John & Belle Have A Blog

All Better

Well, I was the recipient of Christian faith-healing today. A Singaporean friend is, like many people in Singapore, a devout Christian of some born-again type (all those people are some variety of Pentacostals, right?) Her church is, at the moment, held in the Holiday Inn down by Great World City, in a ballroom, with the Sunday school groups one floor down, but they are planning to build a church in a sort of industrial park out in Jurong. As someone whose family is Episcopalian, I find the aesthetics of this all wrong, and the church experience itself way too exuberant. It's like they're all fired up about being redeemed by Christ! That never happens to Episcopalians!

Today they had a young guy preaching, an American of Filipino descent, who is a renowned healer. Cures lepers and everything. So, my friend made me promise a while ago I would come and bring the girls so we could all get healed. This was obviously meant in a loving spirit, and it's not like it's going to hurt or anything, so I said yes. I was regretting that as I dragged myself out of bed this morning, but it was OK once I got up.

They had a concert first, with a quite decent band playing "Our God is an Awesome God"-type songs in a "rock" way--which pretty much amounted to cleaned-up late 90s grunge. Again, I find this rather jarring. Then Zoë went down to Sunday school (where she has been before, because she's a Christian. She decided this when she was four and I figure I'm not going to stop her. I basically gave her a precis of the major world religions and she thought Christianity sounded great from the first time she heard about it. No general waffling about God, either, she explained "I believe Jesus is the son of God." I was like, well, Christian it is then.) and Violet stayed up with me because she was shy. She sat on my lap very quietly the whole time, occasionally interjecting "what is he talking about" and "that guy is crazy!"

He explained that he can perform miracles because it says right in the bible that there will be signs and wonders, and that if you believe you'll be able to heal the sick (and raise the dead, actually, but he can't do that). Which it does! And he told us about lots of people he had healed in the Philippines, one of whom is an MTV VJ whom he converted from Catholicism. The best story was about this one guy who, in addition to having some ailment was upset about being shorter than his fiancee. You might think this is too trivial for God to worry about, but it isn't! All the hairs on your head, etc. So he made the guy taller. He also goes into nightclubs in the Philippines to do this. And fights against witchcraft! Of course, lots of people do practice witchcraft in the Philippines, bomohs, and people who will cast curses for you. It's sort of funny to think of him having real witches to struggle with (for some value of real witches). He also casts out demons, which sometimes causes people to vomit. We went up at the end to get healed, and Violet got upset that Zoë was downstairs and would miss it, so my friend's daughter went and got her. Everybody was crowding around (and indeed there seemed to be some outbreaks of healing-related kiasu cropping up as people jostled for position), but I got nicely shoved to the front on account of carrying a kid around so long.

In the actual healing part he laid hands on each of us in turn and prayed for our various ailments to be healed. He said that Zoë was an unusually sensitive child and prayed for her to be freed from the spirit of fear in addition to her general weakness and stuff. He gets full marks for that, I have to say, and it was out of the blue without talking to any of us. Everybody in the crowd pressed around to touch us too and pray for us. In the laying on of hands stuff I did feel a sort of thrill, like I've felt before in a martial arts class when the instructor did various things to get his hands charged up with chi and let you feel a before and after. Afterwards I was just tired.

If we're all 100% better tomorrow I guess I'm honor-bound to turn Christian. It was a very loving thing for my friend to do and an interesting experience, even though earnest Christians make me feel uncomfortable. The thing is, the actual content of Christian beliefs is really exciting, and in a way it makes more sense to be all hyped about Jesus than it does to read from the Book of Common Prayer in a tasteful, restrained way. Nonetheless I find it weird in a way that I think I don't find devout Muslim people weird. Maybe it's something about the US political and cultural context. I feel like there's something very American about this particular kind of positive, you-can-become-a-new-person-and overcome-all-life-obstacles!-message.

Also, Help Out Gary Farber If You Can

OK, I wrote that post because I didn't want to tell you what happened today, which is that:

A) I had to go to the hospital and have a CT scan because a new doctor who doesn't know me well decided that severe abdominal pain and nausea (which I have all the time!) might mean something was, you know, wrong and stuff. Great big thing like a room divider made of iPod, shiny and white and a big chrome ring around the central hole, and a barely-visible wheel inside, spinning crazily fast. Minor radioactive enema, always good for a laugh, but the weird thing was when they injected the iodine-doped fluid for the scan. The nurse was very nice and reassured me she was there and narrated the procedure, but she told me "you're going to feel hot and your throat might taste like metal" about 15 seconds too late. That was a long time to have the utterly new and unwelcome sensation in which the genuine heat you might feel on your face as you sit a couple of feet from a fire was insinuated all through me from the inside. And the metal taste, but whatever. And of course nothing was wrong and I just spent $750 on nothing! But then, I guess that's better than something being wrong. Unless it were something wrong that anyone knew anything about but was not terrible and they could actually fix, in which case, bring that shit on! So they're sending me back for a colonoscopy.

B) we captured our (now pregnant) stray cat, one of two calico sister kittens we've been feeding since we moved in, and took her to be spayed. John took her, actually, because I was at the hospital, but I had to go get her this evening. Poor thing had her eyes dilated like nickels and was panicking in the pet carrier with the plastic cone on her head. But the vets hadn't had a cone small enough (she's a tiny cat) and they had tried to kludge it with some feeble plastic rope-stuff, but it was loose enough that she got her front paw in it, all stuck along the side of her head! And then she freaked out and was hurling herself about the piss-covered box, scrabbling against the sides, and I couldn't reach in because she'd streak out and/or scratch the mother-loving daylights out of me. I had to wait to free her till I got home and could put a leather glove on. She was good, really, but the cone came off altogether which I don't like. And we have to give her medicine! This is comical because she is feral and barely lets anyone touch her (we did capture them once before and get them their shots, and the vet came out with the carrier of hissing kitten fury and a distinctly rumpled look to say next time we had to bring them in one at a time.) We'll manage, I guess. But what are we going to do with the other 5 kittens (and their mother, and mostly-grown boy cat Omega) we are currently feeding so they can turn the paved front yard of our house into a foul-smelling lunar landscape over which painfully thin kittens stagger in the heat? What? Like, stop feeding them and watch them all die? Chase them away? Or continue with our current strategy of feeding them all at random intervals, a strategy which will yield 10-to-the-28th-power kittens in a matter of months?

On the upside, provided the girls both go to school tomorrow, I will have achieved my dream of a full week of school for both of them at the same time, and Violet and Zoë are both gaining weight nicely. And that was all we really cared about anyway, right? On the other upside, I have credit cards to max out money to pay for medical care, while some people like Gary Farber are stone broke and trying to move across the country and still not qualifying as disabled for some stupid reason. So chuck some pennies in the hat if you got'em, folks. And tell me what to do about the kittens.  And no, it's not the case that we'll somehow end up with a lot of Gary Farbers this way.

Lonicera Frangrantissima

An article in the NYT Style section on men dyeing their hair in a more natural-looking way by increasing the pepper to salt ratio primed me to particularly notice this woman's white hair. I think it looks so beautiful when women have long white hair, like the my beloved paternal grandmother, or the great-great-grandmother in the Princess and the Goblin. I loved that book when I was young. I used to go to a pre-school in Bluffton, S.C. right down the bluff from our house (I'm pretty sure I've told this story already, but too bad.) It was run by the "Miss Reddy's", two spinster sisters who had taught my dad when he was a kid. I have just a few really vivid memories of the place.

I was standing out by the bluff once and a great blue heron flew up and landed there, just a few feet away. The damn thing was as tall as I was, suddenly looking sinister with its snaky neck. Another day I came to school early and the older of the Miss Reddy's was sitting in the doorway in a chair. They had a huge "Breath of Spring" there over the door, which is one of the sweetest-smelling plants in the world. It blooms in the early, early spring--which is to say, winter, pretty much. Not strong like a gardenia but delicate and intense, and it can carry a long way across a field like a slender thread of sweetness. It would be taking dramatic license to tell you it was February and she was sitting under a huge arch of little white flowers turning ivory as they aged, so let's just say it was September so my memoir doesn't have to be pulped before I can even start peddling my ass on a book tour.

Anyway, Miss Reddy Majora had taken her crown of braids down and was brushing all her hair, longer than I'd ever imagined it was, shining down over her humped back and thin shoulders. It must have been down to her waist. I thought of the Princess's great-great-grandmother and for a numinous while felt like I might be about to step Into a Tale. Sometimes I turn and look at my girls and think that this might be that time for them, right now. While for me it's only--

I myself have inherited my maternal grandmother's hair. It stayed mostly chestnut brown, right to the end.

I Give Up

I've struggled against this for a long time now, but I'm starting to fucking hate Hillary Clinton.

Just a few family pics

Yes, we're still alive. Just busy. Here are a couple pics from Mei Mei's B-day party. She had a Miniscule cake. I ordered the DVD's all the way from France. Then, when I asked her what her best present was, she said: the balloons.

Musical chairs.

That's the black spider on the cake. If you know "Miniscule", you know who I mean. Here are a couple snaps from the park. I took the girls to ride bikes and feed the turtles and catfish. Catfish and turtles will fight over bread, did you know that?

Safety first.

Happy Birthday Violet!

Weeel, we're improving-ish. It was Violet's 4th birthday on the 22nd, and although this may linger in my bitter memory as the year we put a "4" candle on a pink frosted doughnut from the grocery store, she actually had a fine time and enjoyed lying around on her little water-filled fever cooling mat and watching Barbie Mariposa. The touch and go question has been whether she'll be well enough for her party Saturday and I think she will. I had to do some work today setting up photo shoots at my house for Singapore Home and Décor magazine, and I wanted to cancel it because I'm so sick but I already had to reschedule once with them because Violet was in the hospital, so I just gutted it out and it was OK. If I can just get through the birthday party itself then I can relax. And then...something? I know we're going to get a lot better than this. I've been enjoying the work for the magazine as a "stylist" where I basically do crafty stuff and arrange it attractively. I'll tell you more about it when I feel better.

Words Fail Me

Well, this is so boring and pitiful that I haven't even wanted to post on our blog, but anyway. Zoë got better and went to school 2 days last week, while Violet rocked one solid week of school for the first time in like 3 months. We went over to a friend's house and had dinner Friday, hung out, the girls got to play with my friend's kids' hamsters and see them roll around in the plastic rolly balls (always fun.) Isn't it nice to see Violet up and about! we said, hubristically, imagining her febrile activity was jolly good health. Why not decide to beat the sea with flails while we were at it! Then when I got in the cab to go home and put her on my lap I thought...it felt like she had a fever. Because she did! 103 wonderful degrees of fun! So we were going to take her to the doctor the next morning but by the time we got up here fever was in the danger zone of 104+ so we took her to the ER. Nothing wrong in the UTI front, she's just got a bad cold, basically, which I do too. We've been sponging with water, and waking up every six hours to take ibuprofen, and blah blah blah. Violet's birthday is tomorrow, but her party isn't until next Saturday. If she's too sick to have a party I actually am going to cry, with real tears and everything. The theme of her party this year is Minuscule, a French show about bugs which everyone should watch. It's like silent film, there's no words, only sounds effects, and beautiful animation that combines digital effects with real photos. The flash-based (yet non-terrible!) site looks different in the day than at night and changes with the seasons. There are a few videos on the site, you should watch them. Also, I changed gears a while ago to make this a more family-friendly blog, cursing-wise, but I'd just like to say, what the fucking fuck?

That Last Step Is...

Zoë's doing OK-ish, although I'm having trouble getting her to take her antibiotics. This is only natural since the granules have persistently refused to melt in the water and thus it is like drinking wet sand. I would probably barf that up too.

Moving on to more pleasant topics, you should look at this amazing house in California (watch the slideshow). I really want a walnut ceiling now. Lots of beautiful houses in Bali have, like this one, a pool right in the middle of them, or sliding doors that open onto a pool. It does look beautiful, but isn't it the worst drowning hazard ever? Can you be certain no one with a toddler or small child is ever going to visit you, ever? Even drunk adults might fall in there with bad results, seems to me.

I am Tired

This week we decided to mix it up a bit, so Zoë has had a horrible flu-like thing and 40C fever. Lots of sponging with lukewarm water and being bothered by imaginary bugs. She seems better today. Violet was well enough to go to a birthday party today for her best friend at school, Nora. It was at a stable in Pasir Ris park where you can ride ponies, although Violet felt too shy to ride a pony. She mostly just sat in Daddy's lap; she's still not her bouncy self. I would like my children to both be well enough to attend school for an entire week, both of them. Is that so fucking much to ask?

I'm getting cranky, or some combination of cranky and really worried and upset. I had to go to the doctor myself (naturally) and he was like, you seem a bit stressed. Hmmm, ya think? Our new-ish local doctor is really sweet and  old, with a charming bedside manner, wild eyebrows, and a yellowed diploma from the University of Malaya. He reminds me of my pediatrician when I was a kid, Dr. King. His home/office was right on one of the squares in Savannah, I think maybe the one on Habersham and East President, a brick house with stairs up to the front door. He had been a colleague of my grandfather Dr. A.J. Waring Jr. He had a big...well, glass menagerie, I guess you'd call it. Sometimes he would give us an animal if we were very good, like a little glass zebra with clear glass legs that were shaped like swirls of cake frosting. Here in Singapore they give the children sweets, and I know a Danish mom who complains about it because it's not healthy. I guess I don't care.

Who the hell is Marlena?

Obviously I should know what this is about, but I don't. (From the comments: "all of the john/belle moments are so adorable! that kinda makes me sad because i never had that kind of connection with my own dad. but this is a really good clip of all three of them.")

90% Interest Rates Draw Lenders

This is an interesting article in the NYT about a microfinance lender in Mexico that is a for-profit, publicly traded company. You always hear in discussions of charity microlending that the default rates are incredibly low. Special measures are taken, such as lending almost exclusively to women and having the women form groups whose loans (and defaults) are pooled. And obviously, the transaction costs on making many small loans would have to be much higher than fewer, bigger loans. Nonetheless, I always wondered why the market didn't attract for-profit lenders, if the repayment rates were really so good.

Well, in this case it has. The non-profit lenders, and the man who came up with the idea, economist Muhammad Yunus, are opposed to the encroaches of for-profit companies that will be run for the benefit of their investors. As long as the for-profit lenders don't get the government to lean on their idealistic competitors it seems to me it would be all to the good--the funds of "ethical" investors can be put to work in underserved markets, and the original, non-profit orgs should be able to offer better rates in areas where they compete.

As I typed this entry, I wondered, do these organizations ever get protested against on gender fairness grounds? "You dickheads will just drink up the money" isn't a very conciliatory response, even if it's well-founded...Desultory googling yields this possible link between access to microfinance and becoming the victim of domestic violence for women in Bangladesh, but that wasn't exactly what I was thinking of. Except insofar as I was thinking about dickheads. The microfinance discrimination far exceeds anything like variable rates for car insurance; from everything I've read they just basically don't loan money to men. This may not result in serious injustice to the male would-be entrepreneurs as a class if men have access to traditional sources of credit closed to women in a society, but it could still be pretty unfair in any given case. It strikes me that the sort of people who would strongly object to this are the same people who would laud accurate, dispassionate risk assessment in other financial areas, but making up imaginary political opponents with contradictory views is unseemly, so I'll stop there.

UPDATE: mere seconds later, I am moved to ask, day-um, what's in that cheese? That looks gooood.  Mmm, mysterious queso.

Basic Architecture

Zoë did this one freehand, using only a ruler. And a book about Greek architecture.

Speaking of basic architecture: I'm finally getting around to installing Leopard on our desktop iMac. Here's the thing. I actually tried it once and it encountered some problem, causing it to eject the disc summarily at a certain point. Somewhat nervouse-making, when one might be betwixt and between systems. But maybe our machine isn't meant to take it. Our specs are as follows:

Machine Name:    iMac G5
Machine Model:    PowerMac8,1
CPU Type:    PowerPC G5  (3.0)
Number Of CPUs:    1
CPU Speed:    1.8 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU):    512 KB
Memory:    1 GB
Bus Speed:    600 MHz

I would have thought a G5 with 1.8 GHz processing speed was good enough. Supposedly you only need G4 and 800+Mhz. But maybe the Bus speed is too slow. I dunno. Should I just try again?

Will a machine like this run slow on Leopard. It runs just fine with what we've got. Maybe I don't even need the upgrade. What do you think?

Would The Architect of Glass-Steagall Please Come On Down

Nice to see the Washington Post offer a little straight talk about America's most mavericky, mavericking maverick ever and his array of contradictory (yet evil!) economic advisers:

One of them helped deregulate the financial services industries in the 1990s, and now sits in the corporate suites of Swiss banking giant UBS, which yesterday announced $19 billion in investment losses tied to the crumbling U.S. real estate market. The other pushed one of the most aggressive and controversial mergers of the technology boom, then was sacked by the disenchanted board of Hewlett-Packard.

Former senator Phil Gramm, with his aw-shucks Texas drawl, may at first blush have little in common with Carly Fiorina, the telegenic former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard. But they share a bond: Both are leading economic advisers of Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the presumptive Republican nominee for president, and both have reputations as the kind of aggressive capitalists that may be sliding from favor as the nation's economy edges toward recession....

The spiraling crisis in the credit and housing markets has kept Gramm in focus, fairly or not. His employer, UBS, revealed yesterday that investment losses tied to the U.S. housing market reached $37 billion over the last six months. For the last three months, UBS posted a $12 billion loss.

Gramm, UBS's vice chairman, said yesterday he was "totally unaware" of his bank's massive holdings of securities tied to subprime mortgages, but, he added, "I'm confident we'll recover."

OK, a) it seems one could be either totally unaware of the state of the bank's balance sheet, or justly confident in its solvency, but surely not both. B), could we please make a national agreement to stop pretending that people's southern or Texan accents mean they're some sort of bumpkin naïf likely to be scared by the horseless streetcars and complex derivative swaps of the big city? FFS.

We're Home!!

Violet is doing better and we are back home. Yay us. Maybe next week she can even go to school! Zoë missed us, as it was the longest time she's gone without Mei Mei ever (I did go to the states for Thanksgiving last year leaving them both behind, a cruel maneuver in exchange for which I am taking them to East Hampton in July.) I am still very queasy, which is a strangely present-to-consciousness annoyance. Now I can get back to life's simple pleasures, like making fun of Jonah Goldberg. A reader asks, "What works of [Eric Voegelin's] did you reference for your article? Or, what works would you recommend as a starting point?" Goldberg backpedals furiously:

Me: First, I should be very clear: I am not an expert on Voegelin. I have not read most of his writings. For they are numerous and often very, very, difficult.  I have read a bunch of the stuff that I found I had to read for my book. But rather than suggest this or that book or essay, I think a great and very useful place to start would be Michael Federici's excellent book Eric Voegelin: The Restoration of Order (published by the indispensable ISI books). It is very accessible while at the same time being faithful to Voegelin's work — as best I can tell at least. It even has a glossary of Voegelin's most important-yet-esoteric terms. It made reading the primary sources a lot easier, for me at least.

I bet it made "reading the primary sources" a lot easier.

Zoë is feeling a bit glum about the whole Mei-Mei situation. It freaked her out to visit the hospital and see Mei-Mei pretty out of it. "Why isn't she talking to me?" But later Mei-Mei was smiling and watching her Barbie Swan Lake video. Anyway, I read some Owly books with Zoë and she cheered up:

She's copying the cover of "Flying Lessons", which you can see and preview here.