Friday, July 25, 2008

taiwanation

For the past week or so, I've been debating ordering some TAIWANATION wristbands. The thing is, I really don't need ten of them, plus I think I've spent this month's budget for Taiwan paraphernalia on a couple of "stinky tofu walks alone" T-shirts from TaiwaneseAmerican.org.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

no boys allowed

It always feels a little "junior high" to me to be in a group which is all girls and no guys.

Well, last weekend, I had an overnight BBQ & games party at my parents' house, and for the first time (for a variety of reasons, none of which involves anyone disliking the company of guys), I invited all girls.

Things that were different:
- We did an arts & crafts project instead of playing waterpolo-type games in the pool. I like both crafts and sports but I find that when there are guys around, there's less general interest in crafts. Anyway, I thought I'd take this opportunity, and asked my sister to put something together. She came up with a really cool candle-making activity which involved lots of different colored chunks of solid wax and pouring liquid wax on top. Fun!
- There were a lot less people, so there was more time to talk and hang out with everyone. I think my mom and sister had a lot of fun chatting with my friends. My dad went to a dinner party for most of the night; I have no idea if that was planned specifically to coincide with the BBQ or not, but it was probably good timing, since he might have been bored.
- One of the girls put together a trivia game, where we all answered questions about each other. It was really well done; obviously carefully planned, the questions were challenging and interesting, and the question cards themselves were gorgeous.
- We baked our own desserts (chocolate souffles) instead of my mom baking them for us, and they turned out well, which is not a given when it comes to souffles.
- I bought two dozen mini-cupcakes from Sibby's. I probably wouldn't have bought them for mixed company since they're super girly-looking. (Of course we finished them, since they're delicious.)
- One person brought her year-old toddler, and we spent some amount of time making sure he didn't hurt himself or break anything, but it was actually not too bad with twelve or thirteen adults around to keep an eye on him. Plus, it was kind of entertaining to watch him running around begging random people for more cherries.
- I got to do the BBQ-ing. Guys always think that they own the grill, for some reason. Silly people.
- We ate a lot less steak and drank a lot less beer than usual. My mom now has eight extra premium beef filets in her refrigerator. Good thing I warned her and she didn't buy too much beer.

Things that were the same:
- We ate a lot. My mom always has lots of good quality fruit and we gorged ourselves on cherries, blueberries, pineapple, etc. We didn't finish the steak but we finished everything else; chicken wings, BBQ beef, shrimp, squid, mushrooms, corn, Chinese chicken salad, and more. For dessert, we had the cupcakes and the souffle, with ice cream and gelato. For brunch the next day, we had my mom's excellent shi fan (rice porridge), ham and cheese crepes, and scallion pancakes, and then she baked us a homemade rum raisin cake for "snack". So much good food, so little time...
- We played board games until late and didn't get to bed until after 4am. It's so nice to be playing games and know you don't have to go to work the next day and you don't have to drive anywhere afterwards.
- We had a lot of fun. I do like overnight parties. Maybe it's because I wasn't allowed to stay overnight at other people's houses when I was a kid, until fifth grade or so.

Monday, July 14, 2008

weekend travel notes

Trip of the month: three days in (really hot, really humid) Houston for a 60th birthday party.

For short trips, I've become a regular user of FastTrack's long-term airport parking, since it seems kind of sucky to be asking my friends to drive me to/from the airport all the time. Plus, it gives me more flexibility; last Thursday, I was able to have dinner in Palo Alto with a friend visiting from Seattle, before heading to SFO to catch the red-eye.

I was just mentioning to someone a couple of weeks ago how I hadn't had a problem in several years, while travelling domestically with my small Swiss Army knife. Of course, once I'd said that, I mentally kicked myself, knowing that I'd just jinxed myself. Sure enough, security found the knife this time through, and gave me three options: check a second bag and pay the $25 fee, mail the knife home and pay $10 for shipping, or throw the knife away. I chose option four: hide the knife in the women's bathroom outside of security and hope that it stays there. I'd done something similar once at the SF passport agency, but I'd never tried it overnight before. Amazingly, the knife was still there when I returned, three and a half days later. I'm not sure what that says about airport security, but I'm happy to still have my decrepit old Swiss army knife, that my parents bought me in Switzerland over twelve years ago.

On the return trip, due to poor planning and some traffic (and wanting to stop for a Whataburger breakfast taquito), we arrived at the bag drop counter about 23 minutes before the flight was scheduled to depart, and the airline agent refused to let us check in our bags, due to the "30-minute cutoff" rule. She tried to insist that we fly on a later flight (I suspect the flight was overbooked and she wanted to clear up some space), but that was pretty much not an option for us, so we tried a few different approaches.

First we asked if we could check our bags on later flight and pick them up at SFO later. We were told "passengers must fly with their bags". I know for a fact that sometimes passengers don't fly with their bags; when the airline screws up, or when a flight is delayed and the passenger is able to catch his/her connection but the bag doesn't make it. But, I guess it's a good rule from the security perspective.

Next we asked if we could leave a bag at the counter, and have a friend pick it up later, since we didn't really need it. We were told that the airline didn't have the resources and couldn't handle this task.

Finally, we asked, if we packed all our stuff into our (half-empty) carry-on bags, if she would throw the remaining suitcase away for us. At this point she realized that we were not about to give up our seats on the flight, so she suggested that since the suitcase was only a few inches larger than carry-on size, we could try to get it through security and then have it checked doorside.

We ended up going one better; we got through security with no problems, and then, even though the flight was full and carry-on space was tight, one of the flight attendants actually managed to fit our suitcase into an overhead bin, so we never had to check it at all. Ironically, the flight's departure was delayed 15-20 minutes anyway, but I'm not complaining this time.

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

sexism causes decreased birthrate?

For some reason or another, there's been a lot of press recently about people deciding to have kids (or not).

In the gym yesterday, I ran across an article in last month's New York Times Magazine entitled No Babies?, that examines some possible causes for Europe's super-low birth rate. Apparently European birthrates recently dropped below 1.3. If that rate is sustained, the population will halved in 45 years (faster if the rate drops lower).

Without having read the article, my guess for the low birthrate would have been that Europeans are deciding they were happier without (or with fewer) children. The answer the article provides is more nuanced, but is not far from that. It points out those European countries that have "greater gender equality...better social commitment to day care and other institutional support for working women" have higher birthrates. I bet the women in patriarchal societies have one child, discover their life now sucks, and decide not to have any more, whereas women in egalitarian societies discover hey, not so bad, and choose to have second or third children.

A quote from the article about the countries with more chauvinistic cultures:
"All of these are societies still rooted in the tradition where the husband earned all the money. Things have changed, not only in Italy and Spain but also in Japan and Korea, but those societies have not yet adjusted. The relationships within households have not adjusted yet.” Western Europe, then, is not the isolated case that some make it out to be. It is simply the first region of the world to record extremely low birthrates.

I guess they better adjust, pronto. Japan and Korea both currently have fertility rates around 1.1, and they may still be dropping.

Another article, in Newsweek, examines the question of whether having kids increases or decreases happiness. A recentl study found that parents "definitely experienced more depression" and "parental depression increases along with the number of children parents have". Of course the researcher got tons of hate mail from parents saying that she must hate her children and so on, but there were some more considered (and more interesting) responses, too.

One blogger wrote:
I like the amateur marathoner metaphor: survey a marathoner in the midst of the race and they'll complain about their legs and that rash and how the race seems like it's taking forever. But when the running is over they are always incredibly proud of their accomplishment. Having kids, then, is like a marathon that lasts 18 years.

Finally, a few days ago I read an article about how guys have a biological clock, too. Apparently older men (starting from mid-to-late 30s) are more likely to produce sperm with damaged DNA, which lowers the rate of conception and raises the rate of miscarriage. So, I guess the moral of the story is, women who want to postpone having children should pick younger guys, to increase their eventual chances of conceiving? Or something.

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

still remember 7th grade history class?

Yes, in fact I do. I just took one of those online Can you pass a citizenship test? quizzes and was all proud of myself for scoring 100%. I think doing well on these things makes me feel justified for storing lots of random mostly useless facts in my head.

 

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