice bowls upside down

Rain drenching their saffron robes

Monks call for Aung San

The Visit

In his nursing home

we speak of remembered trips --

chilly autumn air

Gravity

For someone who has always prided himself in being well-balanced and upright, I was rudely humbled two days ago just outside my front door.

I had ventured forth to pick up the newspaper. The morning was fine with a slight chill in the air (which incidentally reminded me of a scandalous 1913 painting titled ‘September Morn’ by the French artist Paul Émile Chabas) and hardly a cloud in the sky. click here

The newspaper comes delivered in a plastic bag, presumably to protect it from dew or wet walkways (this detail adds nothing to the story, except to give it an element of veracity), and is then picked up gingerly by a corner of the plastic to avoid wetting the newsprint inside, which can happen after a heavy rain or by long exposure to the automatic lawn sprinkler system, when the paper is soaked through and rendered absolutely unreadable until it is later dried out in the oven, and even then acquires a strange crinkled texture that makes the whole thing rather unpleasant to unfold for reading. As an aside, sometimes the plastic bag has an extra sealed pocket in which has been inserted a sample of one kind or another: a foil package of instant oatmeal (dry, of course); a packet of laundry soap; enough instant coffee for one small cup. The sample is more of a nuisance than an incentive for the newspaper reader to go out and buy the large version of the product advertised.

But I am digressing here. Time to get back to my story.

While I was walking back to the house, my foot must have caught on some small obstruction on the edge of the lawn (it could have been a sprinkler head that had not returned to its position of rest, or a bit of aggregate concrete walkway lifted up by a centimeter or so by the underground root of a birch tree, betula alba being the correct botanical term for the European white birch of which our lawn has several, I’m not sure which it was).

One moment I was upright, walking, and in full awareness, not to say complete charge, of my bearings, and a split second later I was face down on the ground, my chin no more than an inch above the concrete surface, which by some stroke of good fortune or automatic reflex at the instant of my heavy and precipitate descent, had been spared injury of a sort that it makes my flesh creep just to imagine.

Somehow my left hand had reflexively broken the fall, and so became the main casualty of this plunge. Glasses, teeth, and bones were all accounted for and undamaged. The left palm bled a bit, having been abraded in several places, but that was a small price to pay for what might have proved to be a much more serious matter.

I might add as another aside that a stroller had just walked past my house when this whole episode took place, and so she was not a witness to it. Had she been half a minute later in her walk, and seen the tumble, I would have been mortified no end.

My pleasure

It really wasn't necessary. They needn't have done it. But they were so kind to show their appreciation for what I did, and now in turn I acknowledge their kindness, which they expressed through a gift of fine wine shipped by express mail to our house.

What I did was to make a video of a reunion of my wife's schoolmates. This reunion is an event which occurs every few years. It is organized by dedicated and hardworking women from all over the world who at one time attended a prestigious Catholic school in Hong Kong. This particular reunion of about three hundred former students was unusual in that it took place aboard a cruise ship over three days, sailing from southern California to Mexico and back.

The organizers, my wife among them, were remarkable in their skill, and in their enthusiasm for making the event a success. The affection with which they hold their old teachers, the nuns, and each of their fellow students never ceased to charm the menfolk who were with them on this excursion.

So what I did for them was no more than what they truly deserved for their own hard work.

And, ladies, for me it was a pleasure besides.

New Arrival

Today one of my wife's nieces announced the good news that she is pregnant, and that the baby is expected in the spring. Our best wishes to her and her husband as they prepare for the new arrival.

* * * * *

I’m working at my PC while listening to Dvořák on the iMac next to it. For some reason, the music from the small speakers of the iMac sounds much better than that from the larger PC. (I’m sorta proud of myself; got the correct accent marks into Dvořák.)

Shopping

This afternoon I paid a visit to our local warehouse store. It is not a particularly big one as warehouse stores go. The ones down in the South Bay are much bigger, and seem to have a bigger selection of merchandise. Still, what we have at our local store can satisfy the buying impulses of your average consumer.

I was a little late, which meant that many of the ladies who hand out free food samples were getting ready to clean up their stations. I did however have a sip of some energy drink or other, from a tiny paper cup. Not bad. At another station there were veggie burgers which smelled okay, but did not look appetizing enough on the pan. I passed on the proffered sample.

I got what merchandise I had come for, and a few other items that I had not even thought I might need. You have to buy in bulk at these stores, you see? Not very practical for a household of two. Sometimes the seemingly reasonable prices can tempt you into getting stuff that will invariably end up in your closet, never to be used.

In a plastic blister case, a set of small tools, exquisitely designed, a pair of folding pliers that incorporated many tools in one, very pocketable, a tiny flashlight that didn’t need batteries, and other items. I thought the set might make a nice Christmas gift for someone. The brand name SwissTech suggested skilled Alpine craftsmen in Basel or Zurich. I looked in the small print to learn where the tools were actually made. Hidden way in a corner on the back in print so fine you needed a magnifying glass to find it: Made in China.

There was a 68-piece craft and hobby knife set, ideal for an aspiring sculptor, woodcarver, model maker, whatever. Under twenty bucks. Beautifully set out in a fitted wooden box. Made in China.

Everywhere you look, from leather couches and armchairs, exercise machines, clocks, heavy armoires and dining room sets, metal storage racks, mirrors, ceramic space heaters, they were all made in China.

Only in the apparel bins were there items made other than in China – in places like Bangladesh and Mauritius and Vietnam and Sri Lanka. You hardly ever see anything from Korea or Taiwan or the other Asian ‘tigers’ anymore. Much less Japan. Products from those countries are nowadays no match for the Bangladeshes etc. when it comes down to consumer prices.

Items made in China have been much in the news lately. The defective toys recalled by a major US toy company, the tainted pet food, the cardboard buns, these will make consumers in this country more leery about the ‘Made in China’ label.

Fruit Labels

Fresh fruits nowadays in the supermarkets tend to have labels on them, and I’ve often wondered why. At first glance it would seem that the labels are placed to advertise where the fruits come from. But such a lot of trouble, for each individual fruit (I’m talking millions upon millions) THAT makes for very expensive advertising.

So there must be another reason. Government regulation? Batch number? Who knows?

Imagine what is required to have a sticky label on each fruit. Surely that can’t be done manually? Must be by machine. But each fruit – each plum, each pear, each apricot, each peach, each nectarine! So, okay, these are from California, where high technology rules. Computers can do wonderful things with robots. See what they use to build cars? Robots. Highly efficient and accurate robots. Surely the same technology can be applied to fragile fruits.

But there are fruits from other parts of the world. Bananas from Ecuador, melons from Chile. Do they have high-tech robots in those places? Or must their labels be affixed laboriously by hand?

Whatever the case may be, the fact that each fruit has a label is a source of amazement to this writer. And a source of annoyance at times, as well.

Just try peeling a label off a ripe and juicy plum without tearing the skin. Can’t be done.

Nuptials

Another wedding, another young couple embarking upon a life together. Our friends the bride’s parents are justifiably proud. The ceremony, conducted by a Filipino priest with a sense of humor, went smoothly. The singing in church was uplifting. The bridegroom is Filipino-American, and his family adhered faithfully to the Catholic traditions of the old country: the veil, the cord, the lighting of candles, the gathering of relatives who blessed the couple kneeling at the altar. At the reception, a round of speeches, of which the bride’s father’s was brief, to the point, and affectionate.

With many relatives and friends attending on a beautiful but breezy day, charming company at dinner, and the happiness displayed by the newlyweds, not even the closure of the Bay Bridge over this holiday weekend could do much to dampen the spirits.

Venezia

Good friends of ours celebrated their 50^th wedding anniversary with a trip to Italy. Charmed by Venice as any romantic and lover of beauty would be.

I don’t care what anybody says, the casino operators may build antiseptic copies of the canals and bridges and palazzi and gondolas in Las Vegas and Macau and elsewhere, but there ain’t nothing on God’s green earth that can compare to the original.

Stealing Time

Here's a story about old Shanghai.

Stealing Time

Some Darker Thoughts

Subtitles

On the doors of the department store, every ‘PUSH’ label on the left-hand side is subtitled ‘Empuje”, and every ‘PULL’ label on the right-hand side is subtitled ‘Puxe’. And people still get it wrong as they enter or leave. One assumes the doors are sturdy enough that the abuse they suffer daily will not damage them irreparably.

* * * * *

Things we take on faith

That the pilot is sober and perfectly well qualified to fly the plane so as to land us safely at our destination.

That the plane is airworthy, all systems having been thoroughly checked and double-checked.

That our luggage has been safely stowed on the plane on which we are traveling and not on a plane headed to a different destination.

That there is sufficient fuel in the tanks to get us to our destination, with some extra gallons to spare.

That the safety video’s precautionary advice regarding drops in cabin pressure, oxygen masks, landings on water, and emergency evacuation will never have to be followed in an actual event.

That the undercarriage will descend and deploy as usual when the captain pushes the button.

That the plane will not be struck by lightning.

That the security personnel have been trained sufficiently well and will have done their screening thoroughly so that no individuals who mean us harm can possibly be aboard our flight.

That our flight will arrive in time for us to make our connection.

There can be many more such faith-based assumptions pertaining to air travel, but these are all that come to mind right now.

One last thought, this in reference to being stranded on the freeway during the rush hour. Very great faith is needed to shed that sense of unease you feel should you happen to be stuck longer than a few seconds beneath a freeway overpass. Earthquakes, you see?

The Thought of It

No, really. I don’t want to think about it. There’s so much else to think about. Why think about this? Yet. Yet, you cannot help it. You must from time to time, yes, maybe even on a daily basis, which is a wordy way of saying ‘everyday’, the thought will just come straightaway into your head, and you can’t avoid thinking about it. That’s usually the way it happens. It comes into your head. Even if you don’t want to think about it, you’re thinking about it. It just happens. It can’t be avoided.

Of course I can’t tell you what to think. That would be ungentlemanly of me. After all, who am I to presuppose that I am able to affect your thought processes? But if you were me, if you were grammatically correct I, you would certainly without fail think about it, simply because it’s there to think about, and there’s no getting around it.

It pops into your head. Like the old bad penny it keeps coming back. If you’re lucky you may not think about it when you get up in the morning and get out of bed. At least, not immediately. But soon enough you will. You can’t miss it. It’s there, lurking in the vicinity, and all you have to do is to be caught off guard for a second, and poof! it gets into your skull, and there you are thinking about it even without consciously meaning to.

It’s actually a bit scary, when you get right down to it. How it loiters there, just beyond the edge of your consciousness, waiting to pounce. The moment you relax, and all it takes is a split second, the thought slips in again. And once it gets inside your head, it is nearly impossible to get it out. It will linger, let me tell you. It will linger.

You can’t force it to go away, to clear the hell out of your head. You simply can’t. What you must do is get yourself distracted. Do something, maybe something physical, requiring the use of muscles. Physical exercise, yes, that’s one way. Don’t try working on puzzles or otherwise using your brain. That won’t do it. Don’t try turning on the television. That will only make it worse. Music sometimes helps, though. But you must play it loud. And then the neighbors might not like it.

Thursdays

I must sound like an old-time 78 rpm record that’s stuck in its groove. (You youngsters probably can’t relate to the old 78’s, which came before the 33’s and the 45’s, and were way, way before cassettes and CD’s, online music downloads, and iPods with white earbuds. Back in those days, you played a vinyl 78 rpm record on a turntable, and sound emerged from your loudspeakers. Sometimes the needle that rode in the grooves of the vinyl would not automatically lift itself off the record groove at the end of the music, and so it would continue scratching the surface over and over until you actually did the lifting yourself to stop it.)

I’m talking of course about my harping on the same topic, about time, the swift passage of it, and the profligate squandering of it. But actually it’s quite true, if you listen with an unbiased ear to my rant. Here’s how it’s been happening, week after week, month after month, and always faster and faster.

Thursdays are the worst. There’s the trash pickup, when you have to get the garbage cans out the evening before, because the truck arrives early, long before you wake up. In fact, it is the sound of their banging around in the street outside at 7 in the morning that wakes you up on Thursdays. Also the occasional cuss word in Spanish.

And every other Thursday it gets worse, because that’s when the recyclables are picked up. Those colored plastic recycle bins had some meaning to them in the past – blue for newspapers, dark blue for cans, grey for glass and plastic, green for other paper products such as empty milk cartons. But these days the colors don’t mean anything anymore. You can use any color for the various sorts of recyclable material, just so long as you use one bin for one sort.

What I’m trying to say, and am having considerable trouble doing so, what with all the interruptions and digressions that occupy my waking hours, is that Thursdays are coming at us far more swiftly than they had been in my youth. The weeks just fly by accelerando e con brio.

Talk about global warming and the melting of the icepack in Antarctica and glaciers in Greenland – everything, but everything is gathering speed today. Cars are driven faster. Fast food outlets turn out their products with ever increasing speed. You turn on the faucet, and water gushes out faster than before. Even insects on a summer evening seem to buzz around with greater speed. The momentum of life may be exhilarating for the kids today, but it is incredibly dizzying for those in my age group.

And the only thing I can think of doing is one that I must now do most days. It does nothing to slow down the pace of living by even a tiny fraction. What it does do is block it out for a little while.

The answer is a nap.

Odd Thoughts

It has been nearly a month since my last post, and I plan to do some catching up, as time's a-wastin'.

* * * * * *

In trying to learn a Romance language, I find that the most difficult part is to distinguish between nouns that are masculine versus those that are feminine. Sure, there are other parts of grammar that one must pay attention to, not least of which are verb conjugations, idiomatic phrases, and such. But for me the chief concern is gender.

Why, for example, should certain words in Spanish and Portuguese which end in ‘a’ -- words like ‘dia’ (day), ‘cinema’ (cinema) be considered masculine, while words ending in ‘o’ -- like ‘mano’ or ‘mão’ (hand, in Spanish and Portuguese respectively) be considered feminine. It just does not seem to make any sense.

* * * * *

The other day at a rather upscale Chinese restaurant, I saw an item on the menu that intrigued me: ‘Prophet fish filled with brown sauce.’

It turns out that ‘pomfret’ had been misspelt, and that it should have been ‘fillet’ instead of ‘filled’. How it was to be filled with brown sauce, and whatever flavor or shade of brown the sauce might have been, must have caused some diners to wonder.

Anatomy of a Baltic cruise 2001

The Boeing 777 heads eastward from San Francisco on a Great Circle route that takes us across cold northern latitudes towards London. On the tv screen on the seatback ahead, in between showings of movies, is a relief map of the areas over which we are flying, and a tiny image of our plane as it passes over places with names like Kuujjuaq and Godthab and Keflavik. The screen also informs us that we are at an altitude of 35,000 feet, some 6,000 feet higher than Mt Everest, and that the temperature outside this cosy aluminum envelope that surrounds us is minus 65 degrees Fahrenheit. On Channel 9, if we are interested, we can hear the cockpit voice transmissions as the pilot talks to Iceland Radio, then to a controller with a Scottish burr.

Ten and a half hours later, after three movies, two decent meals, and uncounted visits to the tail-end lavatories, the rattle of seatbelt buckles being released is a sign that we have arrived at London's Heathrow airport. We are met there by representatives of Holland America Line, who steer us and our luggage to a bus that takes us northeast through the Essex countryside to the port of Harwich, there to meet the MS Amsterdam. We're accustomed to such clichés as 'floating cities' and 'oceangoing hotels' used to describe big cruise ships, but the sight of this massive white-and-navy-blue hull with its nine decks and twin smokestacks is still pretty awe-inspiring. The check-in process goes quickly, even with the continuous flow of passengers (totaling over 1300) that come in by the busload. It is sunny and warm, and we are grateful finally to enter the air-conditioned comfort of our staterooms.

A shower, a nap, and a change of clothes, and we go to the 'La Fontaine' dining room for our first of many meals aboard. The food is excellent and the service impeccable, as we have come to expect from Holland America Line.

Cruise Impressions

Sunrise over Oslo fjord – muted mauve, rose, green, yellow and gold. The sea is calm, its surface barely broken by ripples, and the great ship's wake fans out from her sides in a wide vee. The city of Oslo is pretty, but of all the cities we will subsequently visit, it is perhaps the least memorable. It has the look and feel of a small provincial town in North America. Our tour guide makes no mention of Edvard Grieg at all, which is strange. We will find later that the Swedes hold the Norwegians in less than high regard (they consider them country bumpkins).

Helsingborg, Sweden – At the wharf at 7:00AM, below three flagpoles atop which flutter the Swedish flag (gold cross on a blue field), the Stars and Stripes, and the Dutch tricolor, is a high school marching band in uniform with baton twirlers and fifes and drums. Early-rising passengers line the starboard rail on the lower promenade deck, applauding these rosy-cheeked Swedish boys and girls who have come to greet the 'Amsterdam'.

We hop on the shuttle bus into the heart of town. The main square is faintly reminiscent of the one in Nice, France. We hike up to the Kanän, the medieval castle and keep dominating the city center. Helsingborg is separated from Denmark by the Øresund, at this point only a mile wide. The afternoon bus tour brings us back to the castle, but there is no time to visit the keep that had been padlocked during our earlier visit. Our guide is the prettiest young woman, a recent graduate from a teachers' college. We drive by the seaside villas, visit the Sofiero gardens with their rhododendrons, and sample the Rämlosa spring water, which tastes rusty. An oompah band is playing in the arcade; the place is obviously set up for visiting cruise passengers.

Warnemunde, Germany – My wife and I are up at 4:30AM to take the train from Warnemunde to Berlin. The ride in an old corridor car is long, hot, and uneventful. Of the ship’s 1300 passengers, about 900 have signed on for this Berlin tour. The train could not accommodate them all, so some had to make the trip by bus. The guide, a cheerfully chubby girl, provides us with box lunches on the train. The countryside here on the North German Plain is flat and undistinguished. Though I am a railroad aficionado, this train ride is not one for the memory-book. We arrive at a station in the former East Berlin and are herded into waiting tour buses.

Our guide in Berlin is a Jewish, and possibly gay, man in his forties, well-versed in Berlin's history. We drive along Unter den Linden, pass Alexanderplatz, and end up at the Charlottenburg Palace, where, marvel of marvels, I see Watteau's famous 'Shopsign of Gersaint', easily his masterpiece. The other masterpiece is Chardin's 'Market Kitchen'. Seeing both of these in the original made my day. One sour note: an incident with a museum security guard and a member of our tour group (an attractive dark-haired woman traveling with a teenage boy, probably her son). She was carrying a light jacket draped over her arm, and the officious guard motioned to her to put the jacket on, implying no doubt that she could be stealing a work by hiding it under her jacket. Seems some Germans have not yet shed that old Teutonic arrogance.

The Berlin Story is a sound and light show in a shopping arcade – just so-so. Excellent lunch at the 5-star Kempinsky Hotel on the famous Kurfürstendamm (called Ku-damm for short).

Rønne, Bornholm, Denmark – After picking up a pilot outside the breakwater, the Amsterdam makes a 180^o turn and backs – actually BACKS – into the snug harbor and its berth. At 7:00AM there is a band on the pier welcoming us. One of its members is a pretty blonde tuba player, the only member of the band wearing high heels. At every port so far our ship's arrival has been welcomed by a band, and now here in Rønne there is this group of musicians, most of them middle-aged and in street clothes, except for this attractive, slender, blonde woman with nice legs holding her tuba against her bosom like a baby.

Rønne is a small, neat, pretty town with more bicycles than cars. The picturesque houses are of brick and tile; there is a small church off the main square, and even a Chinese restaurant. We have limited time there. After a visit in the local supermarket, where we buy some caviar and beer, and then walk back to the ship from the main square.

Stockholm, Sweden – slight overcast and a drop or two of rain. The Royal Palace is quite work-a-day in appearance. Not a big deal except for the Gobelin tapestries, the Don Quixote room, the 'White Sea' room, and the Bernadotte quarters. The Swedes are a practical people, and their royal palace reflects their no-nonsense approach to life. Our tour guide, a short pudgy middle-aged woman in a black dress with a white collar, has a nunnish look and manner. Our time in Stockholm is again limited, so all we do there (at least for the men) is to people-watch in the Drottninggatan, while the women shop for souvenirs.

Helsinki, Finland – another early-morning arrival. We stay aboard ship the entire morning, and only join the land tour at 2:00PM. It takes us through the clean and well-kept town, letting us off at the Senate Square, where atop a rise sits the three-domed white church, the Lutheran Tuomiokirkko. Next we visit two other tourist attractions, the Church of the Rock, and the Sibelius monument in Sibelius park, where we take pictures alongside the composer's sculpted steel head. Back on the bus, the guide plays 'Finlandia' through the speakers. I ask her whether she has the 'Karelia Suite', she says yes, but there's not enough time.

That evening we have a Dutch-theme dinner, the women wearing white bonnets and the men Hans Brinker caps, all of cheap cloth and made in China. Kitschy enough to make you think of sticking a finger in the dike.

St. Petersburg, Russia – We sail slowly into the port at daybreak. An uninviting flat landscape of rusty cranes and gantries, corrugated iron sheds, greets the early promenaders. Smoke rises into the still morning air from campfires on the shore away from the pier. A female Russian immigration or customs official, austere in brown uniform with peaked cap, strikes an odd note with her sexy backless high-heeled slippers. A note here about young Russian women – their clothing takes on the most incongruous combinations of styles and taste. One museum guard at the Peterhof wears a sleeveless silver lamé cocktail blouse with workaday denim jeans and platform-soled slip-ons.

The Peterhof palace (Petrodvorets in Russian) is a long, hot bus ride outside of St. Petersburg over bumpy roads, past unprepossessing Soviet-era apartment blocks and green areas on which families picnic and sunbathe. Beat-up old Ladas and Volgas overtake our bus on the right – some looking ready to fall apart at any moment. At the palace we wait in line at the entrance, with the sun beating down. A five-piece ensemble dressed – in this heat – in 18^th century costume, and bewigged, plays tunes for the benefit of the Americans. Since arriving at the Peterhof, several bands and groups have struck up "The Star-Spangled Banner", trusting to the generosity of the tourists with their hard currency. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tourists, both foreign and local, and the tourist guides inside the palace have to shout each other down in order to be heard.

The Peterhof itself is well-restored, but when you have seen dozens of palaces, any new one, no matter how unique it is claimed to be, begins to look like any of the others. To preserve the exquisite inlaid-wood floors of the palace, visitors must wear felt-soled slippers over their shoes. The damn things won't stay put; they keep slipping off to one side.

After dozens of rooms and corridors, we are happy to be outside again, overlooking the amazing fountains and waters of the Peterhof, with the garish gilt statues flanking them. Milling throngs of holiday-making Russians and cruise ship tourists fill the gardens. Our guide has a hard time rounding up all her charges.

At these high latitudes so soon after the summer solstice, the days are long. There is enough light at 11:00PM outside to read by and to take photos without using a flash.

The 'STOP' signs at intersections here are in English. A busload of teenagers, probably on a school outing, passes our bus, and then we in turn pass it, and at each encounter through the bus windows, the kids wave and smile, a friendly, cheerful bunch of youngsters. We wave and smile back.

St. Petersburg (Day Two) – An early get-up again, and it's dull and drizzly outside. The Hermitage (Winter Palace) tour begins but first a visit to St Isaac's Square. There must be a dozen buses around the square spewing forth tourists, from the Amsterdam and from other cruise ships, including the Crystal Symphony. Our guide is Talia, a slender pretty girl almost my height. Bad luck on the bus as we arrive at the Hermitage: my camcorder jams.

At the entrance to the Hermitage Museum, just at the foot of the steps, is a kind of shallow pit filled with debris (cigarette butts mostly) over which is a metal grille. It dawns on me that that's for scraping the snow off one's shoes in the wintertime.

The Museum is worth the entire trip – a true gem to rival the great art museums of the world – the Prado, the Louvre, the MOMA in New York. Its collection is vast, and in the short time we are there we barely see the smallest fraction of it. Just the Impressionist galleries alone would require a whole day to survey, and we only had twenty-five minutes to rush through all of them.

Surprise of surprises, friends from the MS "Crystal Symphony" find us in the room with the malachite urns – they had kept an eye out for us. Considering the crowds in the place it is nothing short of a miracle that we made contact.

At Tintoretto's "Conversion of St Paul" a lady from our group hovers near and says to me: "I thought the guide said 'Conversion of the Soul'." I reply that I had heard her say Saul, which was Paul's name before the conversion. The lady says happily: "Are you a believer? Oh, I am too."

After a box lunch in a park, we go to the Peter and Paul Fortress on an island on the Neva River. Again, scores of tour groups, each one getting into another's way. It's no way to sightsee.

In the evening we take another tour, many but not all in formal wear, this time to the Yusupov Palace, where the 'mad monk' Rasputin met his end. Champagne, caviar, and operatic arias made for an impressive cultural, though very unusually warm, evening.

Leaving St Petersburg we pass slowly by the Russian naval base at Kronstadt, a vast installation, but the only submarines we see are older diesel-engine jobs, as the big Russian nuclear subs are up north in Murmansk.

Tallinn, Estonia – the brass band on the pier is the largest one yet – I counted 23 musicians. Our lanky guide Andres is (as one elderly Southern couple asserts when they are left behind at the main square) the 'worst one yet'. Fact that the guide has B.O. and looks like the character Lurch from the old Addams Family sitcom does not help at all. Estonia is interesting for having been a former Soviet Republic, and still has many ethnic Russians living there. The country and its inhabitants look somewhat better off than what we saw in St Petersburg. The Estonian language is closely related to Finnish.

Two nights at sea before we finally arrive in Copenhagen. We celebrate July 4^th aboard. The Baltic Sea is a very busy waterway. Being almost landlocked, it is ninety percent fresh water from the snows melting into it.

Amazing number of old people in wheelchairs on this cruise.

On the TV news we learn that western Europe from Wales to the Mediterranean have been battered by storms, and here in the north it's lovely blue skies with hardly a cloud.

Copenhagen

Debarkation at Copenhagen is very well-organized, as has been every phase of this Holland America cruise. They seem to think of everything. Our rooms at the Sophie Amalie Hotel in Sankt Annae Plads (St Anne's Square) are not yet ready, so we stow our luggage, and head to the main pedestrian street, the Strøget, about ten blocks from the hotel. Crowds of people on the street. Sunny and quite hot. A visit to the famous Tivoli Gardens shows us the Danes at play.

In the evening we walk from our hotel to see the Little Mermaid – Copenhagen's symbol – and from there we take the sightseeing bus (A hundred kroner for a two-day pass) to see a bit of the City.

The following day, our last, we again sightsee on the upper deck of the open-top bus, then lunch at No 27 Strøget, a wood-panelled restaurant bar. Afternoon we visit the Fisketovet Shopping Center and have dinner at the Cap Horn Restaurant in the heart of bustling Nyhavn, the former seamen’s neighborhood, now a trendy meeting place for the crowds of young people sitting all over the cobbled streets, drinking beer and wine. All the open-air restaurants are full.

We visit a fabulous photography exhibition on Køngens Nytorv Square. The whole square has been set up with kiosks and stelae on which the giant photographs are displayed, lit by a network of overhead lights. The photos were taken from the air in many parts of the world by photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand. The show is titled "Jorden set fra Himmelen" (Scenes from the sky). And all round the square the floodlit buildings give the evening an extra sparkle.

Of all the places we visited, the one that I am likely to remember best is St. Petersburg and particularly the Hermitage Museum, where we just did not spend enough time. If we ever visit again, we must spend at the very least a whole day there.

Brief

Impatient in youth

we fret over

languid time

in a world

of lingering days

Impatient in age,

our briefer years

now conspire

to follow one other

recklessly

into infinity

My Oil Paintings & Photos

Well, Yahoo has finally transferred all my photos over to Flickr, as I discovered today. It's taken them awhile to get this done, but everything appears to be in order, nothing got lost in transition.

By clicking on the image of the painting below, you'll get to the Flickr web page, and there you'll be able to enlarge the images by clicking on the (+)icon. You will also be able to navigate through the various albums I had uploaded before.

I plan in future to add to them.

Another Painting

Painting

O, To Be In England

So. I'm finally getting round to writing about our brief visit to the United Kingdom last month. We stayed with dear friends who made us as comfortable and welcome as any guest could ever hope to be, and then some. How can we ever forget our gracious hostess bringing us our morning cup of tea to start each day?

We met their sons, their wives, and their grandchildren, all of whom received us with kindness that we can only hope some day to reciprocate. We met friends whom we had not seen since secondary school days in Hong Kong. We shared reminiscences of the sort that only those who have lived together in a unique place during a unique time are able to do. We also met a dear sweet lady who just celebrated her hundred-and-first birthday, the mother of our hostess.

Our host and hostess took us on whirlwind tours over several full and busy days. Though we had been to England twice before, they now showed us places that we had not seen on previous guided tours. We walked in the heart of the City of London, strolled through Cambridge, where our hostess had been schooled, admired old St Alban's Abbey Cathedral, were stirred in the American hangar at the Duxford Imperial War Museum, enjoyed a leisurely boat ride down the Thames to visit the Royal Naval College and Observatory at Greenwich, sampled a nice cuppa at Harrod's, where we also saw the memorial to Diana and Dodi (crystal pyramid, Egyptian motif, a trifle outré to my way of thinking) and indulged ourselves with some pork pies, rediscovered the Underground, went to the theater for Les Misérables, and shopped at the outdoor market in Covent Garden, half expecting to see Eliza Doolittle there among the columns with her basket of violets.

What a perfect week, and among what perfect friends!

Steak House

On our drive home from Southern California last weekend, we stopped for dinner at a well-known ranch house in the middle of the Central Valley. It is not one of my favorite places to stop, being situated right next to a cattle farm extending over hundreds of acres. But … I was outvoted, and anyhow, the alternative eateries in the immediate vicinity were of the fast food genre, so there we were.

Although they have a large dining room, furnished in the western style (pitchforks and wagon wheels on the higher walls, framed fruit crate labels in back of the booths), we had to wait about twenty minutes to be seated.

Waiting is for me a good opportunity to do some people-watching. I'd say that most of the diners coming and going were tourists like ourselves, and it is probably fair to say (and I hope not to sound unkind though it will probably seem so) that more than half of the diners who walked past me were overweight. Places like this seem to attract heavier folks, in my experience. The portions here are large, for large appetites.

My initial impression was confirmed when eventually we were led to our booth by our hostess. Great platters of red meat, mounds of mashed or fried potatoes, tall glasses of beer. Ice cream and milk shakes. Calories upon countless calories of animal fat and starch. The clatter of silverware on sturdy china. All the sights and sounds of a good feeding place.

It was almost enough to make me lose my appetite. Almost, but not quite.

* * *

This week has been a busy one. We did the cooking for our older granddaughter's birthday dinner yesterday. (Happy birthday, sweetheart.) Between my wife and me, we produced three favorite dishes, all of which turned out very well and were enjoyed by all present. Afterwards there was a store-bought chocolate-mint icecream cake.

It has turned warmer today in Northern California. The fire season is yet with us, not a pleasant thought.

From Yahoo to Flickr

Yahoo just informed me that my photo albums have been moved from Yahoo to Flickr.

So here's the link:

Flickr

Been quite busy these past days setting up a new computer. Have a glorious Fourth tomorrow.