As mentioned, Betty went at my mane with the hair straightening thing on Saturday. It took about an hour longer than she thought. It looked weird as you can see...a cross between Trump's doctor and Spinal Tap's David St. Hubbins. By the way, St Hubbins is the patron saint of quality footwear.
Following up on last week's news of the ill-fated Goodwill fleet and the many sailors with the virus that were allowed to run roughshod around the island, today marked the 14th day since that happened and not a single case of transmission from them has been found. It was hinted that these sailor boys visited all the "girlfriends" and that says a lot about their copulation methods...will leave it to you to discern exactly what. They are going to test all the quarantined sailors again before freeing them from isolation. Taiwan went 6 days in a row without a single case and that string was broken yesterday with 3 new imported cases (from Senegal and Japan). We're getting close to being free of that shit here, but as long as people come from somewhere else. it is unlikely to be eradicated. What do you do?
It is clear to our clan that a visit to the States this summer is completely off. B-doll, who had a nice internship lined up in DC, has cancelled that and was fortunate to secure a 6 week gig here and a prestigious research facility. As we are off for 8 weeks and would need 21 days of isolation to re-enter society, we have resigned ourselves to spending June/July here for the first time in 9 years. The sweaty gorilla in the room is that this place absolutely roasts in the summer and this week saw it begin. Over a 100 fahrenheit every day, often over 110, with it cooling down to the 90's at night. Oh yeah, as humid as your worst nightmare too. There are absolutely no days off where a breeze or rainstorm does anything to break it. A rainstorm will just increase the sauna effect and also increases places for the mosquitos to breed. Probably shouldn't have listened to that podcast about how mosquitos have killed over 50 billion humans in history this morning. A breeze makes the instantly rotting garbage smell smack you in the face like your sticking your nose into the presidents ass. The VP knows what I'm talking about. I will say that the locals do an admirable job of getting trash picked up every day, it's just that any garbage is weaponized withing minutes of being exposed. What I'm saying is that I will probably not be taking a break from posting and will almost certainly use this space to whine about it for the next 5 months. Just a warning.
One more semi-related piece of regional intrigue. A bunch of like minded China hating types from Vietnam, Hong Kong and Taiwan have an online group where those countries entered an alliance against Chinese bullying in the neighborhood. As those place all love their tea with milk (Thai iced and Taiwanese Bubble) they have named their group the Milk Tea Alliance. A clever and delicious sounding name. Australia has been having a war of words with the Chinese of late and they were just added to the group. I think they can do better with the Australian addition being a baby formula Aptamil, but I have got to get me a t-shirt with this image on it.
Have been grateful this last week in that there has been some sports to distract. Didn't want to, but have been keeping up with that ESPN Bulls documentary. Felt I needed to as all the sports fans I know are tuning in so need to be updated to join the conversation. Since we don't have ESPN, the way we watch it is by using our VPN to log into Tokyo to get their Netflix feed. 4 episodes in and even as this documentary is reportedly controlled by Michael Jordan, he still comes off as a (n amazingly talented) passive aggressive dick.
The other fun thing last week was the NFL draft, which I would watch anyway but was unusual this year for obvious reasons. Seeing the homes of the GM's and coaches, as well as the player home celebrations was quite interesting. I loved the mom that pulled the girlfriend off of the draftee as she was preening to the camera and even laughed at Belichek posing his dog to make their pick. My personal favorite was the Raiders first round draft pick Henry Ruggs III sitting on his couch wearing a white bathrobe with the Old Spice logo on it
One more draft item to note...the Patriots drafted a kid that has a white supremacist tattoo because of course they did.
Last week I shared a cricket video from my year in Melbourne in 1983. An Aussie band I came to love from that time has been posting audience photos from past shows to keep in touch with their fans, and yesterday, they uploaded this photo from October 9th, 1983.
Finally for today, we bought a mint plant for our balcony a month or two ago as Betty likes to make fresh mint tea for herself. My father tortured us as kids by making us do yard work from sun up to sundown on weekends. I kid you not...we had to stop cause we couldn't see any more. This trauma, which probably gave me whatever work ethic I had that has been wiped away the last 9 years, instilled a life long aversion to doing any yard work of my own. Having this mint plant is about all I can stand and I still hate the responsibility of keeping it alive as it is such a needy little thing. If it doesn't get a ton of water every day, it wilts and looks so sad, and would be dead within two days. Better are the little cactus plants we have in the office. Betty and I are both Snakes in the Chinese horoscope and have read that they are considered lucky for that sign so we've had our two little guys for several years now and all the maintenance they need to thrive is an ice cube in the pot once a week.
Was talking to The Boy the other day and remarked how that it was nice that he called me. I shouldn't have been happy as the true reason he called came out later during the conversation that he is looking to buy a car, but at least he waded through other topics first. Anyway, he has been good about calling Grandma and has set a reminder to call on Sunday's, which is the day she has no caregivers and feels the most lonely. Grandma is in an Assisted Living place in California and as with most of those, outside visitors are not allowed. Not even my sister who lives nearby has been able to go in to see her since it went into effect. She does drop off homemade food regularly and yesterday was able to see her as she came out to the balcony to wave.
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