Kitty in Taiwanderful

Finally uploaded some pictures from my trip earlier this year.

This is my Ohana.

Happy Friday!

apple

 [source: appleadayproject.wordpress.com]

me: Do you have apple stock?
dad: No.
me: Why not?
dad: I'm asking myself the same thing.

democracy.

 

I am now a fan of rest stops. But only the one in Taiwan with the awesome food court.

By awesome, the one with green onion pancakes wrapped around a chinese sausage with white pepper and curry powder. The vendors that sell this also provide a container of fresh, peeled garlic cloves to add some extra yum to your breath. So everyone you run into will smell its goodness and know that they missed out on something delicious.

Anyways, the rest stop is where we waited before picking up my mother from the train station.
I asked her about her ride. Most people's responses usually include something like "good" or "bumpy" or "the crying baby hurt my ears". That is MOST people. My mother's response was, "I tried to spread democracy to some Chinese tourists."

Apparently, her conversation with some tourists from China on the train went something like this:
Mom: Have you heard about our upcoming election?
Tourist: Yes. It reminds me of China's Cultural Revolution.
Mom: It's nothing like the Cultural Revolution. This is a democratic election. Do you guys have elections?
Tourist: No.

Never a bore. No time to snore.

That is life when my mom is present.
There is never a dull moment.
She is like a whirlwind that picks you and sweeps you off to some place you didn't expect to go and make life much more interesting.

I just realized I never wrote about what happened when my mother visited two months ago. Time flies!
From what I recall, I received an email on a Monday. She said she was arriving on the 14th. I thought "Yay! After all the confusion and drama, she's actually coming!". Then I glanced over at the calendar. If today is the 13th.... the 14th is TOMORROW!?! If the flight is 13 hours long she should be boarding today and is anyone going to send me any information? A flight number or general arrival time would be nice...

Tuesday also happened to be my final for my night course. She said no worries she'd take a shuttle to the hotel nearby. Around 3pm I received a call from my dad, in China, saying she changed her mind I should pick her up from the airport. After class I drove to SFO to pick her up. It was late. Her flight was early and she had already been in the states for 5 hours. My dad called to ask if I had found her. No luck. I paged her a few times and waited. After half an hour I received a call from my mom. She finally got a hold of a working phone and was already at the hotel. In my post-final, sleep deprived state I had failed to even consider checking my voicemails. Apparently, she had quite the adventure on a share van traveling the entire bay area before reaching the hotel. She walked to the nearest and purchase a phone card that was not working. Her hotel phone was not working either. The hotel staff were not terribly helpful. When I arrived the single person at the front desk, who I had just talked to on the phone 10 minutes earlier, was on the phone and in between bits of conversation, informed me she was off-duty and I would have to wait for the person with the next shift to arrive to answer any questions.

As a sighed a heavy sigh and almost fell asleep while standing, my mom stormed out of the elevator dragging all her luggage because her room phone was still non-functioning. Finally. Near midnight, we were finally reunited.

MORAL: Always check your voicemail. Even if no one ever leaves you voicemail. Check it. It could be the difference between driving 70miles and 7miles.


THAT was the first 7 hours with my mother.
Later that week she rented a car. She had Places to go, People to see, and Things to buy. One of those places was rainy Oregon. Some of those people were old Oregonian friends. Some of those things were half of Costco. Not really, just more than I've spent at Costco, ever. But I rarely venture into Costco. I usually stop by for the gas. If you are ever thinking of going somewhere for a shopping trip, Oregon has no sales tax. If you are like me and are not used to driving in rain, I recommend going during the summer.


RECENTLY, my incredibly active grandmother has taken a turn for the worst. She was a mountain climber. She climbed hundreds of mountains in Taiwan. Just a few years ago her daily walks around the neighborhood included carrying a backpack with books, not because she was going to school, but for the extra weight. Yes, she was that hardcore. Last year she had quite a great fall. Now she spends her days lying in a hospital bed. Off I go to see her.


I'll be celebrating Thanksgiving across the globe in a country where people seem to eat 10x more than Americans and never get any bigger. Wish me luck.

Emergency family reunions.

Recently, some of my coworkers have had family members pass away. One of my coworkers I talk to about making videos with actually made a video for his father's memorial. It was beautiful. There were sepia-toned Leave It to Beaver-style shots from childhood, black-and-white photos covering his years in the air force (?) to his marriage, colored photos of life after the military with children, and finally beautiful close-ups of him in old age when he became a bit more sickly. I'd say the man lived a fascinatingly full life. It was like the history of photography. The ending was a bit more grim but something that stuck out at me was the photos of the family reunions. It seemed like every year the whole family gathered for a camping trip, and it was a rather size-able family. The father wore a sweatshirt with a picture of the clan covered in messages and signatures, like what you do at camp when you're a kid. (sidenote: I was devastated when my grandma saw my chinese camp shirt and washed 3/4 of my signatures away because the shirt looked dirty - there was writing all over it. Always use sharpie!) Even at 80 he was running around the baseball diamond in the annual softball game.

Family reunions are so great!
I'm not talking about holidays. I mean a specific date you when set work and everything else aside and everyone meets in one place with the goal to enjoy each others company. You get to see people and remember oh yes, I am related to you. It's a nice break from normal life to just be with family and reflect on roots and hear old stories about your parents. Now that my family is spread out all over the world, it seems like the only time everyone will actually stop their lives to gather together is for a funeral. I was rather close to my grandparents. My grandparents made an effort to be a part of every grandchild's life, especially to help out when the kids were young. But for other people in other families, it seems a lot of people don't know their relatives well. I am terrible at keeping in touch.

My point,
when there is a death in the family and you report it to work. Everyone has the general understanding, do not bother this person in their time of grief. Work practically ushers you to go be with your family. Because that's what you're SUPPOSED to do. Suddenly, family is terribly important. But what if you barely knew the person who passed? Shouldn't it be more relevant to usher workers to spend time with their family, to actually get to know their family prior to death so that you can truly appreciate the person's life and genuinely mourn their passing?

Work should encourage family reunions. 
Oh, you are going off to be with your family? Your relatives are flying in from Alaska, South Africa and Denmark? Go have a great time bonding! Don't worry about telecommuting and spending your whole time working at the computer. We won't ask a thing from you. We know you are with your family.

What would a world like that be?
There was a story on NPR about the 85th reunion of a black family.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129005346
Someone commented family reunions may be more of a tradition in black families originating from Reconstruction. Family members that had been separated during times of slavery made an effort to travel all over the US to be reunited.