Three Tales of Wonder and Suspense

I'm really, really tired.

I'm home again, and, as I guess it should be, the plane ride was exhausting. The new iPod made the cut, and I was listening to tunes and playing a little solitaire for a good portion of the trip, and the battery held out like a champ. Nice.

So, I have a few things to tell you about.

The first isn't about this trip - actually, it was on the way back from Calgary at Christmas. I hadn't had a Ceaser while I was there, and it seemed like a bit of a shame. It's a drink that was invented there (at Ceaser's steak house), and it's a combination of spicy clamato juice (tomato with "essence of clam" or something... I'm not exactly sure, and have been hesitant to dig much further than that into what actually goes into the bottle), with a little bit of tabasco, some vodka, lemon, and salt and pepper.

Anyways, on the plane, if you ask nicely and get the right attendant, they'll mix some drinks for you, but this one is usually a little bit complex to try for when they still have 200 people to serve. So, I asked for tomato juice and vodka. And the stewardess nodded, grabbed three vodkas, and held them out. I assumed that one was for me and that a couple other people had asked for the same thing. So I took one.

And she didn't move. She just kept looking at me.

I wasn't sure exactly what to do. I mean, I didn't want to seem ungrateful. I must admit, though, that I didn't really need three vodkas. And I was a little unsure as to what it was about my appearance that made her take one look at me and think, "here's a guy who obviously needs a triple". So, I took one more, let her keep the third, and gave her a look that was, I hope, an appropriate mix of genuine appreciation and mild disdain.

That's completely unrelated to the next story, but, in a kind of charming way, that complete lack of common context (other than me) is the thread that ties - or, I guess, doesn't tie - all three stories together.

The little chick has a cold. A nasty cold. She's coughing a lot, which scares her, because sometimes in the past, she's coughed hard enough to make herself throw up. Not much fun, and when you're 2, it can make a common cold a rather scary thing. For a while, she actually associated "sick" to throwing up, so if I asked her if she felt sick, she would just say "no", in the hopes that, if she didn't admit to it, her lunch would stay where it was supposed to.

So she wasn't her usual self during the day. I was happy to see her after not much time together lately, and she was happy to see me, too, but she wasn't sure what to do with herself. We played with Lego a lot. We played with Veggie Tales. We watched some movies. We built a tent in the living room and sat in there with some popcorn to watch our movies. We read stories. We fed her baby. And we a lot of had tea parties with a tea set she got for Christmas.

And we did each of these things for about 45 seconds before moving on to the next one. Cold = short attention span, it turns out. The funny thing is that she likes to get things cleaned up before starting something new (hooray for that, I say), so we actually spent most of the day putting toys away. Oh well - she didn't seem to mind.

It got tricky at night, though. She was having a lot of trouble sleeping. So she would lay in bed, be okay for a while, and then start to cough, and she would call out to me, "Allison coughing more! Daddy, need a hug and a kiss. " So I would go and try to comfort her, give her a kiss and a hug, sometimes lay down with her to try to help her sleep. And when I did, she would put both of her hands in mine, and then wiggle up close to me until her forehead was touching mine, and she would try to sleep like that. It was a little sad, but it was beautiful.

And it made me think... If I feel it this deeply when my daughter has a cough and can't sleep, how would I be able to handle it if something was seriously wrong? My cousin's little boy had leukemia. I can't begin to imagine how that would feel, how I could try to care for her in that. I just can't get my mind around it. It would be devastating.

And (here's part III) today, at work, I saw something kind of cool. We had some network issues - I guess a router went down. So one of our IT guys came out from Lausanne to fix it, but since they needed some replacement hardware, he had one of the guys from the hardware people come out to give him a hand.

Now, this guy is usually very quiet. Not that he won't talk, but he doesn't choose to talk much. But once those two got together... wow. He was chatty, laughing, making jokes, and just generally showing a kind of confidence that I've never seen him show before. It was really cool. It was really, really different.

And that made me wonder. Is he just usually quiet because nobody around him really speaks his language?

And how many people around me every day are in that same situation, where they just feel like they can't be themselves because they don't really believe that anybody gets them? How many people never get to really open up? Tricky.

It's a lot to think about when I'm jet-lagged and running on a couple hours' sleep. But still, worth thinking about.

Tomorrow.

I WIsh

That I could legitimately make "y'all" a regular part of my vocabulary. I love it.

The American Dream

So, in between preparing for the training I've been giving and trying to get rid of a virus on my laptop (if you get an email from me with a subject line of "VERRY IMPORTANT ATACHMENT! OPEN RIGHT A WAY!" you may want to proceed with caution), I have managed to delve slightly deeper into the American consciousness.

And here's what I've found.


I know that everybody says it, but it's true. The food here is just huge. I think I've finished 1 meal here (a sandwich) since I arrived. Almost everything I order seems to come family-sized. Which would be great, except I didn't bring along a family.

While I've been eating this food, I've noticed, again, how nice it is to be hearing familiar music (and by "familiar", I mean not rap and not in French). I like it... music with people singing in tune, with real guitars and drums. I hadn't realized how much I miss rock until I step back and think about how relieved I am not to be surrounded by euro-pop. It's like getting out of a stale room, somehow. It's good.


And everywhere... space. The streets are wide apart. The restaurants have miles between the tables. There are some apartments, but there are a lot of houses, even as I look into one of the business districts of the city outside of my hotel window. There's just a lot of room, and I can see why Europeans who come to Canada or the US for a little while find that so intoxicating.


The flip-side of this, though, is that I haven't been able to get a very good feel for the city. Most places I've worked, I walk everywhere. So I know how Milan or Munich or Zurich feel. I have a sense for the people, the pace, the architecture. But here, I kind of get the feeling that I'm just missing it. I guess it's a place experienced by car, not by foot. And that makes me sad.

Not sad enough that I can't make up for it with a burger the size of a small child, though. Not by a long shot.

I Have A Cold

... and I'm giving training to a room full of people. It's good - I like that a lot of people are there to hear me (it makes me feel popular, and is cheaper than standing outside the cinema offering to buy tickets for whoever wants to come in). But it's tiring, and when talking is tough and thinking is tougher, doing the kind of training I'm doing can be a bit of a challenge.

Nonetheless, I am going to give it my best shot. Or something approaching it.

The other thing is, I miss the little chick. A lot.

People ask me a lot about being a parent, what it's like, how it feels. And the fact is, it's not easy. It's also draining, and when she wants attention, she doesn't really care if I have a cold or not. But it's love... an unending chance to show and learn love, and, sometimes, even to have it returned.

So I miss her. I wish I could put her on my shoulders and wander through the streets singing with her. I wish she was close enough for me to take pictures of. I want to hear, "Daddy play, too?". I want to sing her to sleep.

Soon.


In the meantime, I'm going for sushi.

U. S. of Eh

Well, I'm getting over jet-lag and am ready for a good week. Here are my first impressions of Texas:

1. Disturbing lack of Texas hair - frankly, I was expecting more... more bangs, more back-combing, more... well, more. But the hair here is pretty much like hair in most other places I've been. It's not bad, it's just a little like getting to Hawaii and realizing that not everyone wears those grass skirts all the time. It's a sobering kind of experience.

2. Jesus lives here - there are a lot of churches. And ads (billboards) for churches. All different kinds of churches, including one that I was on the way in from the airport that said "Get empowered to win!". I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to be winning, and it would be presumptuous of me to assume that it's going to be more closely related to a new Lexus than it is to, say, patience developed through enduring difficulty. I don't know - maybe it's about football. Hard to tell, just from a sign.

3. It's tough to get in - it took me 90 minutes to get through the passport control at customs. I don't know if the people in my line were all nasties, or if the guy who was checking them just liked to be extra-thorough, but it was a long, long wait. Lots of checking, and then phoning, and then stamping, and then more phoning and checking. I will say this, though - by the time I got to the front (after finally changing lines), the guy who checked me was friendly. And the guy doing the luggage check on the way out was like one of those dancing traffic cops you see on TV, only with luggage carts and customs declaration cards, instead. He was pretty cool.

4. My name's Steve and I want to be your friend - yes, I'm back in the land of "gratuity not included in price", which means that, once again, I'm popular. Everywhere I eat, people want to get to know me. They want to know how I'm doing, where I'm from, if I'm having a good time. All of which would be pretty cool if I wasn't paying them for it, which makes it seem just a little bit seedy. But not entirely... the people here do seem to be pretty friendly. Hearts as big as... um, Texas, and all that. I'm wearing a watch that I haven't worn in a while, and the clasp was a little bit loose. There's a mall attached to my hotel, so I found a shop this afternoon (yes, on a Sunday) that sells the same brand, and asked if they could tighten it up and move one of the links from one side of the bracelet to the other. And they did. With a smile, and no charge. I like that.

5. Land of the free, depending on what you're looking for - yeah, they get a little freaked out about dangerous things like Cuban cigars (as everyone knows, cigars are always the first step in a revolution), but they are refreshingly non-intrusive on other matters. I saw a guy on a big bike without a helmet. At first I was really confused, then then I just thought, you know, it's his head. Why not?

6. We're gonna make you buy - the stores are huge. Okay, it's Texas, and a lot of things are huge (I had wings last night that, I'm pretty sure, were from turkeys. But, they were playing a hockey game, so all is forgiven, and then some), but the stores are remarkable, and, after being in a place where I only shop at stores I can walk to for a long time, a little overwhelming. And the advertising is a bit over the top (or OTT for my British friends). I heard an add for a used car lot, specializing in selling flash cars to people with "less than perfect" credit. It's called Shabana motors, and if you go there, you are not just buying a car. You are getting Shabana-tized. And no, I kid you not. They actually said this, out loud, on their radio add. Tasteless? Yes. Absurd? Certainly. But you have to admit - it takes a lot of guts to come right out with something like that. I give them an "A" for heart.

It still freaks me out that everyone is speaking English, and that the tables at restaurants are far enough apart to actually walk between. But it's good. I think it's going to be a good couple of weeks.

Abandoning My Principles

All of them.

I got an iPod.



And I figured you would find out, eventually, anyways, so I may as well just come clean with it.




Fire away.

Traveling Man

Well, I'm home again, but just barely. I got back on Saturday, and head out again tomorrow morning to be working in the US for a couple of weeks. I've been more or less on Calgary time since getting here, so it won't be too hard to re-adjust, I hope. Packing is easier, since I'm not quite completely unpacked yet. Hooray.

I've spent the day with an also jet-lagged little chick... she wasn't around on Monday, so I took today off instead, and when she gets it, I can see a bit of a family resemblance: she gets a little weepy, isn't quite sure what she wants to eat, and wants a lot of cuddling. Thankfully, all things we can deal with. I think that "Hug!" was the word that she said the most today, and I figure that for a two year-old, that's not too bad.

The reason I thought of writing this (besides the fact that it's been way too long and I need to get in the groove of posting again) is because I saw a really interesting guy on the train. He was talking animatedly to the man next to him, gesticulating all over the place, and they were both laughing. Then (I guessed - I was listening to the new Carrie Underwood album) his phone rang. And he had the coolest case on it... it looked like a wooden, fold-up measuring stick, what they use here instead of tape measures. He talked some then put it away. Then it went again. And again.

And again.

And, eventually, I realized that it wasn't a phone camouflaged as a measuring stick. It was a measuring stick.

And he was crazy.

Still, he was fun to watch. And I couldn't help but wonder if train isn't, perhaps, the perfect form of travel - at least in Switzerland. I mean, when you drive, you never get to see crazy people. Either that or, if you happen to be related to one, you see a little too much of them. On the plane, there are far fewer than on the train; or maybe it's just my Geneva-Lugano route - it could be that if I was flying NY-San Fran I would meet a few of the more interesting kind.

So, I'm off tomorrow morning. In seat 24c. And I'm hoping to get someone with an imaginary cell phone in 24a, mostly just cause I can't imagine how the attendants would handle it...

7,000

On January 2nd, to mark the start of a new year, TYC had its 7,000th visitor. Not counting, of course, you guys who use a subscription service to read instead of actually logging on. I mean, you don't count as far as the number I know about, but as far as I'm concerned you still count just as much in a metaphysical kind of sense.

You know, just so you're not worried or anything.

Thanks for reading, everybody. And you too, Mom.

Whistling

...is kind of like playing solitaire on the computer; they're both probably more fun to do than to be a spectator for.

Superstar Hair Challenge

I've managed to squeeze in a little bit of TV while I've been back with my parents. Some of it has been no good. I've been sad, still, that the food network somehow continues without either the original Iron Chef or David Rosengarten. All of it has had WAY too many commercials.

But some has been very good indeed.

And I like this one - the superstar hair challenge. It's like American Idol, but with hair. It kind of makes me wish I had a better haircut. It kind of makes me wish I had some friends who were hairdressers, though I'm afraid the lisps and constant brandishing of thinning shears may get to me after a while. But mostly, I just love that they take it very, very seriously.

I can't wait to get back to Geneva. I may not get it done by a superstar, but I'm getting a wash and a cut. Less dramatic than the "freestyle showdown", but I'm going to enjoy it. Cool.

Happy New Year

Original, huh? Nonetheless, I hope it's a good one... for all of us. And I'll be updating more, soon. I promise. Until then, have an egg-nog for me. Or, better yet: I'll have the egg-nog and you can do a half-hour run for me. If only it were that simple...