Monthly Archives: April 2023

Happy May Day!

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As I sit here by my computer in Castro Valley, a large sign hangs from the wall next to me. It contains only the word “Portland” written in six-inch high white letters on a dark brown back ground.  But sometimes it does not contain “Portland but “Artland” because that’s what I saw when I  first approached it this morning.  I knew there is no such place as “Artland,” exist so I looked again and then the letters blinked and changed in positions and now it said “Portland” again.

This sort of switcheroo  happens throughout my reading life these days. So, for example, I have a bottle of Losartan from which I must take one 50 mg tablet each day, so Selai tightly  circled the words “Losartan 50 mg tablet” in bright red ink to make the words easier for me to find. So that I would take the correct medicine.

Now whenever I first take the bottle off the shelf,  only  the words “50 mg” appear.  But I know that there must be more, so  in the next few seconds the rest of the letters in the red circle appear and adjust to accommodate the new number of letters that can fit inside.

Meanwhile my friends attempt to understand what has happened to me.  They may imagine that my vision is blurry.  They may imagine that my vision is dimmed.  They may imagine that I have a cataract or other lens defect but none of these are correct.  The real answer does not have anything to do with my eyes.

So how did I come to this state.  Somewhere in the night of Friday, April 7th, I became awake and I did not know why.  While pacing back and forth in the family room, I noticed the calendar on the wall, the numbers on the calendar were winking on and off.  And everything else was normal.  And I did not panic because I have had visual migraines which are harmless and have similar symptoms.  But the blinking and winking did not stop as they would for a visual migraine.  So I fetched my neighbor JoAnne and asked her to drive me to ER which she did.  It was probably around 4am on Saturday morning.

In the ER they gave me x-rays and CAT scans to determine what was wrong.

Eventually I saw Dr. Rock, who is not a Marvel’s comic character.  He told me that there was  bleeding in my brain and I should expect to lose part of my vision.  He held up his two index fingers to the left and right of my face.  He asked if I could see his fingers and I could.  Then he asked me to close one eye and look at one of his fingers and tell him if the other finger was moving.  When I looked to see if the other finger was moving, it was gone.  It was not only not moving, it was gone.  I had lost part of my visual field.

To be clear, only the finger was gone, nothing in the background.

I stayed in the ER for three days. It is one of the most miserable experiences I have ever had.  Don’t ever go to an ER unless there is no other choice.  I was under constant surveillance because they fear I might fall.  Every time I got out of bed, alarms rang.

Next I was transferred to the hospital which was not as crazy.  I continued to be monitored and so then on the 11th of April, in the morning, I was told I would be leaving in a few hours.  My sister, Abbey, delayed this action and I finally left on the 12th.  I was not allowed to leave the hospital unless I could prove I had 24hr care waiting for me in Castro Valley.  Fortunately, my sister’s best friend, Martha, had connections to an organization that provides Home Health Care.  One of their members, Selai, was dispatched to Castro Valley to help me on the day I was discharged, which was the 12th April.  She has been here ever since.

Selai herself tells it this way – I was in the middle of another job when I received a text an hour before I clocked off. I was told that I would be going to attend to another case which would be in Castro Valley.  I was also told that it was top priority and I was to start the very next day, which was Wednesday, April 12th.  I did. For the record, the urgency of this case was very unusual as it was marked top priority.

My health now is almost back to my normal out-of-shape condition, except for occasional bouts of dizziness and my vision.  And Selai has been helping me with both.  She is also working on my diet so that I eat healthy and well.  More critically, I cannot read or write without her help.  I expect in the future that my health will improve but it will take a while.  In the meantime, the most frustrating thing is my inability to read even though I can see all the letters eventually.  But imagine that all the sentences in the passage are like the ‘Losartan’ prescription that I mentioned above, jumping back and forth, appearing and disappearing all the time.

So I am gaining new appreciation for the condition of persons with dyslexia. But remember the letters are never blurry, they just wink on and off or change positions.  Meanwhile I am practicing my verbal communication skills.

I am extremely grateful to the friends who have stopped by to help me.  As well as texted messages and made calls on the phone.

Thank you and thank God that you were able to help me.

 

Happy Easter!

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Health Report

I’m  not particularly suffering these days but my oncologist says that my cancer drugs are losing their efficacy. So what does that mean?  I certainly can’t be good, but tests and scans will hopefully clarify things in a positive light when I return to Portland in a couple weeks.

The squatter in my condominium

As for my condominium, after a year of non-payment of rent, ignoring all notices to evict, and trashing the place, the delinquent and squatting tenant finally left the hard way, by dying from a heart attack.
This was a sad situation all around. On the one hand, I lost tens of thousands of dollars to him, and many thousands of further losses as we’re refurbishing the place, rebuilding parts of it. But on the other hand, as my property manager pointed out, had our earlier efforts to evict him succeeded, he probably would have died on the cold street somewhere. In contrast, even with all my losses I still have a roof over my head. So as things worked out, he was able to live out his final year in a warm home. I just wish he hadn’t trashed the place so thoroughly. Cat and Dog pee, anyone? Poop in the closet? A carpet of dead flies under the window? Spending several thousand dollars to start cleaning it up.

Openness

Meanwhile, I had mentioned a few weeks ago that I would be pulling back on my intention to be more open, forthright and transparent in my personal relationships, mainly because (as my sister Eileen likes to put it) I kept getting my heart stomped on. Well, I’ve since discovered that once that path is taken, it develops a beautiful inertia of its own.  So I’ve been drawn back out again, to participate in life more thoroughly and to understand the world in more detail, and to experience a joy so deep that I would never have guessed it would be granted to me, especially given the circumstances.
And what strikes me most these days is how central the role of love is in everything we do, both personally, and as a society. Indeed, I hope that anyone who reads this finds themselves immersed in love, even if their heart gets stomped on from time to time.

Tutorials

I’ve been volunteering to tutor middle school kids after school this year ( mainly helping them with homework) but an unexpected student showed up — the pastor who organizes the tutorial program. This is a man who truly walks the walk, and it shows in the respect he’s earned from the kids. It’s natural that such a man would be interested in how education works to begin with, and that’s a subject which is practically my whole reason for existing.
His schedule is tight, but he does have to walk to his car after sessions, which is normally parked close to mine. And so we’ve talked about education, a little bit each day. on the way to the car. I suggested that he try one of my writing exercises (the one about Carlbob), because you only understand the lesson if you do it yourself. And I knew he was interested in writing because he’d already shown me part of a memoir about his childhood.
Well he apparently has a fictional dog who devours all homework, fictionally, day after day, so promised papers never materialized.
But then last Thursday almost no kids showed up for help because, after days of rain, the weather was stellar, the ark returned to land, and Friday was a holiday for Cesar Chavez, so no one had homework due until after Easter, over a week and a half away. So we tutors just talked among ourselves.

The power of writing your love

In particular, I continued my on-going conversation with the pastor. And with basically no students in the room, there was no escape from my invitation to try a writing exercise, because we could try it during the regular tutorial time.
He searched for something to write on – and searched and searched, eventually settling on a Chromebook, which he kept fiddling with to adjust and readjust it.  And all this task avoidance from a man who really did want to write. This is how the educational system has stymied even the writers among us. I grabbed a yellow pad, because teachers should always do their own assignments.
The task was called “Write a hundred words.” Write fast or slow, anything that comes to mind, but no stopping until a hundred words are written. If you honestly can’t think of what to write next, you just repeat the last word or phrase until something new appears in your mind.
Ready … set…. GO !!
I began writing about elementary school education, still an obsession, but then drifted to a specific activity – teacher for the day,” where students lead the class. It made me think that teachers are instructing ourselves out of a job, as the students need us less and less.  That’s and interesting topic!  At a hundred words I called halt. I didn’t share my draft, but verbally shared about it, and how it felt to write with such freedom.
Meanwhile, the pastor’s writing had taken off, almost literally — 171 words already! 171 words about fly fishing. Fly Fishing!!, which he only has time for about once a year, but he loves it. He gabbed on and on about it, cheerfully stating that it had never occurred to him that he might write about it, or that anybody else might read it. He also did not share his draft, but he verbally shared what was in it, and how the writing of it made him feel.  And with every lull in the conversation, (which included other adults in the room), he enthusiastically jumped in again with more fly fishing memories. He just couldn’t bear stopping himself.
So the “hundred words” exercise, among other things, can help you discover something you really love and really want to write about.
Back in the day, I taught writing through a writer’s workshop. Every kid was free to discover and write about whatever they cared about.  So, for example, one student wrote about mating hamsters, not a common topic in English textbooks. Some teachers marveled that I never had trouble getting my students to write. Actually, it could be hard to get them to stop, because they wrote about their joy, as I do now.
I reminded the pastor that real writers write about their loves, their passion. And so should he. And if he ceases to love fly fishing, he should change topics, because you need that love to give life to your writing and help structure what you want to say. He now intuitively understood that point,  deeply, from personal experience. He announced that he would try teaching this to his below-level tutorial students over the Easter break. And as he said this, my chest swelled with an intense and warm physical pleasure, because the most beautiful and meaningful moment for a teacher is when the student not only acquires the lesson, but takes it to the next level on their own, and no longer needs the teacher’s guidance.

Sunny

I’ve mentioned Sunny briefly over the years, but the truth is that we’ve shared so many adventures, and even more meals, in China. I’ve now known her for twenty-five years, making her my longest-known and dearest Chinese friend. And she also has an adorable daughter.  And despite the many changes happening in China, we keep in touch and I care for her.
Recently, Sunny has been traveling three days a week, checking on the suppliers for the company she works for. This schedule entails some boring down time. So she has decided to fill it by writing a blog, where she can write about the things she loves, or at least finds interesting, particularly those she comes across during these travels.
So Sunny has written the following post about toilet paper in China.
By way of background knowledge, I would add that until recently, toilet paper was never given out in public washrooms. If you wanted some, you brought your own. But in higher-scale shopping areas, you might find it available now, even for free.
If you have any response to her writing, let me know, and I can forward it to her.

What you give up in exchange for toilet paper.

Guess what this is?

Hint: it’s found near the entrance of a public restroom in a shopping mall in China.

It’s a machine that dispenses free sheets of toilet paper.

The restrooms in shopping malls are generally clean, in order to attract customers, so they have long provided clean toilet paper to the customers but in a more conventional way, as shown in the picture below.

But it’s too easy for people to abuse this convenience. Some people might take their entire weekly family usage of toilet paper from the dispenser, thus bankrupting the provider. So the providers have found multiple ways to discourage toilet paper overuse, such as posting stickers like the one pictured here, sponsored by Coca Cola, below the tissue container.

The sticker attempts to persuade customers to use less paper with slogans like “Sufficiency is better than plenty” (above the dolphin) and “We care.” (below it)

But the slogans failed to persuade, as indicated by the abandoned tissue container, now replaced by the hi-tech machine mounted on the opposite wall.

The picture of the sweeping man on this machine is actually a notice to the public that no one is using the toilet.  You communicate with the machine by scanning the QR code displayed on the upper left with your smart phone. Alternately, you can touch the brass-colored rectangle to its right and the machine will scan your face and identify you.
Who knows whether it’s only keeping track of the sheets used on this one occasion or if it’s adding up the total amount of toilet paper that you have collected nation-wide and thus ensuring that you don’t exceed your personal quota. A message on the screen in a small font states that “we do not upload any information collected.”

Once the machine wakens, it will deliver a long sheet of toilet paper – about a meter (three feet) in length.

This sort of face scanning has become alarmingly unavoidable in China. During the Covid pandemic, the photos taken by cameras on the street without a subject’s awareness could even be used to trace the contacts between people who might have the disease.

Frequent travelers are no stranger to how information is collected on them.  It used to be that facial recognition was collected by hand at the train stations and hotels. Now, with the second generation Chinese ID card (Shen Fen Zheng), at all stations, you board a train by scanning this ID card on a reader and then looking at the camera for a split second so the machine can compare your face against a nation-wide data base

The majority of passengers take this option instead of a QR code, which is mainly used by those who have not been able to obtain a second-generation ID card. Those passengers have to take the slow line for a manual check-in.

Occasionally the machine gets confused and requires assistance from nearby staff. But to me its operations are more certain than my iPhone, which seems to hesitate every time I change the mask that I’m wearing.

Compared to the scanners found in train stations, those found in hotels are more diverse or sophisticated. One even rated my face scan as 85% accurate compared to what’s on my ID card. Luckily I passed the test and so I had a roof over my head that night.

Still it’s a surprise to see that this facial scan technology has spread to the level of dispensing free toilet paper.

So take note – if you ever find yourself in China, it might help to put a package of tissue in your bag, or maybe it’s easier to purchase one from any convenience store upon arrival to your destination.

Elephants

I think I’ve forgotten the happy elephants lately. Here’s a clip now: