Bye Bye (a.k.a Hide and Seek)
Posted by: tpsky on: November 27, 2006
“Bye Bye,” my 19-month-old daughter M waved her hand. (Translation: Go hide so I can find you.)
“Bye Bye,” My husband and I enthusiastically waved back as we continued to sit around the kitchen table chatting.
“Bye Bye! Bye Bye!” Her voice now had an elevated urgency.
I looked at her smiling.
“Bye Bye,” she said again, flicking her hand with the look in her eyes that said, “Yes. You.”
“Okay, okay, I’m going.” I got up, while trying to finish my sentence. Just then…
“BYE! BYE!” An exasperated screech. (Translation: Get a hint, willya? Get lost!)
Material Girl
Posted by: tpsky on: November 27, 2006
I think we’re inherently materialistic. It’s simple. You can’t see or hear or touch what people are thinking. But when you see food, you know it’s meant to be eaten.
My daughter is 19-month-old (okay, almost 20-month-old), and she’s obsessed about shoes. (Dom’t look at me. I wear a pair of simple black shoes when I go out, and change into slippers when I come home. No pumps.) When we’re home, she would literally pull one of our slippers off our foot and proceed to wear one on her own foot. She would not let us take the other one off, either. Letting the victim keep one of the slippers seems to agree with her justice system.
The other day, we thought, maybe the obsession with Mom’s and Dad’s slippers had to do with the fact she didn’t have slippers to wear at home, only socks. So we bought her a pair of clogs this past weekend for her to wear at home. Well, first she had to wear them even while we were in the store. And now when we’re home she insists that I wear one of her clogs (only three toes can fit in), while she wears the other (the size disparity hasn’t quite register with her cognitive system yet). And, boy, would she throw a fit whenever we need to go out and need to put “going-out shoes” on her.
This reminded me of my own obsession with watches though. I was in the third grade, and some of my friends had started wearing watches. I thought it was so pretty and so grown up. On the way to my grandparents’ there was a watch shop, and I always asked my parents for permission to run ahead whenever we visited the grandparents – so I could stand in front of the shop window and dreamed of which watch I would wear when I grew up. I even taught my younger sister matter-of-factly: “Watches are better than bracelets, because they’re not only pretty, but they can also tell time.” (At least they don’t poke your eyes out like a Red Ryder B B Gun would.)
I think kids first develop physical sense of ownership. Abstract concepts such as relationships would have to come later.
The Night Before Thanksgiving
Posted by: tpsky on: November 23, 2006
This is what having a child does to you. When the child is little, you’re tied down to the kid’s nap and bedtime schedules. And you don’t take as many long trips. Then when the child is older, you can’t even take a trip to Europe for Thanksgiving without hearing some sighs and complaints because your daughter is used to having you visit and cook a scrumptious holiday meal for her. And, that is why on this Thanksgiving eve the only non-microwave dinner in our house is for our 19-month-old, and I’m sitting in front of the computer complaining about my parents deciding to take a trip to Italy at this time of the year.
Tomorrow we’re going to see our former-metal-band-musicians-turned-normal-parents-and-productive-working-adults friends and their kids. Should be fun. We can pick out a pumpkin pie from a grocery store on the way – just in case there weren’t enough pumpkin pies at the party. Besides, the pumpkin filling makes the pumpkin pie a far better *veggie* choice than a Boston cream pie.
Babel
Posted by: tpsky on: November 21, 2006
Wandering into the living room…
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Were you reading the New York Times online?”
“No. I was surfing other sites.”
“Oh.”
…
…
“Oh, I have to show you this really cool art blog I found on New York Times.”
“I thought you said you weren’t looking at New York Times.”
“Well, not right before you asked me the question.”
“In that case, I did not eat five burritos and watch back-to-back CSI.”
“You ate all the burritos!”
“No. Not right before you came in.”
V for Vendetta and Vox Populi
Posted by: tpsky on: November 17, 2006
We watched V for Vendetta the other day. And now I’m interested in reading the original graphic novel, as I know there are quite some differences, and Alan Moore, the original author, did not endorse the Hollywood version. I may read “The Watchmen” first though, since my husband told me “The Watchmen” is a better story (and we already have a copy at home).
The perpetually smiling Guy Fawkes mask was creepy. But then, V is a dark, creepy character. Would we really herald such a character as our hero if we were living in that kind of world? For example, I would never condone the destruction of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center (if it were still standing in the fictitious future) no matter how oppressive the government had become. Would you?
The real voice of the people is in the news, on the big screens, on TV, on our blogs, in our newspapers, books, magazines. The more we allow partisan news articles, politicians who set up their brother-in-laws for $50,000-a-year jobs operating toll booths…oh, yes, America, $14.6 billions later your tax money is still paying for Boston’s Big Dig project – you know, the project that had to do with the tunnel where a ceiling panel that weighed 3 tons killed a woman in July this year? Your tax money will also foot the bill for the investigation, as well as the law suit the Mass Turnpike Authority chairman filed to try to save his face and job. (Well, all right, maybe this latter part will only hit the unfortunate Massachusetts residents, who like paying more taxes anyway.) Futhermore, after failing to save his job, the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority chairman Matthew J. Amorello resigned effective August 15th, but will be paid his $223k salary as well as all insurance and benefits through February 15th. He will also start collecting his $56000-a-year pension when he turns 55. No wonder so many people want government jobs.
Sorry for my rambling digression. (Massachusetts politics always makes me think of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead.) My point is, we are responsible for putting these people in office.
Food for thought…below is an excerpt from Wikipedia’s biographical entry on Donald Trump. I’m not touting for the Donald, but I think the description is very revealing of our government officials nowadays:
The development saga of the Javits Convention Center gave Donald Trump a revealing lesson in the ineptitudes and inefficiencies of the New York City government in that a project he’d estimated could’ve been completed by his company for $110 million ended up costing the city between $750 million to $1 billion. He’d offered to take over the project at cost but found that the New York City bureacracy had virtually no interest in the prudent expenditure of taxpayer’s money.[citation needed]
This debacle would repeat itself in the city’s attempt to restore the Wollman Rink in Central Park – a project started in 1980 with an expected 2 1/2 year construction schedule that was still, with $12 million spent, nowhere near complete in 1986. Trump offered to take over the job at no charge to the city, an offer that was initially rebuffed until the New York City media got wind of the story which changed their minds in a “New York minute“. Trump was given the job which he completed in six months and with $750,000 of the $3 million budgeted for the project left over (he used the leftover money to renovate the adjacent skatehouse and restaurant).
It should be noted that the city had started the Wollman Rink restoration project at the same time (May 1980) that Trump had broken ground for his landmark Trump Tower project, which he completed in 1983.
Female Chauvinist Pigs
Posted by: tpsky on: November 15, 2006
This just boggles my mind. I guess it’s not trendy to desire true love and respect anymore. Instead of struggling with the insecurity of not being pretty enough, smart enough, we do away such base emotion by trashing ourselves and amusing ourselves by seeing women the ways male chauvinist pigs see us. It’s funny, really.
Sorry, Aretha, “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” is no longer THE WORD for women. We’ve come a long way, baby!
References:
Me Tarzan You Jan, an article from New York Magazine
Female Chauvinist Pigs: Girls Gone Wild, a book review article from New York Times
The Car Dealers Are Worse Than HMOs
Posted by: tpsky on: November 10, 2006
Two months ago my car had shifting issues while I was on my way to work. Not knowing what it was, other than that the check engine light was on, the gear indicator was blinking, and it seemed like I was stuck on low speed (though I couldn’t really test that out since I was in a stop and go traffic), I took it to a shop near work. The shop owner was very nice, and he called me the next day and told me the problem they found and advised me to take it to the dealership since my car was very new and had very low mileage, and therefore I shouldn’t have to pay them for the repair, but could get warranty. (I like him! An honest car shop owner.) So, I took the car to the dealer. (By this time the problem had mysteriously disappeared – outwardly anyway.)
First of all, I couldn’t just drop the car off and they only had an available slot the following Wednesday afternoon. Okay – glad my car was still drivable, just needed to take it in as soon as possible to prevent further damage. (Actually, I had consulted answer.com, and the advisor there told me that, “Looks like your gear shifted when it shouldn’t. I think you should take it in, even though there doesn’t seem to be a problem now. It’s already happened once, so who knows when it’ll do it again. If you’re driving 60 miles an hour and it suddenly shifted to 40 miles an hour, then you’ve got a problem.” (Yes, especially if I had one of those 16-wheelers tailgating me.)) And then the ever so friendly (not!) service person asked me whether the check engine light was still on. It was not. It went off by itself even before I took it to the shop near work.
“Then we can’t check it. They turned the light off.”
“What do you mean? Wouldn’t it still be in the computer memory.”
“No. They checked the computer already. The memory would be cleared.”
“But they had kindly provided me the diagnosis code and the text description they found from the computer. Surely you can use this to check the car.”
“No. We don’t go by what Mike’s Service said. This is Honda’s policy. We can’t do anything about it.”
“But you know from me that something happened and here is a lead for you to check the car out.”
“You have warranty up to XXXX miles. And the repair would be free.” (Yup! And I would probably be treated the same way every time I had to come back!)
“But wouldn’t it cause more damage not to repair it as soon as you know there is a probelm?” (Of course it would, and it would give them more business later on. More PAID business.)
“If you had come to us first, then we would’ve been able to check it. But now we can’t do anything unless the check engine light is on again. Come back here when the check engine light is on.” (Whatever happened to just opening the hood to look inside? A lost art: checking a car without a computer.)
“But surely there should be some way around it. I was 20 miles from here, and I had to have it checked out right away because I didn’t know whether the problem was life-threatening to keep driving!” (Even health insurances allow you to get out-of-network care if you need to go to the emergency room. And isn’t car accidents caused by malfunctioning car an even higher hazard? There should be a law about this. Heck, this should be a ballot question in the next election.)
Of course, I lost. I drove my car home, which fortunately was behaving normally.
Oh, and by the way I asked Mike’s Service the next day about the computer memory, and he said that they didn’t clear the memory and so the diagnose code should still be there.
Well, I didn’t feel like fighting with the dealership again (yes, I know, shouldn’t avoid conflict on an important issue), and continued to drive the car. Though, once in a while, I’d have this nagging thought of what-ifs such as the car failing me in a bad place and time, landing me in a bad accident and then later on I’d bring a class action law suit against Honda. Anyway the car had been behaving normally, though lately it didn’t seem as responsive when changing the speed. Then tonight as I was taking my daughter home from the daycare it happened again…just as I was merging into the highway after exiting a rotary. It couldn’t accelerate. In fact, it was barely moving like it was on Neutral. Fortunately, I was able to move over to the shoulder without much issue. After I turned the car off and then on again, it was drivable, even though I had the blinker lights on and was driving at 20 miles per hour on the slow lane.
Well, at least I’m closer to the dealer’s location than Mike’s Service this time. We’ll see how they try to wiggle out of doing the warranty work again. Somehow I don’t feel like becoming a martyr with a childseat in the back of my car.
Just When I Thought I Was Done Filling Bubbles
Posted by: tpsky on: November 8, 2006
- In: Humorous| Voting| election| humor
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Went to vote after work yesterday because every vote counts, and it’s very important everybody performs his/her civic duties. I wasn’t familiar with the polling place, but just followed where everybody was going. Found the line for our precinct and reported our street name, number, and my name. The lady at the table gave me the ballot and informed me that there were two sides. I looked at it – it had bubbles next to questions that we’re supposed to fill out – PLEASE FILL IN THE CIRCLES COMPLETELY. I hate those. I guess they’re easier to recount.
I walked over to one of the booths, which were divided from each other by a wall like the competitors on Final Jeopardy. Maybe they had problems with people getting caught in the curtains or someone tried to recalibrate the movement of the levers. Actually, I didn’t mind pretending I was on Final Jeopardy, and I was sure there were very few dishonest tall guys who would copy their neighbors’ votes on election day. The poll-workers had kindly posted an instruction sheet in front of each writing surface. It said:
Please use only the pencil provided. (I looked down – a felt tip marker.)
When you finish filling out the ballot, please insert it in the secrecy sleeve… (“Secrecy sleeve”? Is it an envelope? I looked around inside the little 3-sided booth, stepped away from it a little and checked the booth from the outside, then checked the writing surface to see if there was a secret mechanism to lift it up for storage of the secrecy sleeve… No secrecy sleeves.)
this way. (What way?)
“Okay, I’ll fill this out, and worry about where to submit it later,” I said to myself.
I slowly filled out those bubbles. I’m sure those poll-workers were about to check on me to make sure I was still breathing. When I was done, I took my ballot to the poll-workers at the other end of the line. “Please first check out over there,” the friendly woman said to me.
“What do you mean check out? What’s over here?”
“Oh, I just need you to give me your address and name again.”
I gave her the information, and she checked off a box next to my name. But…why? Were they afraid I would change my identity on my way out? But anyway I was now eligible to turn in my ballot. A sign on a box with a slot said, “Please insert face down.”
Which face? I held on to my two-sided ballot. Oh, the face opposite to the ballot questions. I would’ve guessed that. By the way, was the poll-worker allowed to see that I voted yes on question 1?
I’m sure the state has cut psychological research budget, and we were actually subjects for somebody’s Ph.D. thesis on anxiety caused by confusing instructions.
Mercury Will Be Passing Over the Face of the Sun
Posted by: tpsky on: November 8, 2006
Today Mercury will travel across the face of the sun, and at least part of the transit will be visible in various part of the North America and Hawaii, starting around 2:12 pm EST. However, according to NASA it will only appear as 1/194 the size of the sun and so a telescope would help immensely (some sort of eye protection is needed; see here for the safety measures you will need to take).
In Chinese metaphysics, the five naked-eye planets (Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, and Saturn) represent the five primary elements of the universe: metal, wood, water, fire, and earth, respectively.
See here for the NASA official site of the 2006 Transit of Mercury.
Dirt, Germs, and Everything Gross
Posted by: tpsky on: November 6, 2006
“I was watching a PBS series on Yellow Fever,” said my husband. “I’m sorry I forgot to tell you, since you’re interested in infectious diseases and all.”
I took a semester-year long of a biology class on “Infectious Diseases” many many years ago, and for a while the conversations between my then boyfriend and I were peppered with “Heptitus B” and “blood feeding bacteria”, etc. Ever since then I was proclaimed the “expert” of infectious diseases in our family and with our circle of friends.
It’s true that I won’t kiss my husband (or anyone for that matter) after his face has been slobbered by his parents’ dog, and I insist on handwashing after petting any animals, house cleaning, diaper changing, using the toilet, riding the subway, coming home from work, and before meals.
But all our hygienic practices started to fall apart as soon as my daughter started to crawl. Every speck of dropped crumb, dust bunny, utensil, she’d pick up and thrust into her mouth without the learned hesitation grownups have. Anything except food.
After she witnessed us cleaning with static wipes and brooms, she started helping us on that front. Picking up a piece of tissue paper, she’d first wipe her own face, then hands, then floor, then baseboard, then desks and all the remaining surfaces. Then, she would bring out the broom and hand it to one of us, and then sit in the dust pan.
Lately though she’d point at a piece of lint or hair on the floor and yell excitedly. At first I couldn’t figure out where she picked up the “new learning”, until one day I thought she picked up a dead bug, and while I jerked it off her hand, I shrieked involuntarily for fear she’d put that into her mouth. Then I thought, “Oh.”
The pediatrician told us this is a good time to start fostering good habits, like brushing her teeth and washing behind the ears. So far we’ve been able to coax her to open her mouth as long as we use the Grins and Giggles toothpaste and not the other kind that she didn’t like. And after she allowed us to brush her teeth, she demanded to hold the tooth brush to practice on her own, which then led to my husband and I falling over each other trying to keep her from also brushing the toilet seat, diaper pail, floor, and the radiator.
From the trend of things, it really wasn’t terribly surprising yesterday when, during laundry sorting, we turned around to find her wearing a big boxer on her head. I think she’s building her immunity.
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