Welcome to my diary...the goal is to share with you the sights, sounds, and yes, even the smells of what it's like to be an Imbrogulio in a foreign land.
Got back a few days ago and the body clock has not reset completely. Need to get started cause there is a lot to share, but before the trip recap, a couple words about the kiddies.
The Boy and Babydoll finished their first semesters of college and high school respectively and both did very well. Nary a B+ or lower in either card, which is nice but am fully aware that many places are reluctant to give low grades these days so am keeping it real with the expectations. Still, better than I ever did and while I trust that the Boy worked hard, can see Babydoll putting a bigger emphasis on her schoolwork, so all good and hope they keep it up.
Right before the break, Babydoll went to her first High School formal dance and here is a snap of her crew before heading out. The Boy has learned well and had the best line upon seeing it..."which one are you?"
Second from the left.
Also right before we split, the big people in the house had a night of slumming it with friends in the Shrimping District. My favorite Taipei activity by a long shot.
Local sausages taste so much better coated with a fresh dose of nicotine.
Am gonna try to do the travelogue a bit different this year by doing it daily diary style. Will see if this help with my focus and keep things from going off the rails.
December 22nd, 2017 - Taipei - Istanbul - Lisbon
We (girls and I) arrived around 10am into Lisbon after an uneventful flight. The Boy was coming from the States and arrived later. Can't recall seeing any movies of note. I will say that the game we invented that is sweeping the globe - PunchBucks - was on like Donkey Kong with two Starbucks outlets in the Istanbul airport.
Lisbon airport was super efficient and from touchdown to hotel was a total of 45 minutes. We had a few hours before the rooms were ready and the Boy arrived, so we set out to see what we could see.
We were at the Marriott on Avenida da Liberador, which is a 10 minute walk to everything and was really great. Their breakfasts were the best we had all trip with avocado toasts and as good a British style baked bean as they make. We tooled down to the main squares and were immediately struck by the amount of shoe stores. Seems the Portuguese take pride in a bustling footwear industry and both the kids ended up buying boots at a local vendor called Seaside. Nice ones and cheap...like 60 bucks. We grabbed a nibble at the heralded (in our guide book anyway) Café Nicola
And one of the "famous" pastries across the square at the highly touted Pastelaria Suica.
OK, I said I was gonna try to be linear, but we need to talk about Portuguese food. In two words...Gag Me. Reading up on the place going in, did not have high expectations, and they proceeded to not meet even those. They love them some sardines, which people like, but I cannot stand. As it was not sardine season, they were not recommended, but every place we went, and this goes for the entire time in Portugal, there was cod on the menu. Am not opposed to it, but it wouldn't ever be my first, or even fifth choice. Most of the places we went had it on the menu as a majority of the items and there is a saying that the Portuguese have 365 ways to cook it. My dumps are different 365 days of the year, but that doesn't make them any more palatable.
They call it bachalau, which unlike aubergine does to eggplant, doesn't make it taste any better.
You know what? They don't even catch it in the waters off of Portugal but import all of it from Norway and Canada. WTF?
I ordered the least offensive type I could find one night...Cod cakes...and they sucked. Dry and fishy in not a good way
This restaurant was really nice...packed to the gills, tons of famous Portuguese celebrities pictures on the wall and even some singer all the locals went ga-ga over came in and everyone turned to admire him. Betty went for it and got the bachalau special.
It went mostly uneaten and she never ordered it again. And she is Chinese and eats all kinds of nasty things with gusto, and this even grossed her out.
We ultimately found a place at the end of our time in Portugal that we liked and went to two nights in a row, but they served tapas, which really aren't a Portuguese thing anyway. Other than that, every meal we had was mediocre and the best thing I could say about any of it was that we didn't get diarrhea. For dinner on this first day, we walked around the hip part of town (the Barrio Alto and Chiado) that was said to have all the good eateries. We strolled past dozens and it was bachalau this and sardine infused that and there wasn't a single spot we got excited about. We ended up at the hamburger joint (go ahead and call us ugly Americans, but you woulda too) and got burgers that looked really good, but were not.
They even managed to fuck up empanadas into flavorless colon blockers.
And it is not just the entrees. Their famous pastries (a photo of which I cannot find at the moment) were bland. Betty said they got the recipe from the Chinese when they controlled Macao. Not sure I am convinced, but will concede that they are as tasteless as the deserts you get in Asia. They look good but not once did anyone bite into one and go mmmmmmmm.
And the booze? They love this stuff called Ginjinha, which they sell at little stands everywhere. You go up and get a shot in a chocolate cup. Ginjunha is a sour cherry liqueur that tastes like cough syrup.
And skipping way ahead, we went to the home of Port wine. They even named the town after it (or the other way around). Anyway, here is the dirty little secret...the grapes they grow in that region are crap and they have to fortify the port wine with something called spirit alcohol. So this is basically moonshine that they have convinced themselves is high class. And from personal experience, just because it gets older doesn't make it better.
We got back to the hotel after our tour of the Port Wine lodge and the guy behind the desk asks me how I liked it. I sorta lowered my voice and said I wasn't a big fan. I wish I had a picture of his reaction cause his eyes bulged in disbelief like a Looney Toones character when he sees Bugs Bunny dressed up like a girl. Cockburn's? Indeed it did.
The only redeeming foodstuff we encountered was their hot sauce, which is called Piri Piri. Really spicy and you gotta use it liberally when in Portugal.
OK...one more Portuguese food thing and promise not to mention it again. In Porto, we had heard and read about their famous sandwich. Inspired by the Croque Monsieur but using local ingredients and adapted to Portuguese tastes (which by that point was a red flag). I give you the Francesinha. Quoting Wikipedia..."APortuguesesandwich originally from Porto, made with bread, wet-cured ham, linguiça, fresh sausage like chipolata, steak or roast meat and covered with melted cheese and a hot thick tomato and beer sauce served with french fries."
We had been told several times that it was a heart attack waiting to happen and we were pretty excited to try it.
We went to the reported birthplace of the thing to get the real deal. The Regaleira.
Nasty. And surprisingly flavorless. It was a gut bomb as promised, but not much else. Those chips were hot and fresh but the ones not on top suffered as they became limp quickly.
OK, I had to do that cause while I didn't think it was possible, have finally encountered a culture whose food is the equal in crappiness to the Taiwanese. Some people say they like it but they would be wrong.
To finish out day one, the Boy showed up right on time and it was a delight to see him. We all went out to the above mentioned hamburger and saw some of the city. Lisbon was completely leveled by an earthquake in 1755 and so it is a relatively new city with a street plan that was laid out by modern (not medieval) design. Wide avenues feeding well paved roads with 18th century buildings dominant in the downtown historical core. It is also a city of hills so there are neat trams and funiculars (which they call elevators. For my money, the coolest structure in town is the Elevator de San Justa, which carries you up from the main squares to the Barrio Alto quarter.
Designed by a Gustav Eifel protégé, it looks like the tower in Paris and was worth the 5 euro ticket. The views on top were spectacular.We took the funicular/elevator called Gloria back down, which conveniently left us a block from our hotel, after dinner.
That was day one and I took a long detour. Am gonna cut it here cause I went long but promise the rest of Portugal will go quick now that this food atrocity has been brought to light, but before signing out, I feel like I better say something nice at this point.
My first note, and one I made several times during our time in Portugal, was that the people were nice. In a real and open way. I did not meet a single person that gave us a sideways glance or was not helpful, but rather were giving of their time and made us feel comfortable every step of the way. The women were attractive in a conservative fashion and the dudes seemed normal and fit. There was a little of the hipster thing going, likely due to their love of soccer with the haircut passing as culture, but very subdued. Apparently, they had a long period where bushy moustaches were all in vogue, but that has passed.
And they speak English. Everyone everywhere. Was surprised as I woulda thought Spanish would make more sense being all Iberian neighbors and such, but they have a long friendship with England and its roots must be deep. Portugal must also be hot with American an travel agents as we heard American accents all over the place constantly. Really great people.
Last post of the year as we are heading out of town for the Christmas break...meeting up with the Boy in Portugal and Spain for a couple weeks. Will have much to say when we get back I'm sure.
Got back from SF a couple days ago after from seeing my mom. To catch you up, she fell and busted up her shoulder, which needed a replacement. My sister had a 10 day vacation planned so I came over to be around. Here are before and after photos of said left shoulder.
Titanium baby...I was the only person who could not only remember both the character and actor's name from the Bionic Woman (Jamie Sommers/Lindsay Wagner) but that she was a former tennis pro/current school teacher at the time of her horrific parachute accident.
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Mom is a fall risk so have had to have people stationed with her 24 hours, so I felt it was OK to sneak out a couple of times for some Gomez essential activities. The first thing I did after booking the flight, my eyes went straight to the sports and music calendars. Saw that the Raiders were home to the NY Giants one of the Sundays and reached out to my LA buddy that travels up a couple times a year to see them and by coincidence, was gonna be there for this game.
My Raider fandom started on January 9th, 1977. 11 year old me had been a Rams follower till that point and it felt like every year they would lose in the playoffs to the Vikings, led by a man named Fran, in increasingly devastating fashion. Super Bowl XI (yes, the Super Bowl and I are the same age), was down the street at the Rose Bowl that year and pitted the Minnesota Frans, who defeated "my" Rams in the playoffs a week earlier, against this team from Oakland. The Silver and Black laid a smackdown on them of epic proportions and have never looked back. The Autumn Wind.
The Autumn Wind is a pirate
Blustering in from sea,
With a rollicking song, he sweeps along,
Swaggering boisterously.
His face is weather beaten.
He wears a hooded sash,
With a silver hat about his head,
And a bristling black mustache.
He growls as he storms the country,
A villain big and bold.
And the trees all shake and quiver and quake,
As he robs them of their gold.
The Autumn Wind is a Raider,
Pillaging just for fun.
He'll knock you 'round and upside down,
And laugh when he's conquered and won.
While I prefer to watch my NFL on TV, had seen the Silver and Black many times live both in LA, where they lived from '82 to '94, and whenever they came up to play the Seahawks, but had never been to a game in The Black Hole of Oakland. With their departure to Vegas in a year or three, thought that I needed to make this pilgrimage.
Met up with my LA buddy a few hours before game time as I wanted to soak in as much of the scene as possible. I am wearing the #25 of Hall of Famer Fred Biletnikoff, who was my boyhood idol. Not fast but hands like glue, which he also used on his hands. Post football, he has dedicated his life to support battered women after the brutal murder of his daughter. One of my heroes. My buddy forgot his Raider gear and had to borrow his #7 jersey from his sister.
The Raiders fans have a reputation as being violent at best and some folks were concerned about my safety. My friends knew a guy that travels up every homegame and tailgates in the parking lot and after 20 minutes searching through the carnival like atmosphere, we found his set-up.
The Dude was a sweetheart and brewed us all up as good a cheesesteak sandwich as I've ever had.
Melty provolone.....arrrrgh. We hung out for an hour or so and took the opportunity to walk around the aisles of likeminded Raider lovers.
I've been to a few tailgates in my day and this was just like all the others in spirit. Concerns of any violence melted away instantly as one could feel the love coming from all of the fans. Even for the few but proud Giant fans walking around in their jerseys were not threatened physically, but as they walked down the aisles, they were greeted with a chorus of well intentioned chants of RAIDERS. The atmosphere was like all other great tailgates I have been with he exception of the physical appearance of the fans. All the other events I've been have felt like wine and cheese affairs, but this crowd looked like they all had received a one day furlough from San Quentin. Beauty can be found anywhere if you look at it right.
As we walked into the stadium, my buddy recited the above poem and the hair on my neck stood up. I lost track of my crew for a while so found a spot and soaked in the pre-game rituals from the teams. Had never seen a full pre-game warm-up and was impressed with the choreography. Everyone had a set of drills that came together like a grand theatre production.
I found a single seat on line a couple rows back from my buddies crew in the end zone that is the void called the Black Hole. All the cast of characters you see on TV were there.
I sat with my friends for a while and when their row got filled, went back to sit in my seat. The lady that sold me the ticket was next to me and I fell in love instantly. She was totally hammered by kickoff and threw out a steady stream of "Fuck Yous" throughout the action. As she was 5 feet tall at best, and that everyone stands the entire game, she couldn't see any of the action on the field, but that didn't stop her from screaming F-U at every play. Then, she'd turn her head to look at what happened on the big screen and yell F-U some more regardless of whether it was a good play or not for the Raiders. I was kind of afraid of her and didn't want to agitate her so snuck a photo when she climbed on to her chair.
I did ask what she did for a living and of course she said "Human Resources".
The game was notable as the one where they sat Eli Manning, breaking his consecutive game starting streak at 220 games, and for Marshawn Lynch's first 100 yard game as a Raider.
Raider-etes and a Frisbee dog catching show at halftime provided more entertainment.
Getting to a game here has been a dream since 1/9/77 and a 24-17 victory by the Silver and Black made the day complete and one I'll never forget.
Second foray out in the city was to see one of my favorites musicians...Jonathan Richman. If I was there without having mom responsibilities, there were 6 shows I would have liked to have seen, but Jonathan is unlike any other and he always delivers. Convinced a college buddy to come out for this one.
I wish I could tell you all the stories with this guy as he is one of a kind, but there aren't many I should share as they are bad examples for the youth of today. I can say that he is the guy that gave me both my Gomez and Yogi nicknames.
We are meeting up in the city pre-show for drinks and end up kitty corner on a major intersection talking to each other on the phone. In a scenario that could only happen in San Francisco, he says that he is on the other side of where the hazmat team is pressure washing the sidewalk where some homeless guy had taken a dump and he won't walk through to meet me. We end up making a loop around the Safeway and end up 10 feet from where we started. Like the old saying goes about San Francisco, I think by Mark Twain...the city where you walk a mile uphill to watch a bum shit in the bushes.
After a funny dinner of catching up, and there was a lot to catch up on which again is unable to be shared, we walked to the Swedish American Hall for the show. Great old timey small venue with deep Nordic wood. Jonathan Richman always delivers...the songs he played this night were all about love, the sun, dancing and dancing in the sun while in love. A true original, he always makes me smile and think of the world as a beautiful place.
He usually plays with just his trusty drummer sidekick, but this night, he had a female sitar player and a stand-up accordion dude. The sitar player sat on the ground and had that sallow complexion of an unhappy vegan. The accordionist was none other than Jerry Harrison, who was in Jonathan's first band The Modern Lovers but is better known as being in the Talking Heads. They played 4 songs from an album he said they were working on together in Oakland and then left the stage. As the set-up at the venue had no backstage, they stopped the concert for 5 minutes and moved out the sitar/accordion through the crowd, which allowed a group of 8 late teen/early 20's girls to weasel their way up the front. Now I have never been a fan of this arm lock/push to the front maneuver, but had to respect that they were there at all since Jonathan started playing music in the '70's. One of the girls, who were deemed Josie and the Pussycats, was taking videos and the large black person next to me shamed them to stop. Is that a new thing or is it just in PC SF? I felt intimidated so only took one picture to document the night.
Other than those two outings, spent the rest of the time hanging at mom's place. Last year at this same time, she had brain surgery to remove blood from her skull after a fall and her post-op was spent in a skilled nursing place that is attached to her retirement home, and she has to spend the recovery from this shoulder replacement surgery at the same place. My sister has been on point throughout this ordeal and learned from last year that we can't be there all the time and since she is a fall risk with periods of delirium, we needed to hire caregivers to be in her room 24-7 to make sure she doesn't get up by herself. Mom was in good spirits most of the time which has to be hard when you have to have someone in the room with you every moment of the day. And night...creepy to have someone sitting there watching you while you sleep.
Most of the caregivers and all of the nurses at the facility are Filipinas. By the way, why do they spell the name of the country the Philippines with a 'PH', but the people from there Filipinos with a "F' and only one 'p'? The craft of caregiving is beguiling to me. These ladies have to take my mom, all 90 years of her, to the bathroom, give her a shower, etc. I wouldn't envy anyone giving a 51 year old me a shower and don't think there is enough money on the planet for someone to willingly wipe my ass, but these ladies do it with a smile on their face and still provide dignity to their patient. They do these things with supreme efficiency and tenderness. Have read how this industry projects to have has the most need for workers in the future. Simply fascinated by how their culture has adopted this field as their countries greatest export.
The days spent hanging with mom were mostly the same. In between her physical/occupational therapy appointments, we had appointment TV watching. Mom typically has Fox News on at her place but we all felt it better to not have that on in mixed company. Instead, in the morning, it was a two hour rock block of Let's Make a Deal b/w The Price Is Right. I was raised by TV with game shows as my nanny and could watch them all day long. Midday TV was spent with a myriad of Judge shows. Judy is still going strong and even though she is an American University alum, she really is a c***. My personal favorite was Judge Mathis...one case involved a mom suing her son for a loan he didn't repay. Trailer homes and crack addiction were strong in this family, but instead of berating the contesting parties a la Judy, Mathis broke down the cycle of addiction and celebrated their attempts at being clean and sober and was uplifting. The evening found us with a couple hours of Family Feud to choose from across several channels. We'd play along with the game and was a good diversion from the exercises and bowel movement talk. One question was, "we asked 100 women to name something that they tell their husbands they are good at, even when they're not." The lady buzzed in and said "sex". The board flipped over as that being the number one answer, but instead of "sex", they called it "tickling her tulip". Genius.
We didn't just watch TV...I taught mom and her daytime caregiver how to play gin rummy. That not a single sole I encountered on the trip knew how to play was personally astonishing as I thought it was as ubiquitous as solitaire. They learned quickly and the games immediately became super competitive while having the added benefit of helping with her working on the hand control of her bad wing. We'd try to go outside every day and sit in the sun for 30-45 minutes for some vitamin D and watch the world go by.
Would also have to set aside some time to do range of motion and strengthening exercises that were given to us by the therapists. Before we started those, we'd have to warm up the arm, which entailed taking off of her sling. When one gets a new shoulder, it has to remain motionless for at least a month so the wound can heal first, so she was strapped into this thing 24 hours a day. After three weeks, she was allowed to take it off to eat and read.
Side note...once they said she could read, we brought her in the SF Chronicle and one of the headlines was how the new Niner quarterback won his first game. She asked me who is this Garropalo, so I pulled up a picture of him on the iPad. She was physically moved by how pretty he is.
She can't take off the sling by herself so we had to learn how to do it without moving her shoulder. Doing that the first time was by far the most stressful part of my caregiving career. The thought of damaging the shoulder and causing her pain was mortifying. After taking it off, we were told to give her a 5-10 minute "retrograde" massage where you pull on her fingers toward the elbow like a glove, and then work down through the wrist to the elbow in an effort to stimulate blood movement. It was weird to do that to mom and am not relating this to show that I am a good son, but to show admiration to the people that do this, and far more personal things for other people. Not saying that I am a good or bad guy, but it is moments like those when you see a pathway to strive to be a better person.
Take Bret for instance. Bret is the activities coordinator for the facility and they have stuff going all day long. There would always be an hour or two daily where they would bring in a musician to play music. It was heavy on Christmas carols and none of us really enjoyed doing that. What we did sample was going to the bingo and blackjack hours that Bret led. The patients are a mixed bag...some of them are with it and others are totally out of it, so Bret has to have a conversation with himself as he is not going to have a lot of interaction. The stream of consciousness coming out of this guy was something to behold as he would talk for an hour straight peppering his deals/bingo calls with arcane movie references. At bingo, he started out with a 10 minute soliloquy on Lucille Ball, talking about her relationship with Desi Arnaz, how she discovered Carol Burnett, etc. and would have gone on for the full hour if it weren't for my mom who finally interrupted him with "are we gonna play bingo or what?" After the first session with him, I thought he was a recovering crack addict who couldn't shake his mania, but realized that the guy is not only a showman of the highest order, but a fucking hero.
They try hard with the food choices at the place, but the meals tend to be bland, and by the time they make it to the rooms, are cold half the time. Plus, I gotta eat too, so on a few of the evenings I made a take out run for us. We are usually in Palo Alto in the summer when school is out and I bitch about the traffic every year, but being there when school is in session and navigating around to get food at rush hour is a special kind of hell. It was during one of these torture sessions that I realized that the Stanford ethos has peaked. Stanford had surpassed the Ivies as the center of knowledge and the preferred destination of the best and brightest, but as with any such pinnacle throughout history, they get a little too clever for their own good. In an effort to make the streets as "safe" as possible they have effectively choked movement to death. The traffic signals are timed so you have to stop at every single one for the longest period of time possible. The level of mathematics that had to go into making that possible is impressive, but there is a fine line between clever and stupid. Stanford isn't going away, but they are on the ledge.
Overall, I really enjoyed being able to spend quality time with my mom. It is sad to be so far away and can imagine it would be a lot different if we were living in the same town. The nurses and such were all saying what a nice son I was, but it is easy to come in for a week and be the good guy. Like a deadbeat dad that swoops in with presents twice a year but doesn't have to deal with all the hard stuff. For 90, she is in great shape and is tremendously upbeat most of the time. She has her moments of frustration of course. One of the caregivers came by one night and she said that she was in the hospital the night she came out of surgery and we laughed as she related how mom was so agitated that night that she scratched and kicked one of the nurses on duty. She had no recollection of that fortunately. Other than being weak, her greatest struggle is with memory...particularly short term. One afternoon, she was talking about her German grandfather in such detail that it felt like he was in the room with us, but could not remember what she had for breakfast.
Only other thing of note that happened was that I tweaked my back again. Was in her room sitting on the edge of her bed and the phone rang. I swiveled on the mattress to go tot he other side to answer it and there it went. Shit. Hurt like the first day I originally messed it up and was invalidated for days. Had to have mom help put my socks on with her one good arm. Went to a doctor there and they hooked me up with the prednisone and am feeling close to "normal" now. We keep telling mom that for her to be able to get out of this nursing place, the first step is being able to wipe her own butt and as she is putting on my socks, she asks me if I can wipe my own ass. Had to laugh at that and told her that I need my own team of Filipinas.
Okey dokey...before I go, here are a couple of jokes I heard last week.
What do Roy Moore and the weather have in common? They're both gonna dip into the teens tonight.
I know that one is outdated, but this one should be good to tell for a few more months (hopefully less).
How does Donald Trump know the difference between a garbanzo bean and a chickpea? He's never had a garbanzo bean on his chest before.
