Small (wet) steps

Our last U.S. step on a rainy JFK day. 

Nearly the last step (Toronto)

Getting closer.  Good to be in Toronto, second to last stop. 

Chinese Fashion and Its Influence on Haute Couture - Great Exhibit

Small Steps in the Big City

We visit every year, but we always find something new in New York.  This time it was Roosevelt Island.

One more stop before we are 'home' in a place we have never lived before.  Very exciting.

Small steps (France)

Les Gorges de l'Herault

Commas matter

This is How Much I Loved High School

Some people talk about high school as if they were the best years of their lives.  In American culture in particular (and to a lesser degree in Canadian), high school life is romanticised through film, books, and music.  It's depicted as the time and place in so many lives where defining moments and memories are created, where people form friendships that last a lifetime, and where first loves are found.  

Not. 

Well, at least not for me.  I had some good times in high school, but I also remember high school as a time and place filled with racist, homophobic people that I had no choice but to tolerate.  The adults in charge were a mixed bunch; some of them cared deeply about what they did and the students they worked with while others were indifferent to all the dickheads in our midst.  I knew, throughout the four years of high school, that this was just a step that had to be completed before my real life would begin, the life that would be defined by my choices.  

When high school ended with a graduation that I reluctantly attended, this was the only photo I wanted and the only I photo I took as I walked out of school.  Some friends were crying, some were revelling in the moment, but I had other things on my mind - the next steps of my life.  This lamp post was enough to remember high school by.  

Small Steps

I've messed up the order of these steps, but Spain was an incredible reconnection with half the family.  We spent most of our time in Sitges with a little jaunt in Barcelona. 

Small Steps (more London)

It seems like everywhere we travel there are neighbourhoods where the affluent are displacing the not-so-affluent. Brick Lane is one of them. 

The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan

Cathy Marie Buchanan’s The Painted Girls combines four elements to tell a compelling story of three sisters.  The grinding poverty of late 19th century Paris, the spreading belief in biological determinism, the emerging art of Edgar Degas, and the world of ballet at the Paris Opera are woven together to form the backdrop of the stories of Marie, Antoinette, and Charlotte von Goethem, three real young women who all danced in the ballet.  Though Charlotte had the most successful dance career, Marie was immortalised in Degas’s series of works based on models from the ballet.  She was the model for Little Dancer Aged Fourteen (among many others), one of the most successful sculptures to emerge from the era.  

Buchanan constructs a fictional story of the relationship between the sisters but most compellingly their relationship to the social forces at play around them.  In her story, Antoinette falls in love with headline-grabbing convicted murderer of the time, Emile Abadie.  Marie’s innate goodness crashes headlong into a world that shows very little kindness.  All of them confront the limited options of the poor, and particularly of poor women, of their times.  

Around them, ‘scientists’ are publishing papers linking physical characteristics like brow lines and jaws to criminal tendencies.  Others see the root of poverty as a flaw in moral character attributable to evolutionary flaws.  In the minds of many, character and behaviour are fixed, pre-determined by forces deep inside us.  In a world like this, Buchanan shows us that to simply hope is to struggle and fight. 

It’s a time where Emile Zola creates works that show the ceaseless struggles of the working poor.  But it’s also a time in which many believe that their ‘condition’ is part of the natural order of things.  The most poignant and powerful moment of the book is when Marie sees the reviews (real reviews from real newspapers and magazines of the time) praising Little Dancer Aged Fourteen.

With bestial impudence she thrusts her face forward.  Why is her forehead, half hidden by her bangs, already bearing the signs, like her mouth, of a profoundly heinous nature? Perhaps Degas knows of the dancer’s future things we do not.  He has picked from the hothouse of the theatre, a sapling of precocious depravity, and he shows her to us withered before her time (p. 317, from Le Temps).

As with most historical fiction, it’s the setting that counts most and Buchanan has made it the villain in the novel, a powerful and conniving force that her heroes must confront.  

More Small Steps in London

Brick Lane has great art.

More Small Steps (London)

Amazing time with amazing people in England included a great day in Brick Lane and a long walk along the Thames. 

Small steps towards a new home are a good thing. 

Distantly Related to Freud - A Coming of Age Story

I just finished Distantly Related to Freud by Ann Charney the other day.  I read it 'blind', without even reading the jacket description.  As it opens, I imagined it to be a story of Holocaust survivors creating a new life for themselves in 1950s Montreal.  It seemed, after the first few pages to be about struggle and the things people have to overcome in order to create a sense of normalcy.

But it wasn't.

I had to spend a bit of time thinking about whether I was disappointed that Charney instead wrote a normal story about a normal life.  In the end I decided that I wasn't; she had created a character, Ellen, and a novel that explored something real and relatable.  Ellen's coming of age among people who have been touched by tragedy and brutality does not prevent her life from being 'normal.'  She wants to know about sex and her own artistic ability.  She wonders about her difference from others and how to find her place in a world that is good to her but simultaneously full of people she can't quite feel completely connected to.

In that, it's a real story about a real life.  Charney's Ellen is particularly fascinating because she defies so many expectations.  The book opens in 1952 and continues through the 1960s, times of important social changes.  In Ellen, we see someone who was ready for those social changes and embraced them not as someone rebelling against social norms but as someone who simply questioned what she wanted in life.  Anyone familiar with Montreal and Quebec society in the 1950s and 1960s knows that this makes Ellen a pretty remarkable character.  Those were conservative times.  Charney's understated description and narration serve to make Ellen something of a quiet hero, a young woman who is not openly defying a social order but who is simply changing it by following her own path.

More Small Steps (London)

I read the novel Brick Lane by Monica Ali years ago and loved it.  Yesterday I got to visit (with great people).  It's a great area and probably a lot more inviting than the Brick  Lane of the novel.

The Dad Shorts: A Story

Once upon a time, I took my first overseas job in Cali, Colombia.  My dad, up for just about anything as always, agreed to come for a visit during my first extended holiday over the Christmas break.  We would have three weeks together to travel around Colombia and see what there was to see.  

Dad flew in a few days before the break started, so he had a few afternoons to explore the city along with my wife.  He unpacked that night...one pair of pants, one pair of jeans, a bathing suit, a few shirts, and socks/underwear.  

"Where are your shorts?"

"I didn't bring any."

At that, my incredulous, what-are-you-doing voice kicked in.  "You came all the way to Colombia, a country with a primarily tropical climate, and you didn't bring shorts?"

"No, I'll be fine," said Dad.

So the next day, my dad and my wife went out exploring the city and the neighbourhood.  This was more of an adventure than it would seem.  My wife didn't speak Spanish at that point, and whenever my dad (never much of a language man) tried to say anything, a French word long lingering in the recesses of his brain would pop out.  He was more likely to say 'merci' than 'gracias'.  In those days, not very many people spoke English in Cali, so ordering a meal was a bit of a challenge for them.  

On top of that, Cali was a very dangerous city at the time.  The Cali cartel was on the run and their many employees were at loose ends.  With less stable work available, random crime, already quite common, had increased substantially.  I warned both to be very careful where they went and made plans to see them for dinner.  They spent the afternoon checking out places, found lunch, had some coffee and were waiting for me when I got home.

By this point, Dad had perhaps realised his packing mistake.  

"It's hot out there," he noted.  I pointed out that he might be more comfortable in shorts and asked if he wanted to buy some before we left for the coast (where it would be even hotter) a few days later.

“No.  It’s okay.  I can’t be bothered.”  Typical Dad response.  He wasn’t cheap, but he was more than willing to put up with a little discomfort before buying something he didn’t need.  Especially since he had made the mistake of not bringing shorts, it was somehow something he should do - forego a bit of comfort to make up for the silly error in judgement of forgetting something.  Buying shorts to replace the ones he didn’t bring to a country where the average temperature was around 32C every day was the easy way out. Being uncomfortable for a few weeks was a way of making up for his bad packing.

I left the room and returned with a pair of scissors.  “Here.  Let’s make you a pair of cut-offs.  We can take the jeans [which I didn’t particularly like anyway] and make you some shorts.”  This was the way around dad’s feeling that he shouldn’t pay his way out of a bad decision.  Dad readily agreed.  A few minutes later, Dad stood in the living room in his new shorts.  The effect was something like an old boy.  Perhaps a bit like Bob Denver as Gilligan, but they looked good on him.  

We spent the next three weeks travelling around some of the most remote parts of the country.  Me being me, we didn’t make a lot of concessions to comfort just because Dad was 70.  We stayed in some clean budget places and some real dives.  We flew twice but also covered huge distances on dirty uncomfortable buses.  We ate some great meals but also found quite a few places where the only choices were ‘chicken, meat, or fish’, each option fried to tasteless oblivion.  We also swam in beautiful Caribbean coves, lounged in mud volcanoes, hiked jungle trails, and read in swaying hammocks.  

My dad, happy and easy-going travel companion that he was, never complained once.  The worst elements of it all actually became fodder for long-running jokes between him, my wife and I.  Upon our return to Cali, my wife and I kept the shorts and recorded all those jokes in permanent Sharpie marker.  When we next saw my dad, we presented them as a gift.  Unsentimental as he was, my dad kept the shorts for 18 years, all the way up until he died.  

More small steps (France)

Transitioning out of a home I have loved for so long has been made easier by visiting the Languedoc region of France.  This is just one example of how incredible the countryside is. 

St. Guilhem le Désert

SimCity From a Classroom Point of View

Long, long ago, I played SimCity and absolutely loved it.  I built my city into a thing of wonder and took great care of it.  These days, as a teacher, I teach a unit on urbanisation and figured SimCity could be a great teaching tool for the classroom.  I thought back to my city of years ago and thought of the things that made my city successful - maintaining public facilities, providing recreational opportunities, building transit - and figured that it could work for my students as well.

When I saw that you can download the SimCity app for free for iOS, I decided to give it a trial run myself.  I figured that I could test it this summer and use it next year.  Unfortunately, 24 hours later, I have deleted the game completely.  Aside from the fact that I was putting too much time into nurturing my city, the educational benefits of the game seem really slim.  It didn't take me very long to decide that SimCity didn't really offer much for my students as they study the elements of successful urban design.

SimCity has a couple of flaws in its current iteration that detract from its potential in the classroom.  First, the pacing does very little to encourage people to thoughtfully plan and design a successful city.  Yes, the game does remind any player, but particularly a budding urban planner, that you would need to provide services like water, fire fighting, and energy in order to make citizens happy.  But there is little opportunity to do so thoughtfully.  There is little 'design'; players end up being more reactive rather than thoughtful in their approach to building their cities.

Most importantly, there is a constant demand or encouragement for in-app purchases.  To grow the city or provide services, a user will very quickly need more cash, and the game constantly offers to let you buy more.  Because the 'free' game very quickly becomes a paid game, its potential as a classroom tool is extremely limited.  For an individual student who buys the game, SimCity perhaps offers a lot of learning potential, but for a teacher with 20-30 students, it does not.

As an alternative, this year I used Plan It Green from NatGeo Games, and my students liked it a lot.  It's slower paced and does not have the same set of features as SimCity, but students had a lot of opportunity to think through their cities.  Some of my students continued to play long after our unit was done, nursing their cities into thriving metropolises.  Even though it's more limited, Plan It Green has more potential in the classroom because it's FREE and a teacher can run it with a whole class (as long as there is a good internet connection).

So, though I'm sad to say it, SimCity will not be part of my teaching toolkit next year.

Ascension by Steven Galloway

In Ascension Steven Galloway has told a great story with some wonderfully diverse elements.  He has woven together the story of the circus, the feats of wire-walking, circus life, the persecution of Roma people, and family drama in one novel.  It's immensely readable with original characters.

What stands out more than anything, however, is the opening chapter.  Galloway has written one of the most tense, stressful chapters I have ever read.  In it, Salvo Ursari, his main character, attempts a walk between the (now destroyed) World Trade Center towers that left me sweating and breathing hard.  I didn't dare skip a single word, but was, at the same time, desperate to finish.  It's just twelve pages, but twelve pages that I will never forget.

Coin Fairy

Once upon a time, a fairy with a seemingly endless supply of coins came to town…

For several years I have been involved in raising money for Operation Smile Thailand, an incredible organisation that raises money to provide free surgery to people with cleft lips and palates.  The doctors and nurses who perform the surgeries do so for free, but the cost of supplies, facilities, and medication still have to be paid for.  Operation Smile raises money to pay for these costs and then to organise the very complicated logistics of getting doctors together with patients.  The surgery is not a particularly complicated one as proven by the fact that most of us never see people who have a cleft lip or palate.  Only children born to very poor parents leave the hospital without it being corrected.

Several years ago, we came up with a truly simple but effective fundraiser in which students competed by class to earn the most 'points'.  Each teacher was given a jar; coins added to the jar were 'positive' numbers and bills 'negative' numbers.  If one of my students put two ten baht coins in my jar, we gained twenty points.  If a student from a competing class dropped a twenty baht bill in my jar, however, we lost twenty points and ended up back at zero.

The fundraiser usually ran for about a week and raised a lot of money.  At the end, we had students count coins by denomination and put them in ziplock bags of 100 coins.  Bills were counted as well.  The winning class - the one with the most points and not the most money - won a free lunch.

There was only one wrinkle in the plan - no one wants coins.  Our cashier's office, which usually handles and deposits all money raised - made it extremely difficult to deposit large amounts of coins.  They didn't do so out of spite but because banks simply do not want coins.  To discourage deposits of large amounts of money in coins, the banks charge a lot of money to handle the coins.  On top of that, the cashier's office asked that we sort and count the coins before handing them over to them (no problem) but then insisted on counting all the coins again while I was there.

When you're talking about thousands of coins, that is a lot of time from a teacher's day standing around waiting while coins are counted.  The times that I did do it usually resulted in most of my prep time spent counting and recounting piles of coins.  Oy.

Luckily the parents of a woman who works at our school own a pharmacy and frequently need coins to make change.  Several years ago, she and I made an arrangement in which I would make sure the coins were counted and sorted and she would buy them.  [No second count was necessary.]  I would then take the bank notes and simply deposit them with the cashier.  It was easier, and she was happy to get the coins.

The only problem?  She couldn't handle the volume of coins that came in, especially the one and two baht coins.  I ended up with a backlog of coins every year that I would tally and deposit cash for (bank notes) with the cashier's office.  I probably could have cleared the backlog by putting a little more time and effort into it, but somehow teaching full time got in the way of my banking duties.  Who knew?

Anyway, this year being my last at my school, I realised I really did have to get rid of all those coins.  When I went through my closets and cupboards at school, however, I knew that this was going to be a bit complicated; there were a lot of coins.  I worked hard get rid of them through the cashier and the woman with the pharmacy.  In addition, I started carrying bags of  5 and 10 baht coins with me wherever I went, paying for everything I could think of with coins.  I probably started tipping quite a bit more too, albeit using coins to make the difference.  Even after redoubling my efforts, in the end I probably had about 30 kilograms of coins to get rid of.

Again, I had already tallied the value of the coins and made out-of-pocket equivalent deposits in the Operation Smile account.  I decided that I would just consider these donations from me and started figuring out how to get rid of the coins.  This was easier said than done.  Thirty kilos of coins is a lot of coins.

By May, I realised that I would have to change tactics.  The value of the coins had already been donated, but my ideal was to donate the coins themselves.  The only thing stopping me was the practicality of getting rid of so many coins.  I could never carry them all in one go and didn't want to ask a friend to help me transport them.  Plus, I wasn't sure where I would transport them anyway.  The first thing to consider was the satang.

those darn satang

Satang are the 'cents' of Thailand.  Simply making them is a money losing venture for the Thai mint.  When 32 baht is more or less a dollar, one baht is about 3 cents.  That makes one satang 1/100th of 3 cents.  Only big stores like grocery stores give satang, and nobody wants them.  Banks have no interest in them, and stores won't receive them.  The only place I could think of that would be happy to take them was a wat, so I went through all the coins, separated out all the satang that weren't already bagged, and put them in a big shopping bag.  

Total weight?  About 6 kilos.

My wife and I had a day trip planned to visit a small river side neighbourhood that included a market, a good restaurant, and a really nice wat that had recently been restored.  We went in the late afternoon, me carrying a green bag full of satang.  We walked through the market to the temple.  I took off my shoes, entered the main part of the temple (which was empty), and went directly to the donation boxes.  My first thought was to dump all the coins out into the boxes, but I realised after the clanging of coins began that this was going to take a long time.  Plus, it was likely to attract attention since it sounded something like a slot machine payout at a Vegas casino.  I put the 6 ziplock bags full of coins on top of the box, quickly retreated to the centre of the floor in front of the very large Buddha, bowed a few times and exited.

For some reason I felt like I had to sneak out and breathed a huge sigh of relief that I had not been 'caught'.  As I was putting my shoes back on, a middle-aged couple arrived, and I urged my wife to hurry out of the wat grounds.

The question now was what to do with the remaining 24 kilos of coins.  A bunch of scenarios ran through my head.  Here are a few...

• Giving bags of coins to people on the street: Bangkok does not have a lot of people asking for change on the street, but there are some.  I thought about dropping off bags of coins but had read too many stories about how the people asking were often victims of human traffickers. Giving them money was essentially giving money to traffickers and, at the same time, encouraging trafficking.   OUT
• Cleaning staff: I figured people who work as cleaners were as deserving as anyone of an extra 100-300 baht.  It might not sound like a lot, but the minimum wage in Thailand is 300 baht per day (about USD 10).  An extra hundred baht (one of the smaller bags I had at that point) would be a 'bonus' of about 33%.  One of the bigger bags would be equivalent to more than a day's wage.  The problem was giving the money.  I didn't want to put someone in the position of having to say thank you to some stranger who just happened to have mountains of change lying around.  I also didn't want someone to be insulted.  OUT
• Public bathrooms: This seemed like the perfect solution to my problem.  I could give the money anonymously with no thanks necessary to a target audience that I felt was deserving (people who worked as cleaning staff).  I attempted to do this three times, approaching a urinal and reaching into my messenger bag to pull out coins.  Each time I did so, someone walked into the bathroom.  It's hard to explain to someone that you are leaving a bag of coins for the woman who cleans the bathroom (and I don't mean because of a language barrier).  I felt like I was committing some kind of lewd act, so each time I discreetly put the coins away and left. OUT

I was now at a loss - twenty-four kilos of coins, a few hundred dollars worth, but no outlet for them. I talked about it with my wife but we came up with nothing.  A couple of days later, they erected a giant scaffolding around our apartment building to begin repainting the exterior.  They also drained the pool.  They had begun the summer repair/upgrade projects.  Aside from us, there was only one other family still in the building as all the other teachers had already left for their summer holidays.  The only people around were going to be the security guards, the groundskeepers, and the special workers doing the different projects.

I had my plan.

Two days later on our way out to get lunch, my wife and I dropped a 300 baht bag of coins off by the pile of broken tiles the workers had pulled off the bottom of the freshly drained pool.  I scurried away without looking back, but when we returned later that day, the coins were gone.  Success!

That night, I went out for a walk, bent down to tie my shoes, and tossed a bag of coins into the corner where they kept all the paint cans.  Next morning?  Gone.

For the next two nights, I went down to the empty pool a dropped bags of coins into the bottom.  Each day, the coins disappeared.  

At that point, a couple of new conditions began to emerge.  I wanted to spread the wealth and make sure as many people as possible got coins, and I wanted to come up with a different place to leave the coins each time.  I began to shed bags of coins at every opportunity.

Over the next days and nights - up until our last day in the building - bags of 100-400 baht magically appeared:

• in the garbage room after a mad dash on my bicycle to beat the garbage truck pulling up the drive;
• on the paths and sidewalks at night;
• by the pile of raked leaves and trimmings;
• on the scaffolding where the painters would be working the next day;
• and, in the bushes.     

For the most part, my scheming went as planned.  Once, however, I had a minor freakout when the previous night's deposit was not discovered.  I had left a 250 baht bag in the centre of the steps leading up the elevator.  It was in plain view of anyone who walked by.  I was sure that one of the security guards would find it when he did his rounds at night, but when I woke up and went to take the recycling out, the coins were still there.

I panicked.  Should I pick up the coins?  Should I walk right past them?  If I walked past them and someone saw me, would they realise that I was the one leaving the coins?  If I picked them up, would I look like I was 'finding' and keeping something that did not belong to me.  I ran back up to tell my wife, but she said not to worry about it - someone would find them.  I was at a loss, so I agreed.  Sure enough, when we went out later that day, the bag was gone.

The only other glitch was with the very last bag, a large bag I had left in some bushes.  I left it at night and was sure no one saw me, but the next morning, two women knocked on the door.  When I opened it, there they were with the bag asking me if I had lost a some money coins in the bushes.  One of them had what I was sure was a little sly smile on her face.  I assured her that they were not my coins and that she should just consider herself lucky, but I am pretty sure my cover was blown.

That was our very last day in the apartment and nearly our last day in Thailand.  I had shed about 30 kilos of coins in the last few weeks and felt pretty good about how things had gone.  The coins donated had essentially served double duty with equivalent amounts going to Operation Smile and to people who were not exactly poor but who were definitely not rich either.

If my cover was blown, that's okay, but I prefer to think that people will talk about the 'Coin Fairy' who, once, long ago, used to leave bags of money for good people everywhere.  When I think about it, this was one more small step in leaving Thailand.

Thip Samai Pad Thai

A piece of art

Doodling 10

Amba Hotel in Ximending (Taipei)

After too many years ignoring the culinary wonders of Taipei, my wife and I finally booked a trip to Taiwan.  We chose the Amba Hotel in Ximending after a lot of back and forth over where to go and what to do.  We knew quite a few people who had visited Taipei, but almost all had gone for school sporting events.  As a result, most had stayed near Taipei American School and had not really had a chance to explore the city.

Ximending turned out to be an incredible neighbourhood for us.  It's quiet in the morning, perhaps until about 11:00, and then gets progressively busier.  By 10:00 p.m., it's packed with people eating, shopping, hanging out, and going to movies.  Being Taiwan, there are not too many Western visitors, but, judging by our hotel, there are a lot of Mandarin speaking tourists.  On top of that, the area is just packed with young people, couples, and families coming to have fun.  Based on food alone, Ximending is a destination in and of itself.

Amba Hotel is on top of the Eslite department store.  Eslite is full of great clothes and accessories by Taiwanese designers.  I don't even like shopping and I had a good 30 minutes walking through the store.  Amba's rooms are stylish, clean, and super comfortable.

The restaurant offers an incredible buffet (included in the room rate) and a cool bar in the evening.  Throughout the hotel there are clever touches.  They are simple but very smart.  For example, instead of that dumb 'do not disturb' sign that you hang on the door handle (which always falls off), Amba gives a two-sided magnet that you just throw at the door.  One side requests cleaning and the other 'quiet'.  It's just one example of some people really thinking about how to do hotels better.

The staff is also incredibly friendly.  The hotel offers free laundry machines with soap (unheard of), and, though the washing process turned into something of a debacle for me, the staff proved how helpful they were in the process.

Thinking of going to Taipei?  Go.  And eat for days.

Trying to decide where to stay?  Amba Ximending.

Evil Washing Machine in Taipei: The Full Story

In a recent post, I mentioned an 'evil' washing machine in Taipei and promised to give the full story...here it is.

After living for many years in Thailand, my wife and I finally decided to visit Taipei.  We had read great things about the eating opportunities in the city and, never ones to ignore the possibility of a good meal, booked a few days to eat and hike in and around Taipei.  We booked at Amba Hotel in Ximending (which we loved - read about that here).  One of the surprising perks to Amba is the free laundry service.  I don't recall ever staying in a place with free laundry service, and Amba has a nice laundry room (with soap!) for all guests to use whenever they want.  

We were in Taipei for only four days and had just enough clothes for the trip.  Even when I don't have plenty of clothes, my tendency on a trip is to just do laundry when I get home.  It's not that big a deal for me to wear something an extra time since most of the people I see on a holiday will never see me again.  As long as I have clean underwear, I'm fine.  

In this particular case, we were going to be going to stay with my wife's family.  This meant that doing laundry would not be a problem once we arrived.  My wife (considerately) didn't want to arrive with a bunch of dirty clothes and have one of the first things she said be, "Do you mind if we do some laundry?"  This was compounded by the fact that we had done a really beautiful but sweaty hike in Yingmingshan National Park that left us with some particularly pungent articles to wash. Leaving them in our bags didn't appeal to my wife.  

On our last day she suggested that we do our usual daytime exploration and eating, return to the hotel in the late afternoon to do laundry, and then head out in the evening.  We had picked out a Sichuan restaurant that sounded fantastic.  We both crave a daily dose of chiles, and, as good as everything was in Taipei, chiles were generally lacking.  The restaurant was actually owned by a friend's sister and often ran out of food fairly early, so our plan was to leave at about 17:00 to get there in time for a good meal.  We even had a small bar in mind for drinks afterward.  

We went down to the laundry room together to find three gleaming machines.  Now the first hint that something might be amiss was that these machines were washer/dryer combos.  Not the stacked washer AND dryers that are common in apartments these days, but one unit the size of a typical small washer that also did the drying.  Neither of had ever seen one before, but we proceeded anyway.

The machine

Next, as one would expect in Taiwan, all the instructions on the machine - the buttons, the settings, and the warnings - were in Mandarin.  On the wall of the laundry room, however, there was an enlarged color printer image of the machine's control panel and brief English instructions as to what to press and when.  One note was particularly prominent - 'When the wash cycle finishes, please wait approximately 15 minutes for the machine to cool down.  Do not attempt to open the machine or switch off the power.'  

Hmmm.  We paused for a moment and asked each other what we should do.  I said (again) that I didn't need to do laundry but that it was okay with me if my wife really wanted to go ahead.  With a little trepidation, we pressed the buttons indicated on the wall to start the process.  My wife insisted that I go up to the room to read/rest since she was the one who really wanted to do laundry.  I agreed.  

It was 15:33.

Oh, it's worth noting that my wife, because she wanted to arrive at her family's with all her clothes washed, was wearing a pair of running shorts, a bra, and a little light wrap - no buttons, no zippers etc. - that she had to keep tight against her body with her elbows.  

A few minutes after going upstairs to the room, my wife messaged me to say that the machine said 2:45.  What?!?  We both figured that it was some kind of washing machine misunderstanding.  There was no way it could take almost three hours to do laundry.  Could it?

I offered to go downstairs to check the machine, but the message came back saying 'no'.  Selfish as it may sound, I had a good book to read, and, as my wife pointed out, I didn't really want to do laundry anyway.  We messaged back and forth a few times about how we might have to change our dinner plan, but other than that we both settled in with our respective reading materials, me in the room and my wife in front of the beautiful Hitachi washer/dryer combo.

The machine kept on chugging along; as it did so I received periodic messages indicating the machine's progress.  At 18:33 my wife messaged again to tell me that the machine had stopped but that the door was still locked.  I replied that it must be that 'cool down' thing mentioned on the sign on the wall and went back to my book.  Another ten minutes passed and another message arrived - the machine was still quiet (no spin) but the door was still locked.  I went down to join my wife or at least offer to give her a break from her washer/dryer vigil.

I arrived and together we examined all the buttons, reviewed the sign on the wall, and pulled on the locked door.  We repeated the same steps a few times and came to the exact same conclusion - we had no idea what we were doing.  We even took a photo of the text on the machine and used google translate to see if it would give us any clues as to what to do.  See below to get an idea of how helpful that was.  At this point my wife asked me to go down to the front desk to see if they could help us out.  Now if you know me, you know that this was no small request.  I hate asking for favours, and I really hate asking for favours if it might even occur to someone that I might have accidentally made a mistake in choosing the machine's settings.

Seeing my hesitation, my wife pointed out that she was basically wearing only a bra with a thin wrap to cover herself, not the best outfit to visit the lobby of a busy hotel.  Besides that, my wife had already put in three hours of laundry duty, so my lobby distress call was really nothing in comparison.  I went down and spoke with the very friendly woman on duty.  I told her that it had already been three hours and the door would not open.  "Oh, that's normal," she said.

Really?  Three hours for a wash and dry cycle?  In our normal life I usually do the laundry, so I knew that this was not normal for me.  At the same time I was relieved because it meant that we hadn't accidentally chosen some marathon washing machine setting for really dirty clothes.  It was just the way the machine worked, odd as it seemed to me.

"Are you sure?  Three hours?  And then, how long should I wait?"

"Yes, yes, it's not a problem.  After the three hours, it's usually another 20 minutes, but I will ask someone to come check the machine."

Somewhat baffled but trusting, I returned to the laundry room and told my wife the news.  In the interest of some modicum of fairness, I told her to return to the room while I waited.  Kindhearted person that she is, she reluctantly agreed.  I settled in to wait.  I had a bunch of articles that I had saved to read in Pocket, so it wasn't such a bad thing.

While I was reading, another hotel guest came to the laundry room to do some wash.  She checked the machine to my left and to my right and saw that both were full of clothes.  She went to check mine, but I showed her that it was locked.  A few minutes later, the same woman from the front desk came up herself to check on the laundry.  She checked the door, looked at the buttons, and got on her walkie-talkie to, presumably, speak with the housekeeping staff.  After a few minutes of chatting interspersed with examinations of the machine, she reassured me that all was fine and that I merely needed to wait.

Fair enough.  I was just glad that she didn't think I had broken the machine.

The other guest asked her a question about laundry.  Now what follows is one of those situations where you don't speak the language, but you can figure out what is being said because of the context and the way events unfold.  I am pretty certain my interpretation is correct.  She showed that she had laundry to do but pointed at the different machines to show that they were in use.  She picked up a piece of paper on the first machine, and I realised that there was a room number written on it.

The woman from the front desk pointed to some laundry bags (yes, they even provided those) and indicated that she could take the laundry out.  She piled the clothes into the bag and loaded her own things in.  And then she left.

It was now 18:51, by the way.  Dinner at Sichuan place was now looking unlikely.

Yes, I reminded myself, this was Taiwan.  Like the woman who had just left, I/we could have actually trusted people not to steal my/our clothes and gone out to eat as per our original plan.  I/we didn't have to sit a silent vigil for our spinning laundry.  This was entirely my fault.  I am the paranoid one who thinks someone might want to take my 8 year old old t-shirt.

I messaged my wife that perhaps we should just go out and come back for our clothes.  She replied to remind me that essentially she was in her bra and underwear.  So, correct that: I/we could have actually trusted people not to steal my clothes and gone out to eat as per our original plan if one of us had kept something to wear.

I settled back in to read and finished a few more articles.  Every few minutes, I would reach for the handle on the machine and give it a gentle tug with the same result.  Finally at 19:08, my wife called back down to the front desk to get help.  I returned to the laundry room and a couple of minutes later both she and someone from housekeeping showed up.  They repeated the same steps - examine the buttons, do a little poking and a little pulling - and said quite formally, "We don't know what's wrong.  We're very sorry.  We will deliver your clothes to you later."

I went upstairs and told my wife.  While this was in some ways encouraging, it did not change our circumstances.  We were stuck in the room and could not go out.  What was worse was that we were now starting to worry that our clothes would come out horribly shrunken from baking for hours in the dryer.  These were the clothes that we would need for the next six weeks, so it was kind of a big deal.  That said, there was nothing we could do, so after worrying aloud for a bit, we resumed reading.

Then, at 19:46 there was a knock on our door.  Our laundry had arrived more than four hours after we started.  The woman who brought it was very apologetic.  My biggest fear had remained that the staff would believe we were somehow responsible, so I was ecstatic about this.  It was perhaps even better than actually getting the clothes back (at least for me).  Our evening plans had been ruined, but we weren't in trouble and we had our clothes.  Relief.  We hugged to celebrate and got ready to go out to eat.

And then we noticed.  Our clothes were still damp.  And wrinkled from their extended session piled in the machine.  

--------------------

A few lessons learned from this experience:

• When using a new type of washing machine, ask how long it usually takes.
• Don't do laundry when you can't read the instructions on an unfamiliar machine.  
• If you absolutely have to wash clothes, ask for help.
• When in Taiwan, trust that people will not steal your clothes.

Note 1: Our last night in Taipei turned out a lot differently than expected, but we still had no trouble finding good food in Ximending.  The packed streets are bursting with eating options and we got to try a few different things before heading to bed late.  

Note 2: Amba Hotel and staff are fantastic.  This is in no way a criticism of them.

The Ravine by Paul Quarrington

Paul Quarrington’s The Ravine is one of those books I ended up picking up simply because it was ‘homey’.  It’s set explicitly in Toronto, and I am always a sucker for something explicitly Canadian.  It’s silly, but when you are from a ‘small’ place, it is sometimes gratifying to see a place you know well through the eyes of someone else.  New York, for example, is portrayed all the time to the point that it’s practically a character in films, novels, and music.  Other places, not so much.  Places in Canada are often backdrops or stand-ins for other places; they rarely get pride of place in creative works.  That may be a silly reason to read a book, but it’s led me down some interesting artistic paths.  

Besides its explicit Canada connection, Quarrington’s novel is deeply rooted in an incident in one of Toronto’s ravines.  For anyone who has explored the ravines, you know they are special in that they are a world next to and below the real world.  In a city that is pretty tame by most standards, walking into a ravine is something like going through the wardrobe to reach Narnia.  Even in bland suburban Toronto, to head down a wooded slope into one of the ravines is something of an adventure.  

Rushing creeks (and even a river), wild animals, trees, flowers, and, on occasion, some sketchy people are the world of the ravine.  In the winter, snow can pile high and animal footprints - deer, coyote, rabbits et al - remind you that you have left behind the city and entered a more magical space.  Many are the adult Torontonians today who have a story to tell about time spent in the ravines.  

It is one of those moments that gives Quarrington his title and his main character, Phil, a direction-changing life-defining moment.  I guess it is that idea - that a life can be changed so profoundly by one incident - that kept me from loving the book.  Of course those moments do exist (and apparently did for Quarrington himself if you read the article linked above), but more than anything they are plot devices.  The best fiction does not depend on plot devices to tell a story.  

Plot devices aside, Quarrington has mastered the tragicomic.  His characters are wallowing in misery, but the story is dripping with humour.  Seeing what’s funny in the midst of a life that is quickly collapsing is a talent; writing about it so that readers feel empathy while laughing is a gift. 

You can’t go wrong spending time in ravines.  

Bye, เมืองไทย

มา8ปีแล้วเราอยู่ในประเทศไทย เป็นโอกาสที่จะไม่ลืมตลอดไป ทุกครั้งะที่คิดเรื่อง8ปีนี้จะยิ้มเพราะจะจำได้เพื่อนดีนักเรียนยอดเยี่ยมอาหารอร่อยและความสวยงาม ความตัดสินใจนี้ยากจริงๆแต่เวลาขึ้นเครื่องบินเรารู้ว่าใช้8ปีของชีวิตของเราในประเทศพิเศษกับคนพิเศษ 

We couldn't ask for anything else. ขอบคุณมากๆ

Modern Toilet: A Taipei Thing

Yes, Taipei has a toilet themed restaurant.  Food is pretty good, but it's the theme that draws the crowds.

Bowls for dinner = toilet bowls 

Seats = toilets

Hmmmm...

Modern Toilet is not my number one reason to love Taipei, but it's a part of it.  Everyone eating here was having a great time, so the atmosphere was a ton of fun.