Sylvia's Journal

Archive Page 100

Jubilating

Published December 24, 2012 Uncategorized Leave a Comment

My home office is overgrown with stuff, primarily papers, CDs, books, memorabilia and then some cloth from all over in boxes. And then there is the furniture; anything that doesn’t fit anyplace in the house came to my office because it used to be the one with unused space. But the measure is full now and I have been fantasizing about an office makeover.

Sita was excited about that idea too, until she walked into the office and realized that I needed to some weeding first and told me the makeover had to wait until the place was uncluttered. After a day of hemming and hawing I finally made a start this morning by throwing out lecture and seminar notes and readings that were 40 years old. To the untrained eye it looks like nothing changed but four hours of cleaning produced two bags of paper for recycling and another with rubbish. With a little bit of luck Sita may reconsider the makeover.

Saturday evening and Sunday evening we went caroling. Saturday in Gloucester the singing was more of a jubilation, with several guitars, ukuleles, mandolins, a small harp, a key board and a piano. The management and orchestration was in the great hands of our friend Andy who knows a bit about Christmas carols and a large crowd. We ended with a formidable rendering of Hallelujah, sopranos in one small room of their enormous Victorian house, altos on the staircase, tenors in the parlor, bases in the hallway.

The power of music and singing together made me want to pick up my violin again – the one instrument that was missing. I was reminded of our West African Grass days in Senegal, with our Sunday morning practice, more than forty years ago.

On Sunday we caroled at Diane’s, also a family tradition. Accompanied by a pianist, with a smaller and older crowd, we sang more or less the same songs, not quite as grand a performance but joyful too. Here too we divided the 12 days of gifting, more or less by family rather than part of the house, creating (in both cases) much hilarity as the competition (to be the loudest) gets fierce. The group with the most youngsters always outperforms the others.

Full house

Published December 22, 2012 Uncategorized Leave a Comment

We have a full house, our daughters, their men and one baby and two dogs filled the house with noise, stuff, dog hair and baby toys. We love it.

We hadn’t seen Faro for 3 weeks and were astonished about his development. His grip on things is firm now and his movements less jerky. He can crawl across the room, propelling himself in a clever way, arm underneath his chest, knee pushing against arm, bum up and then forward. He does this with little apparent effort.

He did stare at us when he arrived, for a long time. You could practically see his neurons firing inside his brain, surging for connections (with his opa and oma) that are still a bit weak. And then suddenly there was this smile – connection made! He did the same when his auntie Tessa and uncle Steve showed up. They hadn’t seen each other for nearly three month. He is a different kid now, no longer an infant but a little boy with real boy clothes on.

The storm that covered the middle of this country with snow was wet with 65 mph gusts of wind and the cove a roiling cauldron. Anything not tied down took to the air. A plastic garbage can was floating in the harbor.

I worked from home all day which was a challenge – a squealing baby, cooing Tessa, barking dogs and other mayhem plus the stress of typing with a right hand in a cast. Still, I managed to get about 75% of my goals for the day met.

But now the weekend and Christmas holiday has started. It is time to start preparing for that.

Christmas commutes

Published December 20, 2012 Uncategorized Leave a Comment

The dreaded Christmas commute home is in full swing. I pass 4 shopping centers. This slows the ride considerably. And then there is the daily accident making it a 2 hours trip from office door to hearth and hubby. Such a long commute condemns me to repeated news cycles so even the radio brings no solace.

Tessa is on the home stretch now too, driving on Thursday from Ashville NC to Pittsfield MA in one fell swoop. From there it is a short ride home on Friday. We think Tessa and Steve will still recognize us, despite all the hours we spent in doctors’ offices, but will the dogs?

Axel has been preparing the nest for homecoming – cleaning the barn (our Brazilian cleaning lady in the lead) and washing the dog-haired sheets, stale from two months of idleness. Tessa and Steve will thus move back in until they find a place of their own (anyone?) between Manchester and Boston that has room for all six of them: 2 humans, 2 dogs and 2 cars.

At work new stuff keeps piling on old. I have moved a long way from my miserable re-entry blues a year ago. Among them some pretty exciting assignments that will allow me to explore beyond the boundaries, in the outer periphery of what I am currently familiar with.

I am learning to live with my hand(icap), periodically unwrapping my hand to massage the stiff fingers but also to type a little faster. Axel massaged the hand yesterday with a ‘poet-warrior’ blend of oils (ginger, arnica and cayenne), recommended by our masseuse. I didn’t care that much about the warrior part but the poet part of the blend was real nice.

Splintered

Published December 18, 2012 Uncategorized 1 Comment

The final diagnosis on my hand is in. Only one bone is broken, splintered said the CT scan. No use to put the pieces back together, it would be nearly impossible. The battle plan is to let the pieces glom together and make the bone whole again. It would be a messy whole but who cares. The arthritic joint will be painless or not. If it is not the hand doctor will fuse everything together at no great cost to hand functionality. Fingers crossed.

I am slowly adapting to my handicap. Today I drove myself to two appointments. It was easy as long as I can use my left hand. Anything that requires right hand strength or agility is impossible for the near future. This includes changing the flow of hot or cold air into the car, cutting hard foods and doing the dishes.

I am aware that my troubles are nothing against the backdrop of the unspeakable drama that unfolded in Connecticut last Friday. It occupies every minute of our waking hours and keeps raising all these nasty questions that we cannot seem to answer as a society, like what is the problem with banning assault weapons?

Sinister mustard

Published December 16, 2012 Uncategorized Leave a Comment

I am a sinistra, a forced lefty now. One or two of the little bones in my right hand are broken according to the X-ray. Axel took the bus to the airport so he could drive me to the X-ray machine which eventually led to the emergency room for a splint and pain meds.

An now I am adjusting to a period of lefthandedness. All the things I would like to do over the next few weeks (and that require two functional hands) had to be dropped in the ‘not this year’ bucket.

I abandoned the pain meds after the side effects turned out worse than enduring the pain of the broken bone(s). Why anyone would want to take these for fun and pay a premium price for them is a mystery to me.

I have a half cast that an be removed for scratching and bathing, a good thing. I am already quite good at putting it on an off with one hand. For other daily living activities I need help from nurse Axel. It’ all too familiar. But because of the familiarity I also know this phase will pass.

Despite the new handicap I was able to start on my yearly mustard production and was able to produce two batches with one hand and very little help. So those who were worried about a mosterdless Christmass can relax. I call it my mostardicum sinistrum.

Back and down

Published December 13, 2012 On the road Leave a Comment
Tags: Baltimore, Japan, Tokyo, Washington D.C.

The second day of the workshop went fast. This always happens. The presentations were interesting, one was about Afghanistan and another about the solar mamas featuring a woman from Jordan and the delicate and not so delicate gender dynamics that kick in when a woman is chosen for what men traditionally may consider a man’s job.

We all gave feedback and each team took the praise and pointers in with grace.

And then we went home, arriving in rainy and warm Massachusetts, later turning to cold. We adjusted quickly to the setback of 14 hours and within a day I was back on a plane, a domestic trip which doesn’t count, to Baltimore. The one day trip turned into a two day trip with a meeting tacked on in our Washington office since I was in the neighborhood.

I went to see N, now a friend, once a student, after hours. She is now a doctoral student at Johns Hopkins. On the way to her apartment I miscalculated a step down from a high curb and made the kind of fall that usually breaks a hip in someone 10 years older.

Tomorrow will tell whether I broke something. Using my right hand is severely limited and painful; hence the short entry.

Work for food

Published December 9, 2012 On the road Leave a Comment
Tags: Japan, Tokyo

Of the 30 participants we had planned for, only 19 showed up. This was both good and bad news. The good news was that we were more comfortable in the small room, the only one available now that the organization has moved to smaller quarters. The bad news was that the carefully assigned groups had to be re-assigned.

English language levels, promised to be high, were more mixed. It was easy to tell who grew up or worked outside Japan. They are all supposed to speak English well for their future UN careers but some have a long way to go. I wondered whether learning English here is like in Afghanistan where teachers who speak very poorly are teaching others in a downward spiral of competence.

Most of the material we covered was new (Kolb’s learning styles, Cohen and Bradford’s Influence Model, with an emphasis on currencies, and emotional intelligence, using a playing cards exercise that I learned years ago at OBTC). The currency session was productive, even though some didn’t quite get it, in that they added some very Japanese examples to the ones I gave them.

Today will be a lighter day for us but a heavier day for them as they have to give a powerpoint presentation about a topic they care about and that relates to their UN ambitions. The specs for this were handed down by the ministry – powerpoint is still the most used tool for communicating content and interest, like it or not.

I do love working here in Japan and with these young professionals, primarily because they had to compete to get into this program, they have to pay for it themselves and they do it on weekends after their regular workweek has ended. And they do this for months, every weekend from 9 till 5). Unlike the other places I work, no one is there because of per diem or transport reimbursements and there isn’t the usual ritual at the end of the day of people clustering anxiously with their hands stretched out around a seated accountant with a money bag and a recording form.

My co-facilitator joined us for dinner – we picked a food type we hadn’t had yet (Monja and Okonomiyaki). For this we had to travel to a section of Tokyo that is famous for this type of food. Once arrived we found ourselves standing in front of a long lane lined with tiny or small restaurants, all offering the same dishes. We picked one at random and were pleased with our choice. It was good we had a Japanese speaker with us because nothing was written in a script we could read and the wait staff did not speak a word of English. We would have had to do a kind of culinary trustfall and then we would have been eating with so many question and no answers.

Swaying

Published December 8, 2012 On the road Leave a Comment
Tags: Japan, Tokyo

Axel accompanied me to the new FASID office to say hello to our Japanese friends and be on his way to explore Tokyo while I prepared for tomorrow’s workshop with my Japanese co-facilitators and a new program officer who was going to take care of the logistical and administrative arrangements.

The first issue we had to resolve was a linguistic one – the course title was not the correct translation of what the ministry wanted but at the same time, when translated from the Japanese, the course title was long and convoluted and made no sense to me. Luckily we didn’t have to change the content, only the title. Now, instead of productive communications, a title earlier conveyed to me, we are having ‘efficient communication in cross-cultural environments.’

We reviewed the 30.000 feet view on the two day workshop and then descended into the weeds, trying out each session ourselves so everyone could make an informed choice about where and when they would be leading or co-facilitating.

At the end of the day I returned to the hotel where Axel soon joined me, exhausted and excited from a trip through the Asakusa section of Tokyo. I was given a private slide viewing with a running commentary.

And then, suddenly, everything started to sway – earthquake we said to each other, grabbed our stuff and headed four floors down through the staff stairwell. When we re-emerged in the lobby people were coming and going as they would at any other time. No one seemed to be in the least perturbed by the earthquake or looking at the still swaying chandeliers. It was as if we had walked into a Bunuel movie. Axel asked the concierge whether we should be concerned and the answer was clearly no, the epicenter was someplace else, not near the hotel.

Later, checking the USGS map I learned that there had been over 30 earthquakes in Japan alone over the last few days – most below 4 on the Richter scale but not all. But then again, there had been just as many in California.

We took the elevator back up, packed our stuff and headed out for another night entertainment center (culture-vulture) in Roppongi to a soba noodle restaurant that used to be in New York and came back. It was tiny and spectacular. The maître d’ was able to squeeze us in at a large table across from a young couple and an older party. Axel’s neighbor proudly told him, in poor English and with a ‘sake-heavy’ voice that he liked America upon which Axel replied he liked Japan creating a round of grins and smiles and more sake.

After an unfiltered wheat beer and some dainties recommended by the chef (grated mountain yam with fish eggs in broth, a ‘lightly fried oyster, chicken meatballs, lightly fried with sharp mustard and shuya), we joined our table mates in drinking sake out of a wooden box. The box was filled to overflowing which reminded me of the Zen story about the overflowing tea cup. It was served with salt, just like a margarita. We ended the meal with a steaming bowl of soba noodles with all sorts of interesting things floating inside it and the most delicious broth. It was nice to have people we could ask our thousand questions to, even if it was in contorted English. There was much bowing and even some hand shaking at the end of the meal, and another huge bill.

During the night more tremors – probably not even qualifying as earthquakers for people here, but very unsettling to me. Each time I would get up and look out of the window, expecting to see people gathering in their pajamas and kimonos but all was quiet and calm, not a soul to see. It was just another ordinary night in Tokyo. Luckily Axel slept through all of them.

Spaceous

Published December 6, 2012 On the road Leave a Comment
Tags: Japan, Nagasaki, Tokyo

Our short trip to Nagasaki is already behind us. The class I taught at Nagasaki University – the reason for this side trip – was attended by 2 Japanese PhD students (international public health), 3 tropical medicine docs from, respectively, Afghanistan, Benin and Mali, one 2^nd year MPH student and 7 first year students, the latter all Japanese.

We spent a lively three hours together, so lively that a few students commented at the end that it felt as if they had only been in class for 3 minutes rather than 3 hours. I took it as a compliment. The material I was covering was new for all of them: how to make leadership actionable, what is a mission, a first attempt at a personal vision and why all of this is important. The material is all-purpose as it can be applied to self, to family, to work team and to one’s organization. Although not quite 3 minutes, the session went quickly and when I was done it was dark and cold outside.

Axel met me at the tram stop near our hotel. He had already made a reservation in the same tiny French-Japanese restaurant (chez garcon Ken) where we had dinner earlier this year, across what used to be the waterfront of an 18th century Dutch settlement, Decima (0r Dejima as the Japanese call it). The reservation had not been necessary as there was only one other table occupied but we liked the little reservation card nevertheless. It said ‘reserve pour M et Mme Boston.’

The owner, cook, waiter and dishwasher, presumably garcon Ken himself, prepared us some French dishes in Japanese style: a shrimp mousse, a salmon terrine with a spicy mayonnaise and a pork terrine with grainy mustard, followed by a yellow snapper and shrimp in a rich sauce. Pannacotta with fruit completed the meal, as well as a carefully selected wine to go with the meal. In between his cooking Ken came over from time to time to make a toast and to disappear again into the tiny kitchen.

Thursday was a travel day again but we managed to squeeze in another visit to the atomic bomb site – the epicenter and the hall of remembrance – a brief respite of contemplation – before meeting Miho and a colleague for a sushi and sashimi farewell lunch.

Back in Tokyo we joined a bunch of jolly commuters, hard drinkers and smokers, for another round of sushi and some noodles before heading to our next hotel. The Tokyo prince hotel looks like a Russian hotel from a bygone era – a giant unimaginative block of real estate set back from the road, with a shopping arcade in the basement and hundreds of rooms lining endless corridors. The décor in the room is early 60s, tired yellow velours, cream-colored draperies and furniture,guilded faucets, cut-plastic chandeliers and turquoise wall to wall carpet.

Because of a clerical error that had put us in a smoking room – causing an immediate respiratory attack in Axel – the hotel upgraded us to a smoke free suite. All the hotel rooms we have ever stayed in in Japan could easily fit in this suite. We have an enormous living room, another enormous bedroom and even a separate dressing room. I don’t have to leave the room when Axel does his exercises.

And so we have arrived at part 3 of our Japan stay – I work and Axel plays. But since my work is playful and joyful, my next three days won’t feel much like work. It has also stopped raining in Tokyo.

Next stop

Published December 5, 2012 On the road Leave a Comment
Tags: Japan, Nagasaki

Our second day in Tokyo was dreary, rainy, windy and cold. Nothing appears to be open before 10 AM and, and since we had to get on our way to Tokyo’s other airport, Haneda, around 11 AM, we ended up spending our last vacation morning in the hotel lobby and coffee shop.

The trip to Haneda airport required one metro transfer, a short trip on a train and a longer one on the airport monorail that passed through southern Tokyo. It reminded us of Rotterdam, a giant port which has none of the refined delicacy of the Japan we are so in love with.

Nagasaki, though cool, was bathed in sunlight when we descended, a nice contrast with Tokyo. Nagasaki is draped over green hills with water everywhere. We were fantasizing about taking a road trip from south to north, one day.

Miho waited for us and guided us to the bus for the long trip into town. We dropped off our bags at our hotel, a fancy modern looking boutique hotel wedged in between girl bars and eating places in a part of town that is dead during the day but quite lively even on school nights.

We had a beer in a café that was a novelty in 1925, a time when Nagasaki wasn’t the cosmopolitan place it is now. At the time it had, unheard of, a décor of foreign movie posters, a gramophone playing western music and home-made ice cream. Today the décor is a little tired, yellowed and dusty. Gone are the movie posters and the gramophone. It is still there but relegated to be a decorative item. The western (Christmas) music comes, now doubt from something Sony. The place serves frikadelles, a Dutch fast food variation on the hamburger. In Nagasaki the Dutch influence here is nowhere far.

For dinner we selected shabu-shabu with the famous marbled beef, this time not from Kobe but from Nagasaki. We thought we were in fish country but apparently the beef here is prized as well. The dinner arrangement consisted of low tables but without the hole underneath so Axel and I were reminded about the Afghan meals we took sitting down, hardly able to walk afterwards.

Meals are often taken in separate rooms for privacy, created by paper sliding doors. Halfway through our meal a mother with her two school-uniformed teenagers joined our little alcove. There was much giggling after we offered ourselves up for English practice but the girls were too shy and the mother didn’t speak any English, asking Miho a thousand questions about us. When we left they had some English parting words (‘nice to meet you’) for us, accompanied by more smiles and giggles.

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