Japan does bathrooms better than anywhere else, including public toilets.
Singapore – June
We went to Singapore (first time for both of us) because Brendan was co-chairing a SREcon, but we took some extra time to sightsee and get together with friends and fellow alumni of Woodstock School.
As part of my childhood love of animals (stuffed and real), I somehow became aware of Steiff, the German manufacturer of iconic stuffed toys and inventors of the original Teddy bear. They sold a huge range of animals of all sizes and species, most of them about as realistic-looking as it was possible for a plush toy to be. We once visited the equally iconic toy store FAO Schwartz in New York, which sold a vast collection of Steiff toys, including giraffes and elephants that towered over me, and tigers I could probably ride on. I yearned to own a Steiff animal.
They cost hundreds to thousands of dollars even 50 years ago. I couldn’t imagine what kind of family could afford such expensive toys, but we certainly couldn’t. I saved up my allowance and, on a future trip to one of Pittsburgh’s fancier toy stores, was able to buy this little guy. I vaguely recall that it cost $12? This was about 1972, so we’re talking $90 in today’s terms, an amount I would now hesitate to spend on a stuffed toy.
I felt him to be so precious that I never played with him much, nor even gave him a name. Poor little chap, he was not part of my busy community of toys. But he has stayed with me all these years.
I do buy and build Lego kits, but I most enjoy creating my own builds, which nowadays tend to be recreations of architecture that exists in the world. Here’s a gallery showing my work, along with inspiration photos (some builds are entirely out of my own head). These are in chronological order, and this gallery will change as I build more.
Update Aug 16, 2021: If I were still unvaccinated today (or even weeks ago), I would of course have a completely different view of the risk: the risk of me getting COVID is now much higher, and hugely outweighs the risk of blood clots. Risk is always relative.
First, let’s get a few possible misconceptions out of the way:
I’m not an anti-vaxxer
I already got my flu shot, as I do every year. I have been vaccinated frequently throughout my life, having lived in many “exotic” countries when you had to travel with a vaccination record to show you weren’t carrying yellow fever, typhoid, etc. I raised my daughter in Italy, where kids cannot go to school without being fully vaccinated. I had no problem with this, in fact I considered it a favor when we were reminded to get her childhood vaccines on time and it was easy to do so with the family GP. Her entire school was once given Hepatitis B vaccines without parents even being informed. I had no problem with that, either. I am grateful that vaccines exist and have even gotten better over time.
Had we been able to make a trip to India before our wedding, things would have turned out very differently. We both like and are comfortable in Indian clothing, and would have been happy to buy (or have made) something Indian, probably a lehnga for me (I have not worn saris enough to be able to wear them gracefully – it’s an art). Brendan looks very sharp in a long kurta, and could definitely rock an achkan.
But this was all happening on a short timeline. We couldn’t go to India before the wedding (we’d be going there in September, after the wedding), and I was not able to find anything Indian readily available and to our taste in the US.
