Family

Yang heard Akon was coming two town for a concert and she immediately signed us up to go. And then she asked who Akon was. The concert was in the Olympic basketball arena which is a near diagonal across town from where we live. For our previous concert experience there, The Eagles, we taxied to the subway and then took the subway to the arena. This time the concert started a bit later and a quick check of traffic and we thought we could drive. Got onto the forth ring road and it was not moving. So we not moved the car to a near by subway station and change the modes of transports. This put us about 20 minutes late but Akon started 25 minutes late (no warm-up acts) so we didn’t miss a thing. ...

The older crotchety nurse loosely fondles two small cups and asks me a question. I have no idea what she is saying so I reply “tīng bù dǒng” which she finds amusing. “tīng bù dǒng” means I hear you but I don’t understand. (The fact that she understands me saying I don’t understand her is an improvement from when I first moved to China when I used to say “tīng bù dǒng” which resulted in a similar response back to me). The nurse in a semi laugh yells “tīng bù dǒng”. No one responds so she laughs and yells a bit louder. The head nurse, the one who booked (sold) us the exam happens to be close by and comes over. It is no small miracle that she was close by as there are maybe 15 stations spread out over two floors with maybe 100 nurses. The head nurse looks at me and then down to the small cups. “Pee pee. Poo Poo”. The poo poo cup is way too small I’m thinking. I say no to the poo poo and take the pee cup. ...

I’m sitting in the den working on the laptop trying to get a project idea off the ground when Elisa opens the door and walks up to me. “No Dora” she says. “No Aidan iPad. No iPhone.” This is her way of letting me know she wants to play with one of these things. She says this because in the past when I’ve been working I’ve told her “No” only to relent into her cuteness. We start with Dora the Explorer images as served by Google which is weird because of the amount of my past work life spent on Bing image search. ...

Yang and I are driving along a small, paved, road in the hillsides of Hebei Province and looking for a trailhead for Haituo Mountain. To our right out in a field is a farmer working his field. Up ahead on our left walking down the road is a farmer making her way. They look old, really old, which makes them about our age. Yang leans out the window and asks the farmer where the mountain is. His reply is a quizzical “Mountain? Everywhere is mountain.” ...

The nice thing about the Beijing marathon is the built in crowd just waiting to cross the street. This was my thought at about mile six today and it colored my views of the crowd the rest of the way. Maybe the people shouting encouragement of Jiayou Jiayou just wanted to get home after the daily grocery shopping. As I looked deeper the crowd was mostly there just to cheer and enjoy the spectacle. Little kids waving flags waiting for a parent to run by, cheerleaders of one of the sponsors, the middle age with time on their hands. But there were a few who clearly wanted to make a break for it and if you’ve lived in Beijing for a while you know lines and barriers don’t really discourage people from going from point A to B in a straight line. This was offset by a pretty massive force of policemen and military stationed along the road and at every intersection keeping the crowd at bay. When I ran in the Bay to Bridge two weeks ago, San Francisco also deployed cops to keep folks from crossing into the runners paths but the number of runners, people, and cops are at a whole other scale here. Think a factor of 50. ...

Yang calls from the tennis tournament she is at and says Lydia’s been asked to try out for a movie. The director is famous here which pretty much means I have no idea who he is. Yang says if Lydia got the part it would be 50 days in Guangzhou for the shoot. A big deal. One minor problem is Lydia doesn’t want to do it. She told Yang that on the phone so then it was up to me to try again 10 minutes later. I just told her we were going to go, no questions asked. She started to cry, not real thrilled with the prospect. An hour later Lydia’s “agent” picks us up. Lydia is in a better mood, no complaining but not enthusiastic either. We ride in the back of the agent’s 10 year old mazda compact and Lydia starts to sketch. The agent tried to talk to her about the audition, that Lydia she be a certain way. Lydia just repeats that she doesn’t want to do it. ...

I’m driving the kids home from school with Lydia in the back seat passenger side, Aidan in the middle, and Naomi on the driver’s side. They always sit with Aidan in the middle, I asked Aidan why by could not quite decipher the reason. This being due to both his English language skills and him being eight. Lydia asks me for my phone and I pass it back. I figure she wants to play a game on my phone. A minute latter she is talking the phone, arranging for Naomi to go with her to a birthday party she’s been invited too later that afternoon. And with that I am completely and totally reminded of Yang. ...

He was one of the few to receive a driver’s license in 1974 and took tremendous pride in being a professional driver. He retired a couple of years ago and then became kids driver last winter; driving Aidan, Lydia, and classmate Naomi to school everyday. He is now lying in a Beijing hospital in a touch and go state as he recovers from brain surgery. A minor car accident while driving the kids home from school last Friday appears to have been the trigger. ...

The 10th anniversary of 9/11 has led many to remember their 9/11 experience. Here’s mine. I woke up early like I always do, around 6:30am or so. I went into the bath and turned on KNBR while taking my shower. Gary Radnich’s chatting with Kevin the Rat filtered through the water washing over his head. I couldn’t make out the words but there was something “off” about his voice. When I stepped out of the shower and could hear Gary’s voice clearer I could tell he was talking about something serious and Gary was uncomfortable with it. Gary couldn’t wait to toss the show over to network coverage. I could make out that a plan had crashed in New York. ...

Having just crossed to the north side of Dongzhimen Wai I turn east nearing the eight mile mark of what would become a personal best 15 mile run. A few strides and I hear an anticipatory scream, kind of like what I’ve heard from Yang when she thought one of the kids was about to have a bad accident. I turn to my right as I hear tires screeching. And then a car hitting an electric scooter which goes flying and a 50ish man dropping to the asphalt. Traffic stops and the scene plays out in a predictable pattern, predictable if you’ve lived here a while. The man lies on the ground, on his side, and is still. No one moves to help him. Passerby’s stare and then most continue on with whatever they were doing. Traffic starts to flow again. I look thinking I should help but it also means I need to cross a busy street to reach the man. And if I am really honest with myself I have to admit that my inclination is not to get involved. I decide that if there is blood, then I will go to try to stop it but I see none. After a minute or so the man driving the car that hit the scooter gets out and looks at the fallen man, inspecting him a bit from a distance. He picks up his cell phone, hesitates a bit, and then gets back inside his call apparently to wait for the police. After another minute and with man still mostly still I continue on with my run. ...