Choices, TV, Noisy houses and snow removal

Sometimes people ask what my impressions are of the first of my worlds after having been away for awhile. There are many but here are a few:

People seem to value lots of choices, unending choices in fact, at least over trivia. Coffee shops added another choice since my last visit: dark, medium or light roast. Even sandwich shops- you think you ordered a number 2 and solved all the choice issues? Oh no, you are still asked what kind of bread (6 choices) what kind of cheese? (4 choices) what do you want on it? (10 items to choose from, onions, olives, pickles, tomatoes, etc) What sauces? Mustard? What kind (3 choices of mustard). But not done yet, do you want it heated? Here or to go? Yikes!

Go down the cereal aisle in the grocery store or the soft drink aisle. Guess that says a lot about people's diets, huh? (Here it would be the powdered milk aisle or the junk food aisles.) It's not just food, there are endless cable TV channels, books, movies, magazines.

Some things, however, offer few choices such as the color of cars or the color of siding on new homes. Curiously clothing also offered few choices in style or even color. Example, women's winter tops were long sleeved but way too low in the neck. What's with that? This isn't Florida! And there were only certain colors available, didn't matter what store.

Yet other things offer no choices, such as political parties. The only thing different is the rhetoric. Actions and outcomes are the same.

Television? Unbelievable. Does anybody really watch it anymore??? News-tainment about the fallen hero of the day. And scaring people about the flu. Commercials? Lots of prescription drug ads, all of which have long lists of horrendous side effects including death and suicide.

Noisy houses. Furnaces, water heaters, sump pumps, blowers, beepers, buzzers, dingers, etc. My first nights back here– as I wake up at 2 and 3 am – by contrast were pretty quiet. The house was totally quiet other than my fan and out my open window all I could hear was the Swiss neighbor's cuckoo clock, a distant dog barking, a few leaves rustling in the breeze. That's it.

Snow removal is amazing. After the Christmas storm I saw thick ice on the highways mysteriously GONE overnight! I saw snowbanks being loaded up in trucks and carted away, and other snowbanks literally shoved back from the edge of the roads.

Nothing new in the public bathroom scene. It seems that everything that could be automated already has been. I did notice that in my home state 9/10 bathroom stalls had the TP very low down making it difficult for tall people to reach. Not so in other states. Maybe the state legislature was bored last summer???

"Suicide" drugs

What is with all these suicidal drugs???!!

I am amazed at the countless TV commercials for various prescription drugs. The commercials spend maybe 5 seconds telling what the drug is for and then 25 seconds hurriedly reading a long list of horrendous side effects such as liver failure, edema, coma, death, mood swings, elevated blood pressure, weight gain, and suicide. And suicide is what they all have in common! There are various drugs- antidepressants, drugs for arthritis, bipolar disorder, anti-smoking and more. And suicide is a possible side effect of all. One's distinct impression is that the side effects far outweigh the benefits. Are they really hoping to boost their sales??? Or is there some other purpose for these “ads”??? Creepy!!

Is your laptop overloaded?

According to an article I read recently:

The wealth of media in modern life means the average person is bombarded with enough information every day to overload a laptop computer, a study has found.

Yes, I am feeling that bombardment! Being in my home country for a short visit I am playing catch up with a lot of people. When you don’t see people very often you have a lot to catch up on. And so you are taking in all the latest on what people are up to, their kids, their jobs, spouses, health, hobbies, etc.

Plus there is a lot going on right now politically that even Congress seems unable to keep up with (and it is their full time job!)

Advertising in this country bombards from all directions. Even people like me that try to avoid TV still find our mailboxes loaded with ads. Everything you buy from groceries to electronics comes complete with more coupons and ads trying to get you to buy even more.

As I near the end of my time here I am starting to think about the details of packing and departure. With email and cell phones you are only a text away from issues and events on the other side of the globe. A recent email regarding future visa options has sent me scrambling to collect and “authenticate” some documents.

And I did notice that it is Christmas season which adds a certain amount of time constraint to finish certain things before the holidays.

So I do feel somewhat fragmented and distracted as I think about details of packing and shipping, work plans for the next few months, national and international trends and crises, visa stuff, and whether I should even bother trying to do Christmas cards or just make it New Years’ cards, and Christmas preparations. All of that interspersed with thoughts of the people I wanted to see, books I had wanted to read, events back in the second and third of my worlds, etc.

My “laptop” does sometimes feel like it’s overloaded!

Shooting trouble

In this the first of my worlds, government and business procedures and processes are usually clearly spelled out. You are given an exact list of requirements, documentation, etc and told that the processing takes 5 working days or 10 working days or 6 weeks or whatever. And mostly it does. But in my other two worlds things are much more fuzzy. I have had to develop a technique of on-the-fly problem-solving and trouble-shooting where I don’t wait around for complete understanding because things are only completely understood in hindsight if even then. Just muddle your way through it and figure it out as you go and have no expectations as to time constraints.

Imagine my surprise when I suddenly am in such a situation here! I am supposed to switch to a different kind of visa. The consulate requires “document authentication” of things like transcripts, diplomas, birth certificates, etc. The first step is to get the documents notarized. Sounds simple. Weeeeeeeeell, not according to the 4 notary publics I talked to yesterday! Somehow the list of requirements given by the consulate does not communicate enough to me or to the 4 notaries I have talked to so far, nor to some colleagues who are also spending their Christmas season gathering documents to authenticate. I spent a couple of hours on the internet trying to get some clues plus a couple of hours on the phone and emailing colleagues to see if anybody else has come up with ideas. So far it seems that I am out in front trouble shooting on my own.

But I am not too stressed out. Annoyed, yes, but not stressed. After all, I am used to this. I just have to resign myself to spending a fair amount of time on the phone and internet and running around and just hope most of it is done before Christmas! Who knows, the answer might be just around the next corner or in the next phone call!

And if it doesn’t get finished by the time I leave? Then I guess I keep working on it from a distance!

Matchless Matches

One of the things that hasn't ceased to amaze me is the matches you can get here. They are small, even wooden matches and actually have very little material in the match head. But they light first time EVERY time! This box is nearly empty and the strikable sides of the box are still in pristine shape.

In the second of my worlds, there are several brands of matches but the best is Rainbow matches. Even so, they don't all light. Sometimes the head breaks off and goes sizzling off in some crazy direction. (My face or arms have been burned more than once by flying match heads.) And usually the sides of the box wear out from repeated striking long before the matches are all gone.

But then there is Brand X. In the village market, there are always a couple of guys going around selling three boxes of Brand X matches for 15 cents. They are very agressive, they shove the matches in your basket and hold out their hand hoping to intimidate you into paying for the worst matches on earth. These matches are a royal pain to have to use. I have more than once used over half a box to light one candle. They break, the stuff they are coated with is uneven and seems to be very fire resistant. A single match usually needs to be struck multiple times before it finally lights. In the process of striking, matches frequently break, and the rough stuff in the side of the box gets shiny (and useless) from use. Many matches never do light no matter what you do. Some do light but don't stay lit long enough to get a candle burning. I avoid Brand X like the plague. The only thing they are good for is tinder for a fire - if you light the fire with something else.

Torticollis and cell phones

It appears that in this state there aren’t any laws about cell phones and driving because I certainly have noticed a lot of drivers do use them. One needs to be more on the alert for inattentive drivers than ever before. I have followed cars which were having a hard time staying in their lane and then suddenly were driving fine. The driver must have ended his/her call. Several time I have seen cars in the far left lane suddenly zoom across multiple lanes of traffic to exit on the right by drivers yakking on cell phones. When you see drivers whose mouths are moving they may not be singing or talking to themselves – most likely they are talking on a cell phone - and that’s a sign to watch out! Another sign is torticollis: abnormal postures and movements of the head. If you see a driver with their head bent to their shoulder, look out!

Yesterday while I was walking, a poodle puppy came bounding out to greet me. His owner was a woman with a crooked head who walked a bit like Lurch as she tried to call the puppy back. I thought she had torticollis or maybe left-sided weakness from a stroke or something as she seemed unable to reach for the pup with both hands and her head was oddly bent to the left resting on her shoulder. Every time I started walking again the puppy ran back towards me so I finally stopped to wait for the woman to capture her pet. It took me a few minutes to realize she was talking on a cell phone gripped between her head and shoulder. She didn’t have torticollis after all!

My sister commented in a public restroom about the need for cell phone etiquette and soon we were in a lively conversation with several other ladies on the topic. They complained of interrupted conversations as people grab for their phones, phones ringing in meetings, in church, people shouting into phones in stores, elevators, startling you, intruding in your space and forcing you to hear their one-sided conversations. Or people start talking and you think they are talking to you but aren’t.

At least people around here don’t seem to text as much. People talk as they walk but I haven't yet seen anybody out crossing streets while texting!

Dusty haired people

(Oct 2009)

Now I am back in the first of my worlds for a visit. It’s often interesting what stands out. This time it was all the dusty-haired people. There are a lot of graying people to be sure. But it’s more than that. Maybe it’s partly because I am used to seeing black heads in Asia and here there are a lot of blonds and light brown haired people. Or maybe it’s because people’s hair is dry from climate, too much washing/drying/perming/dyeing, or from chlorine/fluoride in the water. I am not sure, but the visual impression I get is of a sea of dusty-haired people!

Three worlds

I spent a month in the second of my worlds. It is no joke that I call each of these three countries “worlds”, for that is what they are. The languages are different, the religions are different, the dress code is different, the food is different, not to mention customs, worldview, transportation, government, house layout, yard maintanence standards, medicines, even writing paper and pens!

I have noticed how the brain helpfully seems to compartmentalize experiences. When I am in the second of my worlds I automatically drive on the left side of the road. Remembering names of streets and shops is always difficult upon arrival for the first few days until the brain gets the proper file to the front. Visual memory is instant but the linguistic stuff seems to take a bit longer to get to the forefront. (That means that I can still get to places even if the names of the roads I need to take aren’t on the tip of my tongue.)

This trip I was to teach a 24-hour English course and fit in visits with three teams around that. The only problem was, that I didn’t know when the course would actually start or how many of the hours could be done in one day. This seems to be the way things operate. You make a plan but no need to figure out the details until the time comes to actually do it.
Anyway, I will post some notes from that visit.

Still amusing ourselves to death

I read the book "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman a couple years ago and when I ran across this cartoon, well, it says it all. (Cartoon by Stuart McMillan at www.recombinantrecords.net)

Tips, er, traps for the unwary travellor

January 2, 2008

My trip back to the third of my worlds was relatively uneventful. But travel is full of traps for the unwary and requires quite a bit of juggling of luggage and documents. Security checks are always a challenge. Currently they want you to divest yourself of shoes, jackets, electronic equipment and the little ziplock bags of liquids as well as keys, coins, cellphones and place them in little trays and send them through one by one. The less you are carrying the better, But they also tell you not to check electronics, valuables, keys, etc.

Those little zip baggies with liquids are a relatively new thing. They are where you store any non-solids needed for your trip – chapstick, toothpaste, hand lotion, contact lens solution, etc. So you take things out as you use them but you’d better remember to put them back into the baggies lest you suddenly have to go thru another security check!

If you buy anything at the airport – and you will, you need to pay taxi, porter, airport tax, overweight luggage, drinking water (because you can’t take any through security with you.) DON’T put your coins in your pocket – otherwise you might get in trouble if you suddenly have to go through a security check. Pity the poor people traveling with small kids as they juggle kids, strollers, car seats, shoes, jackets, liquids, money, documents, and valuables plus try to keep track of it all!

When I arrived in the third of my worlds there were 3-4 jumbo jets all disgorging passengers at the same time. The immigration hall couldn’t hold all the people so people were piling up down the hallways too and for all I know, all the way back to the runways! In true Asian style there were no visible lines (queues) until you were quite close to the counter. You can’t really see from the back of the hall what the signs said and you can’t get to the front to read them. I kept asking other passengers if I was in the right line. After all you don’t want to wait in a huge long line only to find out you are in the wrong one! But the local passengers said it didn’t matter what line you were in. And I saw that it didn’t, because when you finally got close enough to read the signs and found yourself in the wrong line no need to go to the end of another line. You just slither over and sort of insert yourself into the next line.

The immigration officers were madly stamping passports, even so it took over an hour to finally get to the front of a line. I have a rather strange visa and so sometimes immigration officials don’t know what to do with it especially because I don’t have an “e-card”. I had a special letter I carry with me in case there is a problem, but the officer in my line didn’t even blink. She stamped my passport and card just like it was supposed to be. By then my luggage was on the carousel. Unfortunately, by then there were no more baggage carts and nary a baggage handler to be seen.

I was also sweating bullets because I had read the new customs form and it said that electronic devices had to be reported. That was a new requirement. I have a letter that explains that our contract gives us permission to import stuff needed for our work but I had forgotten to print it out. And I was carrying rather a lot of computer equipment, some mine, some for other people.

I couldn’t see any baggage handlers so I started asking people with badges about it. One guy turned out to be the airline agent and he said he would help take my suitcases outside to where I could get a cab. With a wink and a nod he sailed me thru customs and I didn’t have to explain anything after all!

Technology

Every time I come back there is more new technology. This time it is computers on the phone. I have called places and computers answered. My years in Southeast Asia have apparently destroyed my accent. The computers usually can’t understand what I say. But that means that I usually eventually get to talk to a real person. Sometimes the voice just reads you a long list of buttons to push, after which another computer voice may tell you to push more buttons and so on. I have even been called by computers asking me to press one for English or two for Spanish. I just hang up. I guess if it doesn’t know whether I use English or Spanish, then it probably isn’t a computer I know. 

I noticed that the announcer at the SW airport is the same as the announcer on the Weather Channel. Maybe that’s the one they call Microsoft Sam. He is everywhere.

This is one of those changes that maybe isn’t so good. For example, if you are late paying your credit card, Sam will call you all day long until he gets you. He is not fooled by answering machines. He won’t leave a message until he has called at least 2 dozen times. Then he will finally leave a message. But he doesn’t tell you what he wants. He expects YOU to call some number and remember some impossibly long pin number to retrieve the message.

Maybe those call centers in India aren’t such a bad thing after all.

Travel – Southwest

My next trip was to the southwest. I was really looking forward to the warmer weather. In fact I initially packed as if I was going to the tropics but fortunately a quick check of internet brought me to my senses. It wasn’t THAT warm! Nevertheless it was pleasant to not be cold. I was able to leisurely walk around and see life up close at one of those legendary senior summer camps the area is known for.














Got some great pictures of palm tree cell phone towers and even a windmill cell tower! (Regular cell tower for comparison.)

I was also intrigued by a log cabin mobile home and an adobe mobile home I saw. There was a giant flea market too selling all kinds of stuff including cheap junk fron C--- like I can get in the third of my worlds. It didn’t seem very crowded compared to Asian equivalents, but that was good because the people were a lot taller and I wouldn’t have had my usual advantage of being head and shoulders above everybody else and able to breathe.
There was a steady rain all day and night before I left. It wouldn’t have been a big deal in the tropics but locals said it was extremely unusual and they seemed to have trouble driving in it. The next day that storm blew us all the way back to my home area, pushing us 100mph faster than normal. But somewhere along the way it froze. As we slid down the runway upon landing, we could see that we had landed in a winter wonderland. The winter wonderland continued falling and blowing all the way home in fact. This is the kind of weather that SUVs were made for with their 4-wheel drive and height. It’s probably why there are still so many of them around.

Travel - Northwest

I have been busy travelling recently. First I went to the NW corner of the country where all the fabulous scenery was hidden in the fog. It was dark and gloomy and rainy but brightened by numerous coffee shops on every other corner. I still kind of dread coffee shops, though. All the decisions. But at`least if you make your friends go first it gives you an extra minute or two to make up your mind. My cognitively challenged brother has developed a strategy to answer multiple choice questions – he always chooses the last choice. Hmm. Maybe I should try that at the next coffee shop.

It’s not just that you are confronted with 25 choices of basic coffee – most of which you have never heard of and have no idea what you might be getting in to. But you have to choose regular or decaf, or even a combo. Then it’s light, dark, or medium roast. (I wonder if anybody would like village char-roast??) Size is not something simple like small, medium, or large. In fact some workers are so snobbish that they pretend they don’t know the meanings of those words! If you’ve actually gotten that far, it is advisable to just grab your coffee and run. If you don’t, they will continue pestering you with questions: do you want milk? What kind and what flavor? Low fat? Do you want it heated? What about flavoring in the coffee? How many shots? Do you want to leave room for cream? Would you like something to go with your coffee?

Most churches in my home area have served coffee before or after the service for years. But in the NW they have latte bars in churches – and as a visitor I got a free latte!  I guess it’s caffeine buzz that keeps everybody in that city going during these gloomy months.

Winter

Winter is definitely here. There’s at least 12 inches of it on the ground and more in the air. It is colder than when I first arrived so I am adding layers to the layers. (If this keeps up I’ll soon be too fat to walk!) I am told that one of the Eskimo languages has 14 words for snow. Here we just use descriptive phrases since English has only one word so we add words like powdery, fluffy, wet, hard and dry. Sometimes it is sloppy to walk in, other times it is soft and quiets everything. But when it gets really cold it squeaks and can make the world pretty noisy.
 

Driving becomes interesting too and can be very much more time-consuming. Everyone slows down a little when it is snowing, and you would think that traffic would move along at a slightly slower speed, but for some reason when everybody’s “slowing down a little” is added up it becomes gridlock. I am sure there must be some obscure mathematical formula involved....

Products multiply

The numbers of products continues to muliply exponentially. I finally visited a large grocery store and counted 187 kinds of cold cereals (I did not count the cooked cereals nor the big bulk packages.) In the second of my worlds they still mainly have corn flakes and rice crispies. In the third of my worlds they have three more kinds plus now several imported cereals - mostly of the granola type. What was most apalling with the 187 were the candy flavored cereals!

I saw somebody drinking a vanilla zero coke(?) product the other day. Sigh! I suppose I should now go count the kinds of "carbonated beverages"! That's usually another entire aisle.

In the other two of my worlds it is the powdered milk aisle that is growing exponentially - they have milk drinks for all age groups. The differences are that some are flavored, calcium enriched, fat reduced, vitamin enriched, filled, or otherwise enhanced with some additives of some sort.

It is said that variety is the spice of life. On the other hand, is it worth it to spend so much time every day mulling over which product to choose for that day? Here's my list, so far, of rules for wasting less time on decision-making:

1. For grocery shopping, the best rule of thumb is, the less processed, the better. (that almost eliminates the cereal aisle right there, not to mention the soda aisle!) You don't waste much time reading the ingredient list on a bag of apples!
2. Go to smaller stores. You save time by not having to decide among so many products plus you aren't hiking 17 miles and will have energy left over for something more important.

Early impressions

Now that I've been here a whole two weeks I am well over jet lag and starting to look around.

It's Halloween, something I had quite forgotten about after all these years. Stores are decked out as well as people's yards. The local discount store has about half an acre of space devoted to costumes, decorations, candy, plastic Halloween treat buckets, etc. There's been a definite shift to the realistic or should I say surrealistic and macabre.

It is cold and blustery (50 F or 10 degrees C.) At least I think it's cold. But locals are running around with just a vest. I've even seen several women still wearing capris.

Interestingly enough, I can buy mutton and buffalo meat at the local grocery store, both guaranteed to be antibiotic free. But fish is pretty hard to find. Maybe I need to look in the freezer section! People seem to eat very little vegetables, unless french fries and chips are considered to be vegetables???? Most of the fruit I miss is no longer in stores. It's mostly apples, oranges, bananas, with a few pears. No berries, peaches, melons, sigh!

TV is full of SEX and, well, blasphemy. Every other commercial seems to be about viagra. Many other drugs are also advertised in commercials. I guess the purpose is so that people will run off to their doctors and ask for those things???

Next project: count the kinds of cold cereal....

It's cold!

I have now arrived in the first of my worlds, am pretty much over jet lag, and can finally connect to the internet. (Now the challenge will be to try to keep warm enough that my fingers won’t be too stiff to type!) My first impression was that I was arriving in a police state. There were signs up as we approached the immigration hall announcing that we were entering a federal something-or-other zone and no cell phones, cameras, recording devices were permitted to be used while in the zone. We lined up and even the citizens’ line which is usually fast-moving was real slow. We also got to watch a couple of officials, hands on hip, chew out an Asian-looking guy. Real welcoming sight....

After being duly intimidated, we got to pick up our luggage and waltz thru customs and on out into the frigid rain. Brrr!

Did I mention that it was cold? One way to keep warm is to keep moving. And that is what I have done, getting back into the swing of driving at high speeds in the rain on the right side of the road, and visiting folk, going to a conference, grocery shopping, etc.

Not only is it cold, it is dark. Now that I am over jet lag I will have to use an alarm clock if I hope to get up at a reasonable time! After years of using the sun as a clock, it's a bit disorienting to have such a short day! And it will only get shorter!!