Measured Words

Read: Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

I had heard Ms. Demick speaking about her book, "Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea" on NPR a few weeks ago and considering my fascination with North Korea, thought this would be a good read.

Turns out it was a perfectly fine read.

The book was more of a novelized take on interviews the author had with defectors to South Korea beginning around 2004. I have no doubt that she's attempted to accurately portray their statements, but the fact that she's only able to interview defectors naturally skews the take on things in North Korea.

This approach to the book, while interesting, left me wondering how much of it was factual. I almost wish she had either done this as a novel or as a pure academic take on research.

This is Callie

This is Callie. She is a Shetland Sheepdog. She's 11. She'll be 12 in July.

Callie gets visited by M.O.T.H. (Master Of The Hounds) from Mailman's Pet Service on Tuesdays and Thursday for a WALK. This is REALLY EXCITING for Callie and Cash and Fenway because they get a glorious walk around the neighborhood with random dog friends.

This is also really exciting for me because M.O.T.H. leaves great notes. I mostly pay for a dogwalker just to get someone to write notes to me about my dogs.

This was today's note:

1.10.12 3:15 - 4 p.m.

We had a great walk everybody peed, the boys pooped all got treats, Thank you, MaryAnn (MOTH).

Ps. Callie got a label from a box stuck on her paw and was having a hissy fit till I got it off - LOL!!

***

Good job, Callie

New England's Spring in January

We had a fantastic day Saturday wandering around the North End of Boston. Someone forgot to tell
New England it's January... and it was a gorgeous 60F & sunny. So we ended up walking along the waterfront... stopping to get cannolis & coffee & just generally lounging in the sun.

We had lunch at Neptune Oyster with my friend/colleague Jenn... the girl I stayed with in London. She's negotiated a move back there! So exciting!!! I'm so super happy for her.

We really love Jenn. She truly has just a great heart... so easy to hang out with and was wonderful to tour St Paul's Cathedral with me when I was there in June and Kathryn's mom was toward the end. Jenn even very sweetly brought us a St Paul Christmas ornament when she came back in December.

After lunch, we walked around the North End... and of course my wife who knows everyone... knew the counter guy at this coffee shop. She had worked with him at a print shop 20 years ago. He was straight out of central casting with his thick Boston/Italian accent. Loved it.

 

Then we stopped off at Mike's Pastry and got some fabulous cannolis & coffees.

And then we sat by the Boston Harbor & ate them in the sunshine. :)

 

 

My 2011 Books Read

	Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)	Collins, Suzanne	4.08		read [edit]	Jan 02, 2012 [edit]	Jan 02, 2012
	Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2)	Collins, Suzanne	4.39		read [edit]	Dec 31, 2011 [edit]	Jan 01, 2012
	The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)	Collins, Suzanne	4.54		read [edit]	Dec 30, 2011 [edit]	Dec 29, 2011
	Before I Go to Sleep	Watson, S.J. *	3.81		read [edit]	Dec 29, 2011 [edit]	Dec 28, 2011
	Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case	Nathan, Debbie *	3.56		read [edit]	Dec 28, 2011 [edit]	Dec 25, 2011
	The 19th Wife	Ebershoff, David *	3.57		read [edit]	Dec 16, 2011 [edit]	Dec 10, 2011
	11/22/63	King, Stephen	4.35		read [edit]	Dec 07, 2011 [edit]	Nov 26, 2011
	The Leftovers	Perrotta, Tom	3.44		read [edit]	Nov 26, 2011 [edit]	Nov 25, 2011
	The Buddha in the Attic	Otsuka, Julie	3.56		read [edit]	Nov 23, 2011 [edit]	Nov 20, 2011
	I Don't Know How She Does It: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother	Pearson, Allison	3.18		read [edit]	Nov 20, 2011 [edit]	Nov 20, 2011
	Outliers: The Story of Success	Gladwell, Malcolm	3.98		read [edit]	Oct 30, 2011 [edit]	Oct 30, 2011
	The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake	Bender, Aimee *	3.13		read [edit]	Oct 24, 2011 [edit]	Oct 24, 2011
	Cutting for Stone	Verghese, Abraham	4.23		read [edit]	Sep 25, 2011 [edit]	Sep 06, 2011
	This Boy's Faith: A Memoir	Cain, Hamilton	2.91		read [edit]	Sep 25, 2011 [edit]	Sep 05, 2011
	Dead End Gene Pool	Burden, Wendy *	3.18		read [edit]	Sep 03, 2011 [edit]	Aug 27, 2011
	Then Came You	Weiner, Jennifer *	3.56		read [edit]	Aug 12, 2011 [edit]	Aug 12, 2011
	Girl in Translation	Kwok, Jean *	3.93		read [edit]	not set [edit]	May 30, 2011
	Dead Reckoning (Sookie Stackhouse, #11)	Harris, Charlaine	3.64		read [edit]	May 30, 2011 [edit]	May 30, 2011
	Olive Kitteridge	Strout, Elizabeth	3.67		read [edit]	Apr 25, 2011 [edit]	Apr 25, 2011
	Summer at Tiffany	Hart, Marjorie	3.54		read [edit]	Apr 25, 2011 [edit]	Apr 23, 2011
	The Heights	Hedges, Peter	3.24		read [edit]	not set [edit]	Apr 22, 2011
	The Help	Stockett, Kathryn *	4.45		read [edit]	Feb 25, 2011 [edit]	Feb 25, 2011

Hullo Snow!

 

This is pretty much what my day looked like today. Only not quite as pretty...

via www.universalhub.com

Does Crying About it Help?

John Boehner's got everyone talking this week about whether or not it's ok to cry at work. Check it out:

• Jodi Glickman on the Harvard Business Review blog takes the opportunity to remind us to never cry at work and to take a walk outside if you feel yourself tearing up.
• Forbes says that crying at work may be ok. Sometimes. Just be super careful about who you do it in front of.
• The Daily Beast cites a study that shows that while women are more likely to cry at work, they're also more likely to judge you harshly for crying: A plurality of women consider people who cry at work "unstable," whereas roughly that same fraction of men see tears on the job as only "slightly unprofessional." In other words, women see tears at work as some kind of moral or psychological failure, but surprisingly, men don’t.
  
• Women aren't the only ones judging though. Gail Collins reminds us of the double-standard society puts on crying by reminding us of how folks turned on Hillary Clinton's non-tears on the presidential campaign trail, but feels more ok about Boehner's crying.

I've cried at work. Early on in my career, when everything felt much more personal about just about me.

Over the years though, I've realized that the urge to cry is usually about something else. It's pretty rare that the actual emotion I'm having in the cubicle is the Emotion of Sad. More likely the tears well up because I'm frustrated with the process, angry at being disrespected, or there's a disagreement with someone about the right way to go about a job.

Now that I've had a bit more experience in the work world, it's much easier to quickly identify what it is that I'm feeling, why I'm feeling it and what I can do to address it.

All of which is about 80x more productive than crying at work.

Sorry Boehner.

 

D*amn Girl! That's a long time!

I'm back. Totally back. I mean. I've been back in the US since Nov 17? Or 19th? I tell you those first few days were a total jet-lag blur. Total and big huge props to people who are able to make that 15.5 hour flight from HKG to JFK and then go to a business meeting the next day.

I'll tell you what I was doing the next day. The next day I was sleeping. A lot. And trying to remember where things like the bathroom were in my own house. And for some reason the spice rack got moved. And my wife's car was close to kicking the bucket so she was driving mine. Oh. And there was probably the equivalent of a cat's-worth of fur under the TV cabinet.

Other than that everything was just as I left.

It did take me awhile to remember how to use US money. It's ALL GREEN. How in the world do you remember to use the $1 bill rather than the $10 or $100? All the same.

I also miss using the $2 coin. And the $10 coin. Those are some useful bits of currency.

The day after I slept all day, I went into work. Which was its own process trying to remember where the office was. Luckily, it's a fairly tall building and has a sign on top. So that helped. What didn't help was the continued jet lag. I had such a headache, I was exhausted... and I was DIZZY. They don't tell you that, but frequently jet lag can lead to dizziness.

Consider yourselves warned.

When I got to downtown Boston... which in an earlier life of mine I considered to be in a densely packed area of town... I couldn't help but thinking how many more buildings and people we could fit into that space. I mean. There is a LOT of wasted space down there!

Not even kidding.

It was also so funny to hear all of the American accents. I mean honestly. My favorite American accent was the customs guy at JFK who asked me how long I'd been out of the country. And y'all, he was so totally American. Like with an American attitude and in a uniform and tattoos all over his arms. He was like that guy.

"How long were you out of the country?"

"Five months."

"DAMN GIRL! Welcome home!"

Welcome home. :)

Now that the holidays are over (look how twinkly my house looked at Christmas!) and I'm back in the swing of things... I plan to continue blogging here. About communications and community and how dreadfully much I miss Hong Kong.

I adore Hong Kong.

Huge big adore.

I also have a ton of pictures and videos to keep posting from the trip... and I have to tell y'all about the AMAZING foot reflexology place I found in Boston which does a session almost as good as they do in HK.

Almost.

And check out my nativity set! I found this on my last weekend in HK at the St. John's Cathedral book store. It's just so glorious. All hand-carved, and the figurines are Asian-style. I've always wanted a nativity set and just never found one before that I felt was purchase-worthy. This one. This one totally was.

Goldfish Market

'You can judge the character of a man by the longevity of his goldfish.' ~ Chinese proverb

Little known fact about me. I'm kind of an expert on fancy goldfish.

I'm not even kidding. I've raised any number of Orandas, Lioncaps and Black Moors. I know a lot about how best care for fancy goldfish, how to cure ich, how to keep it from spreading and optimal water conditions.

I feel in love with fancy goldfish when I saw a gigantic Black Moor in a tank at a pet store in Nashville in like 1996. It was so incredibly beautiful. He just "sat" there in the water. So serene.

Goldfish are so beautiful.

I once picketed the San Gennaro Street Festival in Little Italy* because they had games where they gave out goldfish as prizes. Because you don't give a living animal away to a bunch of drunks eating funnel cakes. I know we all laugh about goldfish and how they're kind of throw-away pets.. but they're not. They're these goregous amazing creatures.

/soapbox/

SO OF COURSE I HAD TO GO TO THE GOLDFISH MARKET IN HK!

Oh my goodness. How fabulous! Finally! A people who appreciate a good fancy goldfish!

I started out the day on the Big Bus Tour's blue line/Kowloon tour but ditched it after the driver on the bus couldn't give me directions at all to the Goldfish Market.

Are you kidding me?

So I hopped in a cab. pointed to the picture of the goldfish on my tourist map (provided by the Big Bus Tour!) and was there in a $2 US fare later.

Thank you cab driver.

This is what it looked like.

 

 

*I lie. I didn't picket at all. Mostly I stood behind the carny guy and whispered to people, "that's a living animal" in some kind of passive attempt to stop the whole thing.

Which of course didn't work.

*snort*

Hullo Sally Boyles!

Sunday night I went up and watched "Double Indemnity"* at the nearby artists' bar on my street. How amazing was that? I a gin & tonic and a wonderful conversation with an older lady that I've known the NYC and Boston equivalents of in other lives. You can spot her because she knows everything about everything and has green fingernail polish like Sally Boyles.

She's always delightful.

It really does turn out that everywhere you go... there you are. And if you look hard enough, you'll find your people as well.

Wednesdays are poetry night.

And next Sunday they're showing a film by a guy whose like the Czech John Waters.

Of course they are.

And you can order off the menu of the Chinese restaurant next door if you're hungry.

And there's a giant Canadian flag flying outside.

And inside two of the young Chinese staff have Rubic's cube t-shirts and talk a lot about iPhone apps.

Love.

* You guys... insurance is a HIGH drama industry! As someone who has a certificate in general insurance (I don't know why either) I could have told you! DRAMA.

This Week's Soundtrack