On Thursday, I took a picture of this oddity in our garden.
A confused daffodil
Somehow this daffodil did not check its calendar to see that the date was January 12! Until this weekend, we have been having rather warm weather (climate change!) and both flora and fauna were getting very confused. This blooming was the most extreme example, but we have seen flowers around town starting to grow, too. They are in for a shock now that it has dropped below freezing!
Today marks a momentous day. Today I cross a threshold from which I will never come back: living in the UK for more than 3 years. Today I say goodbye to quite a number of things but more on that later. The fact that I have crossed the 3-year threshold is significant for many reasons in my life but it marks the end of one significant activity: I probably can never donate blood in the US again. And the problem is that I love donating blood.
I know that sounds very strange, and I should say that I am not a complete weirdo. At one donation, I asked a nurse if she ever met anyone who enjoyed doing it. Her lips tightened, and she went on to tell me a story of when she encountered a disturbed man who went to several hospitals in a day to give blood because he experienced sexual arousal from the procedure. That is not why I like donating blood. I have always been fascinated by medical procedures (Dan always thinks I pause way too long on the TV channel that shows surgeries in progress; what he doesn’t know is that I would watch it exclusively if he weren’t around), and luckily, I never developed a fear of needles because my parents did not overreact when doctors approached me with one. My morbid fascination with blood donation is on par with my inability to tear my eyes off the hairdresser when he/she cuts my hair: what are they doing to my body? that is so cool!
It therefore saddens me that according to most US blood donation centers, I am ineligible to donate blood. The exact screening questions vary. Some places defer you if you have lived in the UK between 1980 and 1996. Other places shun your blood if you had a blood transfusion in the UK. Living anywhere in Europe for more than 3 years will get your blood rejected from some centers.
I enjoy giving blood because 1) I get to watch an interesting procedure being done on my body, 2) I get the satisfaction of possibly saving someone’s life or at least help an ill stranger, and 3) the blood regenerates itself quickly, so besides my time (about an hour each donation although the actual draw is under 10 minutes), I don’t really lose out on anything. As far as volunteering gigs go, this one is pretty easy. For a while, I gave every 8 weeks (the minimum time between donations) like clockwork because the local center needed the blood (less than 5% of the population donate although 39% are eligible). I wasn’t able to participate in my high school‘s blood drive because I wasn’t 18. For the many pints of blood that I donated at the Stanford Blood Center, I received a cool key chain in appreciation. There are also yummy treats at the end of every visit!
It isn’t always a smooth experience. A long time ago, a nurse told me that I had deep veins in my arms. I now dutifully warn the technician before the procedure “Just so you know, my veins can be tricky to find.” This helps some people but for others, it makes them more nervous and they take even longer to get it right. During my internship at P&G, I went to a blood drive in the middle of the workday. The pint bag got to about halfway, and then that particular vein decided to take a nap and stopped pumping blood. If they go past half a pint, they just have to call it quits. Since I was just under half a pint, they stuck my other arm and took a whole pint from that side. Down 1.5 out of the usual 10 pints of blood in my body, I spent the rest of the workday in a giggly, drunk-like stupor (I assume it was drunk-like since I was only 19 at the time. Hi Mom! Hi Dad!).
Another time in front of Dan’s college dorm, I gave blood in the Bloodmobile which is very different from the Batmobile. After finishing, I went on my way to class and soon sprung a leak. Far from being alarmed, I found the whole thing a bit cartoonish as blood began squirting out of my bandages. I went back to the Bloodmobile and was amused by how the nurses put everything into lockdown mode to attend to me. Luckily, no permanent damage occurred.
Because I have low iron count, I sometimes get deferred. Some people have irrational fears or phobias; the one of needles is trypanophobia and the one of blood is hemophobia. I have irrational stubbornness, especially about my deficiencies. The week before a blood donation, I inhale cream of wheat, even though I think it’s disgusting, just to get my iron count high enough. I refuse to let my genetics get in the way of my activities. I am also irrationally stubborn about not donating blood here even though donating in the UK has no bearing on my ability to donate elsewhere.
I am sad that I won’t be able to participate in this process if/when I return. The rules and regulations may change so there is a small chance that I still might be able to donate blood in the US. But for now, goodbye to blood donations.
I am also saying goodbye to Facebook. It was only after seeing The Social Network that I realized that I was among the earlier waves of people to join since I had an @stanford.edu address. There are lots of reasons to stay on, but there are quite a few compelling reasons to log off, so I’ll be logging off permanently. Keep up with us on Google+ (let me know if you need an invite) and add this blog to your RSS feed reader of your choice! (New share and subscribe features are now available on the right)
Despite it being August, it is also time to say goodbye to summer. For the last few weeks, it has been really chilly here (about 14 C/57 F) and tomorrow, it will be about 10 C/50 F. I’ve pulled out the duvet, soup/stew recipes, and boots. Fall is arriving early.
Instead of keeping warm under my natural hat, I’ll be hacking off my hair in a few short days. Since my haircut last July in Toronto I have been growing out my hair in order to donate it to charity. I’m now at 10 inches and utterly sick of the heavy hair weighing down my neck. I can’t wait to chop it off again in Toronto next week! Goodbye hair! Are there any other parts of my body that I can donate? Last month’s riveting book club book, Stiff, has given me many more options!
We have to say a very sad goodbye to Dan’s second cousin, P. Over the weekend, he passed away which was a great shock to us. We just saw him in NOLA in April and have seen him every few years at family functions. He was a kind, generous man with a gentle manner about him. He was a reverend, and we wanted him to perform our wedding ceremony. The only reason we did not was because he and his wife, L, did not know until the last minute whether or not they could come. In the end, they did, and having P and L at our wedding was an honor for both of us. On this eve of our 9th wedding anniversary, we say goodbye to him and are grateful to have known him and have him as part of our family.
L, P, and Dan in April
Croeso yn ôl! We have been MIA for a while and very delinquent with our blog posts. The reason is in the title. As a quick recap, here is where we have been since the year started, for business, personal, or a bit of both.
In between these trips, we have had several visitors, new activities (i.e., tennis, puppy-sitting, Adele’s albums on repeat, an obsession with cooking lentils and zucchini, not necessarily together), friends coming and going, some changes in our jobs including a strike, and movement along the adoption process. In a nutshell, being behind on our blog is a direct result of being extremely busy!
Now that it is mid-June, things are finally starting to calm down… sort of. Dan was promoted to the Head of R&D recently (hooray!) and is settling into that job. Teaching and grading is now over and yesterday, I found out that I am receiving a teaching award as a result of my efforts. Siena is making room for some more ribbons in anticipation of the first big dog show of the season at the Aberystwyth Show this weekend. In adoption news, all of the additional paperwork that has been requested should be going off to Uzbekistan within the next week. The most important thing is that for the next few months, we are staying on the ground with no big trips planned, which means we can finally catch up on the housework and stop neglecting our friends and family. Yes, that means you!
This is not to say that we have not been enjoying ourselves; it has all been super-fun and exciting! We love the traveling, and these short-haul trips keep reminding us how lucky we are that we moved and continue to live here. We’ll do our best to catch up but suffice it to know that we are happy, healthy, and well. Here’s a picture + story to tie you over until the next post. A few weeks ago, we were watching a beagle puppy who is still quite small and sleeps in a little bed. Just to make sure everyone knew that Her Royal Highness, Princess Siena, still ruled on high, she decided that even this territory needed to be claimed.
Hope the puppy can breathe under there!
“Do you have kids?” is a question I sometimes get from strangers or people that I don’t know that well. ”No” is my standard reply, and then what they inevitably say is “Not yet.” Although it’s a presumptuous thing for these strangers to say to me, at the moment, it is entirely accurate. As parents-to-be, Dan and I have spent a lot of time talking/thinking about our future child. One of the issues most pressing in my mind is “What will my parenting style be?”
Many of you may have already read Amy Chua‘s excerpt of her new book and perhaps followed the controversial debate that resulted. There has been a LOT of discussion about it including a David Brooks opinion piece, a Room for Debate on NYT, rebuttals from numerous other Chinese parents, several discussions on NPR (here, here, and here with her husband), Chua’s own answers to readers, an open forum with schoolkids, a follow-up which includes comments from Chua’s friends, and even a send-up from Taiwan’s favorite animated “news” source. That is just among the English-speaking world. In the Chinese community, the debate is no less heated and has Chinese people on both sides of the Pacific in uproar (Chinese versions here and here). I have been following this debate with some interest because not only am I product of a Chinese Mother (this term refers to the style of parenting, not specifically my mom) but I am also contemplating my own internal Chinese Mother as our adoption plans progress. For those not familiar with the debate, it basically comes down to two parenting styles:
1) “Chinese Mother” style: harsh discipline, strict rules, parents always know best and impose their thinking onto the kids, never-good-enough, constant push for academic excellence resulting in a lot of sacrifice on the parents’ part but children who are high achievers but not necessarily happy or socially adjusted.
2) “Western Parent” style: indulgent, coddling, protective of kids’ egos, emphasis on choice, acknowledgement of children’s opinions, importance placed on self-esteem and happiness resulting in parents who are more likely to be “friends” with their children and children who are fine to be mediocre as long as they are happy.
I have been going back and forth a lot about what I think about both these styles. Ultimately, I’m sure Dan and I will walk a path in the middle, so that’s not the issue. One of the things I am very interested in is whether or not either of these approaches are a good idea in an environment where the other approach is the dominant style. I, like Amy Chua and her daughters, grew up in America under the Chinese Mother style. We know from psychology that our own perceptions of happiness are greatly influenced by making comparisons with other people. Growing up, I inevitably compared my household to other children’s and saw some definite differences which often resulted in my unhappiness. My own curiosity is not which style is better but whether it is wise to have one extreme parenting style in an environment where your kids will be surrounded by kids being raised in the other style and thus constantly comparing the two.
The other thing I wonder about is can we define happiness and success? Of course we will say that the definitions depend, but should parents impose a baseline? I have to confess that I probably have a fairly narrow definition of success. When raising my own children, I am not sure that I can help but insist on the same belief system. For example, academic achievement is really important to me and probably to any other household with two PhD parents. I think it’s wrong to promote a sense of “you can be the best at anything” because guess what? We can’t all be the best at everything, that’s just basic math. I believe choice is overrated; the outcomes of many decisions are of no consequence. I think hugs and kisses and politeness and gratitude should be given in spades. These are some of my ingredients to success and happiness, but is it fair to make my children believe that as well?
Despite the fact that I have a mental allergy to memoirs (better summarized by Genzlinger here), I went ahead and read Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother or rather, Amy Chua read it to me on audio book last Monday during my drive up to Bangor. I enjoyed it. I could identify with every single person in her book, from her parents to Amy Chua herself to her older obedient daughter to her younger rebellious daughter and even her Western husband. As everyone who has read the book has already stated, the excerpt doesn’t really do the book justice. It is funny, endearing, and absolutely right on in terms of the Chinese values and moral code. Have any of you read the book? If so, I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts. I have a lot of sympathies for the way she chose to raise her daughters. I, too, think a lot of what she terms “Western parenting” is too lenient and permissive. But I also remember longing to go to sleepovers, learning trigonometry in the 3rd grade (unnecessarily in my opinion), and being afraid to question my parents. Regardless, I don’t think my grades, speaking several languages, or my love for the piano and classical music would have existed without Chinese parenting. I had a long chat with my parents about the book (before any of us read it), and it was a very enlightening conversation. My parents made a lot of sacrifices for my brother and me, and they chose very carefully for us. I know that I could not have accomplished half of my achievements if I didn’t have the foundation given to me by my parents. I owe them quite a lot.
At around the same time all this was happening, I also began to appreciate how difficult it is to be an immigrant raising children. Dan and I have very little idea about the educational system here, and we are only beginning to understand some of the social/cultural norms. How do we raise our children to have Chinese and American values in Wales? How do we protect them from being bullied for being different (let’s face it, they are going to be different) than other Welsh kids? How do we help them keep in touch with their relatives scattered across the globe? And the most pertinent question to my own research interests, how many languages are they going to learn? These are the puzzles we are facing now and for many years to come, and we can only hope that our kids turn out to do more good than harm in the world.
I’m not sure what happened, but they seemed to have missed the point of Mr. Potatohead. That butt is solid, none of the usual cracks can be found. Why? Because there is no need to open it to store the parts because none of the parts come off. What marketing genius came up with this one?
Mr Potatohead is not as fun when all the parts stay on him
It’s official. Summer is over. The students are, without a doubt, back. The days are getting shorter very quickly, and our burger BBQ was during the last (probably) nice weekend of the year. Oh, and it’s now October, so yes, fall has arrived and summer is gone.
Besides the burger BBQ (inspired by this article, we made 6 types of burgers), one of our last summer activities was taking advantage of the local flora. Blackberries are considered a weed here because they grow so rampantly, but they are a wonderful, delicious weed that also provide a nice snack on walks! We decided to pick some which resulted in my very first blackberry crumble. Coincidentally, this outing coincided nicely with our mobile phone contract renewal during which I upgraded to my current Blackberry. Here are a few pictures to commemorate the occasion.
Dan can reach high up for the blackberries that nobody else picks!
4 cups of blackberries ready to be consumed
The finished product, yummy!
Fourteen families today celebrated an occasion that should never have been needed. During a civil rights march in Northern Ireland in 1972, British soldiers were given an order to fire upon unarmed protesters. After 38 years and several inquests, the victims of Bloody Sunday finally got an apology from the British government, from conservative PM, David Cameron, and were recognized as being innocent victims of the massacre. Many who were demanding that the victims be cleared did not think they would live to see this day. It is incredible to say the least, and the healing process for the families of the victims can finally begin. In their speeches today, the families shared this momentous occasion with victims in Tiananmen Square, Gaza, Darfur, and many others who were massacred while peacefully standing up for what they believe in.
One to add to the list is the current conflict in Kyrgyzstan. Hundreds of Uzbeks living in southern Kyrgyzstan have died as a result of ethnic violence in the region. Thousands are fleeing to Uzbekistan but are now being turned away because Uzbekistan is already having trouble accommodating the 75,000 people who have now crossed the border. Unarmed people are being fired upon, refugee camps are being flooded, and within Kyrgyzstan, 200,000 people are displaced inside the borders. Humanitarian aid is just now beginning to come in, and I urge you to contribute to ICRC or to the International Medical Corps.
I am making this plea to you as a future mother. Many of you know, Dan and I are in the process of putting together our adoption application for a baby from Uzbekistan. We are expecting to travel sometime next winter or spring. Given the violence in the area, some details may immediately affect us, such as will we be able to travel there when the time comes or will the government be in a position to be approving adoption applications? But there are other questions weighing on my mind, such as will our baby be a product of the widespread rape that is happening right now? How will a child confront survivor guilt when faced with the knowledge that his/her brothers and sisters were being ethnically cleansed? I don’t know what the answers are, but I know that I am struggling with the concept of raising a child in this crazy and confusing world of ours.
As a quick update, we are close to completing our dossier. We have a laundry list of documents to collect, and we have only a few things to tick off before we submit the whole thing. We are aiming to submit in July, and as I said, we are expecting to travel there sometime next winter or spring (assuming a smooth timeline). I am praying to whatever deity that the violence ends soon, and that people stop dying needlessly.
Since last week, we in the UK have been suffering from Icelandic volcano ash crisis. It is affecting our ability to see the entire coastline of Wales from certain vantage points (the top of Pen Dinas comes to mind) and our laundry dried outside comes in slightly dusty. And of course, air travel has been severely affected. Several of our friends and colleagues have had to change their travel plans to/from Aber. A few of my students are also stuck and are frantically trying to get back to turn in assignments. Britain sent their Royal Navy fleet to retrieve troops and civilians stuck in continental Europe. Not a lot of fun for those directly affected. The aviation industry has reportedly been losing 200 million dollars a day. It really makes one pause to think about how much we now depend on air travel. I fly a fair amount, considering we have family and friends all over the globe plus we really enjoy going to see different places. I know all about the carbon pollution and how carbon offsets are pretty much ridiculous and how the only way to really reduce those carbon emissions is to not fly. Yet my wanderlust stops me from making that commitment, and I admit that is very selfish of me. I’m curious what the green angle will be from this recent event. Will there be a report on the carbon emissions saved over the last few days (bar the carbon from the volcano)? Will people realize that traveling by train/ferry/subway/car (this is a highly abbreviated version of what my friend, R, had to go through to get back to Aber from Villefranche across 24+ hours) is so horribly inconvenient that they actually plan to travel more on planes? Or will people decide that they actually didn’t need planes, coming back to Aber on a bus from Poland (one of my students) is actually a lovely way to see many parts of Europe? A isn’t going back home until May, so the airplane travel will probably be sorted by then. But if not, it will be no big deal.
After posting this, my friends have pointed me to this great illustration of the carbon differences courtesy of Information is Beautiful.
Carbon emissions from the recent crisis is still better than the status quo
A few weeks ago, some of us in Aber had the privilege of watching an excellent film called Departures. The theme that resonated most with me was that of parent-child relationships. A prevalent concept in Asian cultures is filial piety, which is hard to explain to those from non-Asian cultures. It’s not simply being obedient to your parents but actually that we owe them everything. The main character of the film, Daigo, experiences many mixed emotions including shame for being an inadequate son to his mother, rage at his father who abandons him, and excitement about his unborn child. There are many other parent-child storylines in the film, and this thought struck me: I really need to experience what parenthood is like. It is a singular experience, and I feel like I would be missing out on some aspect of life if I didn’t engage in it. So it’s a good thing then that Dan and I recently decided to become parents.
Remember that post a while back about whether we should start a family? We had many, many, many talks about it with each other and discussed with many, many people. There is still a very strong societal expectation that (married) couples should have kids, so we didn’t really get to hear from the perspective of those who don’t think we should have kids. In the end, we decided that what was pulling us to make this decision was wanting to shape a life and parent somebody. I mean, Siena is fantastic and all, but I am coming up against a wall with this whole teaching her to talk thing. Dan and I also thought long and hard about whether we wanted to have biological or adopted children. There are lots of pros and cons for both, but in the end, we decided to adopt! I could go into all the ins and outs of the decision, but for me, mostly it was a gut feeling. Now for the fun part: applying to adopt. This process is incredibly complex and to be quite honest, just weird. So many questions and decisions! Domestic or international adoption? Gender, age, race of the adopted child? Which agency to work with? We finally chose an adoption agency in Maryland called Cradle of Hope who has experience working with both Americans and Brits and are familiar with the laws in both countries. We are applying to adopt a 0-2 year old from Uzbekistan, of either gender. As far as we can tell, we’re the only Americans living in Britain adopting from Uzbekistan. Apologies, but we may use this blog as a venue to discuss our process. We have our home study scheduled for April 16. Very scary! We have to give a very detailed history of ourselves. There are a lot of documents we need to gather in the meantime, marriage certificate, birth/naturalization certificate, financial statements, verification of employment, physician’s evaluations, child abuse clearances, criminal background checks, and on and on. Our goal is to have our dossier submitted around June. We’ll keep you updated on how it all goes!
In surveying our kitchen today, I was pretty impressed with the international nature of our kitchen. I’m not talking about just treats and processed food from various places, but actual ingredients that we can cook with. Among our vituals, we have andouille sausage and chipotle sausage from NOLA (courtesy of R and M), jerk sauce from Jamaica (courtesy of P), black sugar from Taiwan, fideuà from Spain, and we’re getting plusgras butter soon from France (courtesy of R). Being able to cook with ingredients from lots of places is a real joy. There aren’t really places to get these ingredients around here, so getting friends to bring them over the border and traveling with them ourselves is one of the few ways to get what we want. Despite our love of cooking food from all over the world, I do also try to buy local. I go to our local farmer’s market (1st and 3rd Saturday of each month) and the last time I shopped there, I cooked the best lamb I have ever had in my life. It was probably also the freshest lamb I’ve ever had; that lamb was likely live a few days before I ate it. Leeks, potatoes, and parsnips are a regular part of our meals. I’m working on adapting a beef stew recipe for the crockpot. Once I get all the kinks worked out, I’ll post it up. What are some ingredients in your kitchen that you usually cook with?
