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.
It's been a while, but the last two morning's peace and quiet was shattered by effin' funeral processions. At 6am on Sunday and 5:30am Monday morning. Here is an example...turn the volume up full blast to get a feel for the torture.
I can't sleep past 5:30 anyway, so it is only irritating to me, but the poor boss was shaken awake far sooner than needed. Sometimes I wake up grumpy, but most of the time I let her sleep. The answer to the question 'what the fuck is up with a 5:30am wake up call for the dead' is always answered that it is due to being an auspicious time on the yellow calendar. Pagans. You don't see the early processions with the pole dancers either.
Pretty quiet around these parts. Got hot this week and broke out the oscillating fans. Also had my Aussie Rules Football fantasy/fairy tale draft. Feel good about that...got Christian Petraca and Marcus Bontempelli with the first two picks...the two finest Italian heritage fellas in the comp. Opening bounce is this Wednesday so that'll be on constantly through September.
And baseball got figured out. Happy to know that I'll be watching the Mariners a bunch this summer. As for our local teams, we have a couple weeks left of the season and a big trip to a tournament in Hualien the weekend of the 25 to finish off the year. Last year, our bus ride down was 11 hours as there was a horrific train wreck that day that killed 49 people and plugged the only route there. It has its own Wikipedia page.
Gonna be so much fun. The Boss is gonna come down and she has made friends with he parents and other coaches, so a good weekend away for us. The kids will of course be a riot. One of the topics this last week has been gut health. On Saturday, our starting left fielder made it to the game but couldn't play cause he had diarrhea The trainer had to take him to the porta potty out in left field and helped him hydrate after he evacuated his bowels. Another kid takes multiple poops in the morning, so our early games are a minefield for him. A few weeks ago, I am going to the porta potty for a pee, and I see this kid's dad with a pack of wipes trying to mop up the shit on his pants. Kid tells me, 'you don't want to go in there Coach' I didn't.
I was walking the track last week and one of the kids mom's was there too, so we walked a few laps together. I tell the kid I walked the track with his mom today, and another one of the dumber kids standing close by says, "does that mean you had sex?" Jeezus.
And will add one more reason why baseball is the best. At our game on Saturday, a kid takes a pitch well over his head for a ball. Of course, someone says 'good eye'. You'd have to have severe cataracts to swing at that pitch, but baseball is all about meaningless chatter. But then some smart ass on the bench sarcastically says 'superior' eye. We then spend the next 20 minutes coming up with synonyms for "good eye".
Lastly, I also help with a U15 and U12 team, and some of these kids are newish. Am talking to the U12's and they ask me how old I am, to which I reply 'how old do you think I am?'. Little fucker says 60. I mean, I am 56, but that still hurts.
Great story yesterday in the Taiwan News. Taiwanese student in underpants chases thief, dubbed 'Captain Underpants'. That pretty much sums it up...some guy was breaking into dorm rooms, got caught by a guy who was getting dressed and then chased the robber out into the street. The reason to click on the link is to see the CCTV footage of the robber getting chased by Captain Underpants. Classic Taiwan.
Have lamented the last couple of times how the weather has been particularly sucky here this winter and was validated by the news that Taipei has had the most February rainfall in 11 years, which coincides with just how long we've been here. Another report said there has been rain in 47 out of 52 days this year. A lot of folks were feeling the affects of SAD, but this PNW'er felt right at home.
The cold and rainy spell broke last weekend, just in time for our baseball team's tournament in Taichung. Taichung is a couple of hours plus south of Taipei, but as it was a long holiday weekend, the trip took about 4 hours each way with the added traffic. We drove but most of the others took the high speed rail, which takes 48 minutes. Sometimes my desire to always drive bites me in the ass.
So this is now a baseball talk entry. A brief history. For 30-some odd years, our school played slow pitch softball for boys and girls. I don't know why they didn't play baseball, but that is what we came to in 2012. In 2016, our school, along with the 5 other international schools we are associated with in the region (Manila, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Bangkok) voted to change to baseball. As there is no little league per se in Taiwan, and we didn't have a pipeline of players to work on their game at school, we didn't have many players that were good at baseball, nor many that had ever played. Learning baseball in middle or high school is not gonna produce a competent roster.
And it didn't. We sucked bad early on and progress was slow. We have a couple of teachers that are baseball junkies and they have poured their beings into working with the kids. Our high school guy is a great teacher and knows the game, which helped shape the older kids into ones that not only got better, but instilled a love of the sport so that many of them now seek out training outside of school. The other guy began a program in the middle and lower schools that gave kids an opportunity to practice and play year round. He is the equal to the HS guy in that he is a patient and positive teacher that loves the game to the core. I have been fortunate to ingratiate myself with both of those guys so get to come out and be with all the teams a lot. I may not be a great teacher but bring what I bring and am the extra set of hands to help wherever.
So our Varsity boys have maybe won 5 games total since 2017 and that is being generous as I can't remember 5 off hand. We also have a JV team and they have been...a lot of words come to mind and they are all awful. They have not only never won a game but cannot think of one that was closer than 8-10 runs. This year, after 5 years of development, we are...decent?
Our JV team has won their first 2 games. That team is comprised mainly of Freshman that have been playing together for several years and they are nice players and know what to on the field. This may be due to my bias towards baseball, but it is hard to be good. I've played and coached other sports, and have watched them all intensely to some degree, and there is no doubt that baseball is the hardest to master. They say hitting a golf ball is the hardest thing to do. That ball is stationary and the club is 3 times the size and flat. The bat is round and the same size as the ball and is moving. Sometimes fast, sometimes with a break, and sometimes fast with a break...often times right at your skull. Every position needs to do something for every ball in play and that something is dependent on the number of people on base, their speed, and where the ball is hit...and if you don't instinctively react instantly to the hit with all those factors being considered, you haven't done your job. A lot of folks say that baseball players are soft. How about taking a pitch to the body going 60-100 mph. Or in the field when a ground ball takes a nasty hop and hits your face or nuts. Sliding into base is fraught with peril for both the baserunner and the position guy. Baseball players wear spikes, metal ones as you get older. Take a peek at the 12 inches of scars I have on my foot after breaking it as a 14 year old. And I shudder when I even think of what a catcher goes through on every pitch. Oh yeah...the best batters fail 7 out of 10 times, so if you are soft, how do you get back in the box with any confidence at that rate. The yips were invented by baseball. Every interaction on the field is a one on one conflict, but if the other 8 guys don't do their part, you lose, so it is both an individual and team sport. Most importantly, baseball has the best bench situation with lots of time to interact, so if that dynamic isn't just right, it can affect what goes on between the lines. And trust me, the dugout is not only the best bench in all sports, but might be one of the coolest places to be in the history of humankind.
Then there are those that say it is boring. Will eliminate those that don't identify with any sport, but those that are and say it is boring, I don't think you are stupid...I know it. Sure, there are boring parts and boring games, but that can be said of any sport. If you are a parent that had little kids play baseball and got into one of those walk fests, I feel your pain, but the boring parts are also kinda the point. Baseball games have the perfect mix of quiet time where you can have a conversation, and just enough action to get you out of your seat. You also have to be smart to keep track of the statistics and metrics that are in opposition to human error. I am always happy to debate this topic but you will lose.
Our first JV game was a week ago Saturday and it was a 45 minute bus ride away. The other coach had to drive so it was just me and the kiddies, and we went on the short bus, which I had to explain to them why it was appropriate for them to be taking it. Without the other coach, who is a teacher at the school, the boys felt a little freer to let their dirty minds loose. These are majority Freshmen boys aged 14-15, so they are learning how to be perverts. They are playing the regular filthy hip hop songs and then one of the ringleaders asks if he can play and rap along with 3 Big Balls
Jeezum Christmas...
They all knew it too. Apparently, there is a whole genre of gay rappers singing the most graphic of songs, but this thing is AMAZING! It's on Spotify and has found a place on at least one of my playlists. That the boys felt comfortable with me to share this makes me happy. Probably shouldn't be, but there it is. We have played against this team for years and they spank us bad every time, and we are losing 8-0 through 4 innings. We score four in the 5th and then seven more in the 6th and then end up holding them off just long enough to win 11-10. Wow. I could share a play by play and highlights, but suffice it to say that there were some big moments. After the game, coach is giving a little chat and he uses the word 'stiff' to describe something. One of the more perverted of the crew starts to giggle and brings the chat to a hilarious halt.
A lot of us then hit the road to the 12 team tournament in Taichung for games on Sunday/Monday. We end up winning 3 of 4 and finish in third place. It is weird here as due to covid, we were unable to compete as the school at the start of the season, but the rules changed and we can now, but had registered for some games/tournaments as our outside of school club team called the Renegades. All the same players, just not a school sponsored event. It also gives us some flexibility on rosters so we can mix up the teams instead of strict Varsity/JV designations. All of our games were joyous...not only cause we were successful, but that we got to travel and hang as a group at the hotel/for dinner with families, and the weather was postcard perfect (after the long stretch of rain detailed above). The baseball program at school is also unusual as we do not have a field on campus where we can play games, so all of our contests are off campus. Other than golf, we are the only program where that happens and all other sports are played at school. And no one has been able to get away for trips cause of covid except for us.
The guys are so effin' funny. So many gags and comments and good natured ribbing. Each one has a screw loose and they all know where to poke the other. I am typically the bench coach so get to hear all the chats, and as I am emotionally a 15 year old boy, we relate to each other and they feel free to include me in the banter. We are watching our guys in the field and one of the points out how tight our 2nd baseman's pants are. His mom gets them tailored to be that way and now it is all I see. Our 1st baseman is rough and everyone barks like a dog whenever he bats or makes a play in the field. We have a relief pitcher that throws so slow that his balls are more affected by gravity than velocity. An outfielder draws pictures of Homer Simpson in the dirt with a bat between innings. I could go through every kid and tell you what makes them special and weird, but what goes on in the dugout, stays in the dugout. I will share one moment from the last day. One of my jobs was to make sure the fellas are staying hydrated and not getting burnt, and as I was going around, noticed a couple needed to reapply some sunscreen. One of them is the biggest perv of the bunch so told him, let's call him Daniel, that he needed to lube up. Borderline I know, but that started the rest of them off . Daniel laughs and says 'why do you have to say it like that coach', and his buddies then interject that Daniel brought lube along with him to the hotel. And then they say, not only lube, but a big container of it and they then describe how big this bottle is for at least a few pitches with each description getting funnier and funnier. They finally run out of comments and then I say to Daniel...'sock or tissue?" They liked that.
This past weekend, we were able to reserve the local professional baseball stadium to play a round of our tournament games in. We got a deal from the city as it was also a charity event. Admission was free but we asked for donations that will all go to Taiwan Association Against Depression (TAAD). Have written about it before, but we lost a kid at the beginning of last season and TAAD was a part in the recovery process for our community. Our head coach has been really good in making sure that we collectively remember to take mental health seriously and to give back to the place we live in any way we can.
Such a fun day. Our two teams lost all three of the games we played, but we got to play in a big league stadium.
A gorgeous setting. I know I got a charge just being out there, looking at the crowd, being in a cool dugout.
Our regular first base coach had to go out of town, and I prefer to be on the bench usually, but was delighted to be on the field for this day...I'm calling our guy safe before the ump. He was...have never made a wrong call.
Told the boys that I like being out on the field so all the women can look at me...and by women I mean their moms. This stadium is in the neighborhood where our school is so this is the closest we play to our friends. As our normal games are far and in crappy spots, we never get fans other than some parents, so it was cool that the boys had their peers out to see them. And their girlfriends. The parents learned a lot about what's what seeing the girls hanging with the boys. The other team noticed all of the girls out too and after the last game as we are all packing up and such, the coach of the other team comes over and asks if his team can take a picture with our girls. In the States, there might have been a brawl for just asking, but they let it happen. As fucked up a thing as I have ever seen.
Finally, one of the fellas showed me a picture of his brother, who is on the middle school team. The picture is of a poster that has been up at one of the local bubble tea joints for several months now.
I can never get a straight translation of things when I ask, but the gist of this says to please not leave litter in our store, especially litter from other establishments. They also now have CCTV and to please "Respect Yourself". BrutaL
'Twas Super Bowl this week. We had a handful of folks over for the 7:30am kickoff. Decent game and commercials, and the food was good. Not sure if I've ever had a photo taken of me in my chair.
I had that bad boy in my room growing up so it has to be 40 years old at the least. It has experienced a lot of hours watching football and gallons of fart juice. And yes...that is a Fred Biletnikoff jersey I am sporting.
One thing I've become expert at is identifying knee injuries instantly. In real time, called OBJ's ACL tear and Joe Burrow's MCL sprain. Obviously this power is due to watching 10's of thousands of hours of sports and having all of the knee injuries myself, but a totally useless skill to have.
Today is the coldest day of the year so far...low forties last night and as cold as it's been in all our time here. Not complaining, but the relentless gray cold this winter has been odd. The appeal of this dump is that you get some 70 degree runs in January/March and there just hasn't been one.
That kinda sucks for baseball cause we've been rained out a bunch and we're only a couple weeks in. Here is our team photo...first is combined Varsity/JV, and the Varsity only is below. A decent batch of players this year...by far the best since the school started baseball 5 (6?) years ago.
Time for the "Why baseball is great" story of the week. After the above team photo, all of us were warming up. I like to get in there too as playing catch is half the reason I go out. Since it was a combined practice, the warm-up line was long and I'm down at one end. In local baseball custom, you will hear a guy shout out "Oy", and then the rest of the team will respond in unison with "OY!". It sounds OK and our boys have tried to adopt the practice, but it feels forced and to me we are different and should have a chant that reflects our culture and spirit.
At this warm-up, we're chatting as we do, and one of the fellas mentions that another player has a Spotify playlist he made for his girlfriend. The mixtape of this generation...how great they still have the same practice and even better they can make one so fast and also edit it as the relationship ebbs and flows. Anyhoo, the kid tells me that not only does he have a playlist for his girlfriend, but she made one back for him. The playlists are called 'I Love You Baby (ILY Baby)' and 'I Love You More'. Such an obvious call and response and that has caught on as one for us. Pretty perfect as it rolls off the tongue easily and sounds great, is unique to us and is funny in that baseball sort of way. What I like the most about it is that it gets teenage boys to utter the phrase "I love you" so that hopefully makes it easier to say for them down the line.
Brief local covid update...the local continue to fight the battle in a quest for zero cases. They were scared lately by the high transmissibility of the current variant and the Chinese New Year holiday where people travel and congregate. Throughout the two week CNY break and to today, cases have been in the teens and 20's with yesterday going down to 8 and 4 today. Seems impossible, right? Their vaccination rates are similar to most countries...pretty high but too many unwilling to get it. They aren't claiming they have a right not to take it, but are fearful of whatever cause they hear rumors...and they love themselves some rumors here. But they still mask religiously and contact trace with a passion. Most all the folks I talk to, local and expat, think that they should let go of their zealousness and let this wave wash over them, and there are hints they will reduce the inbound quarantine, but the bulk of the people and government are very conservative. No way I'm doing 14 days again, but who would be willing to predict what it'll be like in October.
Finally for today, a local public service news item to share. A human rights group took a look at the 20 major bubble tea brands and rated them on how they "kowtow" to China. Kowtow sounds like a word of Chinese origin, no? See the rankings for yourself here and never get your bubble tea from the Comebuy again.
Mentioned last week we had a few different groups of people over for dinner type things. At each one, people went into our refrigerator and had the same comment...'who drinks all the milk'. Me of course. I love that stuff and have guzzled it straight from the container for as long as I can remember. Betty will put some in her coffee or cereal, but she could 'milk' a 1/2 gallon for several weeks. I polish one off in at most 3 days. We like to buy the stuff at Costco here cause it is imported from the States and I need me some steroids. Plus, Betty has been to dairies here and says the conditions the cows are subjected to due to space issues lead to all kinds of horrific things that I don't even care to imagine. With the disruptions to the global supply chain, the American milk at the Costco isn't in stock all the time, so we will horde it at home and so have 2-3 gallons of the stuff on hand most of the time. That everyone finds this habit of consumption weird, and I've read things about how old people should stop consuming milk cause it causes all kinds of issues, have begun to question this habit. But who's kidding who...I'm gonna drink this stuff till the cows come home
Another habit of mine is to walk around the house at all times in bare feet. We started baseball last week and I went pretty hard at practice. Way too hard than I should have and in addition to aggravating all the usual aches, my back has been outta whack for days. Our cleaning lady was over and she wanted to break down the dining table to take out a leaf and make it smaller, but I begged off as not only did I screw up my elbow on the damn thing a couple years ago, but I didn't want to wrench my spine any further. I told her that my back hurt and she pointed at my feet saying that the floor is cold and that is what is causing my back pain. I know this has to be some Asian chi thing, and while I am certainly not anti that form of medicine, thought that diagnosis was voodoo. She is Filipina and I called her a bruja. With the echoes of Spanish colonialism still resonating in their language, she thought that was hilarious...have never seen her laugh so hard. I have found that the word bruja always gets a laugh.
Another local custom that intrigues me happens at the local schools. I have reservations about the way they teach, which I am led to believe values learning by rote over critical thinking, but the aspect that I know they do right is to have the kids clean up the school. Chinese New Year break for them ends on Monday, but last Friday the students were required to come in to give the school a nice cleaning. I will watch them and individually their efforts are mixed, but it is the spirit of working together for the good of your school that seems like it should be done everywhere. I advocate for this at our fancy expat kid school and get laughed out of the room as they say the parents would never stand for that kind of thing. Seems like a missed opportunity to show some humility and camaraderie if you ask me.
One more Taiwan thing. I went to a talk about the legal system in the country, and there was a statistic on one of the slides that said the number of lawyers in this country of 23 million people was 8,500. Doing the math, that is one per 2,705 people That struck me as exceptionally low and while this wasn't the point of the slide, I raised my hand to confirm that number. The speaker confirmed it so and could see my disbelief. My Canadian friend sitting next to me said to never mind him as he is American. A good line by her that drew an appropriate laugh Half-assed internet research shows that in the US, that number is 295 people per lawyer Wish I had know it was 421 in Canada so I could have gone back at my friend. The speaker added that only 7% of law students pass the local bar, which is an exceptionally high/low bar. The society seems much less litigious here and things are mediated at a much higher rate. It definitely feels like a better system but would make for an interesting study one day.
Like I said, baseball is in full swing and I got stuff 5-6-7 days a week for a couple months. So great...being on the field with the boys, parents and coaches brings me all the joy. Am lucky that I get to work with two coaches that not only love and know the game as much or more than I, but they are both teachers so know how to instruct a kid in their mechanics in ways that I envy and try to incorporate. I can look at a kid and know what is wrong, but these guys have drills and words to correct those flaws. I know I am a much better coach now because of them. What they can't do that I have more leeway to impart to the kids is the irreverent part of the game. Baseball is a lot about the mind and taking yourself out of your own head or addressing a problem by making fun of yourself. It is a a fact that the best hitters fail 7 times out of 10. No one wants to fail or should meekly accept failure, but if you can't laugh at yourself and just get into self loathing mode, it'll destroy your soul. Humor doesn't work with all of them, but what does. A couple examples from this week. We had a kid come out to tryouts that was on the end of the bench of JV last year. Our program is getting a lot better and we have a bunch of Freshman that came up that are real baseball players. For years, we have taken kids that were decent athletes, but not baseball players. Who's kidding who, we've taken shitty athletes just because they liked baseball and had a glove. There was a kid last year that was a disaster throwing the ball. He made the team cause he had a decent swing, but when he would throw, I'd say it went straight maybe 10% of the time at best while it'd spray all over the place the rest of the time. It was comical until you had to play catch with him. When we said goodbye to him last year, we gave him instruction and drills to help with his accuracy to work on in the offseason. He shows up for tryouts this year and he and another boy are doing warm-up tosses. After a minute, the kid throwing with the returnee asks me to warm up with him cause he is sucking so bad that he isn't able to get ready and is getting frustrated. I start to play catch and it ends up me playing fetch cause his balls are going all over the field. He hasn't improved a lick since last season and might be even worse To show how mental these kids are, he comes up to the head coach and I after the tryout and says he should start throwing with his brother. He is totally oblivious to the fact that there is no way he makes the team. Before Coach can say something nice to let the kid down, I interject that he should have done that 10 months ago. Mean, funny to me, and hopefully demonstrating to this kid just how messed up his thought process is.
I know they don't always get my style, which is OK cause that is why we have multiple ways of teaching. For example, there is another kid that is a Freshman...a decent player that could be quite good if he corrected a lot of mechanics. It's gonna be tough for him cause his skull is thick and things take a long time to get through to his brain. Whenever anyone says that something hurts, like 'dad, my knee hurts' or 'coach, my elbow hurts', I reflexively say every time...'your face is killing me.' Every time. So this Freshman kid complains about his elbow and I react as I always do, and he just looks at me. I ask him, do you understand what I just said and then spent 5 minutes explaining the joke. At the end of it, he says he gets it, but am still not sure he does. That kid now comes up to me at every practice and gleefully tells me something hurts so I will comment on his face. I have broken through with him and now he listens to the other stuff. Like I said, it doesn't work with all of them, but you never know what will and you have to keep searching.
We got a bunch of new balls before the season and we have a bucket of old ones and one for the new balls. After throwing, coach yells 'balls in the bucket' and then adds that clean balls in the clean ball bucket and dirty balls in the dirty ball bucket. In the pile of kids putting them away I said, 'that was my nickname in high school'. One of the kids says what was that coach, to which I say 'Dirty Balls'. One of the kids nearby, one that I have coached for 3-4 years now and rarely ever have gotten a reaction from, nearly split a gut cause most teenage boys, and men of all ages, like a good balls joke. That kid is now talking to me like we are related. There ain't nothing like baseball
It was Chinese New Year week. We have traditionally been on the road this week and so never noticed a couple of things. Saw a a ton of families going for walks together for instance. In almost all cases, dad looks more miserable than the kids. And Betty did all kinds of unusual things, like doing the laundry. We were talking about it with some people and I pointed out how unusual it was for her to voluntarily strip the bed and do the sheets as that is my thing, and she mentioned a time when The Boy was of a certain age and she said I told her not to pick up his socks in his room with the implication that he would have pleasured himself with/on them. I said that could never have happened as she would never pick up the kids dirty clothes A new gag I've been putting in rotation is that Betty says that when covid is over, she wants me to take her somewhere she's never been before and I reply, 'How about the kitchen?'. Thanks Henny Youngman...
We had a few get togethers at our place this week. A quiet hot pot with another couple on New Year's Day. On day 3 of CNY, Betty had her local relatives over with Uncle Larry doing the heavy lifting in the kitchen. Pretty big spread and the obligatory guzzling of all the whisky.
Yours truly makes a cameo as wine steward
Baseball tryouts begin on Monday. Covid has so far been kept in check so we are starting as planned. To celebrate, we hosted the baseball and softball coaching staffs (and their significant others) for a night of baseball related BS
A funny group that would likely never get together if it wasn't for the love of the game. We were chatting about some of the prospects and got to break out one of my new sayings...there are three types of ball players. Ones that make things happen, ones that watch things happen, and those that wonder what just happened.
Maybe it is because we haven't left town for ages, but this winter feels like it has been consistently colder for longer than any other time we've been here. Not a complaint cause colder here is like late September in Seattle so love it, I just want to document it for scientific purposes and to also note I don't constantly complain about the weather.
Knees have been pretty good. I notice them when I get up for a few steps, and there is some isolated pain from time to time, but they are bending great and can walk for miles and barely feel them. What is very concerning is my ankle has been bugging me something fierce...the ankle that had been fused in 2004. I figured there would be some weird aches from using muscles that I had been avoiding as I limped around, but this ankle thing is very worrisome. The work that needed to be done on that ankle was pretty severe. I jumped down a handful of steps in front of my dorm in 1984 and cracked my navicular bone. It was different times...I don't think I took the doctors's advice seriously and was heavily self-sedating myself, and it never healed properly. It didn't really bother me until I had ACL surgery in 2000-and something on that leg, and during that rehab it really started acting up. In a post-ACL follow-up visit to the doctor, I was complaining about it and they took a quick X-ray, and when the doctor looked at it he said "were you in a serious car accident or something?"
I then got with a foot doctor who said that the bone had fragmented and pieces were all over, and the way to fix it was by taking marrow out of my hip and fusing the joint. 3 days in the hospital in the worst pain I've ever had, ruthless months of rehab and staying off of it, but all good ever since...until now. I really hope it is just an adjustment to a new way of walking and not another debilitating structural issue cause I was hoping to walk normal for a while. Hopefully, this is the last I'll post about that.
In family matters, B-doll got into the Sorority she targeted. Kappa Delta. Their house sounds way cleaner than The Boy's flea/feces ridden frat house. While that was a shithole, he did have a decent experience with frat life and has a bunch of friends that were made from that. We hope that B-doll has a similar, but cleaner time with hers.
Lastly for today, this movement against Joe Rogan doesn't feel right to me. Neil Young isn't a shy guy...why not go on the podcast and tell him what you think? Anytime you mess with the 1st Amendment, I get uneasy. I listen to a a ton of podcasts but have never caught his. I have heard him on stuff and seen him for years on shows and things, and he just seems like a dumb ass dude bro. He even openly cops to that moniker. So just because other DADB's think he has some good thoughts, we should take him down? It isn't gonna enlighten any of them. Don't we have more important fish to fry?
It's been relatively boring around these parts lately. Three has been a bunch of baseball, but a lot of practices were canceled this last week due to covid fears. The season proper starts the week after Chinese New Year...maybe. The scuttlebutt is that we are going on-line through February if there is any rise in cases, which with everyone getting together for the holiday and it being out (today's news said they are tracing 10 different clusters) means that outcome is a real possibility.
Babydoll got covid. She had to get tested and was positive even though she had no symptoms. She is able to quarantine in her dorm room and said everyone on her floor either has it or was waiting for their test to come back. The Boy has not gotten it as far as he knows, and he claims to his friends that he has some natural immunity due to his half Asian-ness. Kid is living in the south and can see him taking a beating one of these days. Probably when he is an old man cause that is when they like to beat up on the Asians.
It's been a while but have added a few things to my list of life advice I started a month or two ago. This week I added "Give Blood". There is no shortage of places to do so. Unless you have some phobia of needles, and just not liking them is zero excuse cause no one likes them, probably the easiest thing you can do that benefits humanity in a tangible way. Whenever I hear some SJW spouting off on some cause, I ask them if they give blood. Most of the time, I get back some lame excuse, but that just shows me that you aren't even willing to physically do the minimum to do good for your fellow human, and you are not walking it like you're talking it. Get your ass to the blood bank.
I want to add a line about always searching for answers to life but missing them in front of your face...am open to suggestion.
One thing on my lost summer list I was reminded of today was how much I hated using QR codes instead of actual menus. I get why, but can still find them annoying. Was reminded by this article on Vice called QR Codes Suck. The title says it all, but the author really nails all the ways I feel and then some.
Like I said, quite boring around here. Chinese New Year is on Tuesday...woo to the hoo.
Covid here is weird. They are still into the zero tolerance state of mind, which means all arrivals must quarantine. It isn't 14 in the hotel anymore cause they ran out of space, but 7 hotel/7 home. With Omicron, they now make arrivals take a PCR test at the airport and wait for the result (before you would take it and proceed to quarantine hotel), so people are waiting an hour or three for that, which obviously sucks after you've been on a plane for 12 hours. If you test positive, you go to a hospital and after that, who knows what'll happen. Betty knows an Argentine lady that had to go to a hospital as she had a positive test (along with three negative ones) and she didn't know at first that there was a camera in her room. She discovered it after getting naked. I haven't seen this lady so don't know who suffered more, but still a bizarre scene.
The Omicron is out obviously. It snuck out via some cleaning people and into the Tasty Steakhouse, but there were only a handful/dozen cases a day for a week. But then it was 23 and today it is 80-something. It doesn't take a Fauci/Rogan to know that this thing spreads unlike previous strains, so one has to figure it is fait accompli that it is all over the place. The vaccination rate I saw is more than the States and have seen articles where the government is hinting that people need to be prepared for this thing to run wild, but they are still gonna try and stamp it out, and to get yourself vaxxed/boosted is the word from above. It is a week until CNY so the next few days are gonna be interesting to watch. We've already had some baseball canceled and I am dreading the possibility that they try to shut the whole place down.
The knee is doing great. Over did it at practice the other day and was sore the next 36 hours, but it came good and am walking without thinking about or noticing it a lot of the time. Talking to some folks and telling them I have a matching set of new knees, a couple of older types said that I am like Steve Austin now. I know what they meant, but the kids have no idea, and the 20-somethings in the group don't understand what Stone Cold Steve Austin has to do with knee replacements. I naturally counter that I am the 6 Million NT Dollar Man, which is about US$200,000...so not that great. A couple others compared the new joints to being like Darth Vader, which I kinda liked, but when I see myself walking in a mirror, I look like I am moving more like C3PO.
Speaking of looking in the mirror, I got pretty mad at Betty the other day. Was in the bathroom and Betty walks in. I say to her..."when I look in the mirror, I see an balding old fat guy...I could use a compliment." She says, "Well, your eyesight is damn near perfect."
That gag is a tribute to the late great Norm Macdonald, who said it in tribute to the borscht belt comedians of yore.
Not a gag...in response to last weeks discussion on clogging toilets, Betty sent the kids and I this search for the most effective plungers from Wirecutter. Some fine engineering going on there, and I added the Korky 99-4A Ma Performance Plunger to not only my, but my kids Amazon X-mas lists. What I really want now that I never knew I wanted before is a Ridgid 3 foot toilet auger. Have always thought augers were cool ever since seeing Dick Proenneke use one in Alone in the Wilderness.
I'd feel like a real man using an auger to clear my Alaskan sized log.
Also not a gag was that it was the one year anniversary of mom's death. I don't think it was on the actual day, but I dreamt about her for the first time since she passed. In the dream, she was driving really fast, we caught air at one juncture, and she was simultaneously scared and defiant about her ability to still drive. Don't think there is a hidden message there, but she was obviously on my mind.
That's it for this week. Since it is relatively quiet, will leave today by cleaning out a couple of saved news articles. The first is this gem regarding taboos to avoid during Ghost Month. Ghost month is at the end of summer, and know I've shared these kind of articles in previous years. One taboo that stood out in this year's offering was don't walk near walls. Apparently, ghosts like to "stick on walls because they are cooler." They are? I've found the tile floors are cooler, but had no idea about walls. What is also left unsaid is why ghosts prefer to be cooler. More investigation on that topic is needed.
Finally, for this week...Nini Music. Not a type of music but a performer by that name. Got exposed to her from this article that highlights her music while also detailing the trolling she gets from mainlanders. She is a local girl that plays traditional Chinese instruments, but in a decidedly cool way while also being super sexy. Check out her version/outfit as she performs Flight of the Bumblebee at 182 BPM.
With travel restrictions in place, Betty and I were unable to get outta town over the winter break. B-doll however had a month off of school and since she has to leave the dorms, she decided to spend a couple weeks at our Seattle place.
It is cold in Seattle and she asked us how the thermostat operates to heat up the place. We walked through it together as it is the first time we've had to turn it on and it does the trick. For a night.
We get a call from her the next day and chaos has ensued. We have one of those keypad locks. She is sitting there around 10p and all of a sudden hears someone punching in the code to open the front door. Very disconcerting for a girl alone in an unfamiliar space. The guy who lives in the unit below us, and one of the condo board members, who is the handy man about the place, are the intruders. We gave the neighbor our code a while back to help with a weather-proofing project. B-doll doesn't know this and the dudes don't know she is there. After the awkward introductions, they tell B-doll that water is leaking from our place into the unit below and that is when she calls us. The leak is coming from the area around our furnace and not from our water tank. We don't even have a water tank as we replaced it with the tankless kind this summer.
As an aside, we had a water tank in the house we lived in before we moved here, and one winter night, it completely discharged in our basement. There is 60 gallons in one of those things and the water damage it did to that place was severe. It took months to dry it out and the area was never the same again. If you have a water tank, here is a tip that I wish we had received. Sediment inherent in water builds up in the bottom of those things and it is good form to drain it annually, otherwise it may corrode the metal to the point it bursts. There is a spigot at the base where you can hook up a hose to drain it. Had never heard that before the incident and will never forget it. I share this info in hopes of alerting people to properly maintain theirs to avoid such a catastrophe.
That thought was in our heads when we went tankless as we never wanted that to happen again. We were naturally freaked when we get the call. The condo guys, B-doll and us via Facetime are looking at the furnace and see no water. B-doll says she heard some noises coming from the intake vent next to the furnace earlier that day, so we unscrew it and sure enough, there is a pan in there that is full of water that is causing the leak. None of us know why it is there but there had been a lot of rain and snow lately and some suspect it may be coning in from the roof. Another thought was that since this was the first time we had turned on the heat, that it could be related to that. But it is a gas furnace, so how could that be possible? Concurrently, we are remodeling our master bathroom and workers have been there that week, and the condo guys thought they may have been responsible.
We turn off the furnace and ask our contractor to come over the next morning. He figures out that it is the furnace. It seems that those things are hot and water can condense in them, and they all have a water pump to move that water out and that the pump on our furnace is not functioning. Who knew any of that? The pump is behind a vent that is screwed into the wall, so you can't even see the damn thing. I tell you this so you know, but I'm not sure that even if we knew all of those facts that we would have been able to prevent the accident.
Anyway, the contractor has his guy replace the pump the next day and it works. We call B-doll as they are working on it. She had been out during the day and had just come home while the worker is there and we're watching the guy fix it. She goes to the bathroom and says, the toilet is clogged. Flushes it a couple times and no flow. She gets the plunger we have there and she can't get it to budge. More thoughts are now going through our heads.
Our family has a rich tradition of clogging toilets. My great great great grandma, Elizabeth Zeiler famously had a May to September romance with Thomas Crapper, and we have been clogging all manner of toilets ever since. Even though B-doll is adopted, it has woken the ghosts of Imbro's past to celebrate her development into a true member of the family. On the kids roadtrip a couple of weeks back, The Boy shared that she clogged one at the hotel.
To be fair, I don't think it was her this time as these workers are in our house all day, and since they are fixing the main bathroom, they are using the other bathroom. And by using it, I mean destroying it. This summer when they were all in the place working, there were times that I thought a sewage truck had overturned outside our door as these guys diet must be rich in lard. We have her call the board member that helped last night to see if he had a more robust plunger. He comes over and we are still talking to her as he goes at the toilet. We can hear him grunting he is plunging so hard and just when it sounds like he is about to give up, he shouts "I got it!" in joy. We all agree that Babydoll has received a valuable lesson in home ownership.
And we think she got Covid. All four of us Imbros got our boosters within a day of each other this week. Babydoll in Seattle, The Boy in Durham, and Betty and I here in Taiwan. A couple days after hers, I get a call at her 5am, and she is lying in bed sweating and telling me how awful she feels. I tell her to call the doctor in a couple hours and to hydrate. The doctor says to lay low and hydrate and she ends up feeling better. Not sure if she had it, but maybe that, or a reaction to the booster or maybe the flu. Who knows these days?
We were not pushing to get the booster here cause they seemed to have kept it out, but this Omicron, or as I am trying to refer to it...Donkeycron... is another beast and it is slipping through the gates here. A couple of airport workers here, a couple of bank tellers there, and then a big cluster at the Tasty Steakhouse. With the transmissibility of this thing so high, we searched for a place to get it and felt lucky when we found a place downtown that stuck us with the Moderna. We were both a bit squishy the next day, but not too bad. Feels inevitable that it is going to spread here and just pray they don't freak out and close up the town. They are at 70%, which is a good number, but it could be more as there are a ton of folks worried about the blood clotting that a handful of people reported. This culture is big on believing all the scary rumors from their friends. I don't know what their Fox News equivalent is, but am certain there is one. We'll see soon enough.
For years, have gone to a shoe store around the corner. I go there as Betty has a ton of shoes and needs to have them repaired/resoled often. I think that she doesn't wear some of them a lot cause she has so many and the humidity eats them up. Anyway, the guy speaks no English, but we converse enough to get the job done. This week, had a pair to pick up and another that needed to be fixed, but what needed to be done was out of the ordinary, so took Betty for the first time so she could explain what she wanted. The dude was delighted to see her so she could ask all the questions about me that he always wanted to know. We walk in and am using the cane, and the first thing the dude says to Betty, in Mandarin of course, is "did he fall down cause he's so fat? " This guy comes up maybe to my shoulder so respect the balls he's got to be swinging to lead off with that. I am still looking in my Idiots Guide to Confucianism for the part where they say to demean another person as a greeting.
We also had a decent sized earthquake here this last week...6.0. This was the first one where I was sitting on the balcony and it was pretty damn scary as it was rocking pretty good and we're 16 floors up. The new knee got a good test of fight or flight. Happy to report that it held up well under pressure and I moved fast without even thinking about it. Flight is now back on the table. I was always gonna be the one that the bear got to munch on while y'all got away.
Knee picture time. The first one is one week post-op while the second is three weeks.
All the bruising is gone and so is the swelling. Some isolated pain at times, likely as the areas touching the implant adapts to it, but already less pain than before. Stiffness and a lack of range of motion still a thing, but better every day.
Saw this at the place where I get my coffee today. The pooch was held in place with a harness like a Baby Bjorn. He seemed happy with the situation.
When I'm watching sports, I hate it when someone makes a first down and spins the ball and gesticulates like they just took a gold dump. That is why I'm hesitant to say this, but the knee is feeling great. It feels really stable and while I am walking with a cane, it is more for posture than need. Still stiff, and nights are hard to sleep through, but so far, really great. Went in for the two week post-op exam and got two thumbs up from the doctor to walk as far as I want, drive, and put on my boogie-woogie shoes.
There was a bit of funny at the exam. Betty knees have been bothering her so she made a consultation appointment the same day as my two week visit. Her time was 9am and mine was for 10:30am. The way (we think) check-in works here is you take your National Health Insurance card and stick it into a slot of this reader board. It flashes a green checkmark and some Chinese writing and you can see where you are on the waiting list. We walk in, Betty goes to the cashier to take care of some business regarding my bill, and I take her card over to the machine, put it in and see she is first on the list. We walk over and the doctor is just getting into the office, sees me and waves me in. He looks at me for a couple of minutes, says all systems go and then I go see the nurse who is to clean up the sutures and such. While they are doing that, Betty goes for her X-ray and we meet up outside the office to wait for the doctor to look at her pictures. Across from us must be number 2 in line and he is talking to Betty with a scrunched up face and is obviously irritated. When they are done, I ask what's up...she says he is mad that we are in front of them and she explains that she was first on the list, and then the guy asked 'what about him', referring to me and how I got through the velvet ropes before him. 'Maybe you should tell him why' I say to Betty, which she immediately understood and laughed at cause white privilege can be funny.
One of my missions in 2022 is to be in a room with a group of people, single one out and ask the others to give me the room.
The kids are hanging this week and took a road trip from Durham up to Massachusetts. Great they can bond and have family time together and they look good.
That's it for this week. Have been a total shut in and am now just venturing out for a walk, longer each day, and to buy broccoli from Mrs. Lin. Hope to have something for ya next time
