John & Belle Have A Blog

All Alone

John and the girls set off for Oregon today (via Narita, LAX, and SFO.) It seems...super-quiet around here. It has been endlessly raining in Singapore lately, even triggering some serious floods. One in particular flooded a lot of low-level stores along Orchard Road (the main shopping street). The Hermès store was fully inundated, up to the ceiling, destroying who knows how many hundreds of thousands worth of leather bags etc. I assume they have a policy of destroying damaged goods rather than letting employees make off with a soggy Kelly bag. One imagines a hecatomb at Hermès headquarters, with high-level employees scattering barley on the unfortunate luggage before consigning it to the pyre. I went by it tonight and it is still closed tight, with signature orange stretched across every window and door.

Earlier, however, it was sunny, and I worked on my tan. It's a tough job, but...um, no one needs to do it, actually, but it's awesome. When I come downstairs and find that the coffee fairy has been there (otherwise known as our new helper Malou; our long-time helper Tena has retired after 9 years working for us to her house in the Philippines) I have to reflect on my privilege. You all please remind me never to complain about anything, ever. (OK, being sick and my children being sick, that's still on the table). But on the whole I have a wonderful, amazing life and am feeling pretty grateful now.

It's John's first time taking the girls across the Pacific by himself, but I'm sure they'll be fine. The girls are seasoned travelers after all. I'll be meeting them in NY and flying back via Frankfurt after visiting my dad in Bluffton S.C. John and I, handing the kids off as we are, each have a round-trip, but the girls will be flying all around the world. Singapore/Narita/LAX/SFO/Eugene/JFK/Frankfurt/Singapore, plus a train ride from NYC to Savannah, GA and back (we're doing the sleeper car thing, which is great fun). It's strange because you have a general sense that your children will be like you in some important sense, but really their childhood is so different from mine that it's incomprehensible.

Noooooooooes!

My grandma's house in Savannah is for sale (my paternal grandmother Henrietta). My dad sold it for something in the low $200,000s in 2001, and it is currently going for $965,000. To be fair, they put in a lot of work and there were likely structural issues. On the other hand, they didn't put in no $700,000. I have always been heartbroken about it, but my dad reasonably asked, do you want to live there now? To which the answer was no. I wanted to fix it up and rent it, not for income, but just to keep the house in the family until some nebulous future in which I want to live there. But my dad didn't want to be in charge of expensive renovation followed by the hassles of being a small landlord---fair enough. I imagine there is some property management company that could do it for you? And we could offer a long lease? But even if we retire sometime in the dim future and move to the area we'll probably live in my dad's house or the other house we are entitled to build on the property (we got a conservation easement which entitles us to build one more house, but the rest has to stay undeveloped forever. Brilliant idea on my dad's part, and he talked quite a number of neighbors into it too, thereby preserving more of the beautiful May River.) I imagine me and my brother living there side by side as crotchety old people telling those kids to get off our darn lawn. But, it's Grandma's house. Haunted like a mofo, but I'm used to that. The precious, we wants it.

Violet Naiad

Today Violet learned to put her head totally under the surface of the water for the first time. She was wearing goggles and holding her nose, but we all have to start somewhere. I showed her the thrill of the "underwater tea party", in which one pours and consumes imaginary tea--underwater! I don't know that she'll quite be ready for the surf at the Wainscott beach by July, but she may surprise us. John and I have been very lazy in teaching our kids to swim; I suppose I was imagining they'd just figure it out on their own at some point. It was interesting when I had the fence put up around the pool; the Singaporean contractors were mystified as to why I would want to, and totally unable to supply me with a self-closing latch, though I did eventually get them to put a spring on the gate. I'm going to have to buy one in a U.S. hardware store and bring it back.

Me, my bro and my cousin Bobby at my G-dad's pool.

Me and my sister in G-dad's pool.

Me, Mia, my grandmother Nannie, and my mom.

Looking out from our current kitchen towards the pool.

Bigelow

My brother's (now former) employer, rocking the space entrepreneurship. Long-time readers know he spent many months in a former Soviet missile base overseeing the launch of the 1/3-scale test modules, eating dubious meatballs which cycled through the Platonic solids. He was laid off in a cost-cutting move, but he had achieved his dream of space-lawyerin' and was finding he wanted more responsibility. His brains were being somewhat wasted on repetitive work, I think. Since we all know that living well is the best revenge, he has been working on getting his pilot's licence and is traveling around the world with his girlfriend. They are currently in some Scottish islands or other. Yes, it's a tough job, but someone's got to do it. I'm not sure if they're coming back to the states for one last summer in my Grandad's place or just continuing on till they eventually reach Singapore, using our place as a base from which to travel in SE Asia. Why more of my relatives don't take advantage of this scheme is beyond me, I must say. Confidential to my dad: they have fully flat beds in SQ business class now! We considered getting business class tickets to go to the states this year--or rather, I considered it but since the price differential for all four of us would be SGD$20,000, John refused to entertain the idea for a second. Since he was totally right, it was hard to argue about.

Zoe's Coming Home!

Because Zoë is a super-awesome and brave 8-year-old, she went on a 12-day school field trip to China without us, staying in the dorms at the Hui Jia school in Beijing and going on a weekend homestay with one of the girls from her dorm. She's landing at the gleaming Terminal 3 at Changi tonight at 10:15, and because of the magic of Singapore she will almost certainly be home by 11. She had a few homesick moments, but on the whole she was brave and we're very proud of her. Her health is not the greatest, as long-time readers know, and I was iffy on sending her as she had a fever right up to two days before the start of the trip. But she rallied and made it through.

She says she wants to eat normal American food, so we're having pancakes for breakfast tomorrow morning. With juice--the two beverages available in the canteen at breakfast were soup (well, broth, apparently) and reconstituted powdered milk. She doesn't even like regular milk, though she will make an exception for buttermilk, eggnog, or a small glass of heavy cream. She'll probably want a hot dog or grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. Normal American dinner is, naturally, eating out at a good Italian restaurant. I can't wait to give her a big squeezy hug.

We bought a cheap mobile phone for her to put a Chinese SIM card in, which worked great, although I then realized she'd...have a cellphone, which I feel is too soon. Luckily she dropped it on the ground and the screen went half-black, so I don't have to worry about it for a little while. I'm not sure when a good age to get a cell phone is. I mean, she may want to take the city bus home from school starting next term, and if she does I'd probably rather she had one. There's even these push to talk ones that simultaneously function as GPS trackers. There's no need to be paranoid, though; I think it would be fine if she didn't have one, she could just go into a shop and ask to use the phone, or ask a grownup for help; she's memorized my number. I might feel differently about that in the States, I guess, although I think people are mostly pretty trustworthy on the whole.

So, I suck at blogging, basically.

But here are some pix of me and my brother in Vietnam and Cambodia. We had a great trip, especially the magical night in Hoi An when they banned all traffic from the downtown (including scooters) and turned off all the lights, leaving just traditional chinese lanterns and the full moon to provide light. It was like going back in time, so beautiful. My brother also got the chance to truthfully work into a converstation that he was 15 klicks south of Da Nang, and he totally always wanted to say that. Also, we watched a movie that was so stupid it became amazing and transcendant, summing up all the despair of America in the early 80s. Tank. Don't question it; just watch and be amazed. Favorite quote: (racist sheriff) "They're not heroes!" (news reporter with unrebuttable proof or awesomeness) "But they have a tank!" Yeah, baby.

 

3 Squid swims up to reach - plus 'Sorry Violet!'

Next pages:

It's been a while since we had any actual kid art to brighten the place. You see, Belle is sick (what a surprise! poor pale green mommy with nobody inside, as we say around the place.) Zoe and Mei Mei are working their way out of the jetlag stage but there are occasional relapses. We wander around the house, bumping into things like adorable zombies in our underwear. It's a lifestyle choice that carries certain hazards:

Flying Home!

As you can plainly see, I flew home from New York.

The girls are not going to be home for another week. (I had some stuff I simply have to do back here.)

No really. The reason the girls stayed behind is that our littlest hasn't quite learned to fly yet. As you can plainly see, here I am - with Grandma Ribby and Zoë - trying to teach Mei Mei to fly.

Let's get a close up:

There was quite a bit of turbulence and I didn't get a lot of sleep on the flight. So I'm pretty out of it. Also, the WiiFit board just told me I gained 5 pounds during my stay in New York. (Maybe that explains why the takeoff was a little shaky.) Science thus advances: beer and cheeseburgers beat long runs on the beach, calorywise. So it's out with the beer and in with the salad.

East Hampton: Awesome

Sorry for the lack of posts. Oh, I could blame the spotty internet but honestly it's just too nice out to futz indoors with a keyboard. I'm living the dream. I get up every morning at 7 and run a mile and a quarter to the Wainscott beach with a dumb but lovable springer spaniel named Drake. (As Mei Mei says: "Drake is the dumbest dog in the world.") Then I run for half a hour or so along the beach, passing that lovely house you remember from Eternal Sunshine. (Turns out it's not in Montauk, that house. They filmed the thing in Wainscott.) Then home, another cup of coffee by the pool, looking out over Georgica Pond. The swans with the cute newborn cygnets who file past the dock for stale bread. Then drive Zoe 10 minutes to the Maidstone Club, where she participates in J.A. (junior activities) every morning. Swimming, golf, arts&crafts. Today, even though she got a huge mouthful of water in the pool ("I forgot I was underwater," she explained) she still judged that J.A. and the Maidstone Club are, collectively, "the most awesome thing in the world."

Oh, and Zoe celebrated her 8th B-day.

I feel a bit of a happy imposter, mere West Coast Oregon boy out here among all this old New York society and money and such. Damn, it sure is a nice life. (When Belle and I were starting to date, in San Francisco, I saw her grand-dad's name - Stuyvesant - on some piece of letterhead, and I didn't even know how to pronounce it. Like I said: I'm not really from New York.)

I downloaded a free book from Audible (but you have to be an audible member to do that, I'm sure): it's Jim Fusilli's book about The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds [amazon]. Part of that 33 1/3 series, if you know it. It's a pretty good listen. I like that series. (Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love, for example.) 

East Hampton, plus "Reason and Persuasion"

We're in lovely East Hampton, staying with Belle's grand-dad - who is, unfortunately, not well. But that's why we're here. Not so many summers left in the old gentleman, we fear. Good to let the great grandkids see him, and vice versa, while we can.

In other news, hey! You can pre-order my Plato book through Amazon!

I've also released the final version of the text on Issuu. Here:

Open publication - Free publishing - More socrates

More later! I've got to drive Zoe over to the club to do JA - Junior Achievement! (That's where she plays around in a little WASPs nest with other kids!)