Author: chaskemp

Weird blogger program, breaking up sentences and even words and there’s nothing I can do about it. Sorry. The 14.5 hour flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong was fine, with okay seats – the first and second seats of the middle

section, with, thankfully, a nice person in the third seat. I slept some, but Leslie never was able to s

leep. We got into Hong Kong a few minutes after 6am, changed a few dollars, and caught the A21 bus to

Mongkok. We dropped our bags at the Dragon, had breakfast at the Ho Fun Café, and caught

a bus to the Chungking Mansions to change $200. Rode back up Nathan Road and

checked in to the Dragon, where sure enough, we got a room with shared bath. Photo above: Mong Kok sidewalk

We walked around the neighborhood some, including to the Sino Plaza, a very busy collection of mostly tiny shops selling electronic gewgaws. By now, Leslie was shak

y-tired, so we went back to the Dragon and she stayed in the room while I went on a fruitless

search for Wing Hub Roasties. Unable to find Wing Hub, I went back to a place we’d gotte

n take-away (what they call to-go) pork and duck before. The duck was good, but the pork was just brilliant. The best. This day, Sunday, was kind of a lost day as we’d been quite a few hours with little or no sleep. By the end of the day Leslie had gone 48 hours with zero s

leep – not bad for 65 years!!! Photo above (by Leslie): bird fancier at Cooked Foods Court, Fa Yuen (people’s) Market

We slept like logs. In the morning fixed coffee with the filter holder (kind of like a Mellita) that Leslie got for traveling), and walked a few blocks to the Fa Yuen Market. We had planned on getting dim s

um for breakfast at the 3^rd floor “Cooked Foods” food court for breakfast, but changed our minds and had a western breakfast (eggs, ham, toast, coffee)

at a place where we’d talked with the owner several years ago – and it was here that the trip seemed to really begin, with a friendly woman at a nearby table, men with so

ng birds in cages, and Leslie and I planning our day in this amazing city. Photo: random lane Cheung Chau

We took a bus down the canyon of Nathan Road to the harbor. What kind of a day would it be without a ride on the Star Ferry across the harbor? We had thought we’d go up the Peak, but it was a hazy day and so decided we’d take a ferry to Cheu

ng Chau Island. It was a nice 45 minute ride on the “fast ferry” (no smoking, no gambling, passengers must stay in the saloon) to the island. I guess if we’d not been to Lamma Island several times in the past Cheung Chau would have been more engaging. Maybe the best way to say it is it was a good trip to a kind of gritty (as Leslie would say) island town. We were tired by the time we got back to our room. We cleaned up and went out to Good Hope Noodles for shrimp wonton soup and a plate of Chinese broccoli. And finally back to our room where we are as I write this. Photo: Star Ferry, the very same ferry that Suzy Wong and her lover rode back and forth across the harbor, falling in love.

Sorry about all the broken-up sentences and words!

The trip started in Berkeley where we had Thanksgiving with David and Kevin. In a few hours we’ll take off for Hong Kong, where we’ll stay in Mong Kok at the Dragon Hostel. Photo: $4 worth of dim sum from Chinatown in Oakland. Starting the trip with a dim sum binge

http://www.worldisround.com/articles/336394/index.html

My amazing wife is fine with us staying 2 nights in a room with shared bath (hopefully without a turtle – see link above), then 2 nights with attached bath. The thing is we really like the Dragon – it’s well-run, it’s 2 blocks from the MTR and a main bus line, half a block from the Ho Fun café, 2 blocks from the Fa Yuen Market, and it’s in the most crowded area of a very crowded city with the most amazing crowds in the streets.

Then to Hanoi for about a week while we wait for David to join us. Depending on the rains, we’ll go to Sapa up in the mountains or Halong Bay. Then on to Hue (beautiful city of ghosts), Dalat, Saigon, Phnom Penh … deep into the lands of the Mekong …

“Whole generations of westerners who went out there as soldiers, doctors, planters, or journalists lost their hearts to these lands of the Mekong … there are places that take over a man’s soul.” Jon Swain

Two excellent short films by Jun, my cycling buddy. Jun did the video on Leslie and me cited elsewhere in the journal.

State Fair of Texas

Greenwood Cemetery

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Sometimes I find myself wishing I wasn‘t working. Mostly it’s just laziness, but also the fact that I’ve lost a step. I’m not as adept at keeping track of the multiple problems of multiple patients and the multiple questions and issues that come my way in a busy clinic day (I can keep only about 6-8 windows open). So I’m slower. But then there are realizations that I’m doing a good job for the patients and that I can have some fairly deep clinical insights; there is the pleasure of working with my colleagues; and there are moments like in this photo. What joy to see three generations together like this! What joy to provide care for people who really have their act together, like la abuela in the photo.

For obvious reasons I hesitated to write this, but it’s true, so … I became enlightened and nothing other than this life, including the service, would do. That’s why. Of course it was transient. But those few days spent in that state (and Leslie’s profound influence) were enough to keep me on the path for >40 years. Photo: David and me

An email from a former student, very nice to receive: “Just wanted to see how things are going. J told me he was heading to the clinic, so I asked him to get your email address for me. School is going really well. They are definitely keeping me busy here. Seems like I literally study all day. Fortunately, I am a big enough nerd that I don’t mind all the reading. I did not get a chance to come by before I left, but I did want to thank you for your support and encouragement. I remember as a nursing student the professors would always ask us about our plans post graduation. I would tell them that I intended to go to CRNA school. You were the only professor who told me I could actually do it, and supported me. I learned a great deal from you during my clinical rotation, and one of the most valuable things I learned from you was how to be a caring clinician. I admire how you reach out to the patients. Hopefully if all goes well, I can one day offer my services as a CRNA to those in need.” Photo above: Highway Colorado headed into New Mexico

Part of my answer: A nerd in understanding the patho, the procedures, the meds, etc., makes for a stud out there at the literal edge of human existence, where you’ve been spending your time.

Photo: Chocolate chunk cookies (the best recipe) and whole wheat bread (Tassajara recipe)

Like many other people I am deeply affected by the death of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers student who committed suicide after another student posted videos of Tyler having sex with another man. I realize (sorry to be soooo slow) that discrimination of any sort against gay people is a civil rights, a justice issue – the same as the other great civil rights/justice issues of the 20th Century.

Why this time? Why not (ABC News, I think): “… 13-year-old Asher Brown, who told his parents he was gay, fatally shot himself last week after they said bullies pushed him too far. Two other teenagers hanged themselves after classmates had bullied them for years over their sexual orientations. 15-year-old Billy Lucas of Indiana hanged himself three weeks ago, and 13-year-old Seth Walsh from California died this week, eight days after trying to hang himself from a tree.” Why not Matthew Shepard? Why not others? I don’t know.

But I do know, here I am, with no more tolerance for religious bigots who model intolerance and hate and then lie about it with the old “hate the sin, not the sinner” shuck and jive. No more tolerance for people who justify prejudice because it’s part of their culture (Hispanic, Black, Redneck [everybody else gets a cap, why not us], whatever). No more tolerance for looks and innuendo. No more tolerance for really, face it, people’s own personal threat over something (same sex sex) that isn’t unusual, that lots of people do or have done, that animals other than the human animal do.

Being gay isn’t a lifestyle choice – it just is, the same as being hetero, BUT if it was a choice, then so what. Who is anyone to tell anyone else that a choice that doesn’t hurt anyone is wrong?

Here is a link to the It Gets Better Project – a very good thing for young people struggling with cruelty. From one of the vids:

There really is a place for us
There really is a place for you
One day you will have friends who love and support you
You will find love
You will find a community
Life gets better.

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Someone said to my teacher, “I want to kill myself in despair over the suffering.” And I thought…

Dan, I want to lift you up in rejoicing over suffering ended, diminished, and accompanied in your ~60 years of mercy and my ~40 years of trying and if both of us fall over dead today, we know that younger people are moving up to the line and we’ll get past a 100 years of mercy one way or another. A 100 years, a 1,000 years, we’ll hold the line.

I was talking last week with someone who works emergency about working in emergency and how it’s possible to take (literally) just a moment or not even that, just in the way you be, to be nice; to bring some confidence and comfort to people at the edge of existence – and people going beyond that. You don’t have to go anywhere to be a missionary. I was thinking about 10 or 12 years ago when I was in a room with a man in his 70s and his wife, also in her 70s who was dying and I noticed her breast was exposed in all the action and I reached over and covered her and her husband said, “It’s okay.”

My beloved wife

Two new links, two new trips: Blog removed (Chris in the Marines in Afghanistan) and The Way Life Should Be (Mandela with the Jesuits in Maine).

Yesterday I realized that I was enmeshed in a political internet forum and that the ugliness was bad for me. The way it works is people will post on a topic and often the more conservative posters will then be attacked in personal and vicious terms by “progressives.” And the thing is, the political forum is on a backpacking site so naturally I’d be going there. And I would think, I’ll just have a look at what’s being discussed on the political forum, and there I’d be. So I took it all out of favorites. I feel better already. Photo: Behind the refugee agency with some Karen people.

Today I rode home from the lake via Loving Street, which has the steepest hill. Oh man, what a grind! The first time I did it, I started to walk across Gaston (big, busy road) when I got to the top and realized my legs weren’t working very well at all and I couldn’t really turn around, so Mr. Rubber Legs was shaky-walking across Gaston. Time today: 1.15.

Last week I was lying in bed, thinking that it had been a long time since that same morning when Jun and I rode around White Rock and that maybe I’d work out tomorrow and then, come on, I need to take several days off each week and so okay, but the point is, when was the last time I wanted to exercise? Never in my life. Yet here I am, looking forward to the next 14 mile ride and especially the last hills. The schedule I mentioned in the last post remains the same:

Sunday – Ride home to around White Rock and back
Monday – Gym (at 35 minutes now)
Tuesday – Ride
Wednesday – Rest
Thursday – Gym
Friday – Gym
Saturday – Rest

And here I am, plotting and scheming to increase protein intake and learning lots of new good things about nutrition. Photo: Waiting for the clinic to open.

Started tonight getting food together for Colorado. It looks like this:
Breakfast: Freeze-dried eggs with cheese and bread (crostini-type toasts) alternating with oatmeal, fruit, and milk. Coffee and/or hot chocolate. I’m working on a protein drink – something like dried milk + protein powder (whey) + water chilled in snow. We’ll see how the test kitchen does (at least 50-50 chance of blech, I think).
Lunch: Granola or granola bars & candy bars for snacks
Dinner: Chili, burger, pasta, chips, cheese; Chipotle chicken, green beans, bread; Mashed potatoes, bacon, cheese, bread; Tom kha with chicken and rice; Spaghetti, pasta, burger, cheese, bread;

I’ll have this on the first (solo) part (Ute Creek Semi-Loop) and repeat it when DK and I are on the Elk Park/Chicago Basin shuttle loop.

DK left two days ago for Chicago first, then Berkeley for his last year of law school. It was a good summer with him here; a significant change from two people to three in our medium-size cottage; and the only thing I would change would be for him to be around more. From his blog: “Today I leave Texas, and I don’t yet know when I’ll be back. I had an unbelievably great time this summer. I could not ask for more.”

The plan as it stands is to head back to Colorado next month. Current thinking is for me to start with the Ute Creek semi-loop, a 25 mile lollipop loop in the Weminuche Wilderness. I’m giving myself a few extra days on the trail to go slow and acclimate and hoping I don’t go too slow so I get a few days in Fort Collins (the town of my dreams). Then I’ll meet David in Denver and we’ll go back to the Weminuche to hike the Elk Park/Chicago Basin shuttle loop. We’ll catch the train from Durango and get off at the start of the hike, hike a 40 mile loop, and then catch the train back to Durango. We’ll go back to Denver, he’ll fly to Berkeley and I’ll drive back to Dallas.

My inability to get up the hill in New Mexico with Jim Z was a major wake-up call. Shortly after returning home I joined the Lakewood Gym and have been working out five days/week since then. Last week I biked around White Rock Lake Sunday and Tuesday (14 miles each time and the hard part is the hills on the way home) and worked out at the gym three days. This seems like an excellent schedule that addresses cardio and legs with some upper body as well. I’m pretty excited about it all – glad that I’m getting it done kind of like cardiac rehab before an MI. I’ll have 7 weeks to get to an improved condition.

Along with the same theme of health, or something like that, a week ago I bought a Cuisinart ice cream maker for $5 at a garage sale. The test case was basic chocolate ice cream and it’s grrrreat. Since I started baking, especially around the holidays, I’ve been thinking it would be a good idea to be able to make some primo vanilla ice cream to go with certain pies or some dark chocolate ice cream or fresh peach ice cream – so many possibilities, like mixing in chocolate covered peanuts, other things from bulk… The next test will be to make that primo vanilla, the one with 1.5 cups milk, 1.5 cups cream, a vanilla bean, 2 eggs and 3 egg yolks, and some sugar. ¡¡Ay Caramba!!

And now to the photos. In the top photo there’s more beauty here than is first seen. Lupe’s daughter, obviously, and her hair(!) – and also that she’s planning to cut her hair and give it to an organization that makes wigs for people with cancer. And there’s the man in the photo, Alan, the dermatologist who gives several days each month to the poor – he’s beautiful. And the room they’re in, the derm room, started by Carrie K when she was a resident and still going years later while Carrie’s gone on to teach at UPenn – the room is beautiful (not to mention Carrie!) and then there was Kelly (in the photo here), who worked in the derm room for three years and who passed on at such a young age. That was one of the saddest things – and she was beautiful.