| Nothing Doing |
[Jan. 13th, 2009|04:41 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  rejuvenated | ] |
Today was my first yoga class for three weeks, following a long vacation in which I walked plenty but did no stretches, Pilates, or yoga. We ate lots of starch and fat and few vegetables. The only routine I managed to keep up was nightly elbow curls. For the past year or so, I’ve been battling intermittent IT band soreness and stiff hamstrings with gentle, age-appropriate healing regimens. And now, a vacation with no proper self care. And to make it worse, in every hotel we shared single beds which while congenial did not allow for much stretching or turning at night. Hell with the lid off, ya think? Connective tissue scarring from here to doomsday? Not exactly. My leg soreness disappeared and I could run through traffic without my hamstrings protesting. Our weight was unchanged, despite the fearsome diet. Today we did Bikram yoga at 6 AM. Now my butt is sore. I suppose I'm healed, eh? |
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| From UTC +2 to UTC -8 |
[Jan. 12th, 2009|05:03 pm] |
The Lufthansa plane is spotless, its interior an upbeat yet soothing gray with yellow accents. The air is almost painfully clean after Cairo’s viscous gumbo of car exhaust, sand, and animal effluvia. We were airborne before dawn and connected smoothly at Frankfurt.
The overhead monitors cycle a moving map, alternating with a readout of altitude, ground speed, and arrival time. The map shows our flight path. It zooms in from a view of Europe to a view of the North Sea, and then back to the data display. It’s empty blue with our red flight path and our plane is a white arrowhead pointing to the upper left. I look up again. Our path across a map with no features. A sip of coffee later, we’re uncovered a sliver of “North Sea”. There are no features on the map. The air has the scent of silence. The red line bisects the “r” in “North Sea”.
We have come out of Egypt. |
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| on the road |
[Jan. 3rd, 2009|03:47 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  curious | ] |
I am trveling in Egypt, Dec 27 to Jan 11, and journaling to an email list. Please lemme know if you want to be included (or excluded as the case may be) |
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| Ralph Nader is a racist old fool |
[Nov. 7th, 2008|10:36 am] |
The choice of "Uncle Tom" is simply racist. Nader could have chosen a non-racial epithet, in which case he'd merely be an envious and destructive old fool whose loathsome personality obscures some valid political points which I hope will be made by more credible people, like the ones we actually elected. |
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| Feelin groovy |
[Sep. 5th, 2008|01:17 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  relieved | ] |
An old shoulder injuary has come back into my life after years of dormancy. Too little yoga, too many political news stories to read, who knows why. An hour ago I got on my bike, went up to Chinatown and got a walkin chiropractic adjustment from Dr. Andy Lesko, followed by ten minutes of massage from one of his entourage. His place of work is also his home and his sculpture studio. This ain't no spa. Body work is done in the open on benches with cracked plastic upholstery, and cigarette smoke, not flower essence, lingers in the air. But for a mere handful of dollars, I'm adjusted, relieved, and back at my desk, total elapsed time, fifty minutes. |
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| Milking it, shamelessly |
[Aug. 22nd, 2008|05:09 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  relaxed | ] |
I'm back from a week in Sacramento and am about to go downtown to a Mandarin speaker's meetup. Tonight's theme is karaoke and ballroom dancing. I hope to again perform "Wang Qing Shui", which was such a hit for me in Shijiazhuang this May:
I'm not so sure about the ballroom dancing part. That's one bit of Chinese culture I've yet to participate in.
.. and here is the original KTV video, by Liu de Hua ("Andy Lau" in English-speaking circles)
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| Guess I'll stay a while longer |
[Aug. 10th, 2008|08:15 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  optimistic | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Bebel Gilberto | ] |
Since April, I’ve been entertaining a lengthy slow-moving courtship from a well-known e-commerce company located in Silicon Valley. Back at the job, I got my midyear review, steady as ever, and a new project involving face to face meetings with some colleagues I actually like. And next week, a four-day trip to Sacramento (well, Roseville, actually) for a process workshop. Anticlimactic, eh? At least I’ll get to enjoy some real summer. S.F. has been colder than a Hollywood goodbye for the last several weeks. And this week my wife and I are off to Arizona on Thursday to help our daughter move into her first apartment. We're going Thursday, and I won't have to take vacation time, I just just log in from the hotel. |
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| What I did last weekend |
[Jul. 22nd, 2008|02:44 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  bouncy | ] |
Last weekend was our annual campout in the redwoods.
On Sunday as the camp was clearing out, I played the following sort-of-downtempo samba-and-tango set by the pond, as dozens of my closest friends cavorted in the green water among the lotuses.
1 Alá-Lá-Ô Daude
2 Araúna Comadre Florzinha
3 Taieiras - Ely Camargo
4 O Canto do Berimbau (Studio) Capoeira Experience
5 Freestyle Love - Stereo Maracana
6 Pilotando o Bonde Da Excursao - Marcelo d2
7 Hi-Fi Trumpet [boys from brazil mix] Hotel Costes, etage 3
8 Toca Tango Caceres, Juan Carlos
9 Verano Porteno Astor Piazzolla
10 Mi Corazón Bajofondo Tango Club
11 Trilhos Urbanos Caetano Veloso
12 Apito No Samba Lalo Schifrin
13 Tambor De Lingua Gilson Silveira, Roberto Taufic
14 Baiao Gilson Silveira, Roberto Taufic
15 Casa De Bamba - Conjunto Raul De Barros
16 Nega Dina - Emilio Santiago
17 Vale do Juca - Siba
18 Sem Pisar No Chão Vinicius Cantuária
19 Acender As Velas Nara Leão
20 Saudade Da Bahia Luciana Souza
... and I opened with "Captialism Gone Mad" by Mighty Sparrow. Couldn't quite get around to playing any Todd Rundgren this time though.
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| A Wizard, A True Star |
[Jul. 10th, 2008|08:48 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  thoughtful | ] |
Shout out to Todd Rundgren, master lyricist and crafter of well-made songs. Here he starts a song on the "B" part and launches into the chorus. I love this guy. He wrote "Real Man", ",."Sometimes I Don't Know What to Feel" and "You Left Me Sore", along with the better-known "Hello, It's Me", "Just One Victory", and so many more. To think, for years I thought those songs were just clever and funny. But right now, I'm listening to "Real Man", feeling my whole life in his words. Todd Rundgren. Appollinan craft. See also: The Buzzcocks. Scritti Pollitti. Day hikes. The exponential function as its own derivative. Real ale. A smoothly shifting derailleur. Cross-body lead. Not all beauty needs a dark side to shine. Time to go pick up my kid from the airport, she's only with us for a weekend this summer.
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| My Last Credit Card |
[Jun. 30th, 2008|06:36 pm] |
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I just activated a new credit card. It will expire in July 2012. That's it, right, the end o' the world. We're done. The Mayans said it, the McKennas repeated it, and my credit card issuer believes it. |
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| My Correspondent, My Gastroenterologist |
[Jun. 22nd, 2008|04:55 pm] |
We went to see "War, Inc." last night. Last weekend, we gritted our teeth and saw "Sex In The City" to see what the fuss was about. This time we let Hollywood pander to our politics; there was even product placement for "The Nation". The film is an action adventure / comedy about the war in Iraq and corporate world domination. John Cusack is cast as a hit man beset by midlife doubts, whose loins and conscience are stirred by a left-wing correspondent played by Marisa Tomei. There are lots of sight gags and reasonably clever plot, but this movie suffered from uneven tone and pacing. Many of the fight scenes were just too long, and John Cusack as a faux-naif Midwest James Bond wasn't very convincing. There were too many shots of him, and not enough of Marisa Tomei. But the zany crowded plot, and the touches of genuine horror (think of battlefield mercy killings, or maybe don't ...) ultimately qualified it as genuine satire. The same outfit provides mercenaries and turnkey disaster relief operations. A political coup is being planned around a trade show built around the celebrity wedding of a foul-mouthed Central Asian pop star played by Hillary Duff. It mostly worked for me, although I felt I was subjected to most gags more than once, just in case I'd been napping.
As the credits rolled, I began to reflect on some of the movie references I hadn't quite caught at the time, and I saw "Mark Leyner" pop up as one of the writers. Didn't I remember him from somewhere? Amazon.com helpfully groups him with Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace, and Kurt Vonnegut, though Pynchon's a bit of a stretch. I recall reading "Tooth Marks on a Corn Dog" and "My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist" back in the 1990's. Perhaps it was his sure yet manic touch that gave the movie enough shape that it could still stand up beneath the weight of too many stylized fight scenes. Had "War Inc." been squeezed into thirty fewer minutes, or given some meatier Central Asian characters, it could've been a contender. |
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| Back from China |
[Jun. 8th, 2008|05:59 pm] |
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I have taken Tiger Mountain, by stealth and sloth and strategy. We are home safe, having missed the Sichuan earthquake by 1000 miles, and a record-breaking Hong Kong rainstorm, well, we slept through that one and came home the next day. More via email to those of you who asked. |
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| Get Cher Travel Blog Right Here |
[May. 3rd, 2008|12:48 pm] |
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I'm leaving for China in a week and may do some blogging, but LJ is blocked there, so I'll have to use POEM (plain ole email). Let me know if you want to receive my occasional reports. |
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| April flowers |
[Apr. 29th, 2008|02:48 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  grateful | ] |
This year, the Chico Wildflower ride had near-perfect weather, cloudless skies, cool enough for the 2,000 foot climb, then warming up during the final flat forty miles, to a perfect ninety something so that the first beer went down real nice. But only two of us, Mary and I, were there of the five who went last year. One is no longer riding due to progressing serious illness. One has pretty much stopped riding because she went down, hard, and broke her femur last summer. And the third one, our regular riding partner most Sundays, couldn't come due to a death in her family. Said family, though ostensibly Jewish, are finally having a funeral six weeks after the decedent's passing. Go figure. Better still, they can go figure.
I can explain my entire practice of Judaism "while standing on one foot": I call Mira, she has Pesach. Mira's an anthropology prof, and her parents run the Jewish museum in Berkeley. Her seders are always a hoot, with costumes encouraged, parents sort-of-presiding, and the two of us as the token hetero and married people, and as token youngsters besides. Meeting other people's affirmative-action targets for normalcy has been a great strategy for me over the years. This seder was a little subdued, though. Guess who were the only people to wear anything other than street clothes? Mira's dad led us through the Haggadah, but it was not the some Haggadah that was at everyone else's place setting. He didn't hear anyone's suggestion to switch books. He lost his place, he read the four questions a second time. As one of only two adult male guests, I had the honor of being son-substitute and smoothing things out when I could. Sad, though. The phenomenon fka senility.
And now, back to prepping for my travels, which begin in just ten more days. If there's a lesson in any of the above, I'll deal with it later :-0. |
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| Spring Cleaning |
[Apr. 5th, 2008|02:18 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  productive | ] |
I'm pacing myself through a the half-marathon than runs from New Year's, when I was offered a teaching slot in Wuhan, to May 10th, when I leave for China. I have three big projects to balance: A large document to be done at work, continuing to study enough Putonghua to fully enjoy my upcoming trip, and creating my presentation materials. I'll be doing two weeks of Mandarin immersion in Shijiazhuang, then teaching a short course(in English) on Business Process Management to some undergraduates at the China University of Geosciences, Wuhan. Think Carnegie-Mellon, but with a different alphabet. It's only a guest slot that they offer to foreign speakers at the International e-Business Conference, but I'm the only such speaker who is not an academic. So am truly honored and awkward polite phrases flow naturally. This is a next step towards a possible future, teaching for a term or a year in a foreign country. I have to overcome the bad experience I had teaching night school ten years ago; a resume item for sure, but I was quite unable to connect with the student. This will be different. And I hope, better. I am lagging behind my own self-imposed date to complete my Powerpoint slides, but I'll be on time for my hosts.
Got our visas yesterday. It wasn't quite urgent, but with a Tibet protest coming up, I wanted to get this formality out of the way lest there be any diplomatic tit-for-tatting to interfere with our plans. I'll exit China after 3 weeks, meet Mary in Hong Kong, and re-enter China with her to do some vacationing in either Guilin or Chengdu. The parlous state of the US dollar has me investigating how to open some bank accounts in yuan.
While my IT band syndrome has eased with daily stretching, my left hamstring is a mess and I can't do some yoga stretches and it's not getting better. At least it doesn't get in the way of sitting, walking, biking, or dancing, so I can just live with it. We are planning to go on three 100 K bike rides together this year: Chico later this month, Napa in August, and Clear Lake in October. Mary is doing a 100K women-only ride today, and I'd best get to my work now. I've raised a 3rd eyebrow at my LJ and other electronic silences lately. Just busy I guess, with the molecular process of making the learning efforts through assorted dull plateaus. Bikram yoga and Chinese flash cards, for me, this is a meditation practice. My desire for result must be suspended for the practice to succeed.
Every position is Shivasana. Especially cross-body lead! |
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| Kick-ass healing |
[Feb. 10th, 2008|10:47 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  busy | ] |
I am still dealing with my sore IT band. Oddly, it hurts when I drive a car, but not when I ride my bike, so I'm not about to become immobilized. I also need to sit in ways where my hips are above my knees. So I squirm a lot. I'm doing stretches and roll myself on a foam roller. I went for some active treatment on Friday. Jon F, who treated me with Thai massage and accupuncture, also works out of a walk-in chiropractic clinic in Chinatown. For thirty bucks, you get an adjustment from the chiropractor and some massage from one of several practitioners who hang out there. And, the first time is free! I walked over there Friday afternoon for the 4 to 6 pm clinic. First surprise, no one there is Asian. Andy, the chiropractor, is a bearded sculptor and painter from New York, and a smoker besides. The storefront studio is clogged. There are five well-worn massage tables in the middle of the room. The walls are covered with his paintings, and most other available surfaces are festooned with his metal sculptures or assorted junk. The blacks and browns of the art work nicely complement the faint smell of tobacco smoke. Wholistic, all right, and from the dark side. Andy sits me down says "relax" and seconds later wrenches my head, to the right, <crack!!!!> and to the left <lesser crack.>. I lay down on the torn and dingy table, fold my arms, and with another tug and an almost fierce yank, my back had given up a series of pops and snaps. At the next table, the massagee was tutoring her masseur in beginning French. My attempt to join the lesson were ignored. Elapsed time: three minutes. Next, Jon stepped up, folded my legs this way and that, took me through some powerful dyadic stretches, and did some rather painful shiatsu-like pressure up and down the outsides of my legs. Total time: twenty minutes. All with my pants and shoes on! No ambient string music, no bloody scented soaps! Yes, I can supply my own sense of quite and safety, and save a few bucks. I walked back to the office happy, if not quite cured. I'll be back. |
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| El Conquistador, Fajardo |
[Jan. 30th, 2008|01:31 pm] |
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This is the last full day at the aforementioned sterile, inclusive resort. The very name offends. But for the relative lack of entertaining activities, the hotel very much resembles a cruise ship that never docks. Oh, it's comfortable, and you can walk into town and avoid the blandish food and insanely high prices. But there's not even a beach! It's a shuttle boat ride away! I don't know why this place was built. There are so many beautiful beaches, and mountains in Puerto Rico; there must have been quite a political deal involved in getting the place built here, and with a casino as well, as its major draw. I'm here as a trailing spouse, at an attorneys' convention. I was one of 3 men to 20 women in the salsa class for spouses. That was OK, but there's no real constituency for dancing given that gender ratio. I'm glad we will have one more night back in San Juan and can return to the Nuyorican Cafe. Compounding the gritty mediocrity of the days, I've attempted to not use up my vacation days by working remotely for three days. Very easy, with a laptop, a Blackberry, and a room with an Internet connection? I need to train my new boss not to care where I am located. But after hours of fiddling I determined that my laptop has lost its ability to connect via wireless, as well as not having a functioning battery. So my work life has been squeezed through the tiny keyhole of the Blackberry and a thousand fitful pointless errands around the grounds looking for signal. I am extra anxious given the parlous state of my employer's industry. Meanwhile, back at the convention, the customary round of parties and receptions has been a little threadbare compared with prior years. But it's scenic, the weather and the swimming pools are fine, I've gotten some light reading done ("33 Strategies of War", by Robert Greene, of "48 Laws of Power" fame) my leg is recovering. |
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bahir's journal