Month: June 2019

International SOS

Posted on by Elise

We were somewhere near the town of Dingle, taking in these breathtaking sites and letting the girls slide down steep grass-covered boulders at a prehistoric fort on the edge of the land jutting into the Atlantic when I slipped, my right arm overextending back behind my head. I heard two cracks in my shoulder before ending my slide and losing my vision briefly because of the excruciating pain.

There was not a prettier place I could have dramatically dislocated my shoulder, requiring an ambulance ride and copious amounts of morphine. Eventually an x-ray revealed a full dislocation but not fracture, sparing me surgery and allowing the doctor, Tricia, to pop my shoulder back in while I was breathing in huge gulps of some sort of gas to “take the edge off.”

Before and after.

My right arm spent hours out of socket so I’m going to be recovering for several weeks. The health care I received was nothing but caring and thorough and considerate. The doctor even got me tea and toast after popping my arm back. Thank you, Ireland.

A limerick:

To Dingle town we herded the crew
To take in spectacular views
I slipped down a grass boulder
Dislocating my shoulder
Now it’s opiates for the black and blues

Day Two In the Ring of Kerry

Posted on by Elise

The roads here and suuuuper narrow but we had to rent SUVs to fit all the humans. So I’m constantly driving too close to the curb on one side and oncoming traffic on the other. Throw in the harrowingly narrow alleys in town and it’s a wonder we are all in one piece.

Limerick:

Pet sheep and goats and rabbits
Driving though, still not a habit
Squeezed trucks through an alley
Almost entered death’s valley
Perhaps next trip we’ll all just cab it

My big highlight of the day was a farm in which you could really get up close and personal with pigs, goats, sheep, cattle, birds and so much more. An old barn was converted into an indoor playground and outside, as if the animals weren’t enough, there were playgrounds for kids everywhere.

Obligatory sheep selfie

Limericking in Ireland

Posted on by Elise
A momma duck and her ducklings at Ross Castle.

Hello from an estate in Killarney, Ireland, on the island’s Eastern coast. Our family friends the Wan-Yau’s met up with us in Dublin as one of their stops during their epic monthlong traveling adventure around the world. Like us, they are repatriating after living in Asia for several years (Seoul then Singapore) and decided to travel as their furniture and belongings are shipped back to San Francisco.

This is our NINTH squad trip together since we met in 2015. Together our two families have traveled to Jeju Island, Cebu, Osaka, Okinawa, Sydney, Taipei, Bangkok, Danang/Hoi An and now, an Ireland road trip. Eva and their oldest, Jonah, met as toddlers in swim class and through those two we grownups became friends. Amazingly, Eva and Jonah are still super close and love spending time together. “I’m surprised they play together so well since they are both obviously Alphas,” Sarah remarked.

I’m going to try and remember each day with a limerick. Here’s yesterday’s (which was an epic travel day from LAX to DUB then caravaning to this lush farm in Ireland, where we are surrounded by rolling green hills, cows and sheep grazing, and clouds resting atop mountains in the distance. It is as green as you imagine.

Ten hours by plane, four by car
To Killarney we traveled far
The girls made a fuss,
Matt tried not to cuss,
Luna threw up, her forehead is marred.

And for today:

After jet leg and traveler’s rest
Yesterdays’s spirits we tried to best
In the town we explored a castle
The children were not too much hassle
Dined at home to avoid any stress.

I’ll try to keep going!

That One Time At Lawrence Welk’s House

Posted on by Elise
A cozy salon with Manohla Dargis, with blue-hued vistas of Los Angeles behind her. “It looks like the LA of a Michael Mann movie,” she said.

In the megalopolises of Asia, experiences are often marked by their scale — a health scare happening in a “small town of two million people,” or how one protest can draw 300,000 into the streets on short notice.

In Los Angeles, experiences are marked by the random intersections of cultural touchstones: That book party on Sunset to talk foreign policy, featuring the Obama national security guy and some former spies, which was at a clubby Soho House because Ron Burkle owns it. Or last night’s salon for NYT film critic Manohla Dargis at Lawrence Welk’s sprawling former home where an Indian-American musician entertained during cocktail hour by playing “Old Town Road” on the sitar. (That song lineup, which included sitar arrangements for A-ha, and Coldplay, and Marvin Gaye, was wholly delightful but Old Town Road marked the high point, IMHO.)

This was so dope.

Also all the caterers were clearly male models, which a Swiss one admitted when I confronted him over his serving platter of mini chicken and waffles about how ostentatiously good-looking the bar and waitstaff was. I mean, it was almost obscene to have all that bone structure tending bar.

I grew up only coming to know Southern California from the movies and TV, so living here in real life is a mix of recognition and surprise. Almost a year in, I really just love it. Not because of the randomness of the parties but primarily because it’s a place of many cultures, many peoples — and they meet-up and mix-up in interesting ways.

When LA campaigned for the Olympics, the organizers talked about it as “the Northern-most city in Latin America and also the capital of the Pacific Rim” — LA is how America faces outward and into the future rather than inward and back.

Friend Liz now comes to mock me when I say I feel like my soul was always here and now my body just caught up, but I mean it! I am feeling more at home here than anywhere else I’ve lived, and it’s taken such a short time, thanks to the weather (I am perpetually high on vitamin D) and the way the place embraces its cultural quirks and collisions. How nice for a place to be so many things, and to encourage that its people be so many things, too.

30 Years Since Tiananmen

Posted on by Elise

The crackdown started, infamously, on June 4, 1989. But the movement had been swelling by this point, made so tragically clear as we revisit images from that time and remember.

“We know now that one side was arguing for restraint towards the demonstrators and for wider reforms, while hardliners pressed for a crackdown. It was almost unbelievable to witness the open massive challenge to the authority of the CCP. It went on for days, then weeks, numbers growing. But something had to give.”

— Greg Girard, China-based photographer who spent weeks documenting the movement and the massacre. He’s been posting his film photos from thirty years ago on his Instagram, which you should check out.

For further reading, I recommend my former colleague Louisa Lim’s The People’s Republic of Amnesia