Bad Day for Bunnies

Lately the papers are just full of bad news. So far, I’ve been considering myself lucky. Lehman Brothers collapsed, but I didn’t have any money invested in them. WaMu folded up, but that wasn’t my bank. There was a devastating hurricane in Texas, but, for now at least, California is not falling into the sea.

Finally, though, something has hit home with me: They’re recalling my beloved White Rabbit candy. Apparently White Rabbits in California are testing high for melamine. This shouldn’t be surprising, because they are, after all, a Chinese candy made primarily from milk, but somehow I’m still shocked. And vaguely worried—I eat a lot of those things. Probably not enough to give myself a kidney stone, but they are made from condensed milk.

I never thought I’d have anything in common with infants in China, but the world turns out to be smaller and stranger then I could ever imagine.

Back at It

I know I kind of disappeared for a while there. I moved, and that disrupted my life more than I imagined it would. It has been a long time since I did this, and it’s taking longer than I expected to find a place for everything.

The upside (aside from liking the new home and new neighborhood better, of course) is that I am getting to know my local café well. I have been working there a lot because if I stay home all I can see are boxes cluttering the living room and it’s all I can do to stop myself from unpacking them.

Things are slowly getting back to normal. I’m back to work—I had a miraculous week off from destination descriptions the week we had to pack—and now, back to blogging. So thanks for your concern. Nothing bad happened—I was just buried under a sea of cardboard boxes.

Oakmore

I’m heading east for now, trying to close the gap between Glenview and the Laurel District. That means right now I’m in Dimond and Oakmore. Dimond I know a little bit already because my favorite grocery store is there, but Oakmore is new to me. I feel like it’s a pretty well kept Oakland secret, almost but not quite in the hills, and cut off from Glenview by a long, skinny park. There’s a little commercial strip I don’t know very well yet, including a pizza place and a produce market that looks good. I always like it when my explorations include lunch.

The Other Day That Lives in Infamy

I just noticed the date today. Are we ever going to be able to write “September 11” without flashing back to that September 11? Probably not. I have a poster on my wall from an art exhibition that closed September 11, 1985, and even that looks weird now. (“We can’t end it then—don’t you know what’s going to happen on that day 16 years later?”)

Connecting the Dots

I haven’t been walking as much as I’d like to lately. I’ve been working pretty hard—for me, at least—and it hasn’t been easy to make the time. Also, Pipi and I have been experimenting with swimming a few mornings a week, leaving me with less time and energy for strolling.

I am getting back into it, though. I’ve finished the Glenview neighborhood, and now I have to decide what to do next. I was working from Glenview westward, but I got distracted by some neighborhoods to the east. I thought we might want to live in either the Dimond or Laurel districts, so I started getting to know those. Now my walking map is a mess, with isolated marked-off areas and half (at best) finished neighborhoods. This offends my orderly sensibilities, but it also motivates me to get walking so I can fill in the blanks. I’m pretty busy tomorrow, but I do want to get out there.

Walking Update

Today I took what I’m sure is the last walk I can walk to from my current neighborhood. This was sort of a way of saying goodbye to the area, because Pipi and I are planning on moving to a different part of Oakland soon.

Amazingly, on my walk today I discovered a street I’d never been down. I thought I had, but nothing looked familiar. That was a surprise to me; finding out that I live within walking distance of a street I’d never, in nine years, actually bothered to walk down.

An Interesting Proposition

I got an email over the weekend from someone who used to work for the luxury travel site that I’ve been writing descriptions for. He said he liked my work, and wondered if I might be interested in helping him write content for a web site he’s starting. This site isn’t about travel at all. It’s going to be for parents of children with special needs, especially autism.

That’s not exactly my field of expertise, but I do find autism a fascinating subject and have read way more about it than I have any real reason to, so I said yes. I don’t know what the time frame is for this project, but I will let you know when things start appearing on the site. (It may not be for a while, because the site isn’t even live yet.)

Oh, and the heat did break. The sun is sinking into a fog bank as I type. Thanks for asking!

Gosh It’s Hot

How many of you have an espresso maker in your office? And someone to make you an iced mocha when you need it? Well, today, I do.

One thing I didn’t think too much about when I started working at home was climate control. It gets warm sometimes in Oakland, but it’s dry and rarely breaks 100, so I thought it would be okay.

And usually it is. What I didn’t think about, though, is the fact that when most people step outside to get lunch on a day that’s 92 degrees, it’s no big deal. When it’s 92 degrees all afternoon in my home office, though, that gets old after about three hours. Also, my cat Tommy likes to sleep under my desk when it’s really hot, and I’ve been worried all day that I’ll fidget and run over his tail with my desk chair. So I had to get out of the house.

This afternoon I’m at a coffeehouse, where it’s considerably cooler. The music is a little distracting, but they’ve got a good British Invasion mix playing so I don’t mind. I’m conscious, which I might not be right now if I were in my apartment, so I don’t think my productivity is taking too much of a hit.

The heat is supposed to break over the weekend.

Destination Summaries

As you might have guessed, I’m deep in a destination description project. I’ve been writing 10 destination blurbs a week for a luxury travel site based in San Francisco. It’s a good gig. It’s kind of draining to become an instant expert on one location before lunch, and then have to write 300 words about another place in the afternoon, but it’s doable.

And as you can see, I’m picking up lots of cocktail-party trivia, so it’s paying all kinds of dividends.

More on Sir Seewoosagur

Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam did have more going for him than his name. (Though I think we can all see it must have given him a pretty big edge.) Ramgoolam was the Mauritian Prime Minister who won independence from Britain. He was a follower of Gandhi, and managed to achieve his country’s freedom completely peacefully. That’s something the United States can’t even claim, so hats off to Sir Seewoosagur on his well-deserved knighthood.

(Ramgoolam, by the way, was preceded as governor-general of Mauritius by Sir Dayendranath Burrenchobay, and succeeded by Sir Veerasamy Ringadoo. They just come up with good names in the Indian Ocean.)

Yes, Sir

Another fun fact discovered while writing destination descriptions for the far-flung corners of the earth: Someday I am going to travel to the island nation of Mauritius, just so that I can have the pleasure of flying into Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport.

I’d go anyway, because Mauritius sounds beautiful, but that name! Did Mr. Ramgoolam get knighted just because he had such a great name?

Friday Fun Fact

Today I learned that although the British Virgin Islands are still a British Overseas Territory, U.S. dollars are the official currency. Does anyone know why this is the case? I sure don’t.

One More Fun Fact

There are a few McDonald’s locations in the world that have been certified kosher. All but one are in Israel.

That one other one? It’s in Buenos Aires. Who knew?

Fun Facts

Today is Namibia Day.

On this day in history, Krakatoa began to erupt (1883), women got the right to vote (1920), and the first major-league baseball game was telecast (1939).

Today is the birthday of Apollinaire, Geraldine Ferraro, Christopher Isherwood, Macaulay Culkin, crossword-puzzle editor Will Shortz, and Branford Marsalis. Oh, and me. So, short post today.

I’m off to eat ice cream.

Good News, Bad News

Recently I heard about two long-lost pieces on the same day. An editor wrote to me to say that she can’t use a Beijing article I sent her ages ago. I’d pretty much figured that out already, so I didn’t mind.

She also said that she’d like to hold onto another piece of mine for a little bit longer. This is an article about Japan that I first sent her months ago. She said it was long, so I shortened it and sent it back. I didn’t really expect that to do any good, but just now she said she’d like to hang on and see if a space opens up for it. I’m patient.

Netcast

A few days ago, I didn’t know exactly what a netcast was. Now I’m in one.

I mentioned earlier in the month that someone asked me for permission to use one of my Flickr photos in a webcast. I was happy to let him have it, and the guy did use it, in this webcast he produced about historic preservation. (It’s about 30 minutes long. The segment I’m part of starts at 8:13, and my photo is at 8:33.)

Not Strictly Related But…

…Has anyone been watching the Olympics?

Pipi and I have been getting up early to watch U.S. women’s soccer. (On TV, they’re always identified as “Football Women.” I like that).

Some really exciting and surprising things have happened. Germany, the 2007 World Cup champion, fell apart and didn’t make it to the final Olympic match. On the other hand, Japan, usually a bracket-padding team, is doing phenomenally well. They made it to the bronze-medal match. In fact, they played Germany for it early this morning in a match-up of the surging underdogs and the surprised superstars. If you know what happened DON’T TELL ME! I recorded it. I normally like the German team, but today I’d like to see Japan win the bronze for effort.

The biggest surprise of all, though, was the performance of the U.S. team. Just a few weeks before the Olympics, our star player, goal machine Abby Wambach, broke her leg. Most people (including me) thought we were doomed, but amazingly, the team won the gold medal this morning.

It was a very exciting game, won on a goal scored by a player who hardly ever scored during the Wambach era. In addition, Hope Solo performed brilliantly. I’ve always found her a little hard to get behind. (I can forgive the immature outburst at the World Cup, but I have a hard time with the eyeliner she wears on the field.) But I have to grudgingly admit, she came up big in goal.

Everyone came up big, which was a beautiful thing to see. The U.S. women came together and played as a team. A year ago, we might as well have been called “The U.S. Wambach Soccer Team.” If we were a rock group, we’d have been Abby and the Assistants. But today, it was a real team effort. And isn’t that what the Olympics are about?

(Yes, I’m talking to you, Mr. Bolt.)

Mission Accomplished

The event at Book Passage turned out to be a lot of fun. Simon Winchester is a very engaging speaker—the kind of guy who can turn a simple question about how he got his start in writing into a half-hour yarn about the first time he met the writer Jan Morris. (Without giving away the punch line, I can say that what I learned is that it isn’t always a good idea to drop in on your mentor unexpectedly.) I picked up his newest book, The Man Who Loved China, which I haven’t started but am looking forward to.

The networking went pretty well, too. I reminded a few editors of my existence, and met someone who might need some help writing and editing content for a travel web site, so that was successful. But I am now returning to my regular hermitic life.

Networking Tonight

I’m going to another of those slightly nerve-wracking networking events tonight. The author Simon Winchester is speaking at the Book Passage bookstore in Corte Madera. His talk is part of the annual Book Passage Travel Writers and Photographers Conference, which I’ve been to twice. His talk is the one conference event that’s open to the public. I’m looking forward to his presentation, because I’ve read several of his books and liked them all.

My ulterior motive, though, is that most of the conference faculty will be around that evening. So there should be some opportunity to corner some editors and chat them up. I’m not so good at that, but I will probably have a glass of courage during the talk, which should make me a little chattier. We’ll see how it goes.

Siberia Photos

I recently got one other photo request. This one was from a guy producing an online presentation about Siberian architecture, specifically what he describes as the endangered Siberian “gingerbread” houses. I didn’t realize how endangered they are, because I saw lots in and around Irkutsk. I confess, I don’t fully understand how my Siberia photograph is being used, but I don’t mind. One of these days I’ll Google it and see where it shows up.