Dichroic Reflections

I finished Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys last night, and liked it much more than I’d feared. It’s been sitting on my shelves for six months or more, waiting for me to dig in. I know this will sound odd to a lot of his fans: who tend to be passionate, but he’s been an uneven author for me. I love Stardust and Neverwhere; Coraline and I are just good friends. I liked Good Omens, but it’s been a long time. I really ought to reread it, but it’s probably with the mass of my books in storage somewhere. (”Somewhere” = I’m pretty sure they’re in Arizona, probably in the Phoenix metro area, but can’t be more precise than that. All our stuff was moved, packed, and stored after we left.)

Anyway, I did read American Gods, but it doesn’t seem to have made much impact.No love between us Just not the book for me, I think. (Someday I’ll give it another chance to make an impact.) Anansi Boys appealed to me a lot more. It feels to more like Neverwhere, in some ways, and the main characters definitely have some resemblances. That’s probably why I like it so much more, in fact: I care about Fat Charlie and (eventually) about Spider, so I wanted to know what happened to them. I like the use of West Indian / African culture mythology, which I haven’t seen used this well since Emma Bull used a different flavor of it in Bone Dance. The ending is as happy as the one in Stardust: there’s plenty of room to take it further should he choose, but it’s resolved enough to be satisfying.

If anything it could be a little longer; though not especially thick, it looked like the sort of book that would take a week to read but ended up taking a day or less. There are a few things that could be a little clearer: the role of the four old women, for instance. The biggest gap in the book is Rosie: she’s believable as Fat Charlie’s fiancee in the beginning (a much nicer one than Jessica in Stardust but with some superficial resemblance) but it’s really not clear why she’d have such a unique effect on Spider. Or for that matter, why he’s called Spider: yes, he has an affinity with them, but why? Why is Anansi the only one of the gods we see without an animal alter ego? In the versions of his stories I’ve seen, it’s usually Bre’er Fox playing the Trickster role, or else you have someone like Compere Anansi but he’s among other gods like Papa Legba. But those are minor nits, not enough to spoil the story at all. This is a good one.

On another topic entirely, you know what I just did? I clicked a button and had a day’s pay deducted from my check and sent to China. And here’s the thing: that money is going to help people who need it for the most basic survival needs *but also* it’s coming through Taiwanese charities. The government here as pledged a couple billion and individuals have raised that much again and - here’s the incredible part - China has said they’ll accept it. (They’re accepting help from Japan too, apparently also a big deal.) So I can help the starving and just maybe further the cause of world peace, too, by moving one finger (well, and getting a little less pay this month). Pretty cool, huh?

Yarg. Next week I get to go to Hsinchu (2 hours drive, maybe) for two days of training. I was planning to drive, but then I checked with someone who commutes from that city (work is in Linkou, between there and Taipei) and found that the hotel they’ve booked me into is 40 minutes drive from the hotel where the training is. I’ve asked (a few times) about simply staying in the same hotel, but the say it’s too expensive. So now I’m thinking maybe instead of having to navigate between hotels as well as finding the first one in the first place, maybe I’ll let work pay for trainfare and taxis. This adds some aggravation in that I am probably much better off going and buying the train tickets in person this weekend, but I think it will save enough stress to be worth it. I was going downtown this weekend sometime anyway, so it will just be an extra stop. My coworkers seem to be strongly in favor of me taking the train; I don’t think they trust me to drive it. (Taiwanese still seem to view women driving as an odd thing, however; I’ve actually been asked how I get to work when Rudder is out of town.) I do have a GPS, but it doesn’t really seem all that reliable. On the other hand, having looked at maps, the directions don’t look all that difficult - the traffic, however, might be.

While I was writing the above, I was informed that my waitlist in a closer hotel had just been confirmed, so probably I will drive after all. It looks pretty simple - the two hotels are 10 minutes off opposite sides of the same highway I take to work, so I think I wlil drive after all. This is a good example of why everything is just more coplicated in a foreign country.

On the plus side, I just found out the Chinese characters on the earrings I’m wearing (that I bought a couple of years ago) say something about peace and safety while traveling. Maybe I’ll wear them for the trip.

Even more on the plus side, my Stitch and Bitch is definite so I get to socialize this weekend. And lunch today was sushi and milky pearl tea, courtesy of a colleague who went out to get it (and tried to treat us all, but we pushed money at him). My sweater is going well; I don’t think the cable detail will be too bulky because though the gauge is slightly heavier than the one in the pattern the cable comes from, the yarn has a nice drape to it thanks to the silk blend. I’m glad I thought about it in time to add a few more stitches than I was planning under the arms, though, because the cable will pull in a bit. And tonight I will begin this weekend’s planned recreational shopping. Unless I decide I would prefer to hang out at home, because I can do whatever I want tonight - no need to go to bed early because no need to wake up early, no workout to do because I did that this morning, no need to worry about food until I’m hungry for it, no need to figure out what two of us both feel like eating or worry about eating at all until and unless I’m hungry, no worry about rushing to get there before stores close because they are open every night until 9 or so - might even be later on Fridays. The freedom is making me a little giddy.

It’s a little embarassing to admit this … I’ve been back to working out more regularly and so have gained weight, as I usually do. And this would be fine, except that I haven’t lost the extra fat I gained in the Netherlands. (I’m not sure if it was from the change in diet, the hotel breakfasts, or what.) So I have resorted to weight-loss drugs. In my case, this means that I had a big cup of coffee this morning. I’ll probably be feeling a little wonky after lunch but at least I won’t be plowing through pretzels like a starved locust. I might even have a cup tomorrow. At least it’s pretty good coffee: the office has one of those machines that grind the beans fresh every time you brew a cup.

On pleasanter topics, Mrissa has posted about the Fourth Street Fantasy convention. It does sound like a lot of fun, but I can’t go. However, the comments there got me remembering fireflies.

Fireflies - lightning bugs - on summer nights are one of the magical things about growing up in Pennsylvania, even if you’re in the city. On a warm night in June, it can look like the stars came to visit. As if designed for the pleasure of kids, they fly slowly enough to be easily caught, and if you’re gentle it seems to do them no harm. If you put a few into a jar, you have a lantern made by Nature, no batteries required. I never kept them overnight though, because I wasn’t sure what they ate.

The downside to being easily caught, for the fireflies, is that mean kids will sometimes make the glowing rear segments into rings. I never figured out how to do this, however, and didn’t have enough interest (or ruthlessness) to figure it out.

Not everyone appreciates lightning bugs as much as I do, though. I wasn’t surprised when my counselor wasn’t amused, the time I collected several on the walk back from the mess hall one night at camp and released them into our cabin. I was surprised, though, that my fellow campers (aged about eight) didn’t want them inside. Some people turn into boring grownups far too early.

The fireflies were even more amazing when I went back to that camp years later as a counselor myself. (Junior counselor, technically, as I was 16 - in the first display of the irresponsibility they were to show all that summer, the camp directors put me and an equally inexperienced 16-year-old in charge of a bunk of 11 to 13-year-olds even though we were the only two JCs on staff. I wasn’t surprised when the camp closed a couple years later.) As a counselor, I got to stay up later: two boys’ and two girls’ counselors were on duty each night until 11, a rotating roster, and all of our partying was done after that, on the tennis courts at the edge of the camp. I don’t think we can have had those parties all that often, really, but they seem almost nightly in memory. It wasn’t disturbed much at nigh, except by us, and especially in the first half of the summer, the fireflies lit up the trees to look like Christmas. I have very fond memories of a grassy field, those tiny lights sparkling in the trees, a bonfire lighting up a group of late-adolescents, and an illicit beer in my hand, and campfires, fireflies, and sometimes even the taste of cheap beer can bring back good memories.

My brother (perhaps I should start referring to him here as Didi, which is the way you address your younger brother in Mandarin) is … quirky about giving presents. As in, often he doesn’t, but when he does, they tend to be unusual. Every once in a while, that’s unusual as in “spectacularly good idea that no one else would have thought of”. While I was away, a package arrived from him for my birthday and a couple of previous gift-giving occasions (combining makes sense anyway when Chanukah, Rudder’s birthday and mine are only 3 months apart and international shipping is involved). The big item in it proved to be an Aerogarden. It’s sort of like the Jetson’s version of a garden. It came with an herb garden seed kit and my brother also included a Salsa Garden kit (cherry tomatoes and jalapenos). We do have a small balcony and Taiwan’s got a wet enough climate that watering would not be an issue, but pollution might, enough sun might, and anyway I never know what else to do as far as pruning, nutrients, and so on. So this thing is really perfect for someone with my nonexistent gardening skillz.

So far this thing is working perfectly; I’ve thinned out the tomato seddlings already, as instructed, and the remaining two seem to be growing robustly. (They’re almost up to 2″!) The pepper has just finally sprouted within the last couple of days. Especially now with Rudder away, I’ve been talking to them and cheering on the new growth. I expect I sound very silly, but I no longer have cats to talk to :-(. If all goes as planned, I can harvest the first little tomatoes in a month or so.

I don’t know what I’ll do if Rudder and I both have to travel, though. Right now it can go two weeks without care (which, you may recall, is a week less than we were both away in March) but when the plants grow bigger they will need water more often. Maybe I can take the whole thing downstairs and ask the guard to watch it, or get a neighbor to plant sit. Or I could bring it in to work, but I’m not sure the plants would react well to that big a disruption.

In other good news, I may have a local Stitch and Bitch to go to this weekend. I was thinking of shopping in the local mall on Saturday and the downtown one on Sunday (for anything I can’t find locally) but maybe I’ll reverse that, since the SnB is over toward the downtown one.

It occurs to me that I wouldn’t mmuch mind having a spring or summer sweater in every color of Artful Yarn’s Fable. The first sweater I ever made was one of these in the Red Riding Hood colorway of Fable; it would have fit better if I’d understood the concept of negative ease at the time, but I still get a fair bit of wear out of it. Now I’m working on one of these in the Hansel and Gretel colorway. This one will have straight edges; I made one a couple of years ago with the picot edges, coincidentally out of another of Artful’s yarns, Candy. (I’m sensing a trend here.) This time, I’m making the neck higher and the sleeves wider, for more wearability at work. And just to spice it up, I’m experimenting with inserting the cable motif from this sweater, though I’ll rip it out if it looks too heavy or otherwise not good. I’ve never quite gotten over having my favorite gray lightweight wool sweater fall apart after a few years of heavy wear, so I have a feeling that pullover in the specified yarn (which isn’t too hard to find or too pricy) is in my future, anyway.

Well, Rudder’s gone for a couple of weeks. But I’ve got the Swallows and Amazons (and Peter Duck!) to keep me company tonight, along with a bag of goldfish pretzels I’ve opened as a treat. The traffic was incredibly light for my first drive home in Taiwan in a long while. (The roads are pretty chaotic here. It can be intimidating, but on the other hand drivers seem to be very alert and you never have to worry about being in the wrong lane - just turn left from the right lane or vice versa or change lanes by edging in until someone kindly gives way, just like everyone else.)

I hope to get a fair amount of knitting and reading and beading done, not to mention some shopping. I’d like another dress or two for summer. And I may break down and buy the pair of Keens I was jonesing for all last fall; the local mall has them, but only in blue. Still, the color is starting to grow on me: it’s a soft greenish blue that would be good with, for instance, the gray T-shirt and jeans I have on now.

Also, I really need to buckle down and start learning more Chinese again. I’m going to concentrate on words, not grammar; Mandarin grammar is fairly simple and the Taiwanese have the skill the Dutch lack, of being able to figure out what you’re saying even if you’re saying it very badly. I would like to concentrate on practical vocabulary, too, not the crap from our lessons about whether the pork or the chicken is fresher and how children don’t like onions because they’re too spicy. (Useful things I learned from that lesson: the words for chicken, pork, onions, and children. The rest, not so useful.) Tonight’s word, courtesy of the woman working the counter at the local fast food place, is dai4 tzo3: takeaway.

This was really my first full weight workout in a very long time. I finally dont have to worry much about being careful of my left foot. (Still haven’t been wearing any heels, though.) It’s a weekend, too so we had time - we’d gone out to rowing, first, but the dock was pulled out to make more room for the dragonboats, so I put the collars on my new oars and Rudder tweaked his and we came back home to work out here. I think it’s worth logging this one for reference.

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I’m beginning to think Rudder and I picked a good time to be expats. We knew from the beginning that we’d be glad to miss out on two full years’ worth of 24-7 election coverage. Now, though, the economy is beginning to look like an even better reason to have left. We sold our house before prices really fell too far - and before it became hard to sell. We missed the huge spike in gas prices. Of course, you could argue that by moving to Europe and then Asia we encountered it sooner. But we get reimbursed.

Now I keep reading about the increasing food prices in the US - not just in news articles but from real people who are having to think hard about when to go to the grocery and what to cook to save money. I am very used to reading about people eating grains or vegetables not for ethical reasons but because they can’t afford to eat meat often - but normally, I see it in stories or information about the Middle Ages, not modern-day America! That’s a bit upsetting.

Food prices here are much lower than in the Netherlands, but anyway, not payng for a mortgage or car loan means we wouldn’t be worrying. Even back in the US, with only two mouths to feed and two salaries we wouldn’t be worrying anyway, probably. Still, that may not always be the case, especially if we decide to travel around a bit before returning to work. Most especially if gas prices stay high. (And anyway, it’s always handy to be able to lower your spending: you never know when you’ll need to.) So I’m paying attention to the posts about eating on a budget. For my own reference and that of anyone else who wants them, these two posts (mostly, their comments) have some very useful suggestions and tips for eating well, cheap. If anyone else has similar links, I’d love to have them pointed out - I think a collection of similar links could be very useful.

Some unfinished objects: two pair of earrings (one without earwires, because I only have a few of those) and a partial necklace. The colors are closer to right on the black background. (I turned the necklace over in the second photo so you can see both sides of the pendant.)

And the first of the Waving Laces socks These are made from Spritely Goods Sylph hand=dyed superwash merino yarn, and the pattern is from the book Favorite Socks.

Apparently I am allergic to coming back to Taiwan. This time, symptoms started a day before I lef tthe Netherlands instead of four days before; maybe my body didn’t really believe I’d leave after so long. First I got sneezy and hay feverish, now my nose has cleared but I’m coughing. Hopefully this will go away in a day or two, not linger for a month like last time.

If circumstances, the weather, and my sinuses all cooperate, this weekend may include paragliding! Also, while I’m exclaiming, my oars are here in Taiwan! The next challenge is to get them through customs.

Meanwhile, here’s some old stuff I’ve recently revised. I’m posting it here mostly for my own reference - if it’s here I can find it when I want it. . Here’s the first: the first verse has been posted here, but the second is new. I think it needs a third - maybe one will hit me when I go back to the Netherlands in June. I still regret not being able to work in the ducklings!

Spring on the Canal
I.
Persephone proceeds, neither heralded by horns
Nor striding a red carpet like the royalty she is.
Scarcely noticed, she drifts amid a green mist
Glimpsed through grey and winter-knotted boles
Bedecked in cherry blossom, adorned with wild fern
On her sweet inexorable return to the upper world.

II.
Persephone’s whisper swells to Maia’s song;
New growth quickens. Like a green flame
It licks up trunks and along branches.
Buds swell and burst into blossom;
Cherry and dogwood riot among the sober oaks,
While aspens in unseasonable white
Shiver in still-cool breezes.

The rest are behind a cut, because these have all been posted before and the changes are mostly minor things.

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