another one

There were security checks in NST, BKK passport, BKK boarding, Tokyo, SFO passport, SFO domestic, SFO boarding.
When I unpacked my backpack to wash the mold out (hey, look, it's orange and doesn't reek!), I found my pocket knife, a lighter, a razor-based pencil sharpener, and an x-acto knife in the front pockets.

Exploring ironies

So here we are with Thailand wrapped up. I could see returning one day for a vacation--my stock line is, "Great place to visit, extremely difficult place to live." All the same, as I flew out of the country (and then on across the pacific), there was a degree of solace in imagining all my numerous flushings getting ejected over the Thai countryside. Even over the middle of the north Pacific, those gut bombs were bullseying houses where people were cackling, "HARRY POTTY!"

When I got to the airport after a week of snow with highs in the 20s, the 90 degree air was an assault, and the 95% humidity just about flattened me--from a couple of chilly days in uncomfortably cool aircon to standing in a hot shower.
It took my boss, who'd agreed to meet me at the airport, 45 minutes and three phone calls--"Hey, I'm here/okay I'm coming" "Now I'm coming, really" "okay, this time I'm in my truck and actially rolling, so I'll be right there"--during which time three different mototaxi drivers came prowling with, in this order, "TAXI TAXI! Haha, you same same Harry Potter! Where you go? Koh Samui? Eh? Samui?" (Full moon party island.)
I actually answered the first one by telling him, in Thai, that my friend is coming to take me to my home in the city, and he spent a good ten minutes sitting on his bike, waving people down to point at the talking Harry Potter.
I played nod and smile with the others.

We went straight to the big boss lady, where I collected my bonus and left with the promise of a return in April. Next stop was a bank with Saturday hours, and I cleared my account. Enroute to the main campus to clear out my desk, my boss said, "Damn, I'm starting to sober up. Mind stopping to eat somewhere?"

I had the fortune to see all of the Thai lead teachers/supervisors, each of whom said a close variation of, "Great to see you! You look so much better! You start on Monday, right?"
Oh the ironies.
"In April, the new term, once my lungs are healthy again," was the stock reply.
But how fortunate to catch all of them and leave on good terms with an expected return.

And then the packing.
Not that there was a lot. I shipped two boxes home and traveled with a great big rolling suitcase, a large carryon, and a laptop bag. It was a matter of unearthing stashes and discard piles of things that I'd accumulated to help keep going--various drug cocktails to treat various maladies and accidents, salves and balms gadgets and distractions. In a sense, it was heartening to go through the collection and know that I have such tools in my coping box, honed by knowledge of how to avoid ever getting into a similar situation. It was hard, though, when I eventually unearthed things (expectations) I'd taken over: the tent, ultra-compact mosquito net (just imagine tossing out a pad and bag and spending the night with nothing more than a mosquito net!), headlamps, rechargeable batteries, a handful of paring knives and a sharpener.
What killed me was finding the various notes, letters, and packaging sent from home. To see that much concern and worry directed straight at you is beyond humbling. In the context--here's half of a package of pain pills my boss gave me, saying, "we used to call these Gumby drops--take one with a beer and in half an hour your legs feel like Gumby," and here's a note explaining how to take the pancreatic supplements shipped from stateside. Here's an account/ledger book with alternating squares filled in dozens of schemes of colored pencil, and here's a book on written by a man who used a natural/raw sort of diet to get out of similar physical/intestinal circumstances.
What makes me especially sad is the likelihood that my time in Thailand planted only worry, heartache, and wear on those back home.
For me, even now, even though I've lost great swaths in a haze of un-remembered discomfort, I can say it was a positive experience because I learned so much in such a relatively benign culture.
Consider: I did some things that frustrated the hell out of some students and actually got to some parents and sent a flurry of calls to the English Programme big bosses. I didn't learn about them until long after when my foreigner boss mentioned some parent being up in arms, "like she was with you."
On the one hand, my big boss lady stood up, against the mothers and against the administration that didn't think I could hack teaching in the Regular Programme, and the result was an alternate assignment with the same pay, same hours, same contract, same security. There are a lot of places in the world where similar complaints from junior or doubts from on high would be, at the very least, a ticket out of the country tomorrow morning at the latest, if not a seizure of assets and incarceration/house arrest.
It's an easy thing to say, "teach what you're expected to teach in the customary manner," just like it's easy to say, "Enjoy good health."
It's something else to experience, say, drilling the students to memorize the answers to the multiple choice final exam for three weeks, or to suddenly not be able to walk without extreme discomfort.
I've learned these things, and so much about how to survive in trying circumstances, and I've made a couple of great discoveries: I love teaching 4th grade, and I love the potential of teaching abroad.
Ultimately, I'd say my experience in Thailand was fortifying and will help me lead a fuller, richer life down the road.
My worry is that the same experience brought nothing but winnowing, graying worry to those back home.

Regardless, it happened, it's done, I don't ever have to go back, and I'm better equipped to go forward.

Here's another one: the pulmonary infection wasn't TB or some exciting fungus, but rather an extremely uninteresting and normal respiratory bacteria that was able to get through the depressed immune system and take hold.
Love it.

From Thailand

I've been back in Nakhon for almost half as long as the time it takes to get here (consider that my photography equipment, computer [and backup files], and emergency cash would--in isolation--more than offset the price of the airline tickets). My farang boss offered to pack and ship everything, but considering that I've accumulated a trunkload of trinkets to teach Thai tots and have no vision of how such things could experience practical utility outside of this country, the ease with which something might disappear, or the probability of something being broken in the process of negotiating out of Thailand's post office to it's American peer and to my house unscathed, it seemed worth the trip.
Still, it's been tough getting packed. I didn't realize how much I've accumulated. A lot of it is getting jettisoned, but there's also a lot I'd like to bring home and incorporate in a future life. My speakers/subwoofer are large and important, and while they didn't cost that much, a replacement would. Likewise the pens/colored pencils/pigmenting supplies and the running shoes I brought over. It'd be one thing to abandon a wardrobe of $5 dress shirts and a pair of $20 shoes if I were returning to a lucrative job, but that's just not the case. Which is compounded by "excess baggage" charges.
United charges $70 for a second checked bag, Air Asia charges about $15, and each gets astronomic if a bag is over 20 kilos. I'm already shipping some books, and I'll ship enough clothes to keep the bags to weight specs. So while it seems unlikely that I'll be needing another pair of running shoes, a greater variety of neckties, or shiny spider-weight dress shirts in the next month or so, it seems foolish to abandon them in the face of triple-digit-dollar charges when I can ship them via the rough road for something around $10.

It's a melancholy sort of packing: on the one hand, dozens of pirated kids/comedy DVDs are a reminder of the escapism from the daily grind. Looking at it, most of what I have is a way to get away from daily life. On the one hand, it's sad to see the detritus of so much desperation and discontent. On the other, it's affirming to realize that I've made it through and developed defense mechanisms in case a similar situation ever happens again.
What I hope more than anything is that I'm smart enough to avoid similar eventualities.

It's also been affirming to see the people: without exception, those whom I respect have assumed I'm here to teach, or will resume my post soon. The rest cackle "HARRY POTTER!" or point and stare.
We won't get into the necessity of carrying tissue and sanitizer.

On the one hand, it's sad to leave a place where the living has such potential to be easy. But on the other, Mr Wizard, beam me the fuck out.

Market-driven products

Hard to imagine this flavor of Lay's potato chips doing well in the states.
Kinda like crab curry Pringles.

On my new favorite road, and adventures thereupon

Funny to have so recently written about the WRX switch short circuiting rationality.

I have a new favorite drive in the world. It's a sidetrack of a back route down a sleepily forgotten part of the Sierras. It leaves the Tahoe basin at the southern end--not such a bad drive in itself--and wraps around the tallest of the basin's mountains before climbing up and over a beautifully barren and rugged pass to drop 8000+ feet to the valley along an emigrant route.
From lake level, where the trees are anywhere from still-green to gold to bare, the road climbs up above the color line to the painfully crisp air of late autumn with panoramic views first of the lake and then of Hope Valley, where two narrow lanes of faded and cracked asphalt wind around soft marshes, pasturelands, and through golden tunnels of aspen. At the highest point, there's a construction delay while they blast the roadway wide enough to give full sized vehicles wiggle room around a turn.
For some reason, I was impatiently peeved when I pulled up and learned it'd be close to two hours before I could get through the construction zone. And then I remembered that I had nowhere to be before dusk, so I took out my crosswords and spent the time sitting in the sun with high-Sierra air blowing through open windows while listening to some interesting music--a Hovhaness omnibus from the library--accompanied by distant blasts of dynamite. What more could you want?
After the construction, I was behind a camper doing at most 40, which had me well conditioned by the time the emigrant spur branched off the main highway.
For the first while, the road was rough and patchy around blind corners of erratic and varying severity punctuated by a general descent but without the stability and predictability of a steady, bulldozed incline. Doing 40 was plenty.
Then the turns opened up and it was just stupid fun--good enough visibility to see what and who's coming, and just enough of a descent to make it exciting even when cautiously approaching a turn (and come winter, I'll wonder why my traction isn't exceptional).
So I was cruising along, not necessarily fast but in a flurry of screeching tires and stupid smiles, when the road straightened out along the top of a ridge. I could see well over a mile of perfectly straight roadway without turnouts or spurs dropping at maybe 4%.
The WRX switch flipped.
I dropped a gear and dropped my foot.
It felt like pushing an airplane into a nosedive.
I glanced down after shifting back to fifth.
There was a wettish sound--imagine dropping a jellyfish onto wet sand from head height--as my mind sorted out the presence/absence of ones and zeroes.
Then there was a grunt as I realized that I've flown a number of airplanes that will not willingly go that fast.
And then I got enough revs built up for the turbo to really kick in.

Fortunately, Stupidity Straight fed into a series of gentle turns, and I had ample opportunity to leisurely drop a couple multiples of the speed limit. And as the wind dropped from thunder to roar to bellow, I heard a strange sound--it was about like a police siren, only an octave too low and with variable pitch and duration.
This does not do one's cardiovascular system well, even at a sedate 85.
Nothing wrong in the gauges, nothing visibly smoking or unhappy, no secondary signs or symptoms from the car, but this strange sound kept on.
Just after I decided I'd killed the turbo and keeled over, money-wise, the noise died in an explosion of percussion from the speakers.
It was whale song in a Hovhanness composition.

The trail ejected me onto a county road that wound around pastures and plots, through small-time communities with single-building schools little chanced in mindset or appearance since the gold rush. Block-by-block stop signs halted progress, tractors and bikes and costumed kidlets turned most of the countless blind corners into potential news stories, and I felt great relief at being one in a line behind a school bus.
And then I was suddenly in Placerville, on a four-lane freeway, ejected into the other California, the one marred with congestion, patrolmen, pollution, overpopulation, a global audience and nearly-universal recognition as just about the biggest, richest, most progressive and proactive, welcoming and enabling place in the world.
If only we could make it live up to the hype....

The thrill of the old

I love my car.
We all know this, but it must be reiterated.
I REALLY love my car.
It's not the most practical, namely because it has the little boost gauge measuring how far from straight thinking I'm getting as the turbo scream intensifies, and the turbo scream that can itself completely disconnect my rationality, and then I'm shifting out of 3rd gear and doing 80.
Or I'm driving home from the south, around the hairpins and switchbacks, and suddenly the turbo scream modulates to tire scream and the thunk of groceries-turned-projectiles placed unsecured with the heartfelt resolution to not, in any way, allow the boost gauge to flip on the mentally-disengaging fun switch.
But it always seems to fail. It's like asking a mother to ignore the screaming of her newborn--she might be able to put it off for long enough to take an embarrassing picture of a screaming face, but it just can't be ignored.
Even when I was fresh back from Thailand, driving Hwy 20 in the first downpour of the season, and scared the b'jeezes out of myself coming around a turn in a cloud of hydroplaning spray and smack into the stare of a deer in the other lane. It was a terrible moment, realizing that even if I'm staying in bounds while pushing myself, the road, and my car to the brink, what'll do me in is another driver or a deer in my lane, and if I'm already right on the brink, I would turn into the yahoo who T-boned me. It scared me enough to relax and enjoy the rain and fog in the redwoods, right up until the fog lifted and I had enough visibility and space for the turbo scream to flip the fun switch and then it was back to the first step of hell-for-leather.

Here lies the true thrill of the MG TD.
From miles away, it looks spindly with the narrow tyres separated from the long, narrow bonnet by half-melon lights, low-slung suicide doors, exposed radiator cap, and chrome bumpers too low to do much good against anything harder than the aged-wood frame.
From a greater proximity, "rattletrap" is a likely sensation--the doors are probably held closed by a jerry-rigged contraption (or just bungees) that also holds on the dash, from which dangle wires that can be contacted or disconnected by hand because the buttons/switches in the dash no longer work, and the levers and linkages and rods and rails are visible through the carpeting.
Once you've climbed in, secured the doors, climbed back out to track down a pillow to keep your backside above speedbumps, back in, re-secured the doors, negotiated the pedals designed for an early-tweenie's feet, deciphered which knob is the starter, pulled off the dashboard, secured the dashboard, had the starter knob come off in your hand, determined which wires it's supposed to connect, figured out how to simultaneously get contact in the ignition and starter wires, and the engine actually starts, you feel pretty damn good.
Then, to get your feet disengaged from the pedals and eventually engage the transmission, by the time you're moving it feels like a victory.
By the time you're in top gear and screaming along at 40, the steering wheel jumping almost as wildly as your insides, wind battering your ears, the road racing visibly past inches from your bum, the transmission screaming in protest with your left shoe wedged around the steering column to keep the dash intact, your right shoe melting in the blast from the engine compartment, your knuckles are white and your fingers are numb despite the weather, and that 40 MPH is a helluva lot more hell-for-leather adrenaline than anything you can find in a new car.
Even the time I tried to floor out my car and scream through the top of 4th into 5th and got too scared to keep accelerating into 5th--there are some things that are stupid enough to flip off the fun switch--even that adrenaline pales at the prospect of getting the TD into third.
How refreshing, how empowering to drive like hell and feel relief when the speed limit drops back to 25, to drive flat-out without the paranoia of avoiding a ticket.
And that's the key, the contrast between the wonder of modern technology, the magic of a vehicle that floats happily along at 120, and the grounding reality of how fast you're really going WITHOUT having to meet the asphalt. But that's another story.

Sent from Candid Brutus the iPad

On medicines

Here's a good one:
I need a chest CT scan.
Local hospital: $7500
Sutter Roseville:$3500
Reno Diagnostic Imaging: $785
Open System Imaging (Chico): $320+$50 booking fee

On the one hand, how screwed is the system when the local place is 20 times more expensive than a place three hours away?
How screwed are we that we pay it?

Then, how would it be possible to sidestep the insurance/profitability end of things? As long as insurance companies are willing to pay for it, why would the hospitals charge less? And as long as we're too scared to go without insurance, why would the insurance companies not pay?

Scary stuff.