Zori

     Zori. That's the word used (or some derivative of it) in the Republic of Palau, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of the Marshall Islands for what most people from there wear on their feet. The Japanese colonized Micronesia for about 30 years, and that's where the word originally came from.
     I just did a 7 month work gig back in the Marshall Islands, and one of the things I regularly did was to walk on some of the lesser visited beaches on the Eastern side of the islands. I love picking through the flotsam and jetsam that the winds and waves had washed onshore. The amount of plastic and trash that's in the ocean is sickeningly staggering, but there can sometimes be some use there. When I lived on an outer island for a year as I was figuring out how to adult, my soft, sensitive white feet had hardened a bit, but I could never get used to walking on the coral lined paths without zori. I'd  sometimes wake up and find out someone had 'borrowed' my precious zori that I left outside my house. I'd sigh, get some water out of the cistern, strain the bugs and gecko shit out of it and start to boil it for coffee and then go and look on the beach for a mismatched pair that had washed up. There was always a variety on the beach right outside my house and I was on an outer island.  Sometimes, I'd have to walk down a little farther than I'd have preferred to find something that would  kind of fit, but what washed up is what was there. I don't care much now what people think about what I wear, and I cared much less then, if you can fathom that.
     So on the most recent work gig, I did what I always did - marvel at the daily changes on the beach. The sands had shifted from the night before, new pieces of coral, broken shells, high tide, low tide...and every manner of flotsam and jetsam, every day. To include zori. There were hundreds I found and left behind because I just didn't feel a good story in them. But there were some that I brought back with me. Who is Victor? He carved his name in his zori. How did he lose that one? Awwww, those sweet Hello Kitty zori. There were two of those, but different sizes, different colors. What winds and waves washed them towards me? The Popeye zori. Looks like a fifth grader's zori. Each one of those zori could have a fantastic story behind them. How they were lost, what they did to get home with one zori. Here is a link to a great short film about zori, and how terrible it is to lose one on an outer island done by a good friend of mine.

https://www.microwavefilms.org/zori.html

     I want to know everyone's story about how they lost their zori. How long it was in the ocean. What storms and currents brought it where. How it was somehow blown/washed to shore on Kwajalein in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. If anything bad even happened to you or even if you ever lost one of your zori, I hope your story had a happy ending.

 

     

Asshole buddies

      I try to learn something new every day, and the other day, I learned what an asshole buddy is. Typically, I’ll make a conscious decision about what I want to learn, as a few examples, last week, I brushed up on my knot tying skills or wrote for a prescribed period of time every day. Sometimes, I cheat a little by watching YouTube How It’s Made channel and chalk that up as what I’ve learned for the day. Go ahead, watch the one about how hot dogs are made and then let me know if you ever have one again. Other days, I’ll read some of the classics - I’m currently enjoying Guy de Maupassant’s complete short stories. I’ve explored how Bhutan measures GNH (Gross National Happiness), I’m also listening to a podcast that describes the personality and legacy of each of the 45 presidents, I’m up to William Henry Harrison now - that one should be pretty short. But a few days ago, completely by chance, I learned about asshole buddies.
     I’m in Santa Barbara, visiting my parents and we were chatting late in the afternoon about anything and everything.

The man, the myth, the legend, my dad

Then my dad said, “Let me tell you how the guys I lawn bowl with became my asshole buddies.” That got my attention. “Wait - what is an asshole buddy?” My dad seemed surprised I didn’t know what an asshole buddy was and then my mom chimed in and asked, incredulously, “You don’t know what an asshole buddy is?” I swear, this conversation actually happened. I said this is the first time in my life I’ve ever heard the term. My mom said my dad used the phrase all the time, he countered by saying he rarely used it, but it was common Philadelphia slang (where they’re both originally from) and it means you’re really good friends. So we quickly FaceTimed brother Ed for validation. I asked him to give me a thumbs up/thumbs down and posed the question - have you ever heard of an ‘asshole buddy’? He John McCain’ed it perfectly with a slow thumbs down in front of the camera and asked what was going on. I explained the context and then we had some follow on questions about just what an asshole buddy is and isn’t. Some of the questions asked were how does one become an asshole buddy? Do both parties know they are asshole buddies? Do you have to ask someone to be your asshole buddy? At that point, Ed leaned into the camera and seductively whispered, “Will you be my asshole buddy? Is that how it works?” As you may imagine, there was uncontrollable laughter during the discussion. My dad said that blood relatives could not be asshole buddies (really, there’s seems to be some codification on who can and can’t be asshole buddies). I asked him if male/female friends could be asshole buddies, he paused for a moment and then gave a terse ‘no’. I said I thought that was a very, very good call. Cue more laughter.
     The uncontrollable mirth down after a while, but still got an occasional chuckle from me just at the thought of the whole exchange. Later that night at dinner, we were talking about my upcoming trip to Thailand/Malaysia and who knows where else to get an annual physical, dermatologist visit and my 60th birthday colonoscopy. I said, “Hey, do you know who’s going to do my colonoscopy at Bumrungrad Hospital?” They said, “No, who?”  I said... “My asshole buddy.” That was an inaccurate use of my newly learned vocabulary, but we all thought it was pretty funny. 

Alex

     You get what you pay for in general and on Maui? Maybe even more so. My daughter has lived there for 10 years and I just visited her and my brother. She's become a part of the community because she's way more FOMO than I am, and it was so gratifying to see her run into people no matter where we were who she knew, hugs, kisses and this is my dad, he’s just here visiting, blah, blah, blah. Because Maui is not cheap and she’s been mostly in roommate situations, she lives in a crappy neighborhood. If any tourist ever got to the end of the road where she lives, it was by complete accident. So she's been looking for another place to live on Maui, and she answered a Craigslist ad...from Alex. Alex was a huckster of the first degree. He was trying to rent out two 'Ohana' units in upcountry Maui for $950/ mo each. Maui can be a lovely place to visit, but it’s not an easy place to live if you’re working there. If you can find an Ohana for $950 in upcountry Maui, you don't need the type of flowery prose Alex employed or pictures that were not representative of the bed spaces he was advertising, that Ohana will sell itself. Quickly.  Here’s the ad: https://honolulu.craigslist.org/mau/apa/d/pukalani-peaceful-ohana-in-kula-for/7068464609.html

Part of the main house. Where you can't go when his daughter is there. 

     So Ed, Celine and I made an appointment to take a look see because we like pretty pictures and flowery prose too. Yeah. Not as advertised. Alex had a shaved head, waxed mustache, square plastic rimmed glasses and gesticulated wildly as he was describing 'the possibilities' of where an outdoor kitchen might be, or where he could set up the ping pong table, if his daughter wasn't staying in the main house. Right. If his daughter wasn't there, then you could visit the main house, if she was there, then it was verboten. He took us through the property, and said some unusual things. “Look up! Not at the stars (it was about 2:45 pm, the only star visible was the sun), which are beautiful, but look up at the avocado tree! The tree knows when the avocados are ripe and that makes them taste like nothing you’ve ever tasted." Oh Alex. The avocado tree was situated directly above the the detached Ohana. The ripe avocados would have plummeted down in the middle of the night with a thundering BOOOOOOM on the roof of the tiny house like structure that would have raised the dead. Side note: I’ve had avocados that were picked un ripe and avo’s that dropped from the tree. I couldn’t tell the difference. Maybe he could. But he was special.
     You get what you pay for. I remember in my misguided youth after a fairly feral month in Sumatra I ended up in Singapore. I was looking for a knock off Walkman. Google it millennials, and yes, that's how old I am. I was in some mall and asked the proprietor of Indian descent if I could listen to the device before I plunked down my $10, he said with a disapproving wag of the head, "Baba, if you pay $10, you are going to get $10 quality." If you answer ad for an Ohana in upcountry Maui for $950 that ends with: Mahalo, have a beautiful day, and may the Universe smile kindly upon you....you're going to get what you pay for. Alex and his unique personality will be included at no extra charge. 

Maui in 3 Acts

     Act 1:  Maui has a couple of different sides. Visiting Maui typically involves staying in a hotel, when someone else cleans your room, makes your bed and then you lay by the pool/beach while eating food someone else made. When I tell people my daughter lives on Maui, they usually gush and say, “Oh, she’s so lucky!” I remind them (because I’m me) that it’s not all rainbows and unicorns, she works, and you know what she does after she’s done working? She drives home, stops at a store to get some food, cooks, cleans and then maybe does some laundry. You know what she does the next day? The. Same. Thing. Sure, it’s beautiful and there are beach and waterfall days and fruit can be easily foraged. But unless you’re a member of the wealthy elite (more on that later), life on Maui isn’t quite as pretty as those lovely beaches and waterfalls.  One thing that took me aback this visit were all of the abandoned cars on the North (non touristy) side. Brother Ed said there seems to be five distinct stages of abandonment. Stage 1: The car is abandoned in an unusual spot, where you typically wouldn’t park a car but left parked anywhere for a while and your car could be mistaken as abandoned. Stage 2: Tires are removed. Stage 3: Windows smashed in, anything of value on the inside removed. Stage 4: The mechanical guts are stripped and the car is graffitied. Stage 5: Car is torched. Ed and I walked down to Jaws the other day, looked over the bluff and found an abandoned car in the middle of the dirt road on the way back - that wasn’t there 15 minutes ago when we walked the same road. We marveled at the efficiency of that particular abandonment. Those blighted cars are everywhere on this side of the island and it’s crazy.

Just up the road from my daughter’s house. Looks like Stage 3 to me. 

     Act 2: Ed asked if I wanted to plant a legacy tree on their property on Maui, pretty much everyone else in the family already had chosen one and put it in the ground. He has a go to nursery he buys the fruit trees from. When he first went there, he was looking at a dwarf mango tree, the owner of the nursery said, “I have some larger trees, but they are a bit more expensive.” Then he paused, looked my brother up and down and went on to say, “But you look like a member of the wealthy elite, you should take the bigger tree.” Note - my brother looks and dresses like me. We do not resemble members of that class and we had more than a few chuckles about their exchange. But thinking about it, it makes perfect sense. He lives on Maui, is in his early 60’s, doesn’t work and is a haole. That screams wealthy elite, even if you dress like us. A caveat to the legacy tree challenge: there were only two days left in my trip. This is an important decision. I want to ensure that whatever I choose grows and flourishes and provides tasty fruit for years to come. I surveyed the grounds to see what everyone else had planted, which narrowed my options.
     My first choice was to go for sexy. Rambutan is one of my favorite fruits, I thought that would leave a pleasant memory (and taste) in everyone’s mouth. But a legacy tree? Don’t get fooled by looks, folks. Just because that fruit is so pretty and tastes oh so sweet doesn’t mean you want to put those roots in the ground - do the dance, think about the long term match. Is it in the right growing zone? How about the amount of water/sun it needs and how big will it eventually grow - will it block your or someone else’s views? I’ve backed off rambutan and am leaning towards soursop, but want to do my research a bit more. Ed and Celine were trying to bully me into making a decision before I leave, but I can always come back and do it right. Just jumping in the deep end after the good looking fruit tree doesn’t always end well. I’ll come back at the end of the year if I’m short on miles to get to the next status level to plant whatever I decide is both sexy and smart. ‘Cause that’s what we all really want, right?
     Act 3: Ed and Celine. This is the only reason I came to Maui for - family, my brother and daughter - and it’s been a blast. Some people in our lives have tried to domesticate us, and let me tell you, all who have made the efforts have failed miserably. We are more than okay with that. Ed and I would be playing Words With Friends next to each other and he’d say, “I’m interested in herpetology these days.” I look at him and go right to WWF. He’d just played ‘snakey’. I’d snort and say, “Well done!” I make sure to slip in the same type of non sequiturs when we’re playing like, “I think I’m going to the lavatory now.” Not the type of thing I’d ever say, so he looks at his WWF, nods and says, “Good play.” We had a few adult conversations about finances, 5 -10 year plans, what we wanted our lives to look like, but mostly it wasn’t serious at all. There’s just too much wilderness in us and when left unsupervised, it’s a ridiculously funny non-stop show. We relived memories, looked at old pictures, laughed, poked, planned, competed for bed space, laughed, fact checked each other ruthlessly, sang goofy songs, made meals and then laughed and laughed and laughed some more. Straight up silliness, just the way we like it, without any real adults modulating our feral nature. Looking forward to more frequent visits in the near future wherever, whenever. But particularly in off season travel time, because I’m still a Taylor.

Not too far from Pukalani Superette, welcome to upcountry

The master closet

     We Taylors are a competitive lot. At one point, Gwyne said to me, “You know, everything in life isn’t a competition.” I said, “Ohhhh. That attitude explains why you’ve been losing so much.” We both had a good laugh over that exchange. I’m in Maui now, visiting my brother who has a house here and my daughter, who has been living here for 10 years. He has two renters living in his 3 bedroom/2 bath house, which leaves Ed and I to share the master bedroom. And master closet. One of us will sleep on the master bed, the other will sleep on a folding mattress in the master closet, based on a mutually agreed upon competition held during the day. There are no friendly challenges because they are ALL deadly serious, but they are also filled with uproarious laughter and fun, as is pretty much the entire day. My laugh lines are getting a serious work out, ‘cause that’s how we roll.  The first night’s challenge came about organically -  we were talking about real estate and business cycles. He knows real estate, and I know business cycles. We decided on the first challenge to be based on real estate prices in Boulder, Colorado, where he owns a few homes and has lived for 30+ years. Advantage Ed? Not so fast there, buckaroo. He argued prices always went up, I said they were cyclical and said that if he checked, he’d see that in 2008, prices went down. We bickered a bit about the terms. Does a plateau count as a decline? No, the median prices have to dip. As we negotiated the terms of the challenge and finally came to a mutually agreeable conclusion, he did the research. Dip the prices did, and I had a fabulous sleep, blissfully thrashing around on the master bed, thank you very much. Ed enjoyed the master closet. I enjoyed his humiliation as he closed the door to the closet.
     Yesterday’s challenge was geographical - we found a site that had outlines of 197 countries in the world and we had 20 minutes to correctly identify as many of them as we could. The exchanges, or steam of consciousness, were absolutely hilarious. Kenya, Kenya, where are you Kenya? I’d adopt an African accent (which I do fairly well), “Please my Kenyan brothers and sisters, help me, guide me and take me to your ancestral home - YES, I knew you would! Ed would be muttering to himself at the same time and saying things like, “Really? C’mon, I don’t know where St. Lucia is. Is that a real country? AHHHHHH!” I plowed through the Middle Eastern Countries as they popped up, Iran, Kuwait, Iraq, UAE, Yemen, Oman and Qatar, as-slalam alaykum my friends and Ed killed it in South America. We both struggled in Africa and the Caribbean and we swore loudly whenever we incorrectly guessed where some of the countries were located. I lost due to a technicality, I accidentally closed my page on my iPad and lost my progress once, we regrouped for the second start and agreed if I dorked it up again, I would be relegated to the closet. And yes, I dorked it up again. It’s so serious, but it’s also so unbelievably fun.

     The first day was all about a visit to my daughter’s house, meeting her cat and picking up the pickled papaya (coco) she made me, then planning out the day’s food tour through Wailuku. I’m not here to do all the Maui things, I’m here to visit them, so they made all the decisions about what we did. We started off at a woodworking exhibition in the Maui Arts and Cultural Center that featured 25 pieces, each one was unbelievably beautiful. Then we started gathering food for lunch, Celine knows her way around the best places to get great food in Maui. They took me to a Foodland where they have a semblance of a live fish market and fresh ogo, seaweed that perfectly sets off a type of Poke, onwards to another old time Poke market and then we passed an Okazuya, a Japanese delicatessen where we picked up a few more treats. We enjoyed our picnic at a Korean pagoda, and wrapped the day up with a hike and a swim in a FRIGID waterfall/river and then dinner. And many, many more laughs.

     Todays gig is simple - a timed Words With Friends game using a chess clock, we haven’t decided the time each competitor will get, we’re still negotiating terms. Winner gets the bed, loser gets...the master closet. But the games in the next few days promise to be more serious. This is an 8 night trip. Taylors don’t like ties. One of us has to win. Ed suggested reviving a version of a game his sons played when they were here, jumping off a cliff into a river, swimming to shore, building a tower of 10 balanced stones and then swimming back to a pre-determined log in the river. The first to touch the log after completing the task(s) wins. This shit’s about to get real. The score is 1 - 1. And btw, the master closet last night was surprisingly comfortable...and Ed enjoyed my humiliation as I closed the door to the closet. :)

Alan A. Taylor (see #4)

      I listen to a lot of podcasts, on a very wide variety of subjects. Some are mundane behavioral economics stuff, some profane; I like the witty and irreverent podcasts that educate and provide a laugh, but I’ll give any recommendation a listen. One I listened to recently on my old person morning walk was titled, 'Things we learned in 2019' by a consultant named Tom Whitwell at Fluxx, it was a Planet Money podcast. He’s been making a list of 52 factoids since 2014, one for each week in a year. Some made me laugh uproariously, some made me think, others shocked me. Here's a few of my random favorites, the hyperlink takes you to the research just to show you this shit isn’t made up, the only thing original in this blog are my comments in parenthesis. 

1. 28% of people like the smell of (their own) urine after eating asparagus.[Rolf Degen] (I had to listen to that twice to make sure I heard that right. Guess I’m in the 72% that doesn’t sniff their pee.)
2. Advertisers place a single brown pixel on a bright background in a mobile ad. It looks like dust, so users try to wipe it off. That registers as a click, and the user is taken to the homepage. [Lauren Johnson] (Okay, that’s evil. Extraordinarily clever, but still evil.)
3. Peppa Pig tattoos are big in China. [Kenrick Davis] (I have no tattoos, but I’d consider a temporary Peppa Pig tat to freak my wife out.)
4. Using a middle initial makes people think you’re clever. [Wijnand A. P. Van Tilburg & Eric R. Igou] (Hey Wijnand A. P. And Eric R.  - I get it! - Alan A. Taylor)

   

   Alan A. Taylor on the right. Gwyne, about to be freaked out by my Peppa Pig  tramp stamp tat on the left.

5. 54 percent of Chinese born after 1995 chose “influencer” as their most desired occupation. [Charlie Gu] (I take this as meaning they want to be beautiful, get free things and not work. A large fraction of that 54% will not end up being influencers, so I hope they have a good back up plan.)
6. In the UK, marriages between couples over 65 have risen 46% over the last decade. [Cassie Werber] (Hip hip hurrah for hope! My parents once met two 90+ year olds who were celebrating their 5th wedding anniversary. That's one of the best stories I ever heard.) 
7. In a mixed-gender group, when women talk 25% of the time or less, it’s seen as being “equally balanced”. If women talk 25–50% of the time, they’re seen as “dominating the conversation” [Caitlin Moran] (Note to men: shut the fuck up.)
8. A Dutch bike manufacturer reduced shipping damage by 70–80% by printing a flatscreen TV on their boxes. [May Bulman] (I want my next bike shipped in a box that says it’s plate glass. And I’m a serial bicycle buyer and seller.)
9. Every day, WhatsApp handles twice as many messages as the entire global SMS system — around 40bn messages [Benedict Evans] (I love WhatsApp. I got my family on it and communication is so much easier and that’s the best way in the world to get in touch with me. But I react to that ping like a rat being run through a maze.)
10. The web is less than 8,000 days old. [Danny Quick] (8,000 days seems like a smaller number than almost 22 years, but still. So much, so far, so fast. I used to have to talk to people. I’m glad that’s over with.)
11. Amazon customers spend an average of $529 a year. Amazon Prime customers spend $1,340. [David Holmes] (We have Prime. Amazon owns us.)

Kwajalein - 7th tour

     I was traveling in Vietnam sometime in April/May looking for a warm weather winter get away for Gwyne and I when an e-mail popped up asking if I'd consider going to Kwajalein and helping out for few months. Gwyne gave me the okay and this four months turned into seven, but that's the way these gigs almost always work. I briefly considered staying a full year for the tax break, but 'please stay' just can't compete with 'please come home.' It was wonderful to see old friends who I've known for 50+ years and good friends I worked with in Afghanistan. I'm glad I came. I’m also glad I’m leaving. The world is such a big, interesting place. I didn't find the right warm weather place to escape winter last year, so I'm ready to go back and start exploring again. At least that’s the story I’m selling Gwyne.
     It was also fantastic to reconnect with my Marshallese friends. There are very few Marshallese who work on Kwajalein who don’t know me, and that seemed to be a problem for some people. There was a view that I favored Marshallese employees or that they could come to me and I would magically make their troubles go away. Not at all true and my boss knew that. Then one of the three Kwajalein Senators went to her to attempt to get an employment decision reversed. She politely and professionally said all the right things to him, employment actions are confidential and we're contractually obligated to follow all local laws and regulations. He paused and said something that didn't help the perception. At all. When he realized he wasn't getting the result he wanted from her, he abruptly said, "Where's Alan?" Again, not helpful at all.

Same same...but different

     But it didn’t stop there. A few in the upper echelons of management wanted to know why the Marshallese came to me instead of their respective managers.  I listened. I tried to be patient. I failed, and patience is one of my strong suits. Because bluntness is too, I said, “They come to me because they've gone to their managers and they're not getting the answers/resolution they are looking for. I speak Marshallese. I work in Employee Relations. This is not complicated.” I was in fine fettle. When you are a few days away from retirement (again), and you have zero f**** left to give, it's so much easier to speak freely. They said the Marshallese see me as their savior, that I can help them get out of trouble. I said now, now, that's a bit too much, even for me. Like I said, I was feeling cheekier than usual that day. They asked why our conversations had to be in Marshallese and I replied they don't, but most people feel more comfortable talking in their first language. And then remember, I was in fine fettle and feeling very cheeky, I delivered the next line with an absolutely straight face as I stood and was halfway out the door. It's (mostly) not true, but I said, “Well, sometimes we talk about you in Marshallese.  That way you won't know what we’re saying.” I waited for a moment to see their expression, which included a dropped jaw. As you may imagine, it was just the reaction I was going for.