Dichroic Reflections

It’s very interesting seeing how the evolution of online social networking sites changes where my birthday greetings come from each year. This year, the vast majority of them were on Facebook. I got birthday messages from over 1.8% of my graduating class from high school, which is pretty amazing, considering there were 700 of us. And it’s *because* of Facebook; these were all people I hadn’t seen since high school (one exception, but that was last summer at a gathering that was planned on you-guessed-it). Those were outnumbered by birthday wishes from people I’ve never met in the flesh, though once I add in the online ones I have met and the ones I originally knew in person, I think the ones I’ve met outnumber the ones I haven’t, which is probably the first time that’s happened in a few years.

(I know some people don’t like being found by old schoolmates; my high-school years weren’t the high point of my life, but they weren’t a slough of despond either, so I do enjoy catching up with all those people.)

It’s 15:30 and the first of my colleagues has just left work for the day, which reminds me of one more thing I look forward to about moving here: flextime. The Taiwan office doesn’t have any, and I’ve had it in US jobs (either officially or de facto) for so long that being required to stay until a certain time just feels like I’m not being treated as a professional. (It’s particularly annoying when you’ve worked long overtime hours earlier in the week.) The colleague who just left comes in at 6 or 6:30; I’m wondering if I could do a less formal schedule and just come in late (and stay late) on Tuesdays, which are market days in the Centrum. From what I know, that’s the best place to buy fresh meat, fish and produce here. There’s one on Saturdays on the norht side of town, so if I can’t flex that way I’m not totally out of luck, but the Saturday market is farther away and I’m sure it’s more crowded.

I have also been enjoying the cafeteria here (for values of “enjoying” meaning “not actively dissatisfied with” – it is still a company cafeteria, after all). They have cold sandwiches and hot panini-style ones daily (both premade), two hot platters (meat and vegetarian), often something like sausage rolls or krokets, and two kinds of pre-plated salads. There are also several types of bread, cold cuts and cheese, a salad bar that’s fresh if not extensive, and thick and thin soups, so even if nothing looks good I don’t go hungry. In contrast, the Taiwan cafeteria has a choice of two platters, each with an odd (to Western eyes) combination of a couple meats, some vegetables, and rice. For instance, there might be meatballs, a bit of breaded fish with sauce, overcooked cabbage, rice, and bits of seaweed tied in knots (don’t know what those are called). Or spaghetti with meat sauce plus clammy french fries, and similar vegetables. The plates are filled and handed out by cafeteria ladies; it is possible to ask for more of one thing and less of another, but that’s tricky if you don’t speak Chinese – they’re a bit back in the kitchen area. So the caf here is definitely enjoyable, by contrast.

I haven’t been good about working out, but all the walking I do here is appearing to have an effect, or else the trousers I wore yesterday have stretched out. But they’re lined flannel, and even if the flannel stretched, I doubt the lining would.

Also, clean air! I can see through it! And they have heat inside when it’s cold outside. En nederlands is zo veel makkelijker dan Chinees! (Vindication: I ran that last sentence through dictionary.com’s translator, and the only thing they’d phrased differently was that I had “zo veel” as one word.)

On the down side, I think Ted’s first trip here is three weeks after I move Might be a little less, if I’m lucky.

I am dizzy, still or again. I’m getting very tired of this; it’s been noticeable, on and off, throughout this whole trip (which eliminates the idea that it has something to do with Taiwan air pollution). One problem is that I seem to have had a whole smorgasbord of different types of vertigo: this doesn’t seem to be the BPPV one because it’s ont strictly tied to tilting my head. It’s not about low blood sugar, because food doesn’t make a difference. There is nothing much wrong with my ear/nose/throat system that I can tell, except that my sinuses are still adjusting to a much drier climate. It’s not anything awful like a brain tumor or aneurism (opinion of the doctor I went to in Taipei) because it doesn’t come with headache or nausea.

Earlier in this trip it felt like it *might* be related to my eyes’ continuing dislike of focusing together – it feels less like that now, but is still possible. It does seem sensitive to motion – I notice it more when walking than when sitting, more at higher speeds in a car. It doesn’t really seem to be impairing my balance at all. It also doesn’t seem to give me any problems with driving, but I only have to drive on sidestreets here, no highways. I’m still avoiding highway driving, especially Taiwan highway driving, but that’s no great problem for my remaining time there. (Being a passenger seems to be OK, but those two episodes of waves of dizziness while driving on the highway in November and January were kind of scary.)

The Taiwanese ENT and opthalmologist, didn’t have any answers, and when I had a carotid artery scan as part of my annual physical it didn’t find any problems (a recommendation from the opthalmologist because the carotid brings blood and oxygen to the retina, so since it was one of the tests available I had it done). I’ve been hearing lately about peopel having viruses causing vertigo, but I have no fever or other symptoms, and this has been hitting me on and off since November. If it’s not better in a few weeks, maybe I’ll go see if Dutch doctors have any more ideas. It’s more of an annoyance than a disability, since it hasn’t actually stopped me from doing anything (even the highway driving was more of a worry than an actual problem) but it is annoying and I’m ready for it to stop already.

ETA: Ted theorizes that under-hydration is a factor in this. He may be right – it seems to be a good guess anytime I’m feeling less than great for no apparent reason – but it isn’t the only factor because I get dizzy even when well hydrated. Just a bit less so. Also, it seems to be more an internal feeling than any external manifestation – not only do I not fall down, but I don’t notice it at all in moments of distraction, including while crawling around on the floor just now lowering my desk. (Desks that can be lowered without help from the Facilities department, using only an Allen wrench that stores in a little hole built into one leg = good design!)

On another topic: one weirdness that can occur when you work at the same place as your spouse, is when you are invited to a dinner pretty much just as “significant other” but someone sends you a meeting notice for it.

We went rowing twice over the weekend, just because we could – or thought we could. On Saturday I went out with my old partner. She has a new doubles partner now who I think is a better match for her – older and less experienced than I am, but bigger and stronger as well as very dedicated to improving – but she’s generally up for an extra row. It was nice to get to go out with her again, but YIKES! I haven’t been in a boat since October and it was horrible – I felt like I wasn’t getting full compression, due to increased gut and (for some odd reason) less flexibility in my shins, though it did help a bit when I moved my feet out a bit. That forced me to keep my knees too far apart at the catch, which isn’t great for blade control and set. It’s just one of those things where the only cure is lots and lots of distance on the water. On Sunday, she wasn’t available so I went out in a single. It was a bit windy, but I’ve been out in a lot worse – I may be rusty but I’ve also been rowing for 21 years, so even though someone on the dock said “You are courageous to go out in a skiff (Dutch for single) today!” it was never really scary. However, it was even colder than Saturday, and when told that I had to turn around after 1.5 km due to ice by the first bridge I decided that I wasn’t that gung-ho. So I came in and did some weightlifting with the boathouse equipement (some free weights but no cage; I did deadlifts, bench press and some step-ups and static lunges) while waiting for Ted and his doubles partner to get back in.

We’ve been eating really well while here (“well” in the gourmet sense, not the health-food sense) but I’ve also been doing a ton more walking during the day; once I’m here and able to walk more and get on the water more, I think I’ll be in a lot better shape even without making any concerted effort. Being able to cook for myself will also help.

Which reminds me: the apartment kitchen has five stove burners, but the small combination microwave / grill / convection over strikes me as inadequate. I plan to buy a large cast-iron Dutch oven to help with that problem. (Perhaps that’s why they’re called “Dutch” ovens”? Since I don’t have much experience with one, suggestions for what to make in it would be welcome, as well as opinions on what size is most useful.

I finally finished my Laeticia socks yesterday, begun at the beginning of last October. This is why I don’t like to have more than a couple of knitting projects ongoing at a time; I feel like a slacker when it takes me five months to finish a pair of socks, even though the reason for taking so long is that I began and finished three dishcloths, a hat, a scarf, an entire freaking sweater (with complex cables, even) and a shawlette in that time, not to mention part of another sock and about a third of a lap blanket. OK, wow, maybe not such a slacker – thanks to Ravelry for the chronological list. Also there were reasons to start all those other projects when I did, either for presents or to have winter things done before spring or to knit up yarn I’d been given. Anyway, Laeticia – I can’t take a picture right now, but here’s one of the first completed sock. You can take it for granted that the second looks the same:

I checked this morning: everyone I work with is OK from the earthquake. I was pretty sure they would be, but it’s nice to have it confirmed. Still, I’m glad we missed it (since Ted and I are both in the Netherlands at the moment.) The boss mentioned that his power went out – any earthquake that happens down on the south end of the island and is powerful enough to cause outages in Taipei is not one I feel a need to experience in person.

I had a small emergency today: went into my purse to grab some money for lunch and found that my wallet wasn’t there. I’d used it last in paying for dinner last night, so I figured there was a high probability my purse wasn’t closed and it fell out in the hotel room, and a somewhat lower chance I’d somehow left it in the restaurant. Not having credit cards while on travel would be difficult to say the least so I decided it merited a rush trip back to the hotel room. Fortunately it was there; while I was back in the center of town I decided to get passport photos taken, because I need them for my residence permit application. So now I have a bunch of accurate-but-unflattering small photos, but I don’t need to worry about it tonight.

I also picked up lunch while I was back. On my first trip to the Netherlands, I concluded that dinners were great because there were so many different cuisines available, but that Dutch lunches are largely limited to cheese sandwiches or ham-and-cheese sandwiches. In the main I haven’t seen any reason to alter that opinion: OK, if you want junk food you can get croquettes or sausage rolls, and strictly speaking you might also be able to get soup or perhaps a salmon sandwich, but in the main? Cheese or ham-and-cheese. I don’t like ham much, so the choice was obvious. At least they’re often *good* cheese sanwiches – brie on a crisp-crusted baguette in this case, though adding some vegetables other than lettuce shreds would have improved it greatly.

I got to see my new apartment today, and was very happy to find it’s on the 29th floor! This is in a town with about three tall buildings, so the view is fabulous. Otherwise, the apartment’s OK: furniture by Ikea, more storage than I’d expected in a Dutch flat, reasonable fridge with an actual freezer (small by US standards, smaller than the one we have in Taiwan, but much bigger than the one we had here before and that didn’t have a freezer at all), parking in the basement, spare bedroom with a double bed. It has enough room for my bookshelves and erg, no problem. There’s a small storage room in the basement for my bike and such. The kitchen has decent cabinets plus a pull-out cutting board.I’m definitely looking forward to having a dishwasher again! As in our last place, the heater in the bathroom is also a towel rack – nice in winter to have the heated towels. And I forgot to ask, but being a new-ish high-rise, it’s pretty sure to have air-conditioning.

The downsides are that it only has one of those combo microwave/over/broiler things that so unimpressed us in our last place (though this one is a little bigger); the stove is glass induction (ditto with the previously-unimpressed) though it does have five burners – we only have three in Taiwan. But those three are gas and get very hot, fast. lack of real over isn’t unexpected, and maybe these burners will be better than the last place – I plan to buy a good cast-iron pot (I’m thinking of splurging on Le Creuset) which should work better on it. On second thought, I’m not really sure if the stove is glass induction – it’s got a smooth top, but it looked more like metal discs in there. The other downside is only one toilet. Still, most of the time I’ll be the only one there. And when Ted’s with me, at least the toilet is separate from the main sink / shower. The shower’s tiny, but that’s to be expected. No tub, but I never use one anyway. Very oddly, the main bathroom also has a urinal. Never saw that in a private home before.

It’s convenient for restaurants – there are a whole bunch by it that I haven’t tried out. It’s not quite as close to supermarkets as our last place, but still walking distance. Assuming it all works out, as it looks like it should, I think I’ll like living there. The view is the best part; there are windows everywhere. It really feels like an aerie; I shall perch there like the Eagle of Gwernabwy. (Spelling?) Or at least the Eagle of Eindhoven, which has a lot less myffic resonance but does alliterate.

And now for another benefit of Eindhoven living; I am off to the biweekly meeting of the local knitting group. I hear they have a couple new American-expat members, too.

I don’t do book challenges, never have. When I was a kid, they were mostly abot getting you to read more and that would have been just silly. Now, I don’t have the patience; the adult ones seem to be mostly about reading books for some other reason than you think you might love them, and I don’t have the time or brain cells to do that. Lots of people do, and I’m not knocking their reasons: people read books to learn, to broaden their experiences, to please someone else, out of a feeling of obligation, and a host of other reasons. I don’t. I read for me only, and only for enjoyment. Mind you, I do learn and broaden my experiences through reading; I read fiction and nonfiction, classics and modern books, general and genre. Since I’m much more likely to enjoy something that is well-written and convincing, I am more likely to enjoy books where the facts are right, the world-building and characters feel real to me, there isn’t too much reliance on telling rather than showing (a particular problem with mysteries, for some odd reason), and the logic is sound. If you’re going to fail on one of those counts, something else has to be good enough to make up for it. (But my definition of “well-written” may not agree with many people’s, and I can be pretty forgiving if the story / characters carry me along; I’m fond of Harry Potter, after all. Speaking of books with logic problems!)

Of course, sticking to books I like can lead to a certain sameness. But that doesn’t have to be in a limiting way, because of the unlimited inventiveness of authors: if I like a particular trope I may read a lot of it, but that trope can be taken in a wide variety of directions, too.

What I’m getting at here is that I will probably never do something like the challenge to read 50 books by / about people of color, or to look specifically for books centering on gay characters, or small-press books, or any other category that spawns book challenges. I will instead spend the time looking for and reading books I think I’m likely to love. But because they’re likely to fit within certain categories in one way (fortunately, a fairly wide group of categories in my case) that doesn’t mean they can’t be broader in other ways. If anyone wants this particular reader to read books with an expanded range of characters, then, the best thing you can do is to suggest ones you think I might love, or talk about the ones you’ve loved.

And so I have recently bought Silver Kiss, by Naomi Clark, with a lesbian character, recently recommended by Sherwood Smith. It’s urban fantasy, which I’ve been enjoying to some extent (not enough to read all of it out there, though!) And I will be buying Karen Healey’s Guardian of the Dead, which gets into Maori myth, because Shweta Narayan talked about it and the book intrigued me because I like YA fantasies that mix magic into our world. (Justine Larbalestier’s Magic or Madness trilogy is another example in this subgenre that centers on a mixed-race character.) Also in the class of “characters unlike me”, not to mention small-press books, on the plane here I read The Year of Plenty, by Rebecca Brammer (an online acquaintance), which would probably be classified as a Christian book, because several people I know read and liked it, and I’ve enjoyed other historical growing-up books from the Little House books through the recent The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate. (Not bad: it managed to show the characters’ Christianity as very obviously the center of their lives without preaching at the reader).

I know I’m coming late to this and it’s probably old news for everyone else. But in case anyone did miss Johnny Weir’s eloquent statement to the press, here it is. Fabulous.

Taiwan Olympic coverage sucks (in general and even worse for the Winter Olympics. I finally just went ahead and bought the skating on iTunes, so at least I can see one sport, even if the competition is actually over.

Two quick thoughts after the men’s short program:

Whoever choreographed Brezina (to Puttin’ on the Ritz) ’s routine is brilliant – I’ve never seen anyone allude to tap dance in an ice skating routine before.

I hope the parents who abandoned Amodio on the streets of Brazil as an infant was watching these Olympics. The two reasons I can imagine abandoning an infant are because you are scum who doesn’t care, or because you honestly think the baby would be better off without you in its life, whatever pain that causes for you. (I don’t know the whole story – whether he was left in a dumpster or carefully swaddled on orphanage steps or what.) I hope anyone who might be his parents is watching, in order to feel shamed or validated as appropriate. (And I’m glad he ended up with good *real* parents.)

Scott Hamilton is doing a decent job as announcer – at least, he hasn’t really annoyed me yet.