Lepak @ home

I've been back in Malaysia for the last three and a half weeks. Been having fun, but mostly just relaxing and reading a novel a day or so. Lina made it through shipment and quarantine and is doing okay even in the heat (remember this is a cat I used to take for walkies in -20 C and half a foot of snow), but my poor old dog Maxie is really creaky now.

Time is funny. I'm never bothered by seeing my siblings age (except when my brother hit puberty and growth spurt between my leaving home in 2001 and first visit in 2003 that was weird), nor my parents even though mum's hair has more white in it. On the other hand, meeting my California cousins for the first time in 8 years was really strange because the boys who were "kids" are now in the Marines and applying to Stanford, the girl I was helping to read is a high schooler taking college classes, and the toddler whose diapers I was changing is a bright young girl.

Those are all good things, but the lively, fierce guardian animal I left behind is now a sad old dog with a cauliflower ear and growing cataracts that you can see when you look into her eyes under artificial light.

I've been extremely lazy about writing, applying for jobs, art projects, etc., but three weeks really is enough unemployment so here I go. __earth asked me to write a guest blog post about facemasks and the flu situation in Malaysia. His blog is mostly about economics and politics and he also writes for the Malaysian Insider sometimes. I had some other thoughts about the mortality rate and hype/misperception versus facts, which were too long to fit in that so I'll post those on here later.

Also, have to start preparing for Potatoboy's and my wedding...

In transit, again

Haven't been blogging for the last few days because I've been preparing to end my life - my life as a grad student in Madison, that is. A move this big, now that I make one as a fully conscious adult, is disorienting... The last book I read in America was EO Wilson's "The Insect Societies" and given the jokes about how students are larval scientists, I cannot shake the image of a young queen eclosing from its pupal skin. I had to throw away so many things that I had hung on to for years, which I thought were part of my life.

Anyway, I'm in the Taipei airport now, last stop before landing in Penang - home for my parents in their childhoods, home for them for the last two years, and now temporarily for me. It's very amusing that I'm taller than most of the women and a fair number of the men here.

The highlight of the trip so far was an electronic blooper by United on the O'Hare-San Francisco leg. The in-flight mag said they were showing The Soloist. So I started reading the dumb SkyMall catalogue. Then suddenly Star Trek came on! We watched till the end of the scene where the Kelvin gets blown up by the Romulans and then a stewardess announced "Ladies and gentlemen, sorry for the mistake. I tlooks like the wrong movie was programmed into the digital video player. I will try to get The Soloist playing, otherwise it looks like you'll have to watch Star Trek."

After a very disappointing 15 minutes of messing around with the video signal and no "Soloist", the voice came back: "All right, Trekkies..." So I got to watch ST twice. And I still think Zachary Quinto as young Spock is hot =)

I shipped the cat by Korean Air Cargo. Her cage had to be labelled "LIVE ANIMAL" and I expect to receive her in the same condition. Fingers crossed the Penang Dept. of Veterinary Services won't quarantine her...she's got all her shots.

Bug surgery

I think one of the most remarkable sentences in E.O. Wilson's "The Insect Societies" is

Deleurance (1948) was able to remove all the ovaries of dominant P. gallicus by surgery, yet even this treatment did not affect their rank.

He SPAYED a wasp. This was long before people had microscopes with little servos and lasers etc.

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Busy packing. I'm leaving the US on Tuesday, after 8 years of living here, much like the BBC's Justin Webb, only with a cat instead of wife and kids.