We'll Always Have Paris ....

17 January 2010

I’m back. The trip from Taipei was fine for the first 13 or so hours, I boarded around midnight and went into a coma as we passed over the Eurasian land mass. It was dark the whole distance. And then came Paris, the city of ‘half light’ on a gray winter day. Europe has been wearing a cold blanket for the past several weeks. England, poor England, is covered in snow and paralyzed. Spain is coping with more snow than it’s had in years.

Charles De Gaulle didn’t seem so bad. There was a bit of dirty snow alongside the runway, it looked like it had been scraped off the tarmac about two or three days before. After getting my luggage and stepping outside the terminal for my first cigarette since leaving Taipei, the weather was brisk and slightly humid but not impossible. The skies were low and gray but that’s winter and it’s to be expected.

I wandered away from Terminal 1 and found the train that took me to Terminal 2B and Easyjet; well, not actually to Terminal 2B but within a kilometer of it. My flight wasn’t yet ready to board, I’d gotten in at 6 and they weren’t taking any baggage until 8:30. There was a kiosk selling undrinkable coffee that I gagged down and a croissant that I’m going to write to Sarkozy about. I thus passed an enjoyable half-hour before I got the chance to consign my bag to Easyjet.

Freed of the responsibility of hacking around with a suitcase filled with Taiwanese treats for my daughter, I found another kiosk whose proprietor was in cahoots with the operator of the first I’d been to but this time I found a convenient bin into which to pour the contents of the cup of ‘coffee’ he sold me before they ate through the cardboard cup.

Flight time approached, I went through security – always fun when you’ve got a metal hip on one side and 15 screws holding your leg together on the other. I moved to the front, waving my crutch at folks so they would know that I was one of those needy souls who required early boarding. I found a chair near a couple of families coping with babies who were not pleased with the way things were going and, as is the wont of babies, were robustly expressing themselves. So far, so good.

Of course, they didn’t board us on time, but with the weather in Madrid and over a lot of other European cities, a delay was to be expected. Forty-five minutes later, a half-hour after we were scheduled to have taken off, the ground staff vanished, literally vanished – I think there may be hidden stairways behind those desks where they stand near the gates, always seeming to be very busy, huddled over their monitors, playing World of Warcraft.

So, about a hundred and fifty of us stood or, in my case, sat, and stared at each other, wondering what to do. I’m not like that, though, I’m a man of action, at least I was after 20 minutes or so. Of course, the onset of initiative may have been helped by the fact I needed to pee and there were no toilets on this side of security. I got up and hobbled back through the friskers and past the x-ray machinery to the check-in desks, stopping at the toilet. Back at check-in I was informed our flight had been delayed an hour. I figured, selfishly, my fellow passengers would eventually deduce without any assistance from me that the flight wasn’t going for some time so I wandered away through the terminal rather than back through security, deciding that I would take another shot at finding a palatable cup of French coffee.

You know, it’s a wonder to me still that you can cross the border down there near Monaco and stop at the first cruddy looking station on the Italian side, ask for a coffee and be immediately transported to cappuccino heaven. How can that be? What is wrong with France?

You’ve probably figured out that our flight was delayed even more than the hour I was told about and you’re right. We were postponed another 45 minutes and then another hour and then two hours. At some point the young Walmart Welcomer who stood at some type of lectern just before the ribbon-tape maze that you line-up and shuffle through at all airports, so that you can be informed that you have to pay extra for your bag, actually had no idea about the flight at all, she even asked me for information. I was beginning to slip into a Kafka novel. Clearly action was required, drastic action.

Now, the French are still struggling with the art of coffee making but they’ve got a modest reputation for wine and I decided to put that to the test. I found a slightly plastic bar-cum-bistro manned by a surly and completely unmatched couple. The female was a blue-black-haired (that stuff seemed to suck in the light) twenty-something type with an interesting, albeit also frightening tattoo that spread its sinuous tentacles up her neck from somewhere below the collar. The male half of the sketch was a shaven headed young North African immigrant, pleasant, rather shy and without a clue about what he was to do as a waiter.

I sat down and asked for a glass of wine (which I can ask for in twenty seven languages, including French!). After conferring together, the couple determined that what I wanted was a glass of wine, red wine. There! First time out of the box they got it right! And the stuff, at four or five euros the glass, was very, very drinkable. I had two. Landing on the scant contents of my stomach (half of a stale croissant), the pair of them (the wine, not the folks running the restaurant) quickly imparted a nice glow. But, they improved the young couple running the bistro at the same time. Their attitude got better and the female’s gleaming midnight hair was, I realized, actually just one of those French fashion things that they can pull off and I can’t. The snaky tattoo thing was actually a bold statement using the side of her neck, and who knows how much more of her body, as a canvas on which to write a commentary about post-industrial life. The North African was not just a new, nervous employee whose waitering skills were tested every time he brought a glass of wine, struggling to keep the tray balanced but a symbol of the new France, the Rainbow Nation of Europe.

Pretty soon I was feeling left-bankish. The plane had been delayed again, I’d confirmed that because there was a conveniently situated departures monitor which I discovered outside the toilet after my third wine. I pulled a hand-made notebook out of my backpack and a beautiful new pen my sister-in-law had given me for Christmas. This was just the moment! I was here, in this enormous concrete carbuncle of an airport, sitting at a bistro table. This was France, this was the place where Sartre and Camus and Derrida and so on had helped to frame the literary and philosophical dialogue of the world after the War.

I ordered another wine and began to write. Here, let me quote from my new notebook, which has a lovely green cloth cover decorated with painted, elegant Chinese characters: ‘This is my notebook’. Yep, that’s it, I deconstructed the notebook; I captured in that short sentence the whole existential anguish of the airport. My notebook was real, the wine was real (the second and last sentence of the entry is: ‘I’m having a wine’) but the flight, Madrid, the airport, that was all getting a bit blurry. I think it may well have been fading away as a nice case of jet lag arrived to help things along. Or it could have been some break-through in my perception of the material world although I think it could have been the ‘vin’.

And so the afternoon wore on. I eventually ate something, it was good, lamb I think. I had one more wine and then it struck me that, attractive as it was, I really didn’t want to sit at that little bistro for the rest of my life so I ordered a coffee! I can report that although my senses were ever so slightly affected by the wine, they were as sharp in the afternoon as they had been those eight or ten hours before when I’d had my first coffee on arriving at CDG (that’s Charles De Gaulle for short or, possibly, it may stand for Café Du Garbage). Night was falling, set off by the warm glow of institutional fluorescents, my flight had reappeared on the departure list, life was good. I paid and leisurely wove my way through the thickening crowd, through security and onto the plane. I got on the right one by cleverly confirming with everyone that this flight was going to Madrid (the one in Spain, just to be double-sure).

The rest was easy, I let the crew take care of the flying bit and the taxi on the Barajas end the driving bit. Our doorman was kind enough to take responsibility for the get my luggage out bit and push the elevator button part. I easily found my way down the hall to our apartment door and after only two or three tries was able to make the doorbell work. That attracted my daughter’s attention, who intelligently (she is my daughter, after all!) linked the door bell’s sound with the presence of someone without, wanting in. I was back in Madrid!

Fate...

6 January 2010

Pingtung, ‘Los Reyes’

I like the word ‘irascible’. I think it’s onomatopoetic. It just sounds just like irritability should sound.

So, I think that describing fate as irascible is both just and evocative; it sounds as if it’s pissed off. And, much of the time, it appears fate is, basically, a curmudgeon. I write this because my experience of the fellow – I think he’s a ‘he’ but she could as easily be a ‘she’ (I don’t want to be accused of sexism on this topic) – has frequently consisted of cosmic practical jokes, with me as the butt.

Today, for instance, fate decided to test me. I was sitting on the roof terrace, enjoying a beer and a quiet cigarette, ashing my smoke in an empty can left over from the previous evening that I scrounged from the bin we keep on the roof. There was a pleasant breeze and the wind chimes, from Santa Fe, which have adjusted nicely to their new Oriental home, were playing something classically Chinese. Overall, a nice way to spend some ‘me’ time.

Of course, just when I was having some out-of-body, peaceful experience, fate interfered and I ashed my cigarette in the beer I was drinking rather than the empty can (note to self: use different brand cans when drinking one and ashing in the other). The choice I was left with was whether to abandon the cold, refreshing beer I was drinking or carry on bravely, ignoring the ash content.

At first I rashly tried to pour out some of the beer, assuming the ash would float off. I checked myself just in time and stayed my hand, this is, after all, beer we’re talking about.

I don’t think I’ve ever drunk beer mixed with ash before – at least not the first one. There’s always, though, a time for these new experiences and, with two and a half flights of stairs between me and the refrigerator, this seemed the ideal time to try it.

Well, I can report that apart from a slightly gritty taste, the beer seemed to be unaffected. I sipped away, contented, the breeze wafting across the roofs, tinkling the chimes and me, slightly prone and very relaxed.

So, although irascible fate has tested me yet again, I do not think I have been found wanting. I have taken a few roughs with the smooth, a bit of grit with my brew, and have emerged, beery but unbowed.

Tainan

2 January 2010

Pingtung

Tainan, by the admittedly low standards of urban design and beauty that prevail on this island, is a pretty city. Before they were all bulldozed, the city woke up to the fact it had a few interesting relics of the past. Chief among those was the 17^th century Dutch fort which was besieged by Koxinga/Zheng Chenggong, a pirate who is frequently mentioned as a national hero of Taiwan. Still standing, the Dutch fort, called Zeelandia, was originally on Anping Island but the tidal inlet between it and the mainland of Formosa eventually silted up so that today it sits several blocks from the sea at the Western end of Tainan city. When Fred Coyett, the Dutch Governor, surrendered the fort to Koxinga in 1662, it brought an end to 38 years of Dutch presence on Taiwan.

By the way, Fred was called ‘Frederik’ but I think, being an American, that the shorter form sounds more accessible …friendlier.

In the center of the city there is a 17^th century Confucian temple and school. It sits in a park. It was the first Chinese institute of higher education on the island. I liked it; the architecture was still Chinese with those curved roofs supporting dragons perched at the ends but inside it was very simple, austere even. Compared to the architectural chaos of the Taoist temples that dot most cities, this place is refreshingly understated.

In front of the temple there is an impressively large Banyan tree which has apparently been sick (I’m not completely surprised, after all, it’s reputed to be several hundred years old) but the good folk of the city have been working to make it well; it’s been a symbol of the temple for a very long time and they rightly would like to keep it so. A dead tree is not nearly as attractive a symbol as a live one – the same thing applies to the oak (or something) that grows in Guernica and is the symbol of the Basque nation. Here in Tainan they’ve put up several plaques to honor themselves and their efforts to revive the tree. I can report that, apart from the encomiums to its saviors memorialized in eternal bronze, the tree lives still, but it looks poorly and I suspect that full recovery is a considerable way off.

There was a food fair in the park and blaring popular Chinese music. The food was good but I couldn’t help wonder what the ghosts of the students who buried themselves in the Analects when the place was an institute of education would have thought about the noise. Unseemly would seem a good guess.

Still, Tainan has sidewalks that are open, broad streets and a number of parks. Rather than build up, they’ve built out, the place is geographically bigger than its population would lead you to guess. It may be, though, that some of the building out is from fear – a lot of the land is reclaimed and the Japanese will tell you, ruefully, that the reclaimed land turns into something like water in any decent earthquake; better to build low and spread the weight than build up.

We drove along National 17 when we left the city; it follows the coast for a while as you head down towards Kaohsiung. The murky air makes the sea the color of dirty bathwater but the authorities have made the best of it and built paths, public areas, parking lots and benches from which you can look out at the water and watch bobbing barriers that mark the line between various commercial fish farms. Wherever there was a tidal inlet, the bridge over it was lined with people fishing. I liked it but, then, I always like coastal areas.

Buddhist Banquo?

1 January 2010

Pingtung

Eccentric, that’s the word. I’ve been trying to find a term to describe the latest stage in the evolution of my Mother-in-law’s character. When she elected to become a Buddhist nun, sometime in her 50’s, I would have described her as devout, determined to spend the rest of her time on this coil performing various exercises that would ensure her next rebirth would be less filled with work and disappointment.

Over the years I think she has moved from devout to ever so slightly potty and frequently a bit grouchy. Yesterday was one of those grouchy days. She always gets up early and wanders down to the kitchen where she spends way too much time over a pot, stirring up some virtually inedible concoction of bean curd and vegetables (no onion or garlic please!) but the family assures me that she was always a pretty miserable cook so no real change there. What impresses me is the amount of time that she invests in cooking and eating. The quantities of the muck she consumes are impressive – I figure she stays rail thin because she has managed to boil out all of the food value of whatever ingredients she mixes together. Even the smell is faintly repulsive; normally Chinese cooking is a welter of smells, many exotic but virtually all enticing (except for a type of pickled bean curd whose olfactory characteristics are not attractive).

So my Mother-in-law finishes her cooking and eating – she needs to rush because she will have to begin preparing her next meal shortly. Meantime, my wife is busily cutting and chopping and so on, getting things ready for a family shabu-shabu in the evening (our New Year’s banquet if you will). The ingredients are fresh – seafood, beef, lamb, tofu, vegetables.

My Mother-in-law looks over my wife’s shoulder, ‘What are you preparing?’. When informed that it’s a meal for the family and the ingredients are enumerated she mutters and wanders off, ‘I guess I’ll have to go to the temple’.

Buddhists are generally the most tolerant of the religious amongst us. I frequently tell people in the middle of arguments about how Christianity is a religion of the emotions that no one ever charged into battle shouting the name of Buddha at the top of their lungs. This doesn’t, however, seem to be the case of my Mother-in-law on one of her grouchy days.

My Mother-in-law is now getting on for 80. I suspect that her mental faculties are as good as ever they were. What I also believe is that they don’t come into full use except when she is grouchy. It is during those periods that she gives play to a sharpness that is otherwise disguised by what I suspect is a form of piety that includes both generosity and an inward focus that seems to be an objective of being Buddhist.

So, Mom-in-law was not pleased, on this grouchy New Year’s Eve, by the notion of a family dinner where the attendees would stuff themselves with God’s creatures. All day, after learning it was her plan to go to the temple, I wondered what would be the end-game. Evening and the arrival of family brought the answer.

I should explain that ‘Amah’, as she is referred to by the family, is not exactly Kate Moss. She shaved her head when she became a nun and has kept the same hairdo ever since. It’s not unattractive, it’s just there – and I think that’s the point of shaving it for Buddhist nuns and monks, you get rid of sexual differentiators. And her clothes? She dresses in a loose shirt-like thing and some even looser pants that are tied at the waist with a string. The color is a becoming and uniform washed-out gray (from daily laundering).

Amah’s teeth were pulled a couple of decades ago and, since then, her smile has been one of the sights of Pingtung, enhanced as it is by her brilliantly white dentures. But this evening we were not to be graced by a dazzling display of her oral prosthetics. I saw her half an hour before the first relatives were to arrive and she was toothless, her lips compressed into a depression around the gums. Very attractive. It was clear that she was heated up and not in a party mood.

Recently Amah has taken up making notebooks of cheap computer printing paper with covers made of intricately decorated cardboard from used boxes. I am not digressing here ….

New Year’s Eve and the pending arrival of family for a slap up dinner was, in her view, exactly the right time for Amah to decide that she should park herself on the marble steps just inside our door to cut used Christmas boxes into notebook covers giving her an excuse for being there so that, toothless, she could glare at every relative as they came in, wordlessly condemning them for the cannibalistic rite in which they were about to participate.

Being Chinese and inherently polite, everyone made note of Amah’s presence as they entered, nicely circling around her and making appropriately respectful noises. They then traipsed into the dining room to eat. Eventually with all the guests at the table and Amah absent (after everyone was here she managed to trans-substantiate herself from the downstairs entrance, past the dining room and upstairs to her room, unseen) I innocently supposed that we had seen the last of her for the evening; she would go to bed, it was getting on for 7:30 or 8:00 and that’s lights out for most Buddhist nuns. I was wrong.

So there we were, talking away, piling the beef, shellfish and other sinful ingredients into the shabu-shabu pot. I, playing gracious host, was intent on keeping every glass filled with plum wine, beer or some other alcoholic beverage, aiming to get 80 year-old Grandfather inebriated enough so that he wouldn’t go off and gamble whatever he had in his pocket (a winning evening would be even worse) and the rest of us could just relax and enjoy the time together.

It was at this point that our Buddhist Banquo showed up. Gliding down the stairs, all gray and toothless, Amah percolated into the room. Refusing a seat at the table where the slaughter was underway, she hovered behind various chairs, murmuring vile imprecations while still commenting on our cooking techniques (around a family shabu-shabu pot, culinary skills vary widely, mine being particularly unique).

We managed to wind the evening up very nicely. Everyone ate their fill and I rate the dinner a success. The shadow of Amah hung over things for a bit but optimism in the face of adversity is our watchword and, with enough alcohol, specters become illusory. The last guest stumbled out and we went to bed just after midnight to the echoing booms of what were clearly celebratory bombs.

The rest of the night passed peacefully except for the ruckus around 3 AM when a spectacularly lit neighbor’s wife noisily tried to prevent the man of the house from taking a leisurely drive around town. Ultimately she convinced him that bed was a better bet but by then the first dawn of 2010 was on us.

Today’s Laundry – Wash Before Wearing

1 January 2010

Pingtung

There is a little enclosed garden space off the living room. The garden wall is covered with orchids, all types, hanging in little nets, their roots spreading along the tiling. Some have thick, long leaves and others small delicate ones. Roots climb along the spaces between the tiles, taking in moisture, feeding off the rich air.

Crystal skies are a rarity, the humidity is high year-round and frequently a light sea fog moves inland from early morning into the night. Nimbus clouds hang above the shrouded countryside. The sun is diffuse, its rays cut and weakened by hanging, microscopic bondings of hydrogen and oxygen.

There is a strange appositeness about the climate; in winter the atmosphere is like a cotton sheet that lightly covers and in the hot season it is a blanket that suffocates. What nurtures also consumes; mosquitoes flourish, termites feast on anything wooden, even concrete and steel cannot defeat this environment – the concrete becomes pitted and prematurely aged, the steel corrodes. New aluminum structures are soon covered with a patina of moisture and mildew that erodes the brightness of the metal, creating hoary monuments of even the recently constructed.

The orchids – and this time I have fooled myself (and, perhaps, you) because the seeming digression after the first paragraph above was not a digression at all but, rather, part of the point of this splurge of words – are compensation for the weather; they bloom, brilliantly effusive, long-lasting, apparently delicate but surprisingly hardy, giving us color, light and beauty in a small, exquisite package that can make the corner between walls a reason to reflect.

Today’s Laundry

31 December 2009

Pingtung

Yesterday we drove along the coast, south towards Eluanbi. Narrowing quickly, the coastal plain thins down to a point where the mountainous backbone of Formosa slips into the South China Sea. Eventually the highway and the old, Japanese-built railway run nearly together, the latter ducking in and out of pitted concrete tunnels that I figure were built to protect from high seas, landslides and, perhaps, were intended to camouflage it from the air.

As you head south of Pingtung there are banana plantations and factories. Apart from the mountains to the East, just kilometers away but difficult to spot through the sea haze, the plain is as flat as a pool table.

We didn’t make it to Eluanbi – it’s not far but we stopped and took a nap on the coast just north of Kenting. When we woke it was time to drive back.

This morning we drove to Dongkang, the fishing port. The boats don’t get in until 2 pm so we had to settle for yesterday’s catch. However, since we were buying shellfish, prawns and the like, they were live anyway. Once bivalve, a greenish clam-like being, looked delicious and I’m told they are very good with basil and butter. They stick a stalk-ish appendage out of the shell and then spit at you. I will have my vengeance at our New Year’s Eve dinner tonight.

We reminisced as we drove, this route past cane, rice and corn fields, remembering mutual childhoods when the sugar-cane seller would sell a foot-long piece at a time, to Ting here in Taiwan and to me in Sonora (I still wonder where they grew it, certainly not in that desert!). You would chew the fibrous interior and the taste of that sweet juice is a memory that lingers, always there.

Later, back in the relative chaos of Pingtung (relative because it is nothing compared to the bigger cities), we stopped along the street at a bakery that produces marvelous fresh cheese bread and loaves filled with sultanas and nuts. How these people remain so slim is something that still baffles me. Perhaps it’s the water?

Schools were letting out and I think I was the only gwai-lo on the street so that every one of them wanted to shout ‘Happy New Year’ at me. Chinese teenagers seem so naïve compared to their Western homologues.

Ugly?

28 December 2009

Pingtung

On the surface our town here has all the charm of a strip mall. Scooters side-swipe cars and pedestrians with equal insouciance; public sidewalks are extensions of whatever commercial establishment that front them, providing extra display space for clothing racks, stacks of plastic utensils and bowls and bike and cycle parking. The kitchens of eating shops are often outside the premises, on the sidewalk, where it is cooler for the cooks in summer and where the frying and sautéing and stewing acts as a both a visual and olfactory advertisement of the pleasures to be had at the narrow, slightly dirty tables of the establishment. Mostly, too, they are right, those advertisements, the food is basic but flavorsome and prepared with a flair that comes from a combination of a millennia-old cultural fascination with cooking and eating and a need, born of scarcity, to use all of the fresh, edible ingredients that are available.

The bakeries produce soft, fresh pastries that are unrivalled except by the best croissants in Europe. But here they are made in bewildering variety, cheese, cinnamon, sausage, onion, fruit, cream ….

I am still on a crutch, just one now as my recovery from a broken leg proceeds, and limping across the streets is a challenge. I hobble across the intersection; no one intends to kill me and no one does; one old woman, plump and with crooked teeth that she’s proud to show, smiles at me as I hobble by, gunning the hand accelerator of her scooter. It’s a nice smile.

The 7-11 is gleaming and offers not just the usual mix of chips and beer and cigarettes but an aisle of fresh packaged food that is appetizing to look at and smells delicious. The clerk, seventy if he’s a day, enjoys selling me the English-language paper, speaking a combination of Mandarin and a version of English that is just enough for my scant Chinese that we can transact some business. Business done, we smile, wave and say ‘good-bye’ and ‘tsai-tsien’ – ‘see you again’. I hope we do.

Outside the bakery I sit and read the paper and sip at a cappuccino that is as good as any I’ve had in Italy.

Later. I still have the smile that the chubby lady on the scooter gave me this morning.

South of Cancer, North of Capricorn, East of Bengal

27 December 2009

Pingtung

The windows are open and the early evening breeze rustles at the curtains. In the empty lot behind our house there is insect call – chirping mostly. There are a few birds but the last of the butterflies has gone for the day. The grass was cut a couple of months ago but it has grown back and is now thigh high. There are a couple of renegade banana plants and a few trees, mimosas I think.

A fountain drips; the water masks most of the puttering of scooters a few streets away. For Taiwan the neighborhood is quiet, calm. Although the markets are still open and the food stalls are lighting up for the evening, the pace is slower on this Sunday. It may not yet be a day of rest for these industrious people but they are learning to make it a day at half-speed.

We are surrounded by our things – photos of Alex as a little girl, a picture of us on our wedding day, my books, candles, framed remembrances, the Encyclopedia.

There are smells, sounds, feelings that define what it is to be back here. Our house is in Pingtung, now virtually a suburb of Kaohsiung, second city of the island, a huge place. Thirty or more years ago I recall walking the streets around the old port, which was then still a dangerous place with sailors pitching out of bars and lost ex-pats playing dice and whoring. Container cranes have replaced swaggering Greeks and beer-soaked Yanks. The last of the hangers-on after the US closed the airbase are gone. There is a Costco, an Ikea, the Dream Mall (either the biggest or one of the biggest in Asia) and Starbucks and McDonald’s, there is even a modern metro whose lobby is ceilinged with stained glass.

I would stay at the Kingdom Hotel. The Ambassador, on the other side of the Love River, was more modern, plastic. The Kingdom was comfortable, smoky. Middle class Japanese businessmen and western expats on assignment stayed there. The bar was carpeted and traditional: stools, Taiwan beer on tap, bottled Guinness and Heineken. Sometimes you played ‘balut’ to see who bought the round – a game with five dice in a cup and a scoring system whose complexities increased in proportion to the amount of beer ingested.

Across the street from the Kingdom there was a ragged row of bars and cheap, Western-style restaurants. The bar girls spoke the hoarse English of bar girls everywhere in the Orient from Seoul to Saigon, raspy and strangely exotic. The customers at the Kingdom bar were a mix. The most interesting were often the Westerners, mostly Americans in Taiwan with the occasional Brit, who had come out years before, during the War or as engineers or commercial officers for one of the hongs and who had fallen down the black hole which can be Asia. Frequently they were well read and intelligent. Mostly they were lost and their stories were the stuff of fiction, wars and bright lights. I would drink with them, beer fuddled and seduced by their tales, into the early hours. Sometimes after hours of drinking and suddenly hungry, we would wander to a nearby night market and eat noodles and pork belly.

We were all, in a way, the off-spring of tea planters, opium traders, China Marines … even a few missionaries.

They call this half of the ring out here, the Asian edge of the Pacific, stretching from Jakarta through Singapore, Bangkok, Manila, Hong Kong, Taipei, Seoul, Osaka and, now, Shanghai and Shenzhen, the rim. It is the edge, still.

Today's Laundry

19 December 2009

Madrid

So Google has been fined about 400,000 euros for digitizing French language books. What idiots occupy these positions of responsibility in the French Government? Language, and literature, are, if not originally, open-source cultural tools, aren’t they? Yes, if you write something and copyright it, it’s yours for a time and you get to make money off it. Fair enough. What doesn’t make sense is for some narrow-minded linguistic chauvinist to participate further in the murder of a beautiful language. A hundred and fifty years ago – I was going to write ‘a hundred years ago’ but my asseveration wouldn’t have been true – French was pretty much on a par with English, a world language. Today you can speak it in France, at least in France outside of Paris where any attempt by a foreigner to communicate in the local lingo is regarded as an act of lese majeste. You can try it in the countryside of that beautiful country and it’s bienvenue, no matter how fractured your pronunciation and limited your vocabulary. You can speak it in Quebec, in Gabon, in the rest of Francophone Africa, in Haiti and a few other places but that’s pretty much it. When I was in college we were conned by French language grifters who persuaded us to take courses in the tongue and then disillusioned further when we learned that if you wanted to work in a French speaking country, you were more likely than not to end up in some desperately poor, malarial dictatorship.

So, we’re witnessing the further decline of French. The lesson is that if you don’t make your cultural patrimony accessible, it becomes ossified, fit only for a museum. Literature – even the bad stuff – needs to be available if it’s going to make any difference to people. In France they’ve decided not to participate in the democratization of literature and culture that is being delivered for other tongues across the internet. You won’t be able to call up a free copy of an out-of-print and out-of-copyright book in that language. Spanish has sped by French as a world language and English is completely dominant (I recall over-hearing a business conversation some years ago in the lobby of a Seoul hotel whose participants were Finnish, Chinese, Russian and Japanese, all speaking some form of English). Chinese is not far behind and Arabic and the Turkic languages will no doubt all have an international role. Only French will not be at the party and that’s because the fools decided not to attend, despite being cordially welcomed if they did.

And in Catalunya they continue to march backwards. A meaningless referendum was held for about a third of the voters in the region this past week. About a third of that one-third actually bothered to vote. The vote was to express support for Catalunyan autonomy/independence. So, let’s see, one-third of one-third is about one-ninth I think. Seventy percent of that one-ninth voted for some form of independence, amounting, in the end, to less than 10% of the voting age population. Hell, I bet that you’d get more voting for Texas independence!

So what is Catalunyan independence about? I reckon it’s about inferiority. The entire region is riven with a resentful, hard-headed dislike of Madrid and Castilla in general. There’s a history behind this, Franco was rough on the place. But Franco died a long time ago and Spain is now part of the EU. The central Government spends a lot of money on Catalunya and there’s no reason for this silly posturing.

Catalan is a ridiculous language. It is something between French and Spanish. If it wants to survive and people want to speak it, I’ve no problem. When the misbegotten regional government in Barcelona decided, however, that there wasn’t enough of it being spoken and it began to promote its use over Spanish, it was a body blow to the economy. Catalunya has always had a strong, industrial economy. Its people are creative and enterprising. Hobbling it with a requirement that forces the use of Catalan in place of a more international tongue is even worse than what their cousins across the Pyrenees are doing with French. There are very few people who speak Catalan but there are now signs in Barcelona that tell you it’s okay to reply in Catalan when someone addresses you in Spanish. The schools require students to learn Catalan. It’s no surprise that more and more back-office work is being transferred to Madrid where I suspect the regional Government doesn’t care whether you answer your phone in Spanish, French, English, Mandarin or even Catalan; the point is to communicate and get the work done.

Barcelona needs to take a lesson from the Dutch. There is no stupid language posturing. The Dutch speak Dutch, German, French, whatever they need to get things done. You can walk into a shop virtually anywhere in the country and do your shopping in whatever language you want, your money is what does the talking. Be practical Catalunya!

Whew! I feel better.

Sunday coffee ....13 Dec. 2009

Madrid. It is before 8 AM and the sky is cloudy. It is a Sunday morning in early September. We are in the barrio of Salamanca, the most expensive area in the center of the city. I can see a woman in high heels perched on the window ledge of a brick building, some four floors above a courtyard. The building is modern compared to its neighbors, built in the 1950’s; those that abut it date from the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

The woman is blond and even at a distance I can tell she is dressed fashionably. She is holding on to the bricks around the window. She is edging her way along the ledge to an open landing, about a meter away from the window. If she stretches, she can just reach the edge of the wall and pull herself into the open stairwell.

I am standing on my roof terrace, peering over the edge, watching the woman.

She is a thief.

A handbag is strung over her shoulder. I am certain that it contains the jewelry that she has stolen from the apartment whose window she has just climbed out of.

I think about yelling at her, about calling the police. I am afraid, though, that if I do the first, it may startle her and she could lose her footing – the high heels she is wearing are far from suitable for second story work. I think about the risk of her falling. Her life would be forfeit if she did lose her balance, the courtyard below is paved with limestone slabs and it is a drop of 30 or 40 feet. If I elect the second course of action, without startling her by calling out, and I just call the police, by the time they come she will be long gone. I muse that the purpose of their response will change radically to an investigation of death by misadventure from presumed thievery if I do yell and she loses her grip and crashes onto the stones below.

A few seconds only have passed and the woman climbs safely onto the landing. She straightens her dress, I notice that she is tall and slender; whether she is pretty I can’t determine, her features are too vague at this distance. I am certain she is Eastern European, probably a Romanian. Or perhaps I am wrong? I have deducted her ethnicity from my experience of the city. It is full of economic migrants; many of them work – as plumbers, carpenters, electricians, maids, waitresses – but many are criminal, pick-pockets, muggers and, more daringly, robbers who climb into carelessly open windows, left so by their tenants, seemingly secure because they are several floors above the street.

In an instant the blond thief moves off down the stairs and I know that within a few seconds more she will be at street level and out of the building. She will make her way down Ayala, which is empty at this hour, to Serrano where there are already a few pedestrians on their way to early Mass or to buy a loaf of bread or a newspaper. She will blend in and vanish.

There is no time for me to go down from our seventh floor roof terrace and around the corner to pursue her; among other things, I am in my bath-robe and I would surely lose her trail if I stopped to change. The alternative, scurrying down the street in my bathrobe and slippers, is embarrassing and I discount the option. I ask myself if my behavior is actually cowardice and am I just looking for excuses for my inaction?

My early morning coffee on the roof, usually a time of inchoate, multi-directional musing, has turned into a period of singular reflection. How have I behaved during this drama? What did I see? Why have I chosen to interpret it the way that I did? Have I witnessed a crime? I saw a woman leave an apartment in an unorthodox manner; she climbed along a ledge and I concluded that she was a jewelry robber, a second-story woman if you will. But, was she? Could she have simply been the resident of the apartment and lost her key which in this case was required for both opening and closing the door, inside or out?

That line of speculation is spurious, I move back from the edge of existentialism. I know that she is a thief and that I witnessed the last moments of her crime – the escape. I have never seen her before. No one would take the risk of death like she had if they weren’t up to no good. There remain a couple of scant possibilities: Perhaps she was leaving a lover? Perhaps she murdered someone inside the apartment and by climbing out of the window she supposed that suspicion would be directed towards someone other than her?

The sun has risen higher and the chilly temperature of the dawn has given way to a pleasant warmth that I can feel through the terry cloth of my robe. My shoulders are relaxed as I lean on the wall that encloses our roof-top garden. I take my coffee and turn away from the scene of the crime and move back to my chair. I sit and look up. The sky this morning is calm. There are a few cirrus clouds scudding about, propelled by winds several thousand feet above the calm at ground level, diverting me by their shape-shifting. I can no longer see the neighboring building, the open window that has been violated is now a mental picture only and what I’ve just witnessed is already fading into a mind imprint that seems unreal. It will be a memory that one morning, this morning, months later, will, without conscious thought, float to the surface of my ruminations.

Bette Jane Turney: September 2nd, 1924 to November 5th, 2009

Madrid

6 November 2009

My Mother died yesterday. She was 85 years old. She died in Tucson, Arizona where she’d lived for the past 30-some years. My Dad died in Tucson about 18 years ago.

I last saw Mom in August when I visited her twice, one evening and the following morning. She knew it was me but when I went back to see her the next morning, she had forgotten that I’d seen her the night before.

During her last year or two Mom mellowed into a sweet old lady – my nieces and nephew confirmed this. Certainly the last time I saw her she was exactly that, mellow and sweet with a smile plastered onto her face. Perhaps she’d found some peace, I hope that was the case.

I had a good childhood. My Mom was loving, protective and smothering. It took me many years to get over the last but I did. It wasn’t easy and there was a lot of broken china. Yesterday, soon after I got the news of Mom’s passing I wrote a bit about that broken china. It’s not the time to put that into the blog; it needs to steep a bit. Now is the time to simply record her passing, to be grateful that it was peaceful and that she had her daughter and two of her grandchildren with her when she went.

We were all prepared for this. I knew Mom was going, the doctors told us it was only a matter of time. I’d said my goodbyes but, still, when Meghan, my niece, called to give me the news, I stopped and sat and stared at nothing. There was a hole in the universe as she passed out. Whatever it is that life is made of soon washed over the hole and you would have had no notion that it had ever been there but, for a bit, that hole was palpable and there. It doesn’t mean she won’t be remembered or that she won’t have influence beyond death but the pattern of living was quickly restored. I suspect this happens however many times a day someone dies.

I can’t talk much about how I felt yesterday because I’m still not sure. I can report that I felt her passing and there was regret – about things that I will write about another time – but the feeling was really a combination of gratitude for the ease of it all for her and the emptiness that she left in me. Both for good and bad my Mother was a big part of my existence, more in earlier years than recently, but still a substantial percentage of whatever influences went into making me. That influence is now physically gone but it will never be entirely absent, both the good and the bad; I like to think that the good is more than the bad. I know that my Dad, whose passing I genuinely mourned and still do, still has a big influence, a positive one. My Mom will retain an influence as well; as I noted, not all for the good, but still there.

So, Mom, thank you for loving me all your life and for my childhood. There is much that we could have said and much that we could have done differently but there is no ‘do-over’. I pray that you ultimately had no shadow over the memories, no aching regrets. I have regrets but they are soft and indistinct as I hope yours were, having no greater weight on the scale than the warm memories of Christmases, picnics, rides in the country, family dinners and vacations at Kino. On balance its okay! Be at peace!

Financial Crisis? Nope, not here, it's more like Armageddon!

Madrid

28 October 2009

I'm finally beginning to realise how very close to disaster we came a year ago. We are still experiencing the after-shocks of the Lehman failure. Bank lending was very tight this past February and I was anecdotally telling people in the City of London that the banking houses in Madrid had been very lonely places, there wasn't anything going on.

Well, my friends, the truth is that there is still not all that much going on. Here in Spain we are at about 20% unemployment, highest in the EU. In my business, renewable energy, the price of assets is softening and the number of them on the market (for re-sale or for sale after construction) is growing. Owners who six months back were willing to sit on an investment, expecting that prices would begin to rise and that terms would evolve in their favour if only they held out, are now needier, they haven't seen many serious buyers and they haven't closed many deals. The terms are becoming more favourable for buyers and prices are, at a minimum, not rising.

This is not just a shift in my perception of what's happening, it's an important augury of what's really developing out there; there's a realisation taking hold that this is going to take a while to work out. The physical evidence supports this belief; the answer to what actually is going on in the economy is 'not much'. We are seeing a continuation of 'life support' activities, which you'd expect: groceries, fuel, agriculture. What we aren't seeing is what we did expect would be happening by now: a return to some form of normality in the rest of the economy. Naturally, we expected construction to lag; well, actually, to remain comatose for at least another 12 to 18 months. What we didn't expect was that everything else would be hurting. Deals just aren't happening and I think that's for two reasons: banks are not lending (at least they aren't lending easily and without extensive questioning of the deal) and buyers are very much more conservative than they were (and than we expected them to be at this point). The buyers are running scared. The due diligence is longer and more exhaustive. The desire to reduce the number of unknowns combined with a bull market in risk aversion has slowed the pace of business to a dangerously slow speed.

Sclerotic banks, needy sellers, conservative buyers: the way it stands now, we are going nowhere quickly. You cannot make buyers less conservative or quicker unless they've got some confidence in the economy as a whole. Banks are the only part of the dysfunctional algorithm that can be artificially stimulated. The upshot is clear, Governments have got to stimulate credit, they have to get banks to open the taps. Sellers will move enough in price and on terms to stimulate the buyers if they think the banks have enough confidence to lend.

So, are banks the bad guys in this picture? Yep, you betcha! There is no ambiguity; they got us into this mess and they are doing very little to get us out.

The photo-voltaic industry in Spain benefits from a feed-in tariff that is guaranteed by the Spanish Government for 25 years. What that means is that if you can get your solar cells producing correctly and the power you generate is evacuated into the grid, you will get paid. Unless it's got what they call trackers (little machines that turn the solar cell modules so that they get more sun), a photo-voltaic plant has, essentially, no moving parts and is undoubtedly the least risky way to produce power that there is. In other words, if you get your modules in place, there is not much that is going to stop you generating power and if you do, the Spanish Government guarantees you'll get paid. For a lender it doesn't get any better -- the deal is transparent, tick some technical and legal boxes and you've got a nice, steady income.

With these pluses, you'd expect that the photo-voltaic business, along with other renewable energies, would be one of those that would go through the crisis without much damage. Of course the industry isn't immune, a lot of sellers are construction companies that were battered by the residential bubble and have to liquidate assets to improve the balance sheet so, what do they sell, the assets they think will realise the most value, their renewable projects. Still, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the business (except maybe some over-enthusiasm on the part of Government when they first thought up these rich tariffs). Why can't we get things going then?

The answer is, again, simply that the banks aren't moving. Like deer in the headlights they are simply watching Armageddon hurtling towards them. They think that by strengthening their balance sheets they will survive and any loans they make now apparently do nothing towards that end. But, the fact is that theories about what percentages you need to be safe are all simply calculated risk assessments. The presume that we won't go over some financial cliff where all of those guesses (for that, in the end, is all they are) about bad loan reserves and so on are just so much statistical nonsense.

So, how do we get things going? Really simple, in my view; make some loans, prudent ones, but make them and make them soon! We've got to get money moving or we're really going to face some serious troubles.

Baby Einsteins?

27 October 2009

Madrid

To our horror, we've just learned that the 'Baby Einstein' videos from Disney (actually, I've been fairly busy recently and this is the first I've heard of them) do not work. Nope, you cannot put your baby down in front of the television, turn on the video while you have a beer, cook dinner or read pornography and have your baby come out at the end of half-an-hour a budding genius. Apparently the American Pediatric Society (or Association?) doesn't think you ought to have baby in front of a screen at all during the first two years of life. I believe, technically, that the Pediatric Society has actually contacted the American Association of Podiatrists on the matter because of a serious concern about Disney having put their foot in it.

So, what was happening in Baby Fido's mind as he sat in front of the screen? From the very little I've read (and I mean the very little I scanned, this is an issue I'm milking because it strikes me as silly), it appears that the infant viewers were simply overwhelmed by the colors, noises and movement on the screen. They do not 'get' much or any of it; they are, seemingly, mesmerized by the videos and sit there, just like adults, their minds turned into some sort of flickering screen-induced mush, staring gape-mouthed until their parents recall their existence and turn off the machine.

Too bad there is no such protection for adults; I've been known to sit there stupidly watching one repeat of Friends after another, completely bereft of any indication of sentience, letting the noise and the color and the movement on the screen wash over me, just like junior.

Gordon Brown likes Nick Griffin .....

24 October 2009, Madrid

Nick Griffin appeared on 'Question Time' because Gordon Brown and other Labourites wanted to encourage interest in the BNP. Every vote for the far-right is a vote that the Conservatives lose. Gordon will lose this coming June unless he pulls every sneaky, underhanded, low-down political trick he can think of. Even then, though, I think the disgust level across the country may just be high enough that he'll be looking for something else to do this coming summer.

Ups and Downs of a Broken Leg

24 October 2009

Saturday, Madrid

Most of what goes on when you have a broken leg is not all that positive. I broke my left leg ingloriously in four places, managing to twist myself into a knot on a flat piece of sidewalk outside my office. It took two hours of surgery and enough screws to open a hardware store to put me back together. I then had a week on my back in the hospital, another week at home, still on my back and, finally, a trip back to the hospital to put on a semi-permanent cast of fiberglass. I now make my way around on crutches, I'm not allowed to put any weight on the broken leg for another three weeks or so.

I've learned that Madrid is not very friendly for disabled people. I suspect this is a fact about much of the world of which I was, heretofore, blithely ignorant. It's even hard to get into the hospital – I had to wait outside for an orderly to come and get me with a wheel chair, the steps are not friendly and the ramp is a marathon without a rail to hang on to. I cannot go to my favourite cafe near the office because the steps in and out are very steep. Getting into the office itself is a chore – there are two very short flights of steps before you get to the lift but neither has a rail for support so I have to call a colleague to come down and lend me his arm so I can hop up the stairs without risking another broken leg.

Our apartment is called an 'atico' and, in local usage here in Madrid, that means it occupies more than one floor on the top level of the building. After the first two times of hopping perilously up and down from the main to the bedroom floor and, simultaneously, scaring the hell out of myself, I figured out that discretion called for me to sit on my butt and scoot up and down, step by step. It looks undignified but it has taken most of the risk out of getting to my desk, to my bed and to the living room.

Bathing is a very long and involved process – I yearn for the luxury of just standing under a shower and letting the hot water just run and run (not very 'green' of me but I promise to do it only once).

I get up early, no one told me that there would an irritating amount of relatively minor pain that would affect my sleep. I put on my robe and have figured out how to make coffee and take a cup of it to my desk (I fill a big glass half full with coffee, put it in the pocket of my robe and try to hop smoothly back to the desk where I then pour the coffee into a smaller, more convenient vessel for drinking).

Everything takes a long time and I get tired. I weighed about 220 pounds when this began. I've probably lost about 15 or so pounds but its still quite a work-out to use my crutches to go any distance – I can certainly feel my shoulders and upper body getting stronger. And, that's one of the upsides of all this – I'm actually getting in better shape! I do, however, need more naps!

I just went for a brief walk – out the door of our building, down to the end of the block, a few minutes rest on the edge of a planter and back. I think it's time for another nap.

Nihilism redux

Dirdam
22 July 2009

It's truly fortunate that in these times of economic crisis, rising unemployment, social disorder, terrorism and plain, pathetic pessimism, we still have that old reliable, nihilism, to fall back on. Without pillars of order and stability like nihilism, I believe, truly, that we'd be trying to hug smoke, to nail jello to the wall, to base our profundities on marshmallows......

Nihilism speaks to our poetic core. If you combine it with a healthy irony, the mixture is a truly potent one; a union in which bleakness plays no role; there is no room for delusional optimism in ironic nihilism -- the truth is what is not and what is not is false!

8 February 2008, Madrid ...

Boy am I pissed off ...

We have been given an opportunity to re-centre our civilisation. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that opportunity has been thrust upon us. It’s cant to talk about getting back to basics but it isn’t to talk about getting back to Aristotle. Is it actually possible that someone can speak to us from several thousand years previously and have something important and relevant to say? I suspect that a lot of evangelical Christians would answer the question with a defiant YES. Only a few would think of some bearded Greek (if, indeed, he did sport one).

On 11 September 2001 I lost my faith in Christianity, Islam and Judaism. I realised that day that those faiths are built on emotion and it’s emotion that makes people drive planes filled with innocent people in buildings filled with even more innocent people. It’s emotion that makes people believe in the words of some crazed lunatic who feeds them poisoned cool-aid or ends up leading them to fiery deaths in a compound outside Waco, Texas.

Aristotle does not talk to my emotions, he reasons with me. He is the foundation of the civilisation of which I want to be a part and of which I hope I am the child. Democracy is a work of reason. Justice is a work of reason. I believe that happiness – true happiness – is a work of reason.

We have been assaulted by terrible events these past 10 years. We have had leaders who did not understand the full magnitude of what happened and whose reaction was emotional rather than reasonable. We have encouraged and permitted greed to rule our economies and passion our politics. It is time to put a stop to this and let our finances and our politics be ruled by more human values. You see, as human beings, we are the inheritors of reason and logic and we ought to adhere to those superior values and not let ourselves be pulled down by the same emotions that appear to characterise the behaviour of jackals.

Actually, I may have overstated that last bit about jackals and, for that, I apologise to all jackals. In the end, their behaviour is rational.

Sarah???

A short thought, borrowed from that wonderful conservative writer, P.J. O'Rourke: if, God forbid, McCain wins and then, God forbid, he dies, we end up with this incredibly unprepared, frighteningly ignorant person as President, it will be like giving whiskey and car keys to a teenager. God help us! Vote for Obama!

Guerrillas seize Gorilla Park in Congo

from CNN just now ...

It's finally happened! This is the headline I've been waiting for. Guerrillas have seized a Gorilla Park in the Congo. The refuge will now be called a Guerrilla Park. What the peaceful current residents will do does not bear thinking about. If there is Justice, they will eventually turn into the keepers of the Guerrillas. That just seems right, they are far more civilized!

Nope, she's in disguise: She IS a pit bull with lipstick!

5 October 2008
Madrid

There is this thoughtful and passionate guy in Chicago. He's not perfect and his passion blinded him when he was younger. He's white, his name is Bill Ayers, one of the founders of the Weather Underground. He opposed the Vietnam War and he felt America was an unjust society. He advocated radical and even violent solutions to the problems that our society faced. So did the men who signed the Declaration of Independence.

This guy moderated as he grew older. He was still passionate and committed and and he spoke and wrote against injustice (including his own demon-ization). He crossed paths with a brilliant young Harvard lawyer who had opted not for a career of wealth and position in the private sector but had followed a path in politics, beginning with community service. They were acquaintances, not friends. I can't help think, though, that each must have understood, if not shared, the views of the other.

So, did the young, brilliant lawyer consort with a terrorist? Is there no redemption and is there no maturity? Did George Bush take drugs and drink as a young man?

The young Harvard lawyer was of mixed race parentage and raised by a single Mother and his mid-American, white grandparents. What he became and the opportunities he had must be credited to profound social changes that were partly the in reaction to passionate activism, acts of civil disobedience, and, yes, absolutely wrongly, occasional violence by people like the older white man and his ilk (black and white). Both constitutional left and right also fought against an unjust system and we evolved into a society that, still far from perfect, accepts now as a fundamental value that every citizen, every citizen! has the right to life, to liberty and to happiness. And happiness is the result of living in a nation where we are free from fear and where each of us can pursue her or his dream limited only by our individual capacities and the rightful human boundaries that come from a mutual commitment to justice and opportunity for all.

The acquaintance between the older white man and the committed young lawyer was transient, no more than the passing of two ships. Perhaps the memory of seeing and hearing the other did have a benefit. Maybe the older man got some satisfaction in recognising that the younger was evidence that change does indeed happen and things can get better. Could it be that the younger recognised in the older a man who believed in justice but advocated a flawed and illogical path to it? Maybe the younger was made wiser. He now speaks richly and convincingly of a national commitment to a political life whose objective is right and proper: a just and happy society.

Aristotle would be proud.

Sarah Palin attacks this? This act of desperation paints her not as a hockey mom but as that pit bull with lipstick - an unreflective attack machine. I am so disappointed that John McCain's campaign has moved in this direction. If you go down to defeat, do so honorably.

I wrote the Senator that I can no longer support him. I question his judgement in selecting Palin. I initially welcomed her nomination -- a breath of fresh political air but, having listened to her, listened to the debate and reflected on it, I believe the nomination devalues the office and insults the American people. We deserve a better, wiser and more experienced Vice President. Joe Lieberman would have been a good choice. I do not know that it would have swayed me to McCain in the end but I am positive that his ticket will not receive my support!