a sense of humor

i think this one speaks for itself....so i will leave it without comment. i'm too busy being doubled over with laughter.

philippine dreaming

late afternoon sun shone on my jar of shells and coral gathered over the years on various philippine beaches. my little pieces of a tropical paradise, right here in the low-ceiling-ed living room of our old farmhouse in denmark. i'm sad to say that it's been two years since i've been in the philippines. but next sunday, i will remedy that. make that monday, as it takes awhile to get there. i really need a change of scenery and manila is just the place. old friends, good food and a bit of shopping squeezed in between a few meetings here and there. i. can't. wait!

last visits

"we own time, but time also owns us."

i will miss the poetry on the streets of oslo.

sometimes when you leave a place, you know it's your last visit, at least for the foreseeable future. when i left oslo a week or so ago, it was with a light heart for that fact. i'd enjoyed the city for nearly two years, but commuting via plane will wear you down. especially if you don't get what you need from those around you when you're there - intellectual stimulation, exciting tasks, being included, being consulted on areas of your expertise, drawing on your knowledge and network, positivity towards your ideas (for which they claimed to hire you), managerial support, belief that you are capable of your job despite your gender, i could go on, but i think you get the idea. so leaving oslo, i felt happy that it would be the last time i would be there, at least for the foreseeable future. sometimes life is like that.

but other places, you don't realize that you won't be back anytime soon. like the philippines. i've been there 16 times since december 2004. so it feels really strange that i didn't go there at all in 2009. and i find myself really longing for it. it feels like something has been missing in this year (singapore was NOT close enough and is definitely NOT the same) because i haven't been there. it makes me wonder whether i enjoyed it enough when i was there last november. did i realize that it might be the only time i ever buy a fresh coconut from a young boy who paddled up on his coconut-laden surfboard? did i fully appreciate the uniqueness of that experience at the moment i had it?

and although i returned to manila many times after my visit there in september 2005 with husband and sabin, did i appreciate how great it was to be there together with them? and did i realize it might not happen again? i don't think so. tho' i loved the experience, i didn't place anything extra in it, thinking it might be a once-in-a-lifetime thing. i took for granted that we'd go again. and probably we will, so maybe this angsty feeling is for nothing. and maybe i just have this overwhelming sense of nostalgia  because i keep thinking of that house we looked at on sunday and how sadly frozen in time was.

i know one place that i didn't appreciate enough because i definitely didn't think it would be my last visit and that's Cape Town. of course, there's still a chance that i will go back there at some point, but when i was last there, i didn't realize it would be later rather than sooner.  i didn't realize how very long it would be before i was lounging at moyo at the spiers winery, chatting away on the phone and enjoying a fabulous glass of wine. sigh.

i worry a little bit that the world is changing so much with all of this talk of climate change and that long haul flights (except perhaps to the US), are largely behind me. and i'm changing too. i no longer want to have a job where i travel 150-200 days a year, where i'm away from my home and my family. i want something different from life now. i had great experiences, but maybe now they are just memories. memories of times i wonder if i appreciated enough.

of course, there are places that you hope you don't visit again, despite how colorful and amazing certain aspects of them were. like chennai. honestly, it's quite possibly the most uncharming place on the planet and if i never go back there, i'll be quite ok with that. phuket is another one of those for me. they can keep phuket. tho' i had a fantastic afternoon there, playing in the waves that had so cruelly killed so many less than a year before. it's one of those memories where i was conscious at the time that it was a wholly unique experience that could never be duplicated.

when we left singapore this past summer, husband was quite clear-eyed about it not bothering him at all if he never went back. i feel a bit that way too, since singapore is disneyland with nationhood. tho' if remain in shipping (which i wouldn't rule out), i will likely go there again. but i guess the whole point of these musings is that we never really know what the future holds and where it will take us.

what are you gonna remember?

as i've mentioned before, the primary guiding philosophy i use in life (prior to my new one of writing is the new praying) is what are you gonna remember? in pretty much any decision-making situation, i ask myself that question. i'll also ask you that question if you're ever trying to make a decision in my presence.

well, this evening, when i was totally in the zone, sewing on a new quick fleece-backed quilt for sabin's new and improved big girl bedroom, a particular memory kept popping unbidden into my head. and so i thought i'd share it with all of you. because it's a good one.

i've written before about being in a typhoon in the philippines, but several stories happened during that storm. we were in batangas (south of manila) for a workshop and were a group of about 30 people, working very hard during the day and relaxing very hard when we weren't working. one evening, despite the rain, we ventured out for dinner. it had been raining all day, an unbelievable amount of rain. i understood, seeing that rain, at long last what they meant by it raining in sheets. i tried to capture it in the picture above, but it didn't really do it justice.

we got ready for dinner and ran for the bus. my sister used a very environmentally conscious rain hat which she had made from a lush bag - lush being pretty environmentally conscious themselves. we had a nice dinner, some karaoke and a few beers. san miguel light and san miguel extra dry were our beers of choice in the philippines. very refreshing, as my red-eyed sister illustrates (these were taken before i got the "big" camera).

it was very dark and still pouring down rain when we piled back into the bus to go back to our hotel. my sister decided to stick her head out the open window to holler something at someone, as she is prone to doing at times (she has the occasional issue remembering to use her indoor voice), especially after a refreshing malt beverage or two. when she pulled her head back in, off into the rain-soaked darkness on the OUTSIDE of the bus flew one of her giant diamond earrings, which she'd received as a pushing present (thank you, spud, for that phrase) for her second son. very strangely, at exactly that moment, i was reading a text message on my mobile phone from her ex-husband, asking me to have her call as soon as she could about that second child's visit to the EAR doctor!

naturally, losing an item so precious and laden with meaning in such an impossible setting at the same moment she learned her child needed ear surgery was very traumatic and she became understandably hysterical very upset. we screamed to the bus driver not to move the bus and acquired a flashlight and went out to look for the lost earring. bearing in mind that it was midnight, pitch black and a typhoon was raging, it seemed pretty much a long shot that it would ever be found. then, one of the guys said, "i'll find it, i've got snake eyes." and he proceeded to leave the bus, walk straight out into the darkness and nonchalantly pick up the earring.

he said afterwards that he got a clear picture of it in his head and knew exactly where it was. pretty cool, don't you think?

what are you gonna remember?

yesterday, in doing a bit of tidying up in preparation for today's arrival of the cleaner, i came across the picture above. it's husband as a boy of about 5 together with his mother (and a large radio and a very small peugeot) having lunch by the side of the road somewhere in norway. i love many things about the photo--especially that it naturally has that lomo feel to it--all i did was scan, no effects were applied whatsoever. husband is just so cute and so is that car. all husband remembers about it was that it was in norway, otherwise, it's a roadside stop for lunch like any of a hundred others he had as a child.

many years ago, during college, i attended a wedding of a work colleague. a bunch of us from the newspaper sat together and to be honest, it was a rather lame and not very happening wedding. so we decided to move on to a nearby bar. i was hemming and hawing about whether to go along or go home and one of the guys said, "come on, what are you gonna remember?" and he was right, was i going to remember going out and having fun with friends or was i going to remember going home to bed? it was just a line tossed off in a moment, but it has resonated with me ever since.

you might even say it's become a bit of a life philosophy. i have used it countless times when people were about to wander off rather than participating in some fun activity. or when they couldn't decide what they wanted to do. or when they thought about going to bed early. because aren't the things we remember things where we were active and present and participating and stayed up late? we don't remember an evening in front of the television, we remember an evening of dancing or playing cards or having a great conversation over good food. let's face it, you don't know whether you're alive or dead when you're watching t.v. (thanks barbara kingsolver).

i think of some of the times when i said "what are you gonna remember" and the things that i'm certain the people involved remember...

like the time that richard sang bohemian rhapsody in batangas while a typhoon raged just outside:

paying the singer extra to stay on (and on and on) so we could keep dancing at the sofitel in manila:

that time my very tall colleague went to hobbit house -- where all of the wait staff are little people:

the sight of this guy (actually, all 3 are guys) at the amazing show (a transvestite variety show in manila):

my sister licking spilled limoncello off the table:

those ridiculous shots where you take a picture of yourselves shaking your head and going "lalala":

apparently most of the times i said, "what are you gonna remember," we were in manila.

i'm not going to be in manila this weekend, but i hope to do something that i'll remember. what are you going to remember?

don't mess with a typhoon

once upon an august in the south china sea, there was a typhoon. there was also a group of 30 people who were working very hard in the delightful surroundings of the club punta fuego in batangas, philippines. the sheets of rain outside made it easier for them to stay inside and work diligently. but three days into the workshop, they were ready to let off a bit of steam.

so they went for a late-night dip in the infinity pool. it may have been raining, but it was 30 degrees C outside, so a little rain didn't matter.

accompanying them on this swim was a lovely bottle of limoncello. the delightful lemony goodness made them laugh a lot and left them feeling a bit daring and invincible. there was a small group who had been in phuket together at another workshop and they had fond memories of an afternoon spent playing in the waves of the andaman sea. but this was the south china sea and they were on the edge of a typhoon. and it was very, very dark.

however, the now smaller group of three (of the fond memories) decided to brave the steps down to the beach, where the waves were pounding in. the water was warm and wild and they laughed and laughed and shouted into the wind. it made them feel very alive, being there in that place, experiencing that storm up close. the waves were so wild that they were soon covered in sand and their towels, which had been left on the stairs were swept away. one of the three, uncomfortable with all of the sand that had filled his swimming trunks, took them off. and it was only discovered some time later that they too were swept away. along with his glasses. eventually, they began to feel they had sand in places it shouldn't be (ears, for example) and it began to seem dangerous and foolhardy, so the trio made their way back to the bungalows. one of them now stark naked and without his keycard.

however, he was unbothered by this, as he was sure that the door to his bungalow was open on the inside and he had only to knock on his neighbor's door (who was also at our workshop and not a complete stranger) and he would be let into his own room and saved the embarrassment of going down to the front desk for a new keycard without a stitch of clothing on. so, the other two went on towards their bungalows and left him standing at his neighbor's door.

the next morning, the neighbor told his side of the story...how he answered his door in the middle of the night, only to find his fifty-something neighbor standing there buck naked and wanting to come in. as he said, "he didn't even have the decency to pick a leaf." as it turned out the door between the rooms wasn't open, so the two gentlemen spent the night together (there were two beds, so it isn't as racy as it sounds). and much, much, much laughter was had by all.

and luckily, the naked (now clothed) gentleman headed for his flight and even managed to get on it, rather than falling asleep in a chair and having to wait to the next day (like that other time in phuket), but that's another story for another day.

to this day, the occasional stray piece of sand still comes out of my ears.