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January 22, 2007
Date: Yesterday
Date: Yesterday
I’ve decided to become left handed today. On the scale of decisions it is not big, but it implies lots of small changes. Shaving and brushing my teeth this morning…left handedness as a problem. Tying my shoes was also a challenge. I typically eat with my right hand and I spilled coffee down my shirt as I tried to drink while walking between the kitchen and my desk.
So it is difficult, but important. I feel lopsided, like a hermit crab. A while back Adam and I were talking about maps that stressed items other than distance. Travel time maps, for example, can look very different. A travel time map of the United States pushes all of the major cities together (since you can travel reasonably quickly from city to city by air) but pushes the suburbs, the ex-burbs and rural areas farther out that you’d expect. In the same way, I am thinking of a map of the body. A coordination map favors the right side of my body. A sensory map favors my fingers but not the skin on my knuckles. Like everyone else, I favor symmetry but I’m symmetrical only in the context of a normal visual map. It is funny to think about this, the hundreds of people, the crowds of people I see each day, crawling around like hermit crabs. Emotional maps are even worse. The scariest thing in the world would be a person with a perfectly symmetrical emotional map. I’ll tell you the variables used for an emotional map later. I’m too lazy to make them up now.
Date: Today
My multi-entry Indian work visa came in the mail today. I sent my passport back to the United States last Thursday because I can’t get a work visa here until my Singapore work visa comes through. Passport stamps, they don’t mean so much. My new goal is to get as many work permits as possible. Anyway, I sent my passport to one of those express passport services firm in the US. I sent it out on Thursday and they called me late Friday. “You paperwork is messed up… this letter from your employer… it is not right….but look, don’t worry, we’ll take care of it…” Take care of it how exactly? Anyway, the passport arrived back in the mail so it all seems good.
I walked back to the bike store during a break from work this afternoon. Still no bikes big enough for me. Well, one bike that is big enough but it is a mountain bike and I’m not willing to spend money on suspension forks (however cheap) in Singapore. It is the principle of the thing. My new favorite bike store sells a line of bikes called Moontine, with square top bars. The store also sells some plastic semi retro furniture. I’d like the integrate the two. It is the first store that I have been in where I like the bikes and the furniture.
I just bought airline tickets for a six week visit to the states. It looks like I might be asked to fly to Singapore/ India in the middle of the trip. That is why I’ve purchased a six week ticket. Four weeks in the states and two weeks somewhere else. The trip dates go from February to April. I’d like to assert that this reflects some cunning schedule ability on my part but it really means that I will get to watch some new movies since movies change monthly on airplanes and I don’t sleep at all ever on flights longer than two hours in duration (I completely pass out on flights between Boston and Philly or Boston and Florida but that’s it). I've watched all of my theater releases on airplane video screens since leaving Boston. Maybe this is because Singapore theaters have assigned seating.
Read through Shantaram this week. Also “When we were Orphans” by Ishiguro and part of a series of short stories by Murakami. The first is better than the second. The third is very different. Short stories should only be compared to novels when a novel would be better as a short story. Ishiguro is a novelist who could write short stories if he only removed the buffer text.
Date: Tomorrow.
I just finished reading the paper. I can’t believe that this guy just blocked a bullet for a bystander. There have been lots of odd acts over the last few weeks, from the man surviving his fall from a hotel to the man catching the toddler, to the man who saved a kid by jumping on top of him and holding him down in a mid-track cavity as a NYC subway train passed overhead. Last week, police in the UK were aided by a guy with a samurai sword who interrupted a shootout, whacking away at the bad guys and disarming them before disappearing. There have been a lot of these stories but many of them have passed under the radar. The first I can think of is Rick Rescorla back in 2001. These days, it's as if the rules are getting bent. Maybe it is related to the weather. Global warming for personal narratives. Ice storms in July, one armed taxi bench presses to save kittens, that sort of thing. The world is and always will be an interesting place. I blame Marquez and his penchant for magical realism. We’ve been infected on a personal level.
Circumspect Taste | By jb | 07:50 AM
Comments
I think I have a perfectly symmetrical emotional map...
Yo, when are you coming to Boston during that 4 week jaunt?
Posted by: laura at January 22, 2007 11:09 AM