The Ride Home January 2, 2009

The whole time I was in California, the Pacific Northwest was having Weather.  Coming home, it had mostly blown over except for the remnant snow, sleet, ice, rutted roads and general hysteria on the I-5 corridor.  Unfortunately, there are about 75 miles of I-5 corridor between the airport and my home, but still, I boarded the shuttle innocent of what was to come.

Boarding time was 3:45 for my 2:15 reservation, and that should have tipped me off.  But no, I didn’t give it any thought.  The slight cold that had become magnified on the airplane was clouding my thoughts with a tiny fever.  I ate a french truffle and snuggled into my seat next to Talky Tina and we headed out into the fray.

Talky Tina was one of those who when you interrupted to agree/acknowledge that they had spoken or made a good point, would say, “Anyway….”   He also transitioned from one subject to the next by saying, “Next….”  Next?  What is this?  A lecture series?

Indeed it was.  Long story short, I eventually had to feign torporous sleep to get him to stop.  I kept thinking about that scene in Airplane where Robert Hays’ seat mates hang themselves or practice self immolation because he won’t stop talking.

So after 2 hours (and this is before I started the faking sleep routine) we were about 5 miles from the airport.  The roads looked like Michigan in January and it was about to get oh so much worse.  When we finally reached the 5 – that’s right, we haven’t even achieved a major interstate after 2 hours – we had that moment of actual movement forward and we all relaxed a little.  Then it happened.  Ten miles outside the airport, we ground to a complete stop.

Cars turned off their engines, people wandered around the highway, little kids went pee on the roadway with their parents draped over them as human modesty shields.  Off the side of the road were little frantic footprints leading behind trees where the coniferous modesty shields hid mounds of presumably very yellow snow.

We moved 10 miles in 5 hours.

10 miles.  5 hours.

My fever had arrived in full force now, and I don’t remember as a kid fevers actually hurting, but as an adult, they are an ass-kicker.  I had one really inappropriate conversation on the cell with my best friend and that kept Talky Tina from taking up again when it was clear I was awake.

At hour 3.5, someone in the back asked to stop at the rest stop that was 2 miles away and to her credit, she didn’t make another peep about it during 1.5 hours it took to get there.  I guess we kept thinking it was just about to start moving and that’s why we didn’t use the snow path on the shoulder.  We didn’t know it at the time, but we were waiting for snow plows that were nearly 50 miles away.

I hadn’t had anything to drink, so at least my bladder wasn’t screaming.  The dehydration of sitting in a very heated van is probably what pushed my feverish misery over the edge.  I was a mouthbreathing moron by the time we arrived at my destination 9 hours later.  That’s right – it took 9 hours to make a trip that normally takes 2.  Did I mention that my flight was filled infants who screamed their displeasure at the cabin pressure changes and toddlers who screamed just for fun?

Good times.

The Huntington Library – December 2008 December 31, 2008

The Chinese Garden is mostly finished; the plants are young and unimpressive, but the structures are beautiful.

Magnolia setting seed.

Oh hai.  My boob feels nice.

On of many lovelies in the History of Science exhibit in the main library.  Thank you security personnel for trusting me to take non-flash photos.

More magnolia.

Los Angeles Arboretum – December 2008 December 31, 2008

See that little plaque there?  I failed to read it.

You can walk into and around this installation.

Agave parryi, how I love thee.

A cycad – further testimony to my love of blue plants.

Lazy Susan of Microbes December 10, 2008

I guess I thought the Lazy Susan was an American invention used in Asian restaurants to facilitate serving.  They’re utterly common in Taiwan as well; the whole business of eating is quite different there.

You start with a tiny bowl that you fill with rice and then you come to the table and sit down.  The Lazy Susan goes around and you take about three bites worth of whatever you’re wanting to eat.  You lay that on top of your rice and go to town, then spin the Lazy Susan and have something else.  At the table you see in the picture, 13 people sat on stools, shoulder to shoulder.

At first I was pretty horrified that we were all serving ourselves with the chopsticks that had just been in our mouths.  That was before I found out that the wash water for dishes was completely cold and we were to use hand soap for all the bowls and chopsticks.  And that was before someone came to the table one morning with a cold.  Then, I was truly horrified.  But I was hungry too, so I was over it soon enough.  I tried to serve myself from the least savaged portions of each dish, but since we were essentially sharing chopsticks, I knew that wasn’t really helping.

No one drinks anything with meals, but the entrees are followed with soup, usually musk melon which is a little like loofa in warm broth.  There’s a lot of lip smacking and slurping, and no one uses napkins either, so your companions at meals are quite greasy-faced.

Hunger moderates one’s reactions to any of these issues, and I really like the communal feeling of dining with a gang of people.

I wondered about portion control while I was there – you have no idea how much you’re eating after you portion yourself out some rice.  You kind of just stop when you’re full.  As it turns out, you eat quite a bit less than you would otherwise.  I lost weight in Taiwan, despite the 30 gallons of water I was evidently retaining, and I did it without the benefit of an intestinal parasite or microbial revolt.*

One night we had a long discussion about the possible value of “immune challenges” where you challenge your resilience with all manner of germy insults hoping to strengthen it to future assaults.  I think the theory has some merit.  Maybe I can get a grant.

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* I’m sure that somewhere there are overweight Taiwanese people, but they are probably Americans because I didn’t see any of them on the island.  It gave me pause: not one overweight person was spotted in the entire time I was there.

Century Egg December 9, 2008

See that black and green region on this plate?  Century egg.  Why is it that color you ask?  Well, because it’s rotten.  Why is it on a plate instead of in the trash?  Because it’s a delicacy.  You will eat some, and you will like it.

And I did, and I did.  It’s got an earthy flavor and creamy texture, and you only taste the “offness” of it a few seconds after you’ve swallowed it.  I split it with 2 other people, and we pretty much ate it with great relish and exclamations of bravado.  The tofu chaser next to it makes everything okay again.  Follow with white fungus soup and a steamed pork bun.  Yum!

I expected to have stomach distress of various kinds in Taiwan but it never happened.  In fact, the relative richness of food back here in the states after being on a pretty clean diet for 2 weeks caused the most distress.  The richest thing I ate was fried duck – served whole, of course, so we could make meaningful eye contact while I dined on his innards with a nice guava nectar.

My lizard brings all the boys to the yard December 8, 2008

Nothing will make hoards of children descend upon you faster than picking up a lizard and talking to it.

Massospora and You August 15, 2008

I found this cicada in the Taiwan forest, hanging out on a branch, dead. Apparently infected with Massospora, he was eaten by the fungus from the outside in, leaving this empty exoskeleton, wings, and the dried fungal body oozing out from all of his cracks.

The cicadas in Taiwan were of two obvious phenotypes: the car alarm type – LOUD! ALARMING! 24/7! (but you get used to it rather quickly) – and the Rainbird type – cchh-cchh-cchh-cchh ccccccchhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! These were in the mountains and the city, respectively. I enjoyed them immensely.

Here’s a batch of the Car Alarm variety (as yet without a real species, but I’ll get them identified eventually) in my field pinning station – the desk in my dorm:

Collecting in the subtropics is not like what I’m used to. In the PNW, specimens are sometimes dry before I can get a pin in them, and I rarely use any type of preservative beyond periodic deep freezing of specimen boxes to kill dermestids. In Asia, however, the humidity is such that nothing dries. During pinning, the cicada’s legs would be flopping around, which is mildly unsettling. Then I’d get everyone pinned and placed and run them through the oven for a few days, take them out, and they’d all slack out on me again. Sadly, this cycle resulted in an interesting sweet, rot smell. Now that the collect is back in the states and everyone’s dry, they still stink. But I love them anyway.

Part of the stink may be the various Hemipterans and Coleoptera perfumes – some smelled like cucumbers, some like oily death. That could be such an interesting addition to the Linnaean games: identify the insect by smell. I’d know what bees smell like, and bumblebees and honeybees smell completely different, but that’s probably information most other people aren’t terribly interested in.

In anticipation of the collection being seized at security, immigration, or customs as I went through 3 airports to get home with my drying lovelies in my carry-on, I photographed them carefully.

Alas, I did make it home with the bugs feeling like I was drug running even though I had all my permissions in order. It only takes one officious asshole to destroy 4 days of collecting and careful preservation from an exotic locale. I was ingratiating and extremely cooperative every time I interacted with airport personnel.

Success.

(Click the collection image and then zoom-click to see everyone up close and personal. If you have ID information, I’d love it if you’d share it. Thanks!)

Home August 8, 2008

I’m home and miss the breakfast gruel porridge already: rice, hot soy milk, and sweet potato.  The island I visited was Taiwan, and breakfast was sometimes steamed buns filled with pork and served with fresh soy milk, or it was traditional Chinese fare (that is to say, not so different from lunch or dinner) and fresh soy milk.

More posts are coming, with pictures, but I just wanted to tell you right now that porridge for breakfast is apparently global.