excuse me, are you any good?

i tend to fall for rousing endorsements.

is this good? i ask the baker of her desserts. the best, she says unhesitatingly, and i return home with stuff i do not set out to buy. is this good? i ask the lady at the little bakery today. it depends on you, she says. some people like it.

what i say is, political correctness is the new name for lack of enthusiasm is the euphemism for poor business sense is a nice way of saying something else.

watson's

the sign says, buy 2 get 1 free. the cashier is sweetly apologetic. this is already at the reduced price, she explains, so the sign does not apply. you would have to pay the higher, canceled out price, in order to get the buy 2 get 1 free deal, even though the sign is there, and you have no way of knowing any better until you attempt to pay for it.

do you have a membership card? she asks as she rings me up.

the world's local bank

local singapore bank. automated answering system. for this, press that. for that, press some more. don't lose heart. male voice. australian accent. aussie!

what i say is, if you have to be tortured by bad accents, it should at least be your own.

home, ver 2.0

HOM and i check in to the hotel again. this is our third set of rooms in the same place in a little over a month. our rooms increase in altitude with each incarnation. quite clearly, we are moving up the loyalty ladder. do you feel like this is home? HOM asks me. you bet. 

J1 calls this his third home. there's his home home, there's the army barracks, and there's here, where he bunks with his dad every time business brings HOM here.

song of love

i visit with an old couple. 

he is quiet. she is talkative. he is slow. she darts. he is deliberate. she finishes your sentences for you. he butters her bread for her breakfast. she cooks a full meal for just two. he clears the table. she shares her vegetables with him. be careful, they tell each other. the road is slippery. she nurses him without question in sickness. he falls apart when she falls ill.

love learns to be patient and kind after fifty years.

priorities

my mother has learnt, late, to navigate the online world. she keeps in communication with her vast social network via facebook. she has an elago pen that keeps her ipad screen free of fingerprints. she has a bilingual device, which is more than i have. i show her how to upload a photo onto fb.

good, she says. now show me how to make those little circles with the smiling faces inside them. 

mrs. parkinson's law - c. northcote parkinson (1968)

mr parkinson in his element delivering snide digs at the institution of modern courtship marriage the home family life and the aftermath. surprisingly sharp and to the mark too, which one expects not to find in a book written when one was a toddler. the only problem is he takes seven chapters to actually get to mrs p's law, and i get there to find it is a variant of the second law of thermodynamics. his own law was better. but as a study in domestic science this book is a delightful rip.

the years of man are three score and ten, but the psalmist forgot to add that a man may be married for fifty of those years, and even married to the same woman.

modern travel

HOM and i do a count of the electronic devices traveling with us. i have four and he has five. we have ipod ipad iphone and several other alphabets as well, and we do not count the shaver, which technically is electric not electronic. frankly, if the check-in luggage did not turn up we would be fine as long as we could still get connected. 

sands of time

still here. still leaving soon. another magnificent autumn.

He gives me thorns and rocks and rains and strings them together

with joys and pleasures and glimpses of glory.

streams in the desert

i am making a way in the desert

and streams in the wasteland,

- isa 43:19

the wasteland and the desert are not easily recognized, i learn.

i wait for the unmitigated sorrow and undiluted pain

and forget God plants flowers in the arid places

and gives sweet waters with the bitter.

thank God He does.