Side Goals

Whenever I throw something out, I realize later I could’ve used it and I regret being so wasteful. Whenever I keep something, it takes up space in the apartment and I regret being so messy and slothful. It’s a no win situation. The ice cream maker and the instapot had been collecting dust and languishing in our apartment for years. Too expensive to throw away, yet too bulky to hide in the apartment. For our road trip I had the main goal of learning about American history. We have no exciting travel destinations, so we’re looking desperately for domestic places of interest... like bumfuck Virginia. The side goals I had were to make beef bourguignon without a stove and churn a homemade batch of chocolate chip ice cream. 

My family thought I was crazy, but I persevered through their criticisms, “why are you taking up half our trunk with these machines? You haven’t used these appliances ever before, why start now? you never cook this stuff in our kitchen but now you want to cook them? Are you fucking serious? Why are you like this?” To make space for the appliances, I told the family to pack extremely light, like 3 pairs of underwear max, 1 pair of pants, and 3 pairs of socks and 3 t shirts each.

With a day left on our jaunt, I can proudly say I met all main and side goals. While I try to write an entertaining post about slavery and the role of racial injustice in American history I’ve decided to write about how I met my side goals.

The instapot is not really instant. For those uninitiated instapot readers, the instapot is like a crockpot on steroids with tons of functions. It plugs into a standard 120 volt wall socket but then gives an array of functions like pressure cooking, sautee, stew, continuous temperature incubation for yogurt, etc… the instapot gives the user control of heat, pressure, and temperature. Thermodynamically, cooking with an instapot is like controlling all the variables of the ideal gas law, PV=nRT. The chef, (played by former chemist- myself) buys all the biochemical ingredients (onions, salt, pepper, chuck beef, carrots, potatoes, garlic, olive oil, corn starch, chicken stock, thyme, balsamic vinegar, bay leaves) and decides on n (the amount of substance). The chef then turns on the sautee function of the pot and sears the salt and peppered beef in olive oil in a controlled temperature setting. Once the hotel room smells and looks like a smokey steakhouse, the chef then sautees the onions and garlic for a few minutes while checking various news reports how a Johnson and Johnson vaccine made a Virginia man’s skin peel off. The chef then distractedly pours in a dash of balsamic vinegar to create the basis of the sauce. At this point the chef defines the volume of the dish by pouring measured amounts of potatoes, seared beef, spices, chicken stock and locks in a high temperature and pressure on the pot for 45 minutes. For the final 4 minutes of cooking, the pressure is relieved, the lid is opened and the carrots and potatoes are pressure cooked in a cornstarched gravy.

So within an hour, beef bourguignon is concocted in a random Motel 6 room off the highway in backcountry Virginia. The chef takes a bow after serving and feeding the family who 2 hours prior seriously doubted the chef could make anything as tasty as the numerous Cracker Barrel, McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken joints they had passed on thier way to the motel. 

I admit, the instapot is not really what I imagined. I imagined just throwing a bunch of ingredients into a machine, pressing a button, opening the lid to delicious beef bourguignon and then saying “voila motherfuckers” to astonished family members. Navigating PV=nRT is like sailing a ship. You have to adjust to the elements, and adjust the variables on the fly. After the beef bourguignon was savored and promptly demolished,  I proceeded to clean the greasy instapot in the bathtub with complimentary hotel soap and whip up desert.

Round 2

Like all fights, the (ice cream making) fight began with preparation. The night before the bourguignon, i had put the ice cream maker bowl into the freezer to get super chilled. As the ice cream maker bowl cooled, I whisked 6 egg yolks and 2 tablespoons of sugar and 1 teaspoon of vanilla bean paste. After pouring 2 cups whole milk, 2 cups cream, and 1/6 cup of sugar to boil in the instapot, I shut the instapot off and waited for it to cool down to 180 degrees (as measured by my portable thermometer), to ensure that when I added the eggs they would be pasteurized, not cooked. Apparently egg yolks provide viscosity to ice cream. I placed this ultra high viscosity artery clogging soupy cream mixture in the freezer and waited for the cream to ‘mature’ (note: this is ice cream making verbiage, not my own verbs) before churning it the next day with a cup of dark chocolate chips. after a suspenseful 20 minutes of ice cream maker churning I exclaimed “Voila! Dark chocolate chocolate chip ice cream motherfuckers!” The desert was a success. The family was impressed by the culinary shenanigans I managed to pull off.

After I return home, I expect to further refine my instapot repertoire. While the culinary appliances inevitably collect a new layer of dust in the apartment, I will actively plot a duck a l’orange paired with home made Italian stracciatella gelato on my next Motel 6 adventure.

Tale of the Tape (Ski Bum Part 2)

We borrowed a car from G. He told me he parked his car tight next to a pickup truck at the Costco parking lot yesterday. He noticed his car got scraped when he came back to the car. Oh the misery of suburbia! He was pissed but didn’t think much about it cause the car is so old till... this morning when he found the bumper dangling loose from the car. Apparently his car got scraped so hard the plastic bolts that fasten the bumper to the trunk were sheared off leaving his bumper hanging. I called Costco to see if they had surveillance cameras to catch the criminal in action. They didn’t. It’ll remain an unsolved mystery in the suburbs.  

To make sure the car was safe to drive on the highways at very high speeds,  I asked G. if he had any duct tape. G. only had a few inches  left on the tape roll, so despite his skepticism, i taped his bumper back on just secure enough to drive it to the local supermarket to buy more duct tape. Instead of taping along the seam (like most normal people would probably do), I taped perpendicular to the joint to maximize shear capacity.  G. is a mechanical engineer by training and he thought I was being  idiotic and probably daydreamed laughing at me when  I’d drive back from the store without a bumper,  but I remembered from my structures classes, shear stresses are counteracted proportionately to the length of of straps  that span joints perpendicularly (i.e., strap anchors for wood connections). But as Schopenhauer said, first the truth is  ridiculed, then violently opposed, then when proven right, accepted as self-evident. I was willing to look like an idiot for the truth. 

In the supermarket parking lot, I put 8 more pieces of duct tape onto the bumper to keep it from falling off. I thought if I put the duct tape in triangles like a truss, maybe it’d be stronger? My brain at work. Anyways when G. saw what i did when I drove back victoriously, he was incredulous. I couldn’t tell whether he was rendered speechless by the structural success of the duct tape, or the fact that  I managed to turn his car into a worthless junkmobile. Who tapes their car together? (Except the same guy who tapes his ski jacket. Picture ski bum emerging from taped car in middle of winter at ski resort) 

We drove 3 hours north to our destination stopping at a huge outlet mall on the way.  The parking lots are immense, and encircle the mall. Hundreds  of cars are in the parking lots. I took some pictures, like the sea of cars, an elevated police lookout point overlooking the cars, a sheik man holding shopping bags and looking kind of burdened.... After we finished shopping, we couldn’t find our car since there were so many cars in the lots.. but with our duct taped bumper we were able to locate the car a lot easier while walking the lots because it’s so unique. So far so good, the bumper hasn’t fallen off yet and it makes car identification at mega malls easier. 



Flashback to Indonesia 1996. I was on a biology fellowship to study macque evolution there. I bought a cheap acoustic guitar to pass the time. I strung it with metal strings instead of nylon for the quality of sound. Surprise surprise, the cheap guitar head with all the pegs snapped off the neck after a couple weeks due to the unforeseen tension of the metal strings. To salvage the guitar, I nailed the head to the back of the neck in an act of desperation. Luckily the nails didn’t split the neck. It looked completely ridiculous, like those headless duct-tape-masked spray painted Eddie Van Halen guitars from the 1980s but acoustic... with a head nailed backwards to the neck.  Every time I played it, the locals  would gather around... and thought it was amazing. Between songs I would adjust the pegs on the back of the neck to tune it like a rockstar.  They had never seen a guitar like that before and probably never will again. They thought it was some special American guitar, when in reality it was just a hack desperate attempt of mine to fix something, like the duct tape holding up the car bumper today.

Saratoga Springs lies 3 hours north of New York City by car and is a springboard into the 4th dimension, time. There's a confluence of three overlapping scales of history there: military and modern settlement (hundreds of years), indigenous inhabitation (thousands of years), and geological (millions of years). Recently I’m finding a recurring theme - geology plays an underlying role in war, migrations, and settlement patterns and city planning. I have a friend who made a thesis that in a lot of city planning, main roads were and are situated  over flowing  rivers... he’s devoted himself to underground urban exploration slogging through train tunnels, sewers, and aqueducts.  Murcutt really opened my eyes to geology’s relation to flora and fauna. The geology will support certain flora which in turn support certain fauna which in turn support certain herbivorous or carnivorous people, which in turn support certain settlements, which in turn support certain architects who in turn design certain structures for certain uses for certain people, who in turn buy tuna fish sandwiches... everything is connected. While I possess a profound understanding of duct tape and its applications, I must profess I have no geological knowledge whatsoever... if I could tell one rock from another, that would be a great accomplishment.  I can, however, tell the stories of the effects of geology. 

100s of years scale....
There was a pivotal battle in Saratoga between US and Britain that helped determine the outcome of the American Revolution. At the time, the British controlled Canada in the north, and were trying to go down the Hudson River to New York City to try to cut off the rebellious troublemaking Northeast states from the rest of the country. Since the Hudson River constricts at Saratoga, it was a coveted location for a military control point. The British divide and conquer strategy failed because they overextended themselves by sending troops to Philadelphia and Bennington. They underestimated the resilience and guerilla tactics of the Americans. The fields of Saratoga are marked abstractly with white posts with blue markings for the american lines, and white posts with red markings for British battle lines. The fields are rolling and lush. It's hard to imagine the savagery that visited the place. It's also interesting to imagine the small scale of the war. The losses for either side was less than 500 people, but the battle had a tremendous  impact on world settlement patterns. Now america has over 250 million people... 


Millions of years scale...
A few miles west of the battlegrounds  lies Saratoga Springs. Pre-dating the age of the dinosaurs, 400 million years ago in the Devonian period, the site was a shallow bay. Shells of marine life fell on the ocean floor, gradually turning into limestone when it was compacted by the weight of accumulated sediment above. The limestone layer was essentially covered with an impermeable mud-like layer of shale until 12,000 years ago when an earthquake ruptured the shale allowing the trapped water in the limestone strata to surface.



Thousands of years scale... 
The Mohawk Indians were the first people to discover the springs as they hunted the animals that would come to the springs for their high salt content. All the mineral spring water in Saratoga springs surface at a 55 degree temperature.  The two dozen  springs that comprise Saratoga Springs State Park are the only naturally carbonated springs east of the Rocky Mountains. Each spring has a different chemical composition. The Polaris spring is high in calcium carbonate and was used to treat acid reflux. To spout the water up so that the water could be easily accessed, a pipe was installed with a slight tilt northward... hence the name Polaris.  Karista spring, named after the Mohawk word for iron, has iron and iodine in the same proportion as human blood so it tastes oddly  like blood. To drink the spring water here is like drinking an aged wine... except the spring water is 400 million years old, and it’s sulfurous smelling bouquet is composed of minerals and gas byproducts of ancient marine animals.  People with anemia and thyroid problems drink Karista water. The Hayes spring contains magnesium and lithium. Lithium is a free ionized mood stabilizer... but the magnesium is a laxative. To drink enough Hayes water to become happy, one would probably end up sitting on the toilet first. A parks tour guide mentioned a couple weeks ago, a trucker came by to fill up 3 thermoses full of Hayes water. When he told the trucker that drinking all that water would cause a bowel cleanse, the trucker replied he knew that and would drink the water in the morning daily to relieve himself in the morning to avoid making pit stops the rest of the day. 

 

Back to the present... 
For a period of time around 1900s, large monstrous pipes were bored into the ground to harvest the spring waters for its carbon dioxide. The water was transported to Albany and the gas was extracted to manufacture carbonated drinks. Several springs within the park ran dry, prompting officials to halt the commercial spring water extraction activities on site. In the 1930s during the Great Depression, large lavish neo-classical buildings were constructed with lavish pools and water bars inside. People would come to the springs for 3 week stays, and treat their ailments with various baths and drink spring water. The bath water was heated with underground equipment. Once the equipment broke down, the buildings and baths were abandoned in the 1950's and have become curious monuments to water.

Ski Bum (Part 1)

I was carrying a lot of bags when it happened. I scraped my jacket against the door and heard a rip. There was a small nail poking out of the door. It was a small rip about 2” wide. I could see some feathers. I thought about sewing it, but knowing my sewing prowess i decided to patch it with duct tape instead. Initially, it was supposed to be a temporary fix. But the duct tape patch came with some unexpected initial advantages. Some museums have greatly reduced artist pricing memberships in nyc. When I applied for one, I think the museum staff felt sorry for me and granted me a membership no questions asked. Who duct tapes their jacket? Only starving artists, and maybe the destitute.

I went to a tailor to get it fixed, but they said I had to get my own patching material. My jacket is a brown color, so finding fabric is not so easy. The rip is also located in a very odd location... kind of near the top of the elbow, so a decorative patch would probably draw attention to it. I thought a symmetrical patch on both arms may look more intentional, but it would probably make the situation look twice as bad. A month later, I decided to make a more permanent fix to my jacket. I noticed a small patch kept falling off with white feathers escaping... from my deep knowledge of structural engineering, I know that my tape was failing due to shear stress, and to better engineer my patch, I would have to wrap the tape around the whole arm over the hole... which I did. So my temporary solution has become a little more permanent, but makes me look a little more destitute. I’m not one to think about my appearances much... but it is weird how people look down on people with duct taped jackets. What's wrong with trying to keep my feathers in my jacket?

We rented a house by the ski slopes. So we’ve been obligated to go every week to make it cost effective. This past weekend was supposed to be cold. Like -30 F with windchill. On top of that, it was supposed to snow the night we arrived. Of course I was so pre-occupied purchasing a go pro camera and setting it up that I forgot to pack a shovel. I called the owner of the house on the road and left messages about perhaps borrowing a shovel just in case our car was buried in snow. I heard no response. There are no towns near the mountain, so the ride became more a more desperate as the weather reports became more dire as we approached the mountain "12-14 inches falling overnight with icy rain... temperatures falling below 0...". Finally we saw a Dollar Store, and pulled up. I walked around the aisles and couldn't find a shovel. When i asked the clerk, he said, sorry, they've were all sold out. My mind flipped to survival mode, I started imagining using pots and pans from the house's kitchen to remove snow. Dejected, I started to walk out the store. Out of the corner of my eye, i found salvation. a small toy pink and purple my little pony shovel that kids use along side their parents to get the joyful carefree experience of shoveling without really having to move a lot of snow. I picked it up and went back to the counter. I was half relieved that at least I had something to shovel with and half pissed that the clerk fucking lied to me when he said they were out of shovels. it must've been a sight, a man with a half relieved half pissed expression with duct taped jacket buying a my little pony pink and purple shovel.

The snow came overnight, and it took me 2 hours to dig out the car with the pony shovel in the morning. I was totally drenched in sweat before skiing. I could imagine a duchamp nude desending staircase-like painting of of me, it would be a swiveling puple and pink shovel in motion fluttering around a car. The snow was heavy and wet. I was thinking all the snow would be great on the mountain and I looked forward to capturing the skiing with the go pro. On the slopes of the mountain, the snow drifts were large enough to knock your balance down a slope sending one momentarily out of control, It was so cold, the moisture between the layers of my goggle's plastic lenses froze, making visibility impossible. Skiing in iced up goggles trying to navigate snow bumps was treacherous and nerve wracking. A lot of the best american olympic skiiers come out of the northeast. Unlike the west which is graced with fluffy powder, skiiers in the northeast have to contend with ice, cruddy snow. terrible conditions. For the non olympic skiiers like myself, bad conditions expose really bad technique. I ended up on the side of a trail, too far over to turn the other way. Extreme cold weather has the strange effect of hurrying decisions. (like invading russia in the winter). You're so intent on just moving to keep warm, sometimes you move the wrong way. I had a brain freeze idea-- ski through the trees to get to an easier adjacent slope. I skiied about 5 feet before my ski sunk 2 feet under. i went flying and face planted into the snow. The go pro footage i captured is probably like a hilarious prank gone wrong.

When i returned the car rental and took the train into the city, I had to gather all the belongings from the trunk. Not wanting to look completely ridiculous, i buried the shovel into my bag with the ponies concealed and the miniature purple shaft and blue handle sticking out of my backpack. i looked and felt like a total vagrant. It was 10 degrees in nyc, a 30 year low that felt colder with the wind. we have one more week left in the rental.


(Click here to ski bum in comic format)

                                     

                                   

Copenhagenization Part 2

How well intentioned urban planning principles go awry in NYC (Click Here for Part 1)

I had just started a new job and was working on a socially conscious affordable housing project. It was the beginning of the summer, the birds were chirping and I woke early feeling rather idealistic so I went into work to make a model on Saturday morning. Biking through Harlem at 6:55 AM, I was planning the construction of the model in my mind. How could I cut the pieces together to fit together without glue? How many pieces of cardboard would I need? While I was in deep thought, I ran a red light at the rotary northwest corner of Central Park and passed a couple more red stoplights. Nothing out of the ordinary. I would normally have taken a train and scooter to work, but I was testing out biking from home.

All of a sudden a car swerved in front of me and cut me off. I nearly smashed into the trunk. Before I could say “what the fuck, asshole!” A guy gets out of the car and unfurls his badge and says “New York Police Department! Get on the sidewalk!” He might as well have said, “Stop! I’m an official douchebag.” I was processing the shock in my brain. Did an undercover cop just jump out of an unmarked police car and pull me over at 6:55 in the morning?

He asked for my ID. I searched my wallet and fucked around with him and gave him my old college library ID. He looked annoyed. “No, give me your real ID.” I reluctantly handed over my driver’s license. In a sarcastic voice I asked him what he needed it for... In an equally sarcastic tone, he replied “Sir, you know I could have fined you $1000 for running 3 red lights." “Really?” “Yes, I followed you from the rotary. I gave you the benefit of the doubt after you passed the first red light.. but then after you continued running 2 more red lights... I had to pull you over.” I've ran probably 1000 lights throughout my lifetime without issue. I thought these rules prohibiting bikers from running red lights were made to protect pedestrians from aggressive bikers but there are no pedestrians at 7 AM.  Everyone is sleeping, except for me and this police officer. The police man was taking an inordinate amount of time writing out my traffic violation. My luck in getting caught by a retarded cop. Shameless, I asked if he could just give me a warning, and let me off the hook. He said it wasn't personal, that he was just doing his job. "That's what they all say," I thought. Then I was hoping that after he saw my student library ID he would be more lenient with the fine... but he wasn't. I looked down at his printout and it called for a $300 fine.  At that point I saw a guy bicycling run a red off in the distance and pointed it out the unfairness of the system to the cop. I then told him, "In my neighborhood, I consistently witness dozens of Chinese delivery men on motorized bikes going 30 mph the wrong way.... I didn't even know running red lights was a ticket-able offense." It didn't help my case I look chinese. He told me to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles to arrange a court date in front of a judge if I wanted to contest the ticket.

After I left the cop, I rode my bike very obediently to work... stopping at each light nervously looking around. Other bikers nonchalantly passed while I waited for reds to turn green like an obedient dog. The cop took the joy out of biking. I had good intentions of helping the poor and working on affordable housing when I woke up.. now I was pissed because I was $300 poorer. I was in no mood to make models anymore.. all I could think about was how appalling it was that the cops had nothing better to do than to issue bike tickets to people trying to seek alternate environmentally-conscious modes of commute. Harlem is a seedy part of town.. the cops have so many more serious crimes to address like murder, drug dealing etc... why are they wasting time on cyclists running reds in the early morning when no one is on the streets?  I would soon find out all my co-workers had received biking violations. James told me "your first ticket is $300... if you get caught during the year probation period, the second offense is $600, and the third offense is $1000. It's a scam. They're trying to issue tickets to generate revenue. I was on Central Park West riding north where no cars cut east west because of the park, and even I got a ticket for running a red. The cops are all assholes!"  All of my co-workers tried to appeal their fines in court. All of them were denied leniency by the judges. I'm a glass half full type of guy, living in a state of delusion.... so I went to the Department of Motor Vehicles and arranged a trial date. Before the trial, I told my sons, who were accustomed to running red lights with me while biking to the tennis courts that we shouldn't do that anymore. When they asked why, and I said, "I heard the police are cracking down on people who don't obey bike rules and plus it's safer." So we would sit on our saddles like obedient dopes while all other cyclists would pass us by. If I spoke the truth to them it would be something like this, "I got caught running a red, and I don't want to spend $600 for a second offense within my year long probationary period, nor do I want to shell out another $600 for your combined juvenile offenses. And imagine if were caught by the same douchebag cop. he would think I was such a bad role model."

At my trial 3 months later, I saw 6 other defendants take the stand in front of a judge. In each case, their accusing officers were there to provide eye witness testimonies. One person was charged with texting while driving, another for driving without a license, another for making a U-turn that was not allowed etc... A fine in my case was annoying. I thought for these guys barely scraping by to make ends meet, in a poor neighborhood.. a fine would be life changing. When I took the stand, I expected the worst. The judge summoned me up and asked I knew what charges were being brought up against me. I said "uh huh." He said, "it's either yes or no." I said "Yes sir (douchebag)!" Then the accusing cop started reading his account of what happened. I thought I was definitely going to have to pay my fine... The thing with trials is that people lie all the time. The premise of our judicial system is that the accused have to solemnly swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but they then proceed to lie and make excuses to get leniency. I was plotting out all my lies.. like in other states people can make right turns on red lights, so I didn't know I had to stop at that red because I don't drive.. or that the cop almost hit me when he swerved and he should be ashamed of himself.. or i'm really a decent human being just trying to design affordable housing.... but the judge interrupted my exculpatory thoughts. there was something in the cop's testimony which the judge picked up on.... something in the way the officer procured my ID that was not allowed by law. he told the cop to repeat his testimony... then told the cop to stop. I don't know what happened but the judge looked at me and told me "it's you're lucky day, you are dismissed. you will not have to pay a fine." Perhaps I had confused the cop with my library ID... I wasn't about to ask what happened for fear the judge might find me ungrateful and reinstate the fine.

Although, I felt like a weight of the fine and year of probation was lifted from my shoulders, I found no reason to bike anymore to work if i couldn’t run red lights. Biking while obeying traffic rules becomes slower than riding trains. That’s why I scooter to work instead. I've scoured all the traffic laws and regulations in new york. Scootering on sidewalks is not illegal like skateboarding or biking. On scooter, you can go on the street the wrong way and run red lights, and it’s fast. I found scootering is such an obscure mode of commuting that there are loopholes to their usage on NYC streets. Perhaps if there more people scootering, there would be regulations. But kick scootering is just not done by adults. Probably because scooters are associated with kids' toys and it looks strange for adults to ride around like kids? I remember the first time I scootered was at ken's wedding in california.  we were running errands, he was on bike, he told me to kick scooter. after a couple blocks he gave me the bike and he kick scootered. I wasn't coordinated enough to balance on it naturally. a kick scooter is like a skateboard with a stick to control steering. while a skateboarder looks cool and punk, a kick scooterer looks stupid and dorky because of the steering control.... it's like riding around a bike with training wheels. A few years later, we got ben a razor scooter...but a 2 wheel scooter is hard to master for a 3 year old. it gathered dust in the basement. A couple years later, we got ben a micro 3 wheel scooter. they were a fad in nyc, every kid had one at the time. The commute to his nursery school at that time sucked. The school was remote and inaccessible by train. you could take a bus, but waiting for the bus could take longer than walking to the school. so we walked.. or rather, I walked and pushed him in a stroller for a mile. then I continued my walk uphill to work another mile. it was an hour and a half of walking everyday to drop him off and pick him up from school. In his final year, after he learned to scooter on the micro, I got the brilliant idea to scooter on his 2 wheeled kid's scooter by his side. it was ridiculous, the handle bar barely reached the height of my waist. but we cut our commute time in half. he on 3 wheels, and me on 2 wheels, we were faster than the buses and it was more fun. I remember the time I hit a small crack in the sidewalk and went hurtling through the air and had sore ribs for a week. a kid's scooter has small wheels, so sidewalk cracks are very dangerous. but I was addicted to the speed and continued despite my injuries... I scanned the sidewalks like a hawk, navigating all the cracks. It was a sad day when the polyurethane tires shredded... probably because the scooter was designed for 40 pound kids, not 150 pound adults. At that point, I bought my first adult sized scooter.

By the time jerry was born, my scootering skills had advanced such that I could scooter with one hand. this allowed me to push a jogging stroller while scootering. we would fly down the sidewalks at crazy speeds. it was a strange sight. first no adults scooter. second, no adults push strollers while scootering. a commute that would take a normal human being 20 minutes, now took me 5 minutes. we were shattering speed records and social norms in our mode of transportation. when he was 4, we became more conventional when jerry scootered by my side to school. my scootering is always associated with memories of my kids. everyday, when jerry is inevitably late to school, we hop of my scooter, he in front, me in back. his school is 3 blocks north. it's usually a frantic 2 minute ride to get to school by 8:20 AM. There's a memorial chapel on the road between our house and school. Sometimes there’s a hearse double parked in the road. when we see that golden opportunity, we say 'dead man blocking' and ride in the road full speed to avoid riding on the congested sidewalks of parents walking with their kids. last week I joked to jerry, this ride reminds me of the my times racing in the Iditarod. with every propulsionary stride, I lean down where my head is almost at jerry's level and give a  strong kick sending us surging through the street. I let out funny sounds like "heeyah" when my chin is close to his ear. I told jerry, "this is the sound we made mushing dogs through the snow in the Iditarod". jerry laughed and called my bluff, "you didn't race the Iditarod" "yes I did" "if you did, tell me where does it end?" "anchorage...(I try to say this with some dad authority. this is the only Alaskan city I know)" "no, daddy, it's nome" "fine. I lied. where do you learn all this useless information from" "books from school" I drop him off and he disappears into the school.

All week, the main story in the newspapers was how an 18 year old freshman college student at columbia was stabbed to death in morningside park, Harlem at 5:30 PM by a trio of 13 and 14 year olds. When i rowed, my crew team used to run up and down the stairs there for practice in the morning. used needles could be seen strewn along the stairs, but the city has changed and gotten a lot better till recently. when I read this news, my first thought was those undercover cops in Harlem pulling over bikers when they should be going after real criminals. copenhagenization in nyc is so perverted. in denmark, the lanes are filled with commuters. here, they are more or less empty... a source of revenue for the cops to find people crossing red lights, distracting them from their job. the cops take the joy out of biking.

Given the recent spate of murder news in the headlines, I decided to bring Ben to his Model UN conference at his high school, Bronx Science. Bronx Science is a great school located 8 miles north of our house, with 8 former graduates who went on to win Nobel prizes (7 of which were in physics). Given his malabsorption of geometry and basic biology, i'm just hoping at this point that  Ben can avoid failing physics during his tenure there. The model UN students were supposed to meet at the school in dress clothes (suits, pants, tie, and shoes) at 7:30 AM which meant we would have to leave at 6:30 in the dark. He's 14 now, old enough to be socially conscious and embarrassed by me but young enough for me to worry about him getting knifed. "dad, i'm ok. i'm safe riding the subway" "didn't you hear the latest news?" "yeah, but i'm not going to morningside" "but where does the subway pass through? morningside." he suspected I was being cheap as usual, not wanting to pay for a $40 taxi and forcing him to take the subway with me. I must admit, all my actions up to that point corroborated his assumptions. At 6:10 i was watching youtube videos on how to tie my tie for him. (I rarely wear ties because they look formal. The last tie I had tied by a friend and kept in a loop for decades but lost it.) At 6:25 we were cutting insoles to insert in my dress shoes for him to wear my oversized dress shoes. Fitted with my oversized clothes on his frame, I kept rationalizing that he's grown so much this past year, that buying him any new clothes, shoes, or ties to fit will be soon outgrown and a waste of money. We hopped on my scooter to the train station. he was pretty pissed, giving me disgruntled side glances and eyerolls the whole trip up as if to say "I can't believe this guy is my father." The whole subway ride was pretty tame. the only menacing guy was a drunk shirtless Mexican walking down the stairs of the transfer station at 145th street.

When we got off the train, he refused to ride on my scooter. he saw all the other students walking to the school and he was embarrassed to ride with me. It was sad because I could remember 6 years ago, I was taking the 8 year old version of ben to Bronx Science for a chess tournament. The rain was torrential, he stood on the prow of my scooter as we speared and splashed through puddles and driving rain. When we finally got there late, i remember successfully pleading to organizers to get him to play in the tournament as usual. he was completely socially unaware how awkward and fun that was. Now he's a teen. I was walking beside him. he was pissed that we forced him to join the model UN team. to add insult to injury, he was wearing my uncool looking oversized tie and shoes. The previous night, while we were watching Unbroken, he was researching and developing positions for Chad on renewable energy. I tried to joke around with him like "the white man is always trying to take advantage of chad so prepare for that." At the intersection right before the school he told me he wanted to walk alone now. "no kids walk with their parents to these events." "fine" I gave him my umbrella since the forecast called for rain, i took a picture of my baby wearing my clothes and left to return home.

Farewell

i hate riding planes. now i remember why. beyond the fear of going down in some fiery wreckage, getting to the airport still sucks. i left the house 2 hours in advance riding the A train all the way to the far rockaways but i was still running late. i had to be a rude ass in the security lines. my grandmother was sick, and i had to see her, plus I was going to check out the schindler and eames house, and salk institute in my spare time while I was there. pushing and cutting women and small children left and right i valiantly tried to avoid missing my flight. but the more i tried to change fate, the more doomed i became...i have the uncanny ability of always choosing the shortest line that ends up being composed of various assortments of dumbasses who can't follow directions thereby resulting in the longest wait.  in the back of my mind i rationalized my bad behavior by thinking at least i would never see these retards again. i ran all the way to ticket counter with belt dangling in hand preparing what to say to the staff to let me board late, only to find out boarding was delayed. all that cutting and running for nothing. It was uncomfortable to face all the people i had just cut and brushed aside. They gave me incredulous stares as they arrived at the gate area and sat around me as we waited for the plane to take off.

we boarded. i started reading On The Road. it was hot. the recirculated air smelled like engine fuel. we were on the damn tarmac so long, i had already traced keruoac's route from nyc to cali and back to nyc! when we finally lifted off, i noticed the plane was nice, there were these cool touch screens on the back of the chairs. since i had rushed so fast, i didn't eat any dinner. so i ordered a sandwich on the touchscreen, and proceeded to wait. it took them 2 hours to deliver a foccacia sweet bread sandwich. wrapped in saran wrap tightly. it was a disgusting sandwich. but i ate it all, even though it tasted bad cause i spent money on it. it wasn't free airplane disposable food. the cute touchscreens weren't so cute anymore. an annoying obese woman in back of me was playing some sort of game. it felt as if she put her whole body into touching that damn screen. for the next 5 hours, i was the human bobblehead. it was probably a word unscrabble game. anyways anytime i thought i was about to sleep, the whole back of my chair would shake back and forth as she excitedly unscrambled a word. 'boggle'. turbulence over wyoming. great ride. i burped. then a little something would come out. this happened a few times... then i couldn't hold it any longer. i grabbed the red barf bag and heaved 4 times, till the last heave was dry. wiped my mouth neatly with a dirty napkin, and held my bag, trapped against the window by a sleeping father and son duo. i nursed my bag of vomit, it was nearly full, my seat was still being mauled by the person behind me. thinking back on it. i should've turned around and barfed on her. "unscramble this!" and puked a foccacia sandwich on her face. i asked the attendant to take it away. he said "what is that?" i said "what do you think it is? it's vomit in a barf bag." he came back with a plastic bag and ran away so fast i couldn't discard it. so i held the barf bag in a plastic bag, warm in my hand, listened to crazy music. and waited for the miserable landing. i tried to sleep. but would panic wake up to see if i had spilled the barf all over myself. I got off the plane and my uncle said he could spot me from 50 yards away. haggard, exhausted, pale.

The last time i was here, my grandfather (nicknamed ‘du shu agong’ or book reading grandfather because he spent every waking moment reading) was buried on the side of a yellow grass hill in a large cemetery in the suburbs east of Los Angeles. My oldest uncle jokes, his grave is easily found because it lies next to the electrical utility transformer box by the side of the main cemetery road. He will probably remain there alone forever as my grandmother chose to be buried several hundred miles southwest by the coast  in San Diego next to my aunt and uncle’s grave. My grandmother didn’t choose to marry my grandfather... it was arranged and I think she hated every moment of it— the smoking... and the general servitude she endured while married to him. Unlike life, she was able to choose independence in the afterworld. 

Despite not being allowed to go to high school, my grandmother (“I don’t know why my parents named me Yue Liang or moonlight” she confided) was very smart.... much smarter than my grandfather, (my father told me she could do algebra in her head) which probably further agitated her even more about her situation. She never complained while he was alive. Taiwan was controlled by japan when my grandparents were born. As a result, they spoke Japanese and taiwanese first, only learning mandarin later on in life. The strong chauvinist Japanese patriarchal family structure was also in place. Like a dutiful japanese wife, she cooked, cleaned, waited for everybody to come home to eat herself (even if it meant eating at 11 pm) etc... 4 out of 5 of her kids went on to score in the top 10 out of all Taiwanese high school students, and obtain phds in sciences. My father acknowledged my grandmother’s hard life. Before washing machines, she would wash her kids’ clothes by washboard everyday, scrub the floors by hand, tutor the kids after school, cook, and run the house while my grandfather did ‘business’. It was hard work and stressful chasing after mischievous boys. My dad and his 2nd brother would feud a lot. One of my grandmother’s biggest regrets she joked with me was that she once spanked my dad, but not my uncle after one of their fights since she was interrupted with chest pains. She wanted to treat both bad boys equally and felt sorry she punished my dad more than his brother.

My grandfather came from a family that held a lot of land. He went to the best school in Taiwan to study business. Every time, he did ‘business’, he would sell a piece of land to fund his latest venture. Book smart but not street smart, he eventually lost all his land in trying one failed  business venture after another...  like making aluminum pots, bricks, etc... and trusting shady business partners. My uncle jokes the pots he made were so thick, (showing a gap of an inch between his fingers), the cost margin on material made it impossible to turn a profit. The remaining brothers of my grandfather who just held their land, sold it for millions when it was acquired for taipei international airport. It was my grandfather’s fate to try to start businesses and lose more money imaginable than had he just sat on the farm doing nothing. My grandmother had such disdain for such a fool... he never listened to her keen business advice, never considered lifting the toilet seat before peeing, nor cooking a bite to eat in his whole life. 

To me, my grandfather was a wonder. A mysterious man who chose my name out of a telephone book, nailed my childhood drawings to relative’s walls in Taiwan, who could blow smoke rings, hit a backhand and forehand with the same tennis grip, and walk 5 miles every day. When he visited Boston, I used to go ‘san bu’ (walking) with him when I could. We would walk hours and hours together trying different routes all the time. Looking back, I think I got my tolerance for walking long distances by myself through our san bu sessions.

When he visited my eldest uncle in LA, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He was around 75 years old... smoking packs of cigarettes had caught up to him despite his extensive walking and tennis routine. He never knew he had cancer. It was our ‘farewell’ lie. Better for him not to fret about the diagnoses. He lived out his last days in LA surrounded by family. After his departure, my grandmother was finally set free from her lie. Before she passed away, all her descendants came to visit her, to tell stories by her side, and recognize her sacrifice for the family. She never favored anyone, but all those who knew her thought she loved them the most.

My Personal Brunelleschi

After the success of Central Park, Olmsted was invited to design landscapes in many cities in North America. In Boston, he created a series of parks around Boston called the Emerald Necklace. They stretch from the Charles river, to the Fens, to Jamaica Pond further inland. The jewel of the Emerald Necklace is the Esplanade, a 3 mile long stretch of narrow parallel spits of land offset from the shore with shady lagoons, lined with playgrounds and docks. The Community Boathouse is nestled behind the Hatch Shell performance area along the shore providing cheap summer sailing instruction to residents. One summer after college graduation, I decided to learn how  to sail after work. It was a new experience and a great way to decompress. 

I couldn’t find a job in architecture because no one would hire someone without experience... so I set about making a portfolio showing my facility in translating ideas from drawings to different media hoping a school would give me an opportunity.  I turned sketches into etchings, drawings into wax models into casts into bronze sculptures, and drawings into paintings and glass collages. My delusional hope was I could show enough potential that they could imagine I could turn a drawing into a building. I spent a couple years in manufacturing to learn computer drafting by taking a job at a power supply company. I ended up looking in depth at production processes to try to improve assembly times and quality. These power supplies were being used all over the world by companies like Cisco, Nortel, etc... the internet was booming and there was a demand for infrastructure. I didn’t know much about electrical engineering, but I did know some of the thin copper stamped coil inductors were failing because their solder joints were cracking in the field under extreme conditions. I wondered if it was possible to make a coil without joints by folding a stamped piece of copper like origami so the path of electrons could move helically around the magnetic core. An idea led to a crude paper origami model, which led to a copper prototype, thorough electrical and thermal testing, and finally the machines to manufacture them. I ended up designing the inductive transformers and the tooling and presses to make them, and eventually the assembly lines in Mexico to mass produce these components which are probably now scattered all over the world. I put this work into my architecture portfolio and I received a patent for it at the same time. An admissions officer remarked to me in an interview, my inductor looked like a building on the paths of the PC board. It was an exciting time of crazy hours and concentrated work. When you receive a patent in America, you get a paperback book with the legal claims delineated inside. On the front cover is some fancy calligraphy and a red, blue, and gold metal embossed ribbon.

Growing up, my mother would often tell me, with a twinkle in her eye, I had a streak of crazy in me like my grandfather. Over the years, I’ve found crazy to her was positive. It meant the ability to think outside the box... to sometimes go against norms.... and to focus on something wholeheartedly. My grandfather was the last of 6 sons of a farming family in Ewu, outside of Shanghai. Legend has it, his father was an orphan and a prolific gambler. His smartest decision was to quit gambling after he won big. He used the proceeds to buy a piece of land. That led to a rice paddy, rice wine production, and special ham operation. Being an orphan, my great grandfather resolved to have his kids go to the best schools to gain status in society. The first would go to Bei Da, (Harvard of China) and come back to the town and become a mayor. The second and third continued the profitable farm operations. The fourth and fifth became doctors, and the last, my grandfather became a chemist. He also went to Bei Da... not the type of school you would expect a farmer’s  son to attend. He always had a chip on his shoulder, something to prove. He was the youngest and the smallest of his family and compensated for this with his mind and observations. Growing up he would often tell me, “see the problem, solve the problem.” He would explain phenomena like the Doppler effect, or distillation, etc... always asking and prodding his grandkids to think. 

His term through school was fraught with danger. For a couple years, the students went west to Kunming to study as the Japanese advanced into China. Upon graduation, he first worked designing paint formulas, and then served in the military as a chemist. After the war the feud between the Nationalists and Communists threatened the mainland. On a scouting trip to Taiwan, he was amazed to find an island ruled by Japanese, where the sugar was white, and the watermelons sweet and plentiful. He convinced my grandmother and a couple nephews to move with him to Taiwan with the Nationalists. There were 2 ferries to the Taiwan the day they departed.   The boat carrying my grandfather and his family survived the journey and made it safely to Taiwan... they witnessed the other boat meet disaster and sink in the straits. 

My grandfather taught physical chemistry at the Taiwan's National University. On the side, he taught himself acupuncture. As a kid, I would see him place needles in others. He was always inventing something or another, a distiller, a tofu machine, etc... but his claim to fame was a sterilization process for saline solutions used in hospitals. I can’t tell you how many times our family members listened and endured his hour long recount of this process. It’s ingrained in all his descendants. A copy of paper he had published in Science about it was buried with him in his grave. 

“When I went to the hospital, I saw all these people shaking. Fa do fa do (speaking half English half Chinese. Fa do means to shake)” he said  while shaking his body showing what the symptoms looked like. “Nobody knew what was happening. But I started to look at the sterilization process to find the cause. At that time, glass bottles of saline were put in an autoclave, the steam would enter the machine, people would take the bottles out and give it to patients... and sometimes the people would shake ad have very bad reactions. There was something happening in the process. I noticed that some bottles were slightly yellow and brown, while others were clear. I thought the temperature must be uneven in the autoclave despite the steam and it was reflected in the slight differences of color.” By now, he was drawing an autoclave and the bottles with a ball point pen on scrap paper. His writing was like a Chinese farmer’s-- bold dark lines and unkempt. Then he would ask, “do you know what the problem was?” Shame on you if your attention strayed and forgot the answer from a previous telling. “In science, you must see the problem, then solve the problem.” Here he brought the story up to seeing the problem. The solution was deceivingly simple. “I made an escape valve for the autoclave. When I first start the machine, the valve would be open, letting all air out as the steam came in. After a period of time, the valve would be closed, and the steam could fill the chamber at uniform sterilization temperature. All the bottles would appear the same color. No more fa do.” By now, the sheet of paper would be dotted with equations like pv=nrt, expansion of gas laws, etc... apparently without a valve, dirty air would be trapped to condense and contaminate bottles. For this process and idea, he received a patent and made a significant income. 

The crazy part of  my grandfather extended to his raising of kids. At one point my 4th aunt received a toy piano. My grandfather noticed if he played a note, she could tell him what it was. If he played 10 notes together she could do the same. With no musical talents himself,  he brought her to a local school to play on a real piano. He beseeched music teachers to develop her talent. With his patent winnings, he eventually bought a piano. At that time pianos came into the harbor from overseas and cost a year’s salary... $40,000. My mom recounted the day the piano reached shore, and was loaded on a flatbed trailer pulled by bicyclists through town to their 2 room house for 6 kids and 2 parents and installed in the room to the amazement of onlookers. At nine years old, my aunt was an established concert pianist and had outgrown the island. My grandfather sent her to the conservatory in Germany to refine her craft. The two younger siblings followed suit. That’s why half my mother’s family has European roots now. Their minds are a mix of Chinese and German cultures.

My grandfather never stopped tinkering, even when he retired and immigrated to Boston. At our house, he would splice trees together, plant tiger lilies, make his own pungent yogurt. One time he came up to me and asked to shave off a mole that was growing on his face with hairs coming out. He had noticed wounds heal better when the don’t get wet. I thought he was crazy, but after the mole was shaved, he put a clear piece of packing tape over the bloody wound. Within a couple weeks, the mole was gone, the cheek was smooth and clear. For all the patent books he would receive, he would carefully peel off the embossed ribbons and save them in a plastic bag like a stack of delicate butterfly thin trophies.

I didn’t speak to my grandfather for several years before his death. When I had learned to sail, I discussed my wonder with him about sailing into the wind. The Bernoulli effect is such that air moving at a higher velocity on the front face of the sail rather than the back will cause a lower pressure situation and hence a vacuum sucking the sail forward. The same principle is employed in airplanes for flight. My grandfather was incredulous. He thought you’d always have to have the wind blowing at the back of the sail to propel a sailboat. We had discussions about this that they turned heated...  to the point of yelling! All I wanted to do was take him on the water and show him the amazing feeling of gliding on the water sailing into the wind. He thought I was an idiot. I took him on the water... he had a makeshift pendulum device with styrofoam balls to indicate the direction of the wind as we sailed. I took pictures of us sailing the Charles river with the balls being blown backwards. He never would admit the Bernoulli effect despite the pictures. We ceased communication. 

As the 4th of July fireworks over the Charles River lit up the night sky I thought of my time sailing with my grandfather years ago on the same river... fireworks and all.

On Music - Part 1

I used to have an elementary school friend who started group violin lessons with me in third grade. I wasn’t that good, but he was worse. When we played quartets in high school, we would end at different times, which was a sign we couldn't count our beats properly. Eventually he downgraded to viola... and then became a music writer. Woody Allen's quote about gym teachers could be extended to music critics. "Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach, teach gym." --> "Those who can't play violin, play viola. Those who can't play viola, write about music."

I personally concluded my violin career after my last orchestral performance in college. My violin has been collecting dust under my bed ever since. In a short-lived fit of ambition 5 years ago, I took the violin out of the case and had the bow re-haired to play again. But compared to other instruments with frets and keys, the violin is easily weaponizable. It was difficult to position my fingers along the strings correctly after a long hiatus, notes went awry and I somehow conjured sounds of a dying chihuahua being maimed by a butter knife. My violin playing went from terrible to horrible from neglect.

So following a similar trajectory in music as my elementary school friend, at 45 i've decided to write about music. unlike most music writers, i have access to an uncle who lives in the same city as me who is a talented concert pianist and pedagogue. but, what can i contribute to musical discourse that hasn't been written before? while my elementary school friend now makes a living writing flowery prose about music, i just want to write something about music with the words fucker and douchebag. i think about making sentences like "that fucker berg's atonal violin concerto sounds like a douchebag got drunk and played a broken accordion, and transcribed it to violin." there's something inaccessible about classical music. i think it has something to do with over-intellectualism reinforced with superfluous dress codes and etiquette that accompanies classical music concerts. if i can somehow subvert the language of classical music with punk words like douchebag and fucker, maybe i can convey how chaotic and beautiful life is, and that music often arises from the fragile and often marginalized composers, and that musicians breathe life into their creator’s pages and souls from the depths of their hearts, and that everything is gone before you know it, except music's essence which remains. how wondrous this thing is we call life.

Birth of a Pianist - Part 3

My grandmother lost a tremendous amount of blood during delivery and had it not been for my grandfather's quick thinking nephew who set up the transfusions to counteract the hemmorhaging, my grandmother would not have survived. Her sixth and last child was a boy. Finally she could return to her workplace and not suffer her coworkers' snide quips, "Yo shi niu hai zi!" <Yet another girl!> She had given birth to 5 girls before HKC. In a strange way, my aunts owe their existence to HKC because in their great efforts to conceive the all important male heir, my grandparents sired his 5 sisters...  HKC would later portray his sisters as 'tigers' in a childhood story he wrote for school, "Living with Five Tigers." Each sister has a strong personality manifesting particular proportions of their parents’ traits: self-righteousness, neuroticism, arrogance, diligence, and intelligence. I asked my mother how exactly the sisters acted like tigers towards HKC. She laughed, “You know, ranging between 4-15 years older than him we would probably hen peck him with 'Hey, what are you doing? What are you eating? Where are you going?'" To the family, he was called 'xiao di', or little brother. To my grandfather, HKC was the gem. My mom would joke, in my grandparents' mind, "us 5 girls equals 1 boy."

My grandfather would bring HKC to factories to explain how things worked. Having grown up with my grandfather, I could imagine his dialectic with my uncle, pointing to one machine or another "how does this work? why is it configured in such a way? what is the main problem? how would you make it better? Do you see the problem? Now solve the problem.” And so on. This was the formative education of my uncle... the genesis of his operating system.

As a young kid, HKC wasn't one to play with stuffed animals or toy cars, he would look at electronics like tape recorders and radios wanting to know how they worked. He would open things up, take them apart and understand how they worked. My grandfather, noticing HKC's mental and manual dexterity believed music was the perfect calling for him-- a field where brain and hand go together. People tried to talk sense into my grandfather. “You know it’s a hard life to become a musician. Only a few people can make a living from it.” But my grandfather was not easily swayed. He saw the rat race in Taiwan. Students studying and working hard to eke out ordinary lives. “Beware of the student with the B+. Not the guy who can gets the best grade, but the guy who who takes time and thinks and understands,” my grandfather warned. During elementary school HKC displayed his musical talents in playing tympani, trumpet and piano. Despite my grandmother’s protests and reservations, by 13 years old, HKC was sent off to German musical conservatories to develop his craft.

Growing up, I didn't think of 'xiao di' as a talented pianist... he was my uncle. the most unusual thing I found about my uncle was that he didn’t have kids. Everyone in his family had kids except for him. Given my grandparents' drive to conceive a male heir to carry on their line and provide a measure of immortality, HKC's not having kids was difficult for them to comprehend. 

My grandfather probably could not play or understand a single note of music or make a drawing to save his life, but he provided his son with an operating system -- factory tours provided a strong approach to artist. Being an artist aware both outwardly and spiritually, not satisfied with societal norms, and very observant. While my Grandfather was looking at gas particles, yogurt cultures, and sound waves, my uncle looks at how notes phrases are made, how notes should be ended... the difference in their artistry was what they were looking at.