Tous les jours

So just how do I fill my days, locked as I am into a small hotel room?  A week in, I think I can reliably answer.

Well, meal times provide structure, and it's something to look forward to, even if they're like as not to disappoint—perhaps this time you'll get lucky.  Also, someone comes by to take your temperature in the afternoons, and though the entire interaction is maybe 10 seconds, it's seeing somebody that isn't through binoculars, even if they're head-to-toe in Tyvek and PPE.  This temperature we enter into a mandatory government app on our phones, and we take our own temperatures in the morning, for a total of two readings a day (Laura does this just once a day and it's entirely on the honor system, with no fleeting visitors.)

I usually wake up between 6 and 7, and listen to NPR for a couple hours.  I do my morning grooming and take my pills, put on the tea kettle, and make up the bed.  (Coffee here is in a pour-over filter pack, but it doesn't work either with the flimsy Dixie cups they gave me or the rice pots I save from meals to make my tea in.)  I poke around on the internet and catch up on Gudetama Tap.  Eventually I put on music—opera last week, but '20s jazz today—and read.  One source of fun is an internet nanny cam Laura's sister Rachel has allowed to be put in her house, trained on our hamster.  For once, with the 14-hour time difference, he's on the same schedule as us humans. 

After lunch, more internetting and reading.  I may put on NHK World, which is one of the few TV channels in English, or stream France24, in French, for a challenge.  Yesterday I had a nap, but I try to avoid them so I sleep better at night.  Today I did a little light laundry in the sink, and of course I'm writing this now.  Next I will probably read, or gaze out the window, until dinner.  Laura and I will chat a few times a day over Google Hangouts, though her internet connection doesn't seem great for video calls.  Could be the particular protocol, as she seems to use Zoom fine.

I don't have the greatest view, but it's better than Laura's view of an interior courtyard.  I am above a marina drydock, with all manner of boats put up for the winter or repair.  Beyond that is a channel, which runs under a major highway overpass, and has a lock.  The bit of the harbor I can see is frozen over, but the channel is clear and frequently features ducks.  The channel is blighted by industrial infrastructure.  Beyond the highway, Seoul can be glimpsed in the haze.  Sometimes high in the sky I can see dueling seagulls.  I have small birdwatching binoculars, and I watch the boat yard workers, usually the same 2-3 guys, as they go about their business.  Sunday I had a treat, when ordinary people walked down the access road towards the hotel, or visited the boat yard, maybe to shop for their first boat.  Here was the people watching I had hoped for.  It was the first time I'd seen any women, apart from the occasional temperature-taker under three yards of Tyvek.  Yesterday I saw a cat, possibly in search of li'l smokies.

Yesterday was a sport event.  It was a windy day—the afternoon particularly clear, with a good view of Seoul—and somehow, one of the orange biohazard bags they give us for our meal waste, had gotten loose outside, and it was engaged in aerial acrobats, riding the eddies and currents and vents and what-not, tumbling and gliding, even coming close to my window on the 11th floor.  It was sheer delight to see this stupid bag gamboling on the wind.  Then the wind took it around the side of the building never to be seen again.  But while it lasted, it was glorious fun. 

(Addendum: Were I able to get on top of the building,  I could see with the binoculars into North Korea, which is about 20 km away, albeit just barely.  You can tell where the DPRK starts from where the trees end, having been all cut down for fuel.)

After dinner, I have a routine of eating one See's bonbon, followed by a sip of (scotch) whisky, which is technically contraband in quarantine, but it adds a little civilization to my captivity.  I'll read a bit, and maybe take a shower, if I didn't earlier.  A bit before bed, after I do my nighttime bathroom routine, I will watch an episode of Frasier on CBS All Access, using a VPN, to get around region restrictions.  A bit more reading and then lights out around 10.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

I will mention a bit of intrigue here on the 11th floor.  Smoking in quarantine is forbidden—the literature threatens a fine and imprisonment and deportation—but a neighbor keeps getting in and out of his room at all hours to go smoke up on the roof, I think.  What's definitely worse than smoking is leaving your room.  When he comes back, the hallway is filled with the scent of stale smoke, as though this chain-smoker never washes and moves in a Pigpen-esque cloud of his own miasma.  It of course travels under my door, and all I can do to fight it is spritz a cheap Avon cologne I brought.  Every time I hear his door slam, I just know my world is about to smell like an ashtray in continuous, unwashed use since 1963.  I haven't quite worked up the nerve to blow him in to the desk, but I'm on the verge of it (will today be the day?).  At home I'd merely tut-tut such behavior, but here, cooped up, it's become a mild obsession.  It's unchristian of me, but I keep hoping he will step off the roof during one of his late-night sorties.

(Update: I finally called the desk, and they said they'd check on it.  A little more noncommittal than I'd hoped for, but maybe they'll come through.  If they properly understood.  Updated update: haven't heard or smelled peep since I called, so something happened.)

One of the phenomena I find interesting is what I call "prison inventiveness," though doubtless professional psychologists have a word for it.  But what you brought into quarantine is all you have, apart from meals.  You begin to save any bit of packaging that has potential use.  I have a bundle of chopsticks, rice pots turned tea mugs, fruit cups turned drinking glasses, a burgeoning rubber band ball.  When LEDs on all the switches were keeping me awake, I peeled apart my luggage routing sticker, cut it up, and covered all the lights.  This provides a measure of satisfaction in my own ingenuity, until I think about the parallels with making do in prison.  This whole experience has given me just a tiny taste of what it must be like to be a prisoner—less the gangs and constant danger of assault, sexual or otherwise.

So yes, the mental health toll is real, and I wouldn't do this again or recommend it to anyone else, but here we are, and thankfully nearly over the hump.  Thank you for all the check-ins, e-mails, notes, social media comments, etc., that help maintain my sanity a little.  It's very much appreciated.

Quarantine so far--Laura's post

Dramatic, no?  It was a tough trip in, especially that last bit, and it really threw me for a loop.  Ultimately, the Ramada is fine.  All the hotels have small rooms, with very limited amenities.  The view is interesting, the room has good climate control, the bed is comfortable enough, and I got normal towels.  My bag was delivered the next day, and I have all my stuff.  Ian got his negative COVID test, and he ended up at one of the nicer hotels, Marina Bay.  Other than a more picturesque view and some actual art on the walls, our rooms are substantially similar. 

Services are a bit different.  At the Marina Bay, guests are temperature-checked once a day by the staff.  At the Ramada, they make a loudspeaker announcement at 9:45 am every day telling us to log our temperatures and symptoms in the app.  At the Marina Bay, Ian can’t get anyone at the desk to pick up the phone when he calls.  At the Ramada, I’ve had pleasant well-spoken attendants happy to talk with me about whatever I needed.  One time I didn’t get an answer and they immediately called the room back to see what they could do for me.   

Food is definitely different.  The Marina Bay serves what appears to be a very Korean-style menu, with a lot of variety.  At the Ramada, I get a much more stable menu, heavy on salad, pickles, and a few pieces of fruit with each meal.  It’s very predictable.  Unfortunately, the proteins haven’t worked out well for me.  They’ve had too much fat and gristle, and when you stack that with delivery at just about room temperature (or as I’ve come to know it, congealing temperature), it’s very unappealing.  I’ve just switched to my other option, the vegetarian meals, and we’ll see if that works out better for me. 

The internet in the hotel is pretty great, and I’ve been able to do lots of video chats, and even play my D&D game with my friends who gamely moved the whole thing to a time I could attend.  I’ve read two books so far, though most of my days fill up pretty quickly with work, as we prepare for when I get on site in a few weeks.  It sounds like the hotel plans to book taxis for us at the end of our stay, so Ian and I probably don’t need to worry about how we’re getting to Cheonan, we can just take our hotel taxis and meet there. 

I’ve got another week left here, and I think by then I may have just finished shaking off my jet lag!

Arrival--Laura's post

 Ian detailed some of the story of our travel from the U.S. to Korea.  I’ll pick up just before our paths diverged. 

After we went through symptom screening at the airport and had handed over our pre-flight negative COVID test results, we started to walk over to the next area.  Before we could get to the gate, our screener came running over with an in-ear thermometer.  He had forgotten to check us for symptoms!  He stuck the thermometer in Ian’s ear.  He turned and stuck it in mine.  Back to Ian, three checks in a row.  Back to me. Back to Ian.

The screener turned and led us back to the symptom area and flagged down an inspector.  The screener went running back to his booth to get us both green lanyards with cards labeled, "symptomatic," and had us put them on over our heads.  The inspector looked at where our temperatures had been recorded, and took the lanyard back off my head, but he directed Ian to a walled off area labeled "Symptom Investigations."  I stood with our things and made Ian give up his coat and sweater onto the pile of luggage, yelling after him to "Sit down and cool off!"  I had read about people getting flagged for being overheated at temperature check stations before. 

I texted with Ian through the cubicle wall between us and he reported a second temperature check 5-10 minutes later had clocked in at 37.1°C.  Since this was lower than I had tested to begin with, I figured we would be in the clear, but nope.  Apparently he needed to be detained at the airport until he could get COVID test results.  I asked the ladies running the symptomatic inspection area if I could stay while he waited for his results, but they said no, helped collect his bags, and waved me off.  I made sure I wasn’t accidentally in possession of anything Ian would need to navigate whatever came next and wished him luck before heading back into the next stage of immigration.

I was pretty dismayed at being separated as I continued through immigration (install an app—sit while they contact a resident to verify you’ve been requested to come—fill out paperwork about where you’re staying—sign a paper to promise not to leave quarantine or get deported).  Part of the way through, my colleague texted me that one of his pieces of luggage was missing and one of ours was too.  When I arrived at the baggage claim area, Ian’s roller bag and my duffle bag were there, but my roller bag was missing.  Basically, I only had my pillow, some clothing and my work boots.  Everything else I packed was in the bag that hadn’t kept up with us.  Everything I planned for quarantine, everything for work, all my toiletries, and also, all of my socks.  Not great.

At the lost bag desk, they assured me that bags usually show up a day later, and I filled out the paperwork.  My colleague mentioned that there had been a sign saying our bags hadn’t arrived, so it was likely that they were still somewhere that was known, just not here.  I refused to write down an address, since I still didn’t know where we’d be staying and I didn’t want them to deliver the bag to the hotel I’d be heading to in 14 days.  They said I could call the next day to check on the bag, and tell them where to deliver it.  I asked the ladies at the counter to please look after Ian’s bag, because it would be some time until he could come to claim it, and they said they would.

No problems through customs, as my colleague and I walked past the desk and out into a waiting area, to catch a bus to quarantine.  There were two large groups of people already waiting, and about an hour later we were ushered forward outside and onto a bus.  The full bus pulled out from the airport onto the road, and the sun was just coming up. 

It was a hazy morning, and as the sun played hide and seek with the tall city buildings we passed, it burned a deep stoplight red.  The bus ride was longer than I expected.  After a half hour, I realized that Ian and I were basically going to be on our own to get to our destination in 14 days.  I had heard the hotel assignments were not predictable, and there was no reason to expect we’d go to the same place.  At 45 minutes, I started checking on Google Maps to see if we were approaching any of the common hotels I knew about.  No.  Maybe?  There was one hotel very far out that we could have been heading to—The Golden Tulip.  But before we got there, we pulled in at the Ramada.  I knew people stayed at the Ramada, but I was pretty sure it was the worst hotel of the options.  I hadn’t even mentioned it as a possibility to Ian, because I didn’t want him to focus on it.  One colleague had found her room at the Ramada contained only hand towels, and was told to just make do when she called the desk to ask for a full-size towel.

They unloaded half the bus (and I hoped the rest of us would move on to another hotel), but then unloaded the other half.  It was shockingly cold outside.  They had us place all of our hand carried luggage to the side and sprayed it down with some sort mist.  They conducted temperature checks, handed us rubber gloves and had us pick up our bags again before ushering us into a cold marble entry room.  Our things were piled against the wall, and we were directed to sit at a row of counters and fill out paperwork.  The paperwork was simple, with few questions.  There was not much information, or many options to be had.  Just some passport information, confirm our promise not to violate quarantine rules, and pick between normal or vegetarian meals.  Then we lined up to pay for our stay, receive our room keys, and head up to quarantine for the next two weeks. 

I’m in room 414.

No, I said the gazpacho

 We last left our tired but intrepid neurotic on the threshold of the hotel room that would be his entire horizon for the next 14 days.

Before we continue, it is important to say that Laura and I watched countless videos of people in hotel quarantine in Korea.  The experience varied by the hotel you are randomly sent to, but it was agreed that the Marina Bay was one of the best to find yourself at.  Video after video showed its blessed inmates as having large rooms, well-appointed, with balconies, and generous welcome packages.  The meals shown looked very appetizing, and the internees seemed to enjoy the quiet time to catch up on their yoga and skincare routines and Netflix watchlist.  This looked eminently doable, and here I had won the lottery of hotels.

Now, it goes without say that this is not at all what I found.  Life doesn't work that way, and probably less so for me.  I usually have all the luck of a tree culled for toilet paper hoarded by fat people in Arkansas.

Lesson one: people often selectively present aspects of their lives on social media to appear more glamorous, killing it at life, hashtag-blessed.  You don't see the crying fits, the dirty undies, the shameful online shopping compulsion and crushing credit card debt that goes with it.  Despite being an old hat at the Internet, I forgot this cardinal rule, that people lie in the service of their carefully curated personas, and that what I was being shown was either presented flatteringly, or else wouldn't have made the vlog if the turd couldn't be sufficiently polished.

Lesson two: in the Plague Year, the situation changes by the week.  Most of the videos we were looking at were months old.  It had not occurred to me that the experience might deteriorate as the pandemic wore on.  Our default mode of thinking is that things get better over time, when this year they have run in the opposite direction.  Yes, we now have the vaccine, but more people are being infected than ever, and life expectancy in the U.S. has dropped by a whole year.  All year, I said with the pace of events, I couldn't foresee next week, much less next month or next year.  And yet here I blithely made all my plans and designs and fond imaginings with old information.

Now, having said the above, I may present to you what I encountered.  A small room, in no better shape than one in an aging La Quinta or Holiday Inn, with a view that overlooks a boat yard and a small channel lined with industrial infrastructure.  No sweeping views of the harbor, no people watching.  The YouTube vloggers had been given a prince's ransom in snacks and ramen, slippers, an exercise band for God's sake.  None of these awaited, just toilet paper, a stack of Dixie cups, a few thin towels, and a roll of orange biohazard trash sacks.  Nothing in the way of cleaning supplies, despite maybe wanting to sanitize surfaces, or perhaps in case of spills.  (I later discovered by examining the fire escape diagrams, that there are three different floor plans, and I got the smallest of these.  The videos obviously featured the other floor plans.)

Of course, I was disappointed but desperately tired, ate a small sorry-you-missed-dinner dinner consisting of ramen, a juice box, and a chocolate bar (whatever; real food was coming tomorrow and it was going to be great), and did some cursory unpacking before hitting the hay.

The next morning, the loudspeaker crackled to life and announced, first in Korean, then English (why Korean? This quarantine system is for foreigners, not Koreans—they quarantine at home), that breakfast had arrived.  (This is how the loudspeaker works; 30 seconds of static before and after the announcement.)  I had no sooner unwrapped my breakfast and begun to examine its contents when there was a rap-tap-tapping on my chamber door.  I donned a mask, and there was the facility doctor with a COVID swab.  I told him I had been tested at the airport, that I had papers, that the instruction packet said the hotel test was for people who weren't tested at the airport.  He was adamant, this is policy, we must follow policy, etc.  I cut him off midsentence, pulled down my mask and told him to just do it already.  He was gentler than Nurse Ratched at the airport, but it was still intensely uncomfortable.  He screwed the cap on the test and told me to expect him again on the 13th day for more of the same.

Of course, daily they announce by the same crackly intercom that people who were not tested at the airport will be tested at their doors between the hours of 8 and 10.  I double-checked the paperwork, and indeed, only residents of former Soviet republics and a few select other countries require the extra swab.  Why always the extra scrutiny, I will never know.

Laura has an entirely different experience at the Ramada, where she's quarantining about 40 km away, and I will let her describe her own experience, as well as what passes for food where she's at.  

I can only describe my own meals.  They come three times a day, at 8, noon, and 6.  The meals always arrive cold, without the ability to heat them, and the overall quality varies wildly from school cafeteria to prison chow.  Breakfasts are vaguely Western, with cured meat and eggs, or quail's eggs, and then some oddball elements like cocktail wieners, rice balls, fruit cups that also include tomatoes, and some kimchi pickle, usually of daikon radish.  These are generally the most edible meals of the day.

Meals later in the day can be more or less palatable to Western tastes.  Usually there is rice and some protein, be it bulgogi or katsu-fried fish, kimchi, and then an assortment of other items.  Among these invariably are cocktail weenies, which is incredible given that three separate companies at least produce our meals.  There are various vegetables, usually covered in a garlicky red pepper paste and usually tasty.  Then there odd mayonnaise-based salads, containing some combination of egg, potato, macaroni, and apple slices—sometimes all at once.  There are seaweed salads or pickles, which is not my thing, but not unusual.  But then there are some truly odd, insanely pungent relishes—I don't know a better word, mix, medley?—based on dried shredded squid, dried tadpoles, dried tiny eggs, usually with mung beans.  These I have to carefully remove from the tray before I can begin to eat, and often their odor has already flavored everything else in the box.

Each meal comes with a soup, usually some sort of miso-based broth, or corn purée, which is often accompanies breakfast.  Breakfast usually also comes with plain yogurt, and most meals have a piece of fruit or pieces of fruit (and tomatoes).  Beverages are either a 16 oz. water bottle or a juice box, and only at some meals, with no rhyme or reason I can see for their inclusion or exclusion.  Every other day they may tuck a packaged snack of some sort, a cookie or candy.  Some dinners also include dried ramen, in case you get hungry between meals or if you don't care for anything you've been given.  

These meals don't resemble the YouTube videos.  It's not that there's not enough of it, or that it's very bad, but it's just not good.  I honestly like Korean food, but I don't think this is what Koreans eat.  It's quite a let down.  All your adult life, you choose what you eat, you get the things necessary for it and make it, or pay someone to make it for you, but always something you choose.  Here there is no choice, and the quality and variety are so variable.  (As I often quote my old psych profs, the two greatest predictors of happiness are predictability and control.)  I realize the irony of saying this as a citizen of a nation that locks innocent kids in cages (which I oppose with every fiber of my being), but it just seems to me that, when the food and the room are considered, the amount of hospitality owed to people you lock in their rooms for 14 days, utterly dependent on you, is a little higher than this.

Why then the deterioration in the quality of the quarantine experience?  Again, some of it is false presentation by vloggers curating their branded lifestyles, and a pox unto them.  But it really does seem that quality has diminished, and I don't know if that's due to the cupidity of the contractors, or funding cuts, or an attempt to subtly discourage all but the most essential visitors, or some combination of all three.

This entry grows too long, and rambles, so I close here.  I will say more about how I structure my days in quarantine in another post.

The road and the miles to Coree

Greetings again from the "Land of the Morning Calm," Korea.  We were last here in 2014, and my, how changed is the experience.

The journey got off to an inauspicious start.  Our trip was supposed to be 1.5 hours to Detroit and then 14-ish hours to Incheon, depending on headwinds.  Instead, during the preflight check in Elmira, already buckled in, it was found one of the engines was malfunctioning.  It would take 4.5 hours to get a replacement plane, and of course we would miss our connection.  This necessitated a four-hour layover in Detroit, five to Los Angeles, another hour's layover at LAX.  But once ensconced in our business-class seats on the way to Incheon, things began to look up again.

At Incheon the troubles were renewed.  I was pulled out of line for a temperature of 37.5°C, which is a low-grade fever.  What kills me is that I was already hauling two heavy bags and didn't want to carry my sweater and coat as well, and thought it might elevate my temperature.  Well, I was right.  The quarantine officer separated me from Laura (she was sent on to her quarantine facility), and I was taken behind a screen to strip off my outer layers.  I subsequently tested at 37.1°C, which is elevated but usually not considered a fever.  Nevertheless, the quarantine officer ordered a dual-swab test, which she said would take 6-12 hours to return a result.

I was ushered to a carrel and told to wait.  Maybe half an hour later, someone came to escort me to the testing site.  As it turned out, this was outside on the tarmac, and I still in my short-sleeved shirt.  But I found the minus-3°C cold infinitely preferable to the nasal swab, which is the most uncomfortable thing I have ever had happen to me that didn't involve a dentist.  (Yes, ladies, I am aware doctors do much worse things to you, but I can only speak to my experience, which, subjectively, was unpleasant.)

I was returned to my cubicle, where I was given a bottle of water and a mylar blanket, and told I could stretch out on the floor to nap if I wanted.  For the next seven hours, I saw no one except a menial who brought me a fish baloney sandwich—three words that should never occur in sequence, anathema sit.  I am not ashamed to admit that as the sixth hour approached, I was beginning to crack up.  I stood up on my chair to look around and saw the terminal deserted.  I gingerly peeked into the other carrels—16 in all—and found mine was the only occupied one in the place.  Had I been forgotten, left to rot in a low-pile-carpeted oubliette?

A bit after the seventh hour, just as I was looking up the U.S. Embassy, a pert young quarantine officer appeared and asked if I had received the test results in my e-mail.  By God, no, woman, or would I still be here?  I would have raised such a hue-and-cry as to have brought half the airport staff running, so on edge was I.  Why I needed to receive it in my e-mail was never explained, and I never needed it for anything else, but this required half an hour of back-and-forth with their IT department to get it successfully into my inbox.  I was then sent to the immigration desk, and after taking my biometrics and pouring over my documents, the immigration officer, confused, sent me to a back office for her supervisor to handle, and the process began anew.  At least this woman's facility with English was good enough for my nervous jokes to land.

Thankfully, my checked bag was still waiting for me at the baggage claim.  I collected this and the customs officer took my declaration slip, dropped it into a basket unexamined, and waived me through.  The cordons corralled me into another cubicle, this one quite sizeable, erected around a low garden, with a desk manned by half a dozen police cadets, all staring intently into their phones.  One looked sleepily through my documents, and told me to sit on the bench for the bus that would take me to my quarantine hotel.  After a few hours, I asked when the bus might come, and was told it was delayed because of the snow, which seemed doubtful, at least from an Upstate New York perspective.  Anything less than six inches is hardly an impediment back home.

Two hours later, after a large group of arrivals joined me, the bus finally showed up.  I think the real story was that I alone was not enough to warrant a pickup, but they were the critical mass.  We boarded and not much later arrived at our quarantine facility.  It turned out to be the Marina Bay Hotel, much hyped in YouTube videos by internees, and shown to have beautiful rooms and a wonderful arrival package.  Surely I was about to be recompensed for all my sorrows.  After more paperwork, and my documents being examined once more, I forked over my $1,680 for the room and was sent up to the 11th floor to lock myself in for the next fourteen days, in peace and comparative luxury.

I think you know where this is headed.

To be continued.

A foreigner's welcome to Liu's Bakery

Since we've arrived in Taiwan, we've been seeing this commercial on TV.  To outward appearances, it's an elderly KMT general brandishing a pistol, suggesting you buy his biscuits or else.  They mystery was killing me, I needed to know what he was saying, and so I scoured the internet.  What he seemed to be selling was branded "Nutricom," so I found an e-mail for Nutricom USA, asking if they knew of the ad and if they could clarify.  Happily, this venerable gent's daughter is in charge over in Florida, and she translated.  Turns out his name is George Liu, and he's selling wheat germ.

"Nutricom has given me strong health and vitality.  This old soldier has none of the Three Highs (cholesterol, blood pressure, sugar).  Modern people eat too well, but rich diets have come to kill!  Nutricom is the weapon to defend your health.  Come to Liu's Bakery and garrison your health.  And don't forget to try our new Sun Biscuits!"

That's a bit of a paraphrase, but essentially it.  His daughter then surprised me with an e-mail saying George wanted to meet me.  A TV celebrity and war hero, how could I resist?  A date was set and I started hunting around for a suitable present.  In Chinese culture, exchanging small gifts is de rigeur, and given his advanced age and venerability, I wanted to make sure I found something to match.  I found a small bonsai tree in a pot, which I thought bespoke dignity and longevity.

It was a rainy morning, so I took a cab to the bakery.  No sooner had I walked in and asked for him, George was right behind me, surrounded by a gaggle of family.  He is a very happy patriarch, and, indeed, very robust for 92.  He saluted, which I returned (Semper paratus!), and he saluted again, this time for my beard.  (It's nothing back home but Taiwanese think it virile and really like it.)  He accepted my gift and we paused for a photo opportunity.  He would tell you his English is poor (it isn't), but he was very jocular and on our way up to his office, he told me he had seven children and 17 grandchildren.  He asked me if I had any children and I said no, and then he offered to give me a few of his as he had some to spare!

We settled in upstairs in a windowless office, nevertheless furnished with chairs made of the tropical hardwoods and tung oil for which Taiwan is famous.  The walls were covered in calligraphy scrolls, which I later learned were George's own handiwork.  He called for tea, and his youngest daughter, visiting from the U.S., translated as necessary.  As I said, George's English is good, but like most people over a certain age, his hearing is diminished.  It's difficult enough to hold a conversation in a foreign language, but especially if you can't hear clearly.

George was born on the Mainland and served in the National Revolutionary Army of the KMT, under Chiang Kai-shek.  He evacuated the mainland for Taiwan in 1949, and, apart from a stint in Florida, has been there ever since.  He left the army and has been in the baking business since 1959.  George is a physical fellow, and likes to touch your hand and shoulder while talking.  In this way, he leaned in to offer a correction: He was a major in the army, not a general, but unlike all of the generals today, he's actually been to war!  I was half-certain the next thing he would say would be to challenge me to arm-wrestle.

A religious man, George got his start in delivering bread by bicycle at the suggestion of a Canadian missionary.  (Allow me to insert a "God save the Queen".)  Indeed, he was wearing a Gideons Society tie that proclaimed Jesus as Lord.  Do you know where God is, he asked.  Up, I gestured.  Yes, but also here, he said, pointing to his chest.  "God is love.  People kill in the name of religion.  But if you have love, everything in the world will turn out fine.  No wars, no hatred," he beamed brightly.

He's had a few near-scrapes with death in his life that I suspect have sharpened his sense of God's agency in his life.  During the Chinese Civil War, he accidentally shot his foot through his holster.  While he was laid up in sickbay, his unit was all but obliterated by the Communists.  "That gun saved my life," he said.  Another time, he was on leave to see his parents, and his mother had made jiaozi, or dumplings.  Oh, I'm sick of them and I'm late in getting back anyway, he said.  His father took him aside and said, Why don't you just have a seat, eat some, and make your poor mother happy?  So he did, and ended up missing his unit's departure.  As with the gunshot wound, his unit was wiped out and his life spared.

The gun in his commercials was a replica, and he let me hold it.  But George values it as a happy reminder of the gun's part in God's plan for his life.  He showed me his major's uniform and photos, recently taken, of how well he had been received on the mainland as an old veteran, on the outskirts of Beijing where he has established a local factory.  These mementos (and also TV commercial props) he keeps in a small bedroom adjacent to his office, which he casually but in all seriousness offered to lend me when I'm next in town.

By the time the war was over, George was in Taiwan and again in sickbay with tuberculosis.  There's no hope for you, he was told, it's just a matter of time.  It was then that he found religion.  Besides, he had too many buddies to avenge to just give up and die!  So Jesus cured him, but he had yet to embrace humility.  What sins do I have to repent of? he asked.  He was out of the army, with no job prospects and no girls who would marry him without one.  His Canadian missionary friend suggested selling bread to the U.S. military.  Around this time he had the breakthrough realization that "God is love," he forgave his enemies, and things started to click for him.

Indistinct from his business interests, George has long been on a crusade to improve people's health.  People eat such garbage, he says, echoing concerns I've had across East Asia, as people increasingly adopt Western foods.  Ever notice the oldest person alive is usually Japanese?  There's a reason for it.  They traditionally don't eat sugar, refined carbs, and vegetable oils, which are central features of the Western diet.

George's magic bullet is wheat germ, which, compared to regular white flour, is high in protein and bran.  I tasted a bun modeled after the ones he ate in the Nationalist army, made from whole wheat flour.  It was dense, but good.  George watched me very closely to see if the bun would meet with my approval.  And it did.  It is dense but toothsome, and, from my experience of American rations, better than anything they vacuum-pack as MREs. (Okay, I admit: I really like the maple nut-cake dessert.  The squeeze cheese and cracker are a guilty pleasure.)

As with other visitors, George had me write in his diary to memorialize the event.  I was sure to endorse his nutritional theory, as I'd seen what the Western diet was doing to the Taiwanese, as it has done to us back home.  Indeed, refined carbohydrates and added sugars are killing us, and everyone abroad to whom we export our diet.  Acknowledging his age, saying he doesn't think God will grant him more than two or three years (may he get 20!), but he says he is writing a book that will encapsulate all his nutritional theories.  I have nothing to add to his wisdom save that he might read Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food.  It might be complex for his English, but he has very patient and loving daughters to translate for him.

He had another appointment for the afteroon, so we had to bring the meeting to a close, but he generously sent me away with samples, literature, and several Chinese Bibles.  I've said before that you don't give a priest a Bible for a present because he likely already has 30, but I make an exception for foreign language editions.  I was just barely manageably laden down with treasures, and I must have looked quite the sight walking the half-mile back to the apartment.

I left Taiwan (this entry having taken me a few months to complete) just as George had asked me to dinner.  I countered that my wife would be in Taiwan this July (as it turns out she won't) but he said he would be summering in Florida (you would have to have experienced Taiwan to understand the logic!).  I don't know when or how but I hope to see George again.  But I feel as though I have more to learn, and he has more to teach.  And beside all that, he is just a damned pleasant fellow.  I will treasure what time I had with him, and if God adds an hour or two, I will be grateful all the years of my life.

I don't know how they say it in Chinese, but as they said at my ordination as a bishop, Ad multos annos—to many years!

Long weekend in Hong Kong, part II

After another excellent breakfast (the Sheraton puts on quite the spread), we headed over to the Hong Kong History Museum.  Immediately we were confronted by a display of 2/3rds-size Star Wars stormtroopers, and then advertisements for a toy exhibit, including Transformers and Gundam.  It would appear the museum knows where the money's at, and is reorienting itself accordingly.  However, the original history exhibit was still there and free, so we went in.

We first toured a section on the formation and geology of the area, followed by prehistoric artifacts and life-size dioramas of paleolithic society.  The next section was the ethnography of South China in the Qing Era, so I assume nothing happened between 8,000 B.C. and 300 years ago.  We saw the floating home of some Boatdwellers, a shy Cantonese people who spend much of their lives afloat; and mockups of a bourgeois home and a humbler city dwelling.  There was a section on Chinese opera and lion dances, a giant festival tower made of buns, and a mockup of a Taoist temple.

The next section was colonial history, starting with the Opium Wars, followed by the British opening up shop and the founding of HSBC.  There were mockups of upper- and middle-class Chinese homes, a grocery, and printing and telegraphy offices, all in a replica Hong Kong neighborhood from 1900.  Then we wound our way to displays relating to the Japanese invasion in 1942.  Unlike Taiwan, Hongkongers did not find Japanese occupation to be a pleasant thing.  Still, they didn't dwell on Japanese atrocities much, and half the display was given over to the Japanese surrender in 1945.

Post-WWII was an economic boom for Hong Kong, in both banking and manufacturing, culminating in the roaring 1980s.  We milled past bright, shiny consumer goods and trappings of prosperity.  At this point, however, there began to be mentions made of the 1997 handover, and as the exhibit continued, and we came closer to the date, I became increasingly depressed.  Hong Kong, after all, was British.  They had never experienced republican or Communist rule.  It was a bit of a betrayal and not unlike trying to hand Florida back to the Spanish.

(Though, every U.S. presidential election, I seriously give the idea thought.  Maybe the French would like the Louisiana Purchase back, too.)

The exhibit more or less ended with the handover, as though time had stopped in 1997.  Of course it hadn't, but discussing events since then would be necessarily political, and HKers have felt like they've been treading water the last 20 years, with Beijing looming larger and larger in their lives.  We left the museum, had lunch at a Thai restaurant, seated beneath the paternal and reassuring gaze of the late Thai King Rama IX.  We then hoofed it back to the hotel, booked a harbor cruise for the evening, and had a nap.

Our first choice of conveyance, a motor junk with red sails, was booked up already, and the next evening wouldn't be available as HK was going dark for Earth Hour.  So we got tickets for a more conventional vessel, which happened to be twice as long a ride and with an open bar.  At the appointed hour after dark, we boarded the two-deck passenger boat and headed to the open upper deck.  Most nights, the skyscrapers put on a coordinated lights-and-laser show.  It's not as amusing as they sell it to be. But I had some nice watery Chinese beer, Laura had her cocktail, and once the light show was over, simply enjoyed being afloat, by turns overhauling or being overhauled by the red junk, our nautical dance partner.

Eventually we were put back ashore, and Laura, having had two rum-and-Cokes, was feeling munchy.  Lucky for us, food trucks lined the way back to the hotel.  We ended up with fried dumplings, scallion-and-ham pancakes, a strangely sweet montecristo sandwich, and something intriguingly branded a "Burger of Sorrow".  This turned out to be an egg on a porkchop on a bun, and the "Sorrow" part was a reference to a classic Cantonese movie we'd never heard of.  In the U.S., this thing would doubtless be covered in jalapenos and ghost chile sauce, to invoke real sorrow, but fortunately we were half a world away.  Full of greasy street food, we went to sleep on beds much softer then we've been used to in Taiwan, which are amazingly still softer than those in Korea.

The next morning, after again tanking up at the hotel buffet, we took the metro north and east to the outskirts of Kowloon, to see the Nan Lian Zen gardens, adjoining the Chi Lin convent.  It is a fairly large walled park in the middle of urban sprawl, and fairly well insulated against noise by the wall.  It's hard to describe the gardens, except that each turn of the winding paths present a new vision of the Buddhist Pure Land.  There are water features, fuzzy pines, and great "virtuous" stones transplanted from who knows where.  Gardeners silently trim the grass with hand shears.  The whole place was replete with excellent spots for a nap, were there no security guards roaming the place.  There was a golden pagoda in the middle of the lake, along with koi fish.  They were not particularly interested in people, as feeding them is forbidden and they can tell a stranger from whoever's job it is to feed them.  Koi are very smart.

We popped our heads into a pavilion where they were displaying works by students at a pottery school the nuns had sponsored to be run by a famous master potter.  Indeed, the gardens themselves were a partnership between the nuns and the city.  For being aloof from the world, these venerable ladies can cut a deal.  Having circled at least the larger part of the gardens, we headed across the road to the convent (or "nunnery" as the signs had it) to see these wizened lady-monks for ourselves.

Alas, they were nowhere to be seen.  The place is lavishly constructed on the usual Chinese model of outer, middle, and inner hall, with two courtyards.  Behind the third hall there are dormitories, which is where we suspect the nuns were cloistered during the day.  The first courtyard featured lotus ponds, but beyond the threshold to the middle hall, no photography was allowed.  All around the second courtyard were shrines with giant gold Buddhas.  Incense wafted from every direction, and a PA system droned "Amitofo," the Chinese name for the Amida Buddha, being chanted over and over.  When we'd absorbed enough sanctity, we exited through the gift shop, where Laura found a nice purse possibly made by the nuns.  I doubt we'll ever know for sure.

We made our way back to the metro and took it all the way to HK Island and the Hong Kong Maritime Museum.  If there's anything I like, it's old nautical shit.  We first had lunch on the top floor in a bistro usefully and charmingly staffed by adults with developmental disabilities.  We then paid our way into the exhibits enjoyed  all sort of models, replicas, dioramas, and artifacts.  Laura was very pleased to find a giant lighthouse lens (glass, of course), and I stepped into a bridge simulator run by merchant navy cadets.  Now, granted, my competition were children who enjoyed smashing the simulated passenger ferry into things, but my piloting impressed the cadets, I could tell.  I sailed the length of a simulated Victoria Bay with nary a near-miss.  I believe I stepped out of that museum a couple inches taller.

We took a real ferry back to Kowloon to rest up before dinner.  We came back to signs telling us the hotel would be observing Earth Hour and dimming the lights.  This might have proved interesting, as we decided to dine in the traditional Cantonese restaurant located in the hotel.  Laura got the tofu (usually a safe bet), but I figured if I was in a foreign land, and the company is paying for it (after all, these are the people that make me live in Nowhere, NY), I was going for the whole hog, by which I mean fried squab and a chicken and frog legs stew.  Laura wasn't thrilled with her dinner, alas, but I rather enjoyed pigeon, and the frog legs were the best I've ever had, scarcely distinguishable from the chicken apart from being bone-in.  Laura had a light, floral tea, and I went for the pu-erh, a completely fermented tea I'd come to enjoy in Hong Kong.

The promised dimming of the lights had not happened, and the only candles were the tea lights under our respective teapots.  We decided to take dessert in the rooftop lounge to see how Earth Hour had changed the skyline.  It was definitely subdued compared to usual, but it was still light enough to read by.  Surely HK has a record somewhere for light pollution.  Without blackout curtains, I'm not sure I would have slept the weekend at all.

Having gone to bed and rising again to enjoy our last lavish hotel breakfast, we climbed into a cab and headed back to the airport.  Apart from the trials and vagaries of air travel, not much remains to be said.  Taiwan immigration hardly looked at my passport before stamping it with another 90 day visa.  Not to be preachy, but it's amazing how disinterested immigration officials can be when their country isn't hated by half the world.  Such comparisons--which country does what differently and possibly better--are one of the intellectual joys of international travel.