What a gas!

My severely myopic road buddy is 15 years my junior, but she's still able to keep up with me. Back in the summer of 2008 we had begun making arrangements for a trip to Spain, when her eye condition worsened and required a procedure called epiretinal membrane peeling. The procedure required the fluid in the eyeball to be temporarily replaced with a gas until the new fluid, little by little, replaced it.

That put an end to our plan to fly to Spain because it was verboten to fly for a month after the surgery—something to do with the incompatibility of aircraft cabin pressure and the gas in the eye. Although it was not stated concretely, I had visions of the eye exploding out of its socket and splattering on the wall of the cabin.

We were, naturally, disappointed in our aborted trip to Spain. As a consolation prize, we flew to Shanghai instead after the month was up and the natural fluid had filled the eye cavity—and we didn't have to worry about scraping the eye off the cabin wall. Blech!

So, the meaning of the title in the previous post. We were having our morning coffee recently and she said maybe it's a good thing that we are 15 years apart. We can still travel before you get too old and I get too visually impaired to do so. So, bad macabre joker that I am, I laughed and said: “Terrific, the crippled leading the blind!

Nanjing Road shopping street

traffic jam, what else?

Except for a trip to Hong Kong some 26 years ago we had never really been to China. Hong Kong was still a British territory at the time. So going to Shanghai the year China hosted the Olympics in 2008 was our first (and so far only) trip to a China emerging onto the world stage—like a Phoenix rising from the ashes—as it has done so many times in its long history as a coherent nation. 

Pudong across the river

tai-chi in the morning

family outing

Daishijie - our subway stop

yum-yum dim sum

Shanghai, as you might expect in a “developing” country, was a city of contrasts from the towering skyscrapers and business bustle of Pudong, to the back alleys of the neighborhood our hotel was in where people still bathe and do laundry in the street. People gather in parks and do tai-chi in the morning and haggle over the price of tea in the market—and wonderful Chinese food (and others) to die for. Where a young fellow graciously helped us to find our hotel when we were hopelessly lost. Where I had a “Margarita Supreme” in a place called Zapata's in the old French Concession the size of a goldfish bowl for practically a song. Where a little girl whose mother sold flowers in the street saw me carrying a McDonald's bag (with only hot coffee inside unbeknownst to her) and grabbed my arm trying to get what she thought was a hamburger and wouldn't let go. [I would have given it to her if it had been a burger.] A city, indeed, of contrasts from extreme conspicuous wealth to a hungry child in the street. Sounds a little like America these days, come to think of it. 

Photos taken at Yuyuan Garden in old Shanghai

lotus and carp pond

tea house in the garden

window framing the garden

ubiquitous "moongate"

 undulating dragon wall

 

The mobility challenged leading the visually diminished...

 ...or, less politically correctly, the crippled leading the blind

I had a knee injury issue last year and road buddy has chronic eye impairment. Not wanting to be a crotchety old fart who is always complaining about the slings and arrows of outrageous aging I tend to either ignore the inevitability and symptoms of physical deterioration as I get closer to the ending than the beginning or make bad jokes about them. In keeping with the spirit of this blog, I'll proceed with the latter and save the enigma of the title for later.

First, the knee thing. We spent the winter in Vienna last year. I started feeling an aching in my left knee and tried to ignore it, but bought a knee support as a precaution. One night in late January, returning from the opera, I was in serious pain and limping despite the knee support. Our credit card carries travel insurance and there was a doctor on their list in Vienna, so we called and made an appointment.

We didn't know the tram system very well yet, messed up, and were late for the appointment with me hobbling along on foot and she in a state of nervous anxiety. We were also new to cell phones and she couldn't make it work to call the doctor's office to apologize for the delay and was getting extremely frustrated and agitated. Meanwhile, we were in front of a post office and I went inside to ask directions. We were actually quite close to our destination, but when I exited the post office it looked like she was about to smash the damned cell phone on the sidewalk. Approaching cautiously and keeping out of range of flying cellphones I told her that the doctor's office was just up ahead and to the left; slowly she put the phone in her backpack and we proceeded to the doctor's.

The Austrian doctor and his Japanese wife were very understanding of our new-kid-on-the-block situation and we both calmed down and proceeded with the examination. I dropped my jeans and, while examining the knee, the doctor suddenly and without warning pressed on a spot on the inside just under the kneecap and I let out a yell. “Did that hurt?”, says he. “Uh-huh”, says I. “You appear to have a lesion on the cartilage that cushions the bones.” “How can you tell that?” “Because you yelled when I pressed on your knee.”

He wrapped the knee in an ace bandage—which I covered with my knee brace—and prescribed an NSAID (non-steroidal anti-inflammation drug) called Seractyl, and recommended I get an MRI and see a specialist. I did, but not before going to Spain for a week—the flight and hotels had already been arranged—and continuing to walk on the heavily braced and NSAIDed knee which seemed to be improving. Back from Spain and the MRI. It confirmed the doc's diagnosis of a lesion and some deterioration in the cartilage cushion. And so to the specialist.

He and my doctor were friends and we both had an appointment on the same day. It turned out, ironically, that my doctor also had a bum knee. Well, to make a rather too lengthening story short, the specialist examined, pressed and prodded the knee and was encouraged to see that I was experiencing no pain but recommended crutches. I was a bit startled and asked why crutches since I had been walking all this time without them and the knee was improving? He thought it was better to keep weight off the knee until it was repaired. I asked him if I could expect a complete recovery and he said yes, but that the damage to the cartilage couldn't be replaced. But the body produces a substitute cushion that is almost as good if you take care of it.

I used the crutches, first two, then one, then none for a couple months or so. So far so good. I take one with me when I travel just in case. It also comes in handy for priority boarding on airplanes.

Next, the eye thing...

There you go again....

Kristol article in WaPo
PNAC

Arch neo-con and editor of the extreme right wing rag The Weekly Standard, William Kristol, is huffing and puffing for endless war—again. Blithely ignoring the current messes that he and his other PNAC (you may remember the blueprint for world conquest that is the Project for a New

American Century) “chickenhawks“ and other bellicose warmongers are largely responsible for inspiring, from the comfort of their think tanks and letting other people do the dirty work, not to mention the dying in the process. As usual he drags out the bloody shirt of 9/11 as the ostensible excuse for expanded military global domination. After all, we have all this expensive military hardware that has to be used so that the military can have a job and the arms manufacturers and merchants can make huge profits. Their slogan: War is our most important product.

In an opinion piece in the Washington Post he chides President Obama for wanting to end some 10 years of war where it began in Afghanistan. Mr. Kristol is horrified—end a war? With apparent glee he warms to the prospect of expanded war all over the damn place: Afghanistan Schmafghanistan; that was only the beginning and it ain't over yet. He sets up the straw man of destroying AQ and denying the use of Afghanistan as a “base for future attacks”. What future attacks remain unspecified, of course. If you're arguing for perpetual war, there can be no defined goal of anything resembling a victory. Why, by his reckoning the whole world could be a base for “future attacks”. Could we call this paranoia?

For starters Mr. K suggests moving on to: Pakistan, Tunisia, Iran, Yemen, Somalia because we “are at war with political Islam” whatever the hell that means. Finally, Mr. K comes out with it: what we need is another Cold War. And his substitute “ism” to replace Communism is—are you ready for this folks?--Islamist Terrorism.

Maybe this is madness masquerading as pious intellectual jingoism.

Persian Odyssey: Part XI – Zoroastrianism

Thus Spake Zarathustra - Richard Strauss

gas blowoff in Khuzestan 

The city of Ahwaz is in the center of Iran's oil rich province of Khuzestan. As I headed southeast towards Shiraz I entered the region of the oil fields. Seeing the gas flares that blow off from the wells got me to thinking about fire and energy. [By the way, much of the drama that we are witnessing in the Middle East today is, I believe, associated with the planet's hunger for energy. In my own mind, I think of the ongoing conflicts as the “Energy Wars of the 21^st Century”. Whether to attempt to gain control of and/or exploit oil resources--as in Iraq and potentially Iran--or build a pipeline across Afghanistan, the conflicts of the area are directly related to the critical need for the fossil fuel--the "black gold"--that drives our modern energy-dependent lifestyle.]

What I really want to do here, though, is segue into the element of fire. In the desert you are constantly conscious of our great ball of fire—the sun. The top banana in our Solar System (yes, Fundies, it doesn't revolve around us) is not necessarily a friendly source of warmth in the desert, it can be a direct threat of heat stroke if everything isn't up to snuff as my bike sprocket wasn't. So fire was my constant companion on this trip, and the gas flares triggered my awareness of it. With fire on my mind, what should I come across just at this time but the ruins of a Zoroastrian fire temple.

Zarathustra holding the sphere

dome of a fire temple in Esfahan, Iran

You may remember my reference, in an earlier post, to the cuneiform inscriptions at Ganj Nameh in Hamadan praising the Zoroastrian deity Ahura Mazda. Zoroastrianism was the religion of Achaemenid Persia. It was founded by a man named Zarathustra most likely sometime around the 11^th Century BC.  Fundamentally, he taught that life was a struggle between truth and falsehood. Man should overcome falsehood and find truth through Zarathustra's teachings. Fire and water were used in fire temples for purification rituals during ceremonies. The inner sanctum of the fire temple, accessible only to priests, was a square chamber with four pillars in the corners supporting a domed roof that protected the sacred fire.

my very own fire temple

interior looking in and out

I rode up to the base of the hill upon which the remains of an ancient fire temple stood and climbed to the top. Some care had been taken to preserve what remained of what must have been the inner sanctum—the place of the sacred fire—with a wattle and daub roof--or, more likely but less romantically, corrugated tin. I could almost imagine echoes of the old rituals. But, nothing in the present, no people nor village nor town anywhere in sight, just the silence and emptiness of the surrounding desert.

Climbed back down, checked the tension on the chain. The damaged sprocket didn't look any worse, no broken gear teeth. Put a little more tension on the chain, applied more lubricant (no more signs of my recent close encounter of the unfriendly kind) and continued on southeast towards Shiraz and Persepolis.

PS: Zoroastrianism is still practiced in Iran by a small element of the otherwise mostly Shiite Moslem population. Their main fire temple is in the city of Yazd. There is also a fairly large community of Parsis who practice Zoroastrianism in Mumbai, India.

the modern fire temple in Yazd, Iran
[Photos of Zarathustra, Esfahan and Yazd fire temples courtesy of Wikipedia.]

To be continued...

50% … 50% … and 50%

suburban council houses

"tower block" type council house

A British friend of mine forwarded an article to me recently recording complaints by tenants of “UK Council Houses”. Not being a Brit myself I had no idea what “Council Houses” means. A quick Wikipedia search indicates that it is a term used primarily in the UK and the Republic of Ireland for public or social housing. They were “built and operated by local councils” to provide spacious, well-built homes for reasonable rent primarily for working class people. The article goes on to say that the experiment hasn't lived up to hopes and expectations—great or otherwise—and, like many “projects” in the US have led to urban blight in some cases. Apparently things need “fixing” from time to time and tenants submit written complaints to their local “council”. 

 The whole point of this post is that some of these complaints are funny in the fractured English that they are written in. One wonders if some of them are deliberate double entendres. At any rate, following is a modest sampling of the more printable ones:

Extracts from letters written by council tenants:

1. It's the dogs mess that I find hard to swallow.
 
4. Next dors 18 year old son is continually banging his balls against the fence.

5. I wish to report that tiles are missing from the outside toilet roof. I think it was bad wind the other day that blew them off.

6.. My lavatory seat is cracked, where do I stand?

8. Will you please send someone to mend the garden path. My wife tripped and fell on it yesterday and now she is pregnant.

9. I request permission to remove my drawers in the kitchen...

10. 50% of the walls are damp, 50% have crumbling plaster, and 50% are just plain filthy.

11. The next door neighbour has got this huge tool that vibrates the whole house and I just can't take it anymore.

12. The toilet is blocked and we cannot bathe the children until it is cleared.

14. Our lavatory seat is broken in half and now is in three pieces.

16. The man next door has a large erection in the back garden, which is unsightly and dangerous.

18. I am a single woman living in a downstairs flat and would you please do something about the noise made by the man on top of me every night.

19. Please send a man with the right tool to finish the job and satisfy my wife..