Long Time No See, Auld Lang Syne
Proverbs Commonly Attributed to ChineseChinese ProverbsThis train of clicking around and browsing started when I told someone "long time no see," which a teacher had told me is good Chinese grammar. I think it's a literal translation of the Chinese characters, but a bad translation into English. In English, I would say, "It's been a long time since I've seen you." Hao3 jiu3 bu4 jian4 is the Mandarin. It's beautiful because Chinese can be so simple and elegant like the answer to a math problem. But translating character by character doesn't communicate all the meaning that resides in those four characters.Hao: a plentiful/good amount, jiu3, a long time, so a really long time combined, but the emphasis has been over-used, like "hen hao" and "hen duo" (very good, very much) to mean just the first degree of the superlative. Then, bu4, the negative, then jian, which is like the common phrase, "zai jian" which is "goodbye," and means "see, meet, observe," almost like rendez-vous in French. The "bu4 jian4" is a iodomatic for "missing" and literally "not in sight." So in English, how would this be different than, "You've been missing for a long period of time." or "You haven't been in sight for a long period of time." "Where have you been keeping yourself?" Anyways, in English we put meaning in tons of words, in Chinese, the characters all have a lot of history. And compound characters have more meaning as well. As an English speaker I'd like to see more nuances in the translations into English.
On a box of firecrackers my brother in law bought yesterday in Chinatown, the English translation was: Drou grou. Drop to ground. In China the English translations were so bad, and in a way we were thinking they just drop letters every once in a while, like I get a stroke wrong in a character. It can't make that big of a difference, right? hahaha.
As one garage sign said, "U Good!" ????
Robert Burns, Scotsman, poet. I made some people in the Terracotta museum in Xi'an, who claimed to be from Robert Burns' hometown, recite his poetry. One guy actually had some on hand that he read by heart.
..And in commemoration of NYE:
AULD LANG SYNE
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne!
Chorus-For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
And surely ye'1l be your pint stowp!
And surely I'll be mine!
And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
For auld lang syne.
We twa hae run about the braes,
And pou'd the gowans fine;
But we've wander'd mony a weary fit
Sin' auld lang syne.
For auld lang syne.
We twa hae paidl'd in the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin' auld lang syne.
For auld lang syne.
And there's a hand, my trusty fere!
And gie's a hand o' thine!
And we'll tak' a right gude-willie waught,
For auld lang syne.
For auld lang syne.
Robert Burns
New Year's Wind-Up and Cocooning
New Year's Wind-Up
To treat it as amateur night, or to frolick with the bridge and tunnelers, this is the question. I have never really participated in the much vaulted large black and white party. The most I've ever really made a big deal about new year's was going to a famous guy's house in Pacific Heights one year dressed formally (for me). It turned out to be a super small part of his girlfriend's friends, the "seven people sitting around staring at each other" kind of thing. The most crazy night was two years ago where I managed to go to like 4 parties, stayed up into the morning and watched Eddie Izzard in french with friends over and over again. I completely forget to this moment what I did last year, but a friend mentioned that we went to dinner then "bailed" on a party across town. Bailed, to go to sleep. What a partier! What a reveller! I remember one year, when I was thirteen, I was in New Mexico at a hotel in my own room, which was the height of luxury, and didn't know it was New Year's. I heard guns going off in the parking lot and thought we were in some urban violence situation. Calling my mom on the phone, she informed me it was New Year's. I actually fondly remember that. Last night I thought about just skipping the night and moving forward into the day, which I have always preferred anyway. A new day! New resolutions! Newness!
CocooningI love my family, I love hanging out with them, but there's something quiet and serene about returning to your house after a four day extravaganza party and not leaving it for 24 hours.
OK, I went to Trader Joe's and experienced outside weather, then went back in with my food supplies and hibernated. Did laundry, catered to my obsession with West Wing. I wonder, am I getting argumentative and acquiring an ADD form of talking because of watching West Wing so much? Do I talk and walk everywhere? Am I in full professional business apparel for a fourteen hour workday with no signs of spillage or sweat? Yes, I'm becoming a more critical TV viewer.
Storm Patterns & Mushrooms
My nephew got a cool Weather Station from my parents this Xmas. We set it up on the back porch down in Monterey and watched it as a storm front made its preparations. The station has a little four armed wind thing that spins around. It was intermittent, which was kind of interesting for all of us, as we thought it might be constantly spinning. We got a few millimeters of rain last night in the little rain catcher thingie. The temperature at 7:30 am was 55 deg. Farenheit. Ah, maybe I can be a weather anchor!!
Driving over highway 17 I found a very heavy, lowlying fog on top of the Santa Cruz Mountains. SF, though, was shining and sparkling. Friend who lives in South Beach told me we had just had a storm pass through.
Yesterday watched the surfers off of Lover's Point down in Pacific Grove. About a dozen were all lined up for the big waves. I saw one guy get a wave, then fall backwards on the ridge and do a double-flip, landing in back of the wave on his back. A little sea otter was playing around near the cove. All very exciting to me, especially since that cove is usually calm as glass, and I've spent a lot of time swimming in it. It is very cold water, as it's the closest you can get to the Monterey shelf to the deep ocean, and the water is pretty much right from there and not warmed up at all.
Walked through a redwood forests down near Pacific Grove (PG to those in the know) and there were tons, tons tons tons tons of mushrooms. My sister didn't know the name for all of them, so here are my amateur descriptions: that mushroom that is in Alice in Wonderland, lots of little light brown ones, huge ones that push through the foliage like a submarine emerging, and really dark black ruffly ones that remind me of truffles though I have never seen a truffle.
People in Rain are Idiotic
I went out on errands yesterday and forgot to bring any form of head cover. It was middling to slightly drizzly so I just had permanently wet hair the entire time. There are a lot of covered walkways in San Francisco, especially on my walk, down Columbus to the Embarcadero centers, which are all covered. The problem really are those huge, large umbrellas that petit women seem to always have. The little points of the umbrella are right at the range of my eyes. The women have to walk super slowly, since they have to navigate some kind of space for their 5-foot span umbrella. On Columbus Ave sidewalks there's just not enough room for the umbrella.
The large umbrella span reminds me of just that weird selfish territory thing that seems distinctly American. Yes, I am making grand generalizations about a culture, shoot me. There just isn't a lot of cooperative, friendliness towards others in walking around with a 5-foot span umbrella. You're hogging the sidewalk, and you're too short to allow people under your canopy.
Walking down the Columbus sidewalk is kind of funny in the rain. Poeple have to stop constantly to let you by, they tilt their umbrellas to the side, and all the while, we are covered by awnings, so you can just wrap up that umbrella and use it as a cane, which is a much better use anyway.
And this leads me into other annoying rain behavior: drying your umbrella, open, indoors, in a walkway/door entrance/high foot traffic area, etc. I'm not a huge fan of umbrellas, but I will use them when I don't want to suffer that deafness that goes with wearing a goretex hood. And can we say there are a million superstitions against opening an umbrella indoors. The most important of which is somewhat grounded in fact, it's a big awkward thing that should be left outside.
Another favorite pet peeve while I'm at it: meaningless hygiene protection.
- those cotton face masks everyone wore in China. No, they won't keep anything bad out, but if you stop burning charcoal brickettes in your house, and get low-emission cars, that might help.
- the allover plastic stroller cover that young mothers in the mission insist on putting around their babies. Unfortunately, TB will still get in there, despite the baby in a bubble.
Stockton Post Office
Overheard at the post office:
(woman on cell phone)
[loud buzzer goes off as she enters post office]
"Yeah, so it was really nice, because we weren't hanging out with Patrick, which is what we usually do, it was just he and I, and we talked and got to know each other. I felt more mindful. And it was nice after our first kiss, you know? Wow. They don't have any good Christmas stamps. I won't buy stamps if I'm not really excited about them."
[as she leaves loud buzzer goes off again]
Me and another woman, at the self-serve kiosk, chatting about woman who was "not mindful, but mindless..."
Ah, holiday joy in the post office.
I parked at a meter, on Washington Square, across from the post office, with 10 minutes on it!!!!
Californians and Rain
Unseasonable greetings
Gusty, drenching storm snarls traffic, knocks out powerSo I've lived almost all my life in the San Francisco Bay Area. I spent 4 years in the rainiest seasons of Portland, Oregon, a town that is rainier than Seattle. My most unpleasant memory of Portland, besides opening my sweater drawer to mold, is sitting in a public bus, at night, with my fellow Portlanders in wet Goretex, and not knowing when to get off the bus since all of the windows are steamed up. It's a nightmare, actually. The only good part of that was that my friend and I had mint schnapps in our plastic coffee mugs!
Yesterday I drove down and up 101, one of the worst freeways to be in when it's near-flood conditions. I just kept in someone's dry tracks and sang along to soul. The pictures on the news and in papers for the last day or so have been so catastrophic, full of car crashes and other results of the awful conditions.
Once when I was about 16 I drove up and down 101 during similar conditions. I was going up to a mod show in the City (ah, the days of our youth) oblivious to the fact that, hey, when the weather is bad and there's standing water on the road, you may not want to go out! I remember how there were
no cars on the road. Later, my friend called me and told me I had just missed the entrance ramp road blocks, and that the freeway was flooding.
Last winter, same time, I woke up aroiund 5am to get to SFO to go to my grandmother's funeral. I took 280 this time. Similar weather conditions. I tried in vain to get some weather info on the radio, but couldn't, and had to decrease my speed so much I ended up missing my flight. I passed about six accidents on the roadside, and this is usually a twenty minute trip. My excuse sounded really pathetic to Minnesotans who were braving a blizzard to go to the same funeral.
So I'm not sure what I'm saying in this entry. I'm sure everyone reading this will say: Californians don't know how to drive in weather. I do know that there is something torrential and vicious in the few days of rain we get here. In Portland, it was always drizzly and rarely heavy. Everybody lived in rain, for 9 or so months, so it was just the way of living. Here, people are unaware that their 1994 Honda has bald tires and hydroplanes at anything over 30mph. Portlanders grew up driving 30mph, so there's no curbed desire to speed.
There are things I love about California that I know nobody else loves. I love the cold, dark green-blue Pacific, and I think it's "clean" and "fun" in a way nobody else does. Warm water just oogs me out. I also like the rainy season we get here, and how it's heavy raindrops, with wind, and usually comes with loud, scary thunder claps. I like the deep damp shiver you can get, what with the sea air and the falling temperatures and random winds. I love how fleeces are sold more prominently than personalized license plates in Fisherman's Wharf. I dig the frozen frost on a lawn in the early morning. It's like snow, but not really. I like the way the fog from the ocean builds up against the mountains and pours over, and you can see it wrapping around Sutro Tower. OK I could go on, but you get it.
Union Square
I've done one re-cognizance visit, and I've done another with small family in tow. These are my recommendations:
- park in the neighborhood you want to end up in, for our situation that was fisherman's wharf/north beach, then take the cable car.
- the cable car is super fun. The powell-hyde route is the funnest, as it goes on a very steep incline and decline!
- the SPCA windows at Macy's are really adorable and worth it, and aren't materialistic or consumer-istic, as you would expect.
- the Westin-St. Francis gingerbread house inside the lobby is ROCKIN this year. Very cool.
- the tower elevators in that hotel are super fun, and FREE
- avoid Macy's inside.
- don't seek food in Union Square, but if you do get hungry, King of Thai on Geary, near Macy's, is great.
Things I Don't Want for Christmas
Idea blatantly stolen from Kim, par for the course.
- the new bound version of
Two Years Before The Mast by Richard Henry Dana. I have seen this advertisement a gazillion times! Stop already!
- anything with a cable car on it.
- the extended mix of Holiday Inn by Chiggy
- "country bear" motif bathroom set with toothbrush holder, from Fingerhut
- lifetime subscription to Barely Legal
and the final item...
- signed personally by the President, a Christmas Card from the White House
Notes on the Mission, Having Since Moved
My Thoughts on the Old NeighborhoodI stood outside of a new store opening yesterda, Aldea (sp?) on 17th between Valencia and Mission, accompanying a security detail friend.
The neighborhood has not changed in the year I've been away! Still everyone looks the same in the artfully casual way of wanting to look different. There is a lack of economic and age difference here that doesn't exist in North Beach, at least North Beach during weekdays. A few hipster snobs muttered "yuppie scum" as they walked by the new housewares store. I quickly got to know the homeless panhandlers while standing out front. So in that way, I guess, there is economic difference. A woman who is 150th in line for a low-income house, and a fellow who was burned out of his house, and had the Red Cross report to show for it. I really admired his shoes. He had some prison poetry about a lost love. Not a love in prison, I'm assuming, but on the outside.
The building where the housewares boutique is housed used to be really contentious. It had been a regular row of Victorians but was bulldozed in the early dot-com times for new spanky live work loft units. The surrounding singletons got really upset about this and protested it. A friend's boyfriend moved there, and I think he was even one of the first tenants. He's since moved out. It has bad juju.
The first article is great, and even has a photo of the Hoff & 17th building as an example. The second is an interesting 1999 climate article, mostly about how Brown was just kind of setting things up for total destruction with lucrative development deals.
I'm just glad I found rock-star parking across the street.
SF at Night
Above photo credit to Carroll Elizabeth
San Francisco at NightBecause of sickness and a bad adaptibility to jet lag, I've seen a lot of SF in pre-dawn and nighttime. I still love it to bits.
First an explanation! The above photo is one of those vacation picks that just cracks me up, next to the headless buddhas at the Summer Palace. I just got my travel-friend's photos and was laughing so hard this morning. The above photo are, not kidding, two kids riding around on those minibikes totally unchaperoned. The parents were like 2 blocks away eating noodles and chatting with each other, out of sight. So we're on this old medeival wall, and look down at the new hutong projects, and see these two 1 1/2 year olds on motorcycles. God, it was so amazing. And then travel-friend made the comparison to Chinese drivers and I just lost it. Sigh. hahaha.
So sitting in Peets at the Ferry Buiding whittling away the early morning hours. Lots of people sit there and stare at the ferries emptying out more people. Note: early morning commuters do not stop at Peets, late morning commuters do. I wonder why.
There really isn't a lot of daylight nowadays, and I'm missing most of it by sleeping off hours. I go outside and I'm always surprised: it's raining! It rained last night! It is sunny! It's not sunny, it's cloudy! Oh the everchanging weather patterns. Last night was friggin' cold, and I mean that by saying cold for SF, not cold in general. A sweater
and a jacket! Unheard of.
