Diagnosis: Temporary Adult-form ADD

I just read through a full article on the mental control of the bilingual lexico-semantic system...and don't know what I just read. Ever do that? Your eyes read the words, follow through the entire 10-20 pages, but none of it actually registers in your brain and at the end you don't even remember reading that last page with the weird graphs and have no idea how the article reaches the conclusions about bilingual language control that it does...? Egh. I am so not back in student mode. My mind keeps wandering.

"This system involved a process termed contention scheduling in which schemas..."

... I gotta remember to buy garbage bags. Hmm, should I use a green theme or a blue theme for my next painting? Oh, I should remember to call my old lady tonight to tell her I am back in the country...

"Simulations of contention scheduling system..."

... Where did I leave the user-guide for our phone that doesn't work? Hmm, the bathroom could use a good scrub-down...it's the only room I haven't fully cleaned yet since I got back.

Oh, right... "...evidence for the role of frontal lobes in regulating language tasks in unilingual speakers..."

...Did I email about that internship position yet? No, crap, I should do that yet... "And in conclusion, the IC model shares commonalities with existing proposals....".

Egh. I could use some coffee.

Byebyebaby

I am half-packed, just waiting for the rest of my laundry to dry. Tomorrow night I fly back to NL, without Luuk. You'd think that I'd be used to this idea, but I'm not liking it too much. At least it's only six weeks and not six months...

Nice Singapore.

The staff in our hotel building are some of the nicest people in this country. I am sure that is part of their training and whatnot. But they are really good at it. We never pass in the hallway without a "good day, ma'am". Walking into the dining area we are always greeted with cheerful smile and a bright "good morning!". Our cleaning lady always apologizes for cleaning the room when I am around and thanks me when she is finished. The other day, we walked out of the elevator into the lobby and were met with a chorus of "good evening!"; five smiling faces beamed at us from behind the desk where I assume they were waiting for the evening shift change.
I am never quite sure how to treat our friendly cleaners and cooks and receptionists. Their every move speaks of servitude. Even the way they take our money and return our change when we pay for something at the desk is one of respect, using both hands to hold the money by two corners. I fear being perceived as an arrogant colonial, so I smile back and thank them and probably over-do my display of gratitude for whatever it was that they just did for me. Yet since arriving here two months ago, I have become quite lazy with picking up after ourselves and doing the dishes...that is, afterall, what they are paid to do, right?
I wonder sometimes how we look through their eyes. Growing up with a negative response to the word "servant", usually equating it with something akin to "slave", I have a hard time imagining that working with a continual attitude of servitude would be satisfying or pleasant. To me it would seem so demeaning and I would find myself resenting the lazy foreigners who can't even do their dishes even when they have nothing better to do with their time...
But this place is different. It is not only the staff in this building that bear this attitude; everywhere we go we are met with a pleasant smile and an eager offer to help, by business men and street cleaners alike. Once, I asked someone for directions to a place where I was meeting some friends, and after being offered directions from several different people closeby, I was finally brought to the place I was looking for.
Perhaps a shift in perception is due on my part. I could learn much from these people.

(almost) discovered

A few weeks ago a girl walked up to me and asked if I would like to model for some pictures for her portfolio. She gave me the address, in a big busy mall, and I figured, "what the hey, I have nothing better to do" and made an appointment. I worried about it all weekend, what kind of agency, would it be safe, should I go...?...but decided that this being Singapore, and the office being in a mall, the likelihood of that sort of thing happening was pretty minimal, so I should just go to the place and check it out. Then the day of the appointment I completely forgot about it. Yes, forgot. Cause I am such a busy woman these days. Have so much going on in my day to distract me...

Anyway, I remembered two days later.

Today I got a call from someone I presume to be the same girl, saying that I had been recommended for some tv commercial and a magazine of some sort. She asked if I would be willing to come by on Thursday for an interview... "No, sorry, " I said, "I am leaving for Bali for a few days and when I come back I will only be here for two days before I leave again for home. So it won't work out." Undeterred, she asked if I could come by tomorrow instead. "But what would be the point?" To figure out if there are any projects I can do. "But I won't be here to do them...so what's the point?" Well, would you just be willing to come by and talk about it? I finally convinced her that I would not be here to do anything agreed upon in any interview, thanked her, and hung up.

Seriously.

Well, there goes my modeling career!

Thoughts of a hopeless romantic.

Dane wrote a blog recently about love. I have lots of time to think about things. So I kept thinking about it. And here are some rambling thoughts...

That God uses marriage as an example/portrayal of our relationship to Him, has always fascinated me. Obviously, given the state of marriages today, this is not a perfect example... or actually, maybe it still is, though in some cases more of a "how not to..." sort of way.
Think of any marriage that ever impressed or amazed you. Most marriages are admirable, given the effort that sometimes must go into it. But I have seen only a handful (and I can proudly say that my parents' is one of them), that created in me complete admiration and the desire to have 'that' some day. The kind where more than just the cliches were alive, but where something like unquestioning acceptance, loyalty, servitude were all combined to create something that suddenly made all those Bible passages about love make sense. It is those marriages that create the desire to have that special kind of relationship with God that is reflected therein.
Obviously, it's different...I mean, God and I can't hold hands or cuddle or say sweet cheesy things to each other. But that's not even the stuff that impresses me about these marriages; these are only superficial evidence of a deeper underlying power that exists in their relationship. To think that that kind of love can exist between God and His bride the church, is, to me anyway, astounding. This picture of what relationship with God might be like is so different from the 'judging grandfather watching from above' picture that I struggle with so often, or even from the 'loving Father teaching His growing children' picture that I once in a while can handle.
Why we don't hear more sermons on this kind of love, I don't know. Maybe we can't understand it for lack of suitable examples so it's best not to touch on the subject. (Or maybe we get too caught up on roles and who is supposed to do what... Funny thing is, those particular marriages that I admired so much, seemed to work with little regard to those oh-so-important roles. Perhaps they naturally fit into their roles so well I didn't see it, but I think the reason the roles didn't seem to be important was because both parties were too interested in serving the other to care about who was doing his/her part.) It was those marriages and Biblical use of the analogy that began to form my ideal for marriage. I began to see marriage not just as a way to hook up/have kids/find yourself a life partner to make the treck more bearable, but as a way to broaden our understanding of love and of God. As if God actually created the concept of marriage, if at least in part, for that very purpose.
When Luuk and I were planning the wedding, we had to answer some questions for the civil ceremony. As we filled out the answers, we became more aware that we both wanted more than just a happy marriage that lasts. We wanted ours to be a marriage in which others could catch even just a glimpse of the sort of love that can exist between God and His people. I suppose that sort of relationship is one that takes a long time to develop. Somehow the best marriages are those that form a threesome (pardon the lack of a better term) with God.
We are still learning, still working on that(though I like to think we have a good start), yet even in this beginning, growing stage, I have found that my approach to God has changed. The way I see Him is different and the relationship that I desire to have with Him is different, better I think. This will sound incredibly cheesy, I know, but loving Luuk as much and in the way that I do now has made me aware a kind of a love that I did not know existed; I want to love God like that, but more. Because those marriages and because of my own short experience with marriage, I am aware of a different side of God. Does that make sense? I like to think that this was part of the purpose of marriage in the first place... But maye I am just a hopeless romantic.

Recap: the rest of our 'Nam trip

After a visit to the Cu Chi tunnels (where the Vietcon guerillas lived and fought during the war, which in the end was a great factor in defeating the Americans) and the War Remnant Museum (which made me glad to be in Vietnam on my Canadian passport), we escaped the dirt, smog, and traffic of Saigon and took a night train to the quieter, cleaner beachtown of Nah Trang.

Highlights included a trip on a bike-cart (picture a short, skinny, Vietnamese dude huffing us big Westerners up and down the hills of the town, though don't feel too bad, he was paid well by both us and the owner of the sea-food restaurant he took us to); a giant Buddha statue at a monestary (where we were guilted into buying some postcards from some monks-in-training and where we found a group of young boys of various ages who were well-experienced in begging and one of whom carried an expensive looking camera I am sure he did not get for his birthday, and where I was felt up by a 2-foot-tall four-year-old who was, it seems, being instructed by an older boy to either find hidden pockets or search for something little four-year-olds shouldn't even know about...); and a group of Hindu temples from the 7th century, darkened on the inside from hundreds of years of inscence and prayers.

The most interesting experience was the boat tour, the highlight of which was our crazy guide who kept making and laughing at his own jokes that no one understood; at one point he pulled out a styrofoam slab, on which was stuck a plastic basket with several bottels of what he, to the amusement of some and the shock of others, repeatedly called "fucking-mingen-Vietnam wine", which we all figured out really means "really really bad wine". This was our floating bar, around which we floated in our tubes, wine in hand.

Our next stop was Da Lat, a city in the mountains. This place has a bit of a French Alp resort feel to it, only tropical and littered with garbage. Apparently Vietnam royalty used to spend vacations there, and we can understand why. The mountains are beautiful and the temperatures are much more bearable. We took a tour with the Easy Riders (dudes on motorcycles); we each sat on the back of a bike and followed out guides through the mountains to surrounding villages where we saw how silk is taken from the cocoons and turned into the thread and then into cloth; then how "happy water" is made from fermented rice (it is some of the nastiest drink I have ever tried), and how mushrooms are grown out of fermented tapioca and sweet potatoes ("same same, but different", as they say). And of course we took many pictures of the layered farms where families grow all sorts of fruits and vegetables sold in the rest of the country. The day we left Da Lat we took golfing lessons at the incredible golf course on top of a hill, the view being green and mountains; then we flew back to Saigon in a propeller airplane.

Our final adventure was a tour through the Mekong Delta, the highlights of which included the boat ride through a palm tree and bamboo sided canal and the Jewish Israeli guy with a somewhat French accent we met whose greatest joy on this trip was not the food, culture, or scenery, but rather bargaining.

The strongest impression of the whole trip was how similar Vietnam was to Central America and Mexico. Different food, different language, but similar colours, buildings, people, professions/methods of survival, fruit, dirt, treatment of environment, poverty/wealth dichotomy, friendliness. Same same but different, I guess.

(Hmm...I was going to post some pictures but can't find our adapter...That's not good.)

P.S.: Interesting food we tried while in Nam included frog legs, crocodile, pigeon, and snails. Luuk will have to remind me if I missed any interesting ones...

Saigon Dance

The most notable characteristic of Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh) is the way traffic works despite the craziness of obviously untrained drivers and millions (literally, millions) of motorcycles and cars and taxis on the roads that also happen to be filled with pedestrians crossing anywhere and anytime, the occasional suicidal biker, and once in a while a short guy pushing a cart filled to ridiculous heights with some thing or other. There is really no way to describe the experience of maneuvering through this strangely coordinated chaos in a way that can draw a comparable picture. Traffic lights are no meaningless, just slightly ignored; right of way is not a matter of traffic rules, but size; lanes are suggested, not necessarily respected; and pedestrian crossings might as well be non-existant. How we survived our few brave attempts to cross the streets of this smoggy city is beyond me. We simply started crossing and hoped we would be avoided by the wave of motors and lights heading to and around us. Somehow, they always saw us and always missed us. Occasionaly we witnessed a slight fenderbender, but most of the time this dance (which is really the best way to describe it) went on uninterrupted and accompanied with the tune of millions of horns warning other drivers of their presence.

On a side note, Vietnam seems to be filled with extremely talented artists and painters waiting to be discovered by the world. I find myself continuously drooling at gallery and shop windows, wishing that we were not here with just a backpack and seriously considering daring to take the galleries up on their offer to ship for us, at "a special price, good for you, good for me".