… something to write home about.

So, I have returned from my holiday vacation to 465 emails, 332 of which are brand new.

I think I shall ignore them a few moments more before committing to that pile.

Imagine this scenario:  I’ve been cleaning house for a couple of days.  Not constant but a regular thing.  Loads of laundry, picking up (and throwing away broken) toys, putting stuff away that should have been put away but for some reason wasn’t.

So, about 3:10 AM I decide I’m done for a few minutes and I’m going to sit down and read the comics.  The last comic read is this one:  xkcd - Christmas Back Home

Tomorrow night I think I’ll try to get to bed earlier… doubtful, but I’ll try.

Well, kind of.

Life has been a bit busy and I needed a break.  I still need a break, but life isn’t quite as busy now.

However, if you were looking for a substance filled post, you’ll have to wait a bit yet.  I gotta find my voice again.  It was here when I left; I thought I set it down over by the desk.

Oh, that’s right, I don’t have a desk anymore.  Tried to move it out of my basement and broke the damned thing.

I must have put that voice in a box somewhere. 

Have you seen it?

Continuing in my role as amateur cultural anthropologist, I have a few observations about the differences between China and the U. S. of A. that I will be documenting over the next few days as they bubble up to the top of my head.

This time, it is about obesity.

I’m sitting in the San Francisco Airport on my return flight from Hong Kong, China, after a work assignment in Shenzhen, China.  Shenzhen is a new, bustling city and I have a lot more to write about that in future posts.  I was there with three co-workers last week and by myself this last week.

Shenzhen is a city of around nine million people and has a very efficient, very new subway system. The subway was far more efficient and inexpensive than taking a taxi everywhere and it gave me a chance to watch people, which is a favorite pastime. Both last week and this week we were trying to find someone that was visibly overweight.  Anyone.  These are full subway cars, there are lots of people, everywhere.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I’m considerably overweight.  I’m actively working on reducing to more healthy levels and increasing my exercise level but it is a long process.  It took me a while to get this way and it is going to take me a while to reverse the process.)

Anyway, back to the topic at hand.  It was the rare case to find someone that was overweight and I don’t think I saw anyone that was morbidly so.

In comparison, I’m sitting here watching the couple hundred people or so waiting to board flights to the different destinations. Of all of the adults, I can see two people that would fit the ’slenderness’ model I’ve been seeing for two weeks and both of them work for the airline and they both appear to be of Asian descent.

Before traveling, I wouldn’t have given it another thought and I wouldn’t have considered many of these people overweight without the examples I’ve seen over the last two weeks.  But all of these people have a gut; they are all carrying at least some extra weight around their middles.

Discussing it with a co-worker and friend that lives in Shenzhen, I’ve come up with a few possible reasons.

• Diet. Other than rice there isn’t a lot of empty carbohydrate calories in their diet.  Portion sizes are much smaller too, except for social dining where there are lots of dishes to share. Still, people seemed to eat what they wanted and stop, more interested in the socializing aspect.
• Exercise. Between walking to the subway, walking from the subway to my destination, walking back, etc. I walked far more than I would have spent on the treadmill at home.
• Environment.  It is hot and humid all of the time.  According to the people that live here, it will sometimes cool off to around 70 degrees Fahrenheit in the cool part of the year.  If you live where it is warm you don’t need to store fat around your middle.
• Genetics.  Living in a warm climate most likely selects for those that can survive and be comfortable in that climate.  I’m used to the heat, mostly, but I still visibly sweat and perspire when I walk outside.

Still, the comparison isn’t a pretty one - at this rate the health related disease and illness from obesity is going to ruin us here in the U.S.

On the positive side, I now have some good ideas about what I can do to help myself get to be a smaller person.  I’ll never be ‘rail thin’ like the people in Shenzhen (my shoulders from bone to bone make me wider than most to start with) but I can be a lot more healthy.

Update:  After I finished writing this in the airport and closed the laptop, a couple of college-age adults arrived that were very slender. 

For some strange reason, I have the chorus to “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts” running through my head all afternoon.

I desperately need a new song in my head.

As I drove back from lunch, I was listening to Science Friday on NPR. It was the second hour and they were talking about virtual versus physical communities. On of the guests, I think it was Sherry Turkle from MIT, made the comment about how people are using and developing wonderful skills of organization, networking (the people kind) and politicking and that she hoped that these people would bring those skills back to the ‘physical’ world. Which begs the question… why?

Now, she appeared to be speaking directly to virtual worlds, such as Second Life, and bringing those skills to bear on physical world problems such as the political system in the US and solving societal, social and resource problems. But if you broaden that definition slightly to include forums, IRC, email mailing lists and IM chat, what makes the virtual world more or less important or real than the physical one? So much of what we do every day is inside of our heads anyway I don’t think it matters in the long run.

I think it is more important that you do interact with others, share your concerns and empathy with people you know. It doesn’t matter if you have been friends since childhood or met online via an email community. Friendship and caring doesn’t begin and end at the end of your fingertips.

15 years ago, it would have been the telephone. 50 years ago it would have been letters. Now, we connect instantaneously and globally; it is wonderful, not something to be dismissed lightly.

When I started at USU in the fall of 1984, there were a few people I kept in contact with via letters but not many and they were infrequent at best. Even the young lady I dated in my neighborhood kept me in touch and interested by the occasional letter to which I would promptly write back. A conversation might take a week to complete and while I might have been a bit more insightful, most likely I would have to re-read the previous letter or two to remember what we were talking about.

Today, I have conversations with friends from my neighborhood, high school, university and other communities on a daily basis. Some are work related, many are not. Some are by phone, some are by email, some by web forum, many are by instant messaging. Some are even through comments on articles on web sites we frequent since that is what we have in common. Denise and I have never met, but she is a great friend. Mary is a good friend that I only met after we be came friends online through a mutual friend. Beau wrote some software that I tried out and we’ve chatted intermittently in the couple of years or so since. I met Chuck at a NaNo party and have become acquaintances while Beth and I have maintained a friendship ever since she mocked me at a different NaNo party. Bill, Doug and Stacey are three of my best friends and I’ve known them for years; Bill and Doug are neighbors and Stacey is a high school friend. (if I didn’t mention you it isn’t a slight, these are just examples).

My point is that it doesn’t matter how you make connections and communities, only that you do make them. Community is important; friendship and empathy is important.

Without these different communication methods, I wouldn’t be in contact with most of my friends. I wouldn’t even know some of them… and my life would be the poorer for it.

Update:  After writing this, I realized that I have three emails in my personal account awaiting reply.  Bad Chris, Bad!

So, as a belated birthday present, I went to a Endodontic specialist and had a root canal today as a follow up to having a crown prep almost a month ago. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as uncomfortable as the crown preparation was and I was out in about an hour.

It was interesting that the Novocain block was in a different location and I ended up feeling like I’d had a stroke for a few hours.  I couldn’t make a suction seal with my mouth at all and from the bottom and outside corner of my eye to the bottom of my chin was completely dead, no muscle control or sensation, except for the skin which was unaffected. There is still some residual numbness and minor swelling but I didn’t have to have any pain medication or even over the counter medication.

Hopefully I can get the permanent crown on before I leave the country for two weeks.

Sometime about two weeks ago, I broke a tooth.  As usual, I don’t just do something partially; this time I broke the tooth so that it is cracked in two places.  This means that every time I bite down on it, the tooth splits apart and … well, the sensation is a bit hard to describe.  The dentist was quite impressed with the degree of fracture though and had to pull out a camera to show it to me.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have any time in his schedule on that day to do a crown preparation so I’m going back in tomorrow morning for that.  I have learned in the last ten days to chew on the right side of my mouth but for some reason I forget when I drink.  The first swallow of cool or warm liquid reminds me quite forcefully that something isn’t quite right.  I can’t drink from a cup as it will always hit that tooth but I can use a straw and get around it.

Tomorrow morning can’t come soon enough - the tooth is starting to ache constantly and I’m sure everyone is tired of me complaining about it. Molly (TIP) indicated that mouth pain is worse than childbirth but not having endured that I don’t have any comparison. 

As some of you are are aware, I have had some trials getting a passport issued. The post office in some locations has an appointment list of five to six weeks just to accept the applications! Once the application is accepted, there is four to five week wait while they do whatever has to be done to process and produce the passport and that is for the expedited process. The non-expedited process can run up to six months or more.

However, you don’t have to go to the post office. After kvetching a bit about this, someone clued me in that I could go to the County Clerk’s office for Salt Lake County for the interview and drop off the application, no appointment necessary. Hurrah! An hour later, it is in process and I’m back on track for being able to make my trip.

If you don’t live in Salt Lake County, please check with your clerk’s office to be sure that you clerk’s office accepts applications.

A couple of pointers before you go:

• Check or Money Order only for the State Department payments.
• You can get a duplicate birth certificate on a walk in basis from the county health department. You must appear before 4:00 PM.
• Clerk’s Office opens at 8:00 AM.

In case you are wondering, the costs associated with a passport are:

State Department fees (expedited)

143.50

Clerk’s fees

35.00

Duplicate Birth Certificate (if needed)

15.00

I know it is strange that I haven’t needed a passport before now, but until recently you didn’t need a passport to travel to Canada or Mexico and I haven’t been further abroad than that yet.

Wow. Just wow.

Not going to write much about it now; suffice to say it was amazing to watch the most complex human made system go extraterrestrial in person. It went very, very fast and wasn’t as loud as I thought it would be. I was shooting video and it was difficult to find at the start as we couldn’t see the launch pad from our vantage point.

I’ll post photos and video when a available. ‘night!