Translating a Simple Conversation

It’s amazing how different girls and guys are.  Let’s take the following scenario.

Guy and girl are together at an event at point A. Guy needs to get to point B and girl needs to get to point C.  Getting from A to B and from A to C require going on the same overlapping route for at least half the trip.  There are public transport portals, called BART stations, at various points along the overlapping routes and at point C.

What girl says to guy: “Hey, could you drop me at a BART station that’s convenient for you?”

What girl means: “Hey could you drop me at a BART station that’s convenient for me?  I’m open to a compromise where you drop me at one that’s sort-of convenient and sort-of-not-convenient for both of us, but I know you won’t drop me at the one that’s most inconvenient to me and furthest from where I’m going even if it is the most convenient to you because that would just be mean and rude.  I’ve already shown you that I appreciate you and value your time by suggesting that you pick one convenient to you, so you should show me that you appreciate me and value my time by taking me to a BART station that isn’t inconvenient to me.

What guy hears: “Hey… BART station… convenient…”

Then guy drops girl off at the BART station closest  to point A, to where they both just were, most convenient for him, least convenient for her.

What girl thinks as he drops her off: “I can’t believe he’s dropping me off here!  I’m going to have to switch trains; it’s going to take me forever to get to point C.”

What guy thinks as he drops her off: “This is a convenient BART station.  I am a good person because I went out of my way to do exactly what she asked me to do and saved her the walk here.”

What girl thinks on her BART ride home: “It’s the end of the world!  He doesn’t like me.  If he liked me, he’d want to spend time with me and talk to me, and if he wanted to spend time with me and talk to me he would have kept me in the car longer, but he got rid of me as soon as possible so clearly he doesn’t want to talk to me or spend time with me so he clearly doesn’t like me.

He doesn’t care about what happens to me.  He dropped me off by myself at nighttime in the city, far from home.  If he cared about me, he wouldn’t want me roaming around the city by myself after dark, he would want me next to him to be sure I was protected and safe.  But he just dropped me off to let who knows what happen to me, clearly he doesn’t care about me.

He doesn’t respect me or my time, he thinks the things I do aren’t important.  He knows it’ll take me an hour to get home from this location and he could have saved me at least 20 minutes by dropping me at a different BART station. That might have cost him an extra 5 minutes but if he doesn’t think 5 minutes of his time is worth 20 minutes of my time then he clearly doesn’t value my time, and if he doesn’t value my time then he doesn’t value what I do and he thinks the things he does with his time are more important than the things I do with my time.  He’s so self-centered!"

He doesn’t respect me!   He hates me!  It’s the end of the world!

What guy is thinks on his drive home:

 

 

Sometimes, it’s tough being a girl, with all this thinking and "logic and expectations of considerate-ness….  Yeah, being a girl can be a pain, but for the cute shoes, it’s totally worth it.

Of 3rds and 4ths

Today is the 3rd of July.  That means tomorrow is the 4th of July, my 3rd favorite holiday!  (After Easter and Palm Sunday.) So, seeing as it is the 3rd before the 4th that is my 3rd, it seems like a good day to reminisce about some of my favorite 4th of July memories.

Parades

Growing up, the 4th of July meant hot, sunny days and warm nights, parades and swimming and fireworks.  Mommy and Daddy would sit on lawnchairs on the wide grassy part between the sidewalk and the street (something they don’t really have in the Bay Area).  My sisters and I would sit on the cement curb in front of them, perfectly poised to jump up and snatch some tootsie rolls when the candy-throwers came by.

Twirling

As we grew older, we did less watching and started actually being in the parades.  First it was Alfred, who joined the baton twirling corps in 1st grade.  After watching her in a few parades, I wanted to be in them, too.  So I became a banner carrier for the twirling corps.  And eventually I started to twirl as well.  I was terrible.

[Alfred marching with the Senior twirlers.]

I remember my first parade as a twirler.  Not because there was anything especially memorable – I chased my rolling baton to the curb as much as any other parade -, but because there’s a video somewhere taken by my aunt from Daly City who was out visiting us.  I approach the waiting family, including this favorite aunt we don’t get to see enough, and instead of running to give her a hug or asking for water or anything nice, I, in all my early-teenage glory stomp my feet, whip my baton through the air and yell “I’m never doing that again!” Right as one of the military guards marches past and fires their rifles, so it comes out more as “I’m never doing – BOOM *flinch* – again! *baton swing*.” 

But of course, I did do it again, many, many more parades and competitions and parents shows.  I wasn’t particularly good at twirling.   I usually won just because there weren’t any other 16 year-olds still in the Beginner category.  But it was fun, and I do love me some pretty outfits. ;)

[Beginner Miss Spring 1997; me in pretty outfit.]

Zambia

The best 4th of July parade I was ever in was the one I ran myself.  In Zambia.  On like July 10th or something. 

I was living in in Cheelo, about 2.5 hours outside of Monze.  It was my first Fourth of July outside of America.  And I was sick.  Really sick.  I spent the entire day lying on my foam mattress on the dirt floor, under my mosquito net in my small two-room hut.  It was not fun.

So I celebrated the Fourth of July when I was better a few days later.  Since I was the only American for miles, it hardly mattered that I was a few days late.  I didn’t have my special American Holiday shoes (described here) in Zambia at that point, so I had to come up with a new special outfit for this occasion.

Using my treadle sewing machine, some fabric left-over from making dresses for Peppino and Ngandu and some old bicycle spokes from when Ba Lenix repaired his bicycle, I made my first home-made corset and a matching skirt.  July is the middle of cold season in Zambia (much like the Bay), so I wore a long-sleeved leotard under my outfit.

[Me in 4th of July corset.]

I looked more like a Bavarian sheep herder than anything else, but whatever, it was still special!

[Below: The banner.]

Our Parade

Then we had our parade.  We lined up in front of my hut door, “Happy 4th of July” scrawled on my skirt pattern pieces clinging to the rough wood.  John Phillip Sousa marches warbled out of the small plastic speakers set at the hut’s base.  Bana (children), Ba Lenix, a few other grown-up men from the village and me in a line, we set off marching around the compound, waving American flags, blowing whistles, banging nsima spoons on pots, slamming pan lids together, smiling and laughing.  It was fabulous!

[Our 4th of July / 10th of July parade. Ba Lenix is the one in the camouflage shirt.]

After our exhausting parade, we popped some popcorn over the open fire and enjoyed some more of that warbley Sousa music.   What a perfect non-holiday Holiday.

Pink with a Different Obsession

I feel like writing here, yet I have nothing particular to say today.  So, I shall dig into my photo archives, randomly retrieve an old photo, and tell you a story:

 

Pink, it’s Aerosmith’s favorite color.  It’s lots of people’s favorite color.  It makes Molly Ringwald feel pretty.  It makes lots of people feel pretty.  I like it.  It’s so fun and feminine and yet strong and empowering.  It’s like an old lady who’s lived a long enriching life and is comfortable with herself, proud of who she is.  She garners respect not with force, but with peace, with the calmness of having learned what’s really important.  Pink has none of the demanding-ness or insecure attention seeking of red.  No.  Pink is refined and beautiful, and timeless.

Ok, maybe not hot pink, but anyway…

 

Not everyone is such a fan of pink.  Some people are kind of ehh and indifferent about it.  Some people like it a bit but wouldn’t rave about it.  Some people would prefer not to wear it (quite a large number of men I would guess).  But then there’s Munchkinhead; she hates pink.  With a passion.

How badly is with a passion?  Well, if you’re wearing pink and you try to hug her, she’ll run screaming from the room.  Probably something to the effect of, “ewwwwwwwww!!!!! Get away from me!”

If you put one of the pink bowls at her spot on the dinner table, she snatch it up, somehow managing to make it bang into the table while doing so, stomp over to the cupboard, slam the pink bowl into the cupboard with as much racket as possible and return to the table with a non-pink bowl – likely a white bowl with a yellow duck on the bottom of it – loudly exclaiming the entire time that whoever set the table ought to know better than to give her a pink bowl.

If you put something pink on her bed, or worse, dress Gibby in pink, you’re probably going to have to fetch Daddy Bunny out of the laundry chute.

And if you try to dress her in pink… Well, let’s just say I hope you have good medical insurance.

As you can imagine, these sorts of reactions make it rather fun for Daddy and me, who carry the mischievous gene in the family, to strategically place pink items in Munchkinhead’s vicinity.  Just picture this tiny little Munchkinhead turning bright red and stomping and flailing and making such a ruckus, as though she were three times her size, just cuz something’s pink.  It’s so ridiculous!  It’s so funny!

Mommy and Wendy, they do not appreciate this so much.  Maybe they don’t have a sense of humor.  More likely, they’re just nicer.

Part of the reason this is all so amusing though is because pink used to be one of Munchkinhead’s favorite colors.  Pink and yellow.  For most of her childhood.  Yellow stayed, but somewhere along the line pink got replaced with black.  My poor little Munchkinhead!  What terrible thing must have happened to turn her from bright, happy pink, to sad, dark, emo, black.

 

*Sigh*  Well, at least we’ll always have adorable pictures like this, adorable pink pictures like this:

By the way, if you really, really, really want get a rise out of her, use pink paisley.  She hates paisley even more than pink.  One scrap of pink paisley on Gibby and Daddy Bunny will be bunny-napped for sure!

An Unexpected Visit

I wasn’t expecting visitors.  It was late, dark, I was about to crawl into bed, crawl under that warm fluffy comforter, snuggle deep into my mountain of pillows.  But I’m not one to turn away friendly visitors, at any hour.

Some might have thought it unusual for them to come together, the two of them as a pair.  But it wasn’t really.  They had met many times before.  Conversed at so many gatherings and get-togethers over the years, the way in-laws do, connected together by a common appreciation for their children’s love and a playfully rambunctious affection for their grandchildren.  Yes, I was certainly more surprised they’d come at all than that they had come together.  Yet, there they were; they we were, standing together, one on each side, me in the middle.  My heart swelled with happiness and love.

The visit was short.  They lingered briefly, one of those calm, soothing, silent visits you can only have with old friends.  Where the still air conveys as much as any words could say, “Hello. How are you? I love you.”  The still air, a warm familiar hug.  And, then, they had to go; and I had to go to bed.

I crawled into bed, crawled under that warm fluffy comforter, snuggled deep into my mountain of pillows, and smiled.  “Goodnight,” I whispered.  “Goodnight, Grandpa.  Goodnight Buddy.”

Meekrats, Legos and Money (or, I Still Don’t Know What You Do)

Many people have asked me lately “so what do you do?” or “what are you doing now?” having passed the Bar Exam.  That’s a complicated answer with a bunch of pieces, but I can tell you about one part of what I do now.  So I’ll tell you, and then I’ll ask for your money.

I’m continuing my work with Creative Commons, or CC as we call it for short. – oh, great, you’re thinking,   I never understood that anyway.  Well hold on, I’ll try to explain, again. 

CC has these nifty tools that help people share.  You remember kindergarten, right?  That lovely time when you could eat paste and pick your nose and the only thing you had to do to succeed was know how to share.  Well, we help adults reconnect with their inner child and share nicely.  And, since sharing is so wonderful, we work to help the whole world share, too.

Enter our teams and our CC communities around the world.  They are people who like to share and they want to spread the word about sharing, too.  They teach other people about sharing and they teach them how to use the CC tools. 

It’s kind of like when you had the Legos and some other kind wanted to play with them and you showed the other kid how you could both play with them together and then you and the other kid became great friends and made really cool castles with moats and all sorts of things you never would have thought of on your own.

One of the things I do at Creative Commons is work with some of those teams that teach others about sharing, specifically our teams in Sub Saharan Africa.  The teams are working to build sharing communities in their areas.  I help them coordinate with our big top-man office in the City and to connect with other teams for joint problem solving and solution sharing.  It’s super fun and I even get to use my Tonga!

All these teams and communities are made up of volunteers.  They give a lot of time and energy to spreading sharing.  Sometimes, they even give their money because there’s no other money for them to get.

Generally, international grants funded by private organizations and NGOs are HUGE, we’re talking T-Rex huge, multi-million dollars.  Our teams and communities don’t need or want that kind of money.  They just want a couple hundred bucks to do some nifty projects and sessions about sharing.

So, CC has created this neat new program that will allow the teams and communities to apply for little grants, meekrat sized grants, instead of T-Rex ones. 

And all this month, CC is raising money for this program.  (This is where I ask you for money, if you haven’t figured that out yet.)  You can help! Yes, you.  There’s a pretty green box on the top left of my blog.  See that box that says “contribute”?  Click it.  Click it, I say.  Then you can sleep easier at night knowing you’ve made a real difference in the world, instead of sending a T-shirt to Africa ;)  Oh, and you can even get your own t-shirt.

 

“Meekrat” cc-by Brokinhrt2, available on Flickr

“Daddy’s old stash of Legos” cc-by-sa Big Ben, available on Picasa