I never get tired of photographing one of the most photographed places in the world.
Photo taken Saturday on our way to wine tasting gulping sipping in Napa.
What a glorious sunny day!
Photo Copyright 2012, Karen Fayeth, and subject to the Creative Commons license in the far right corner of this page. Taken with an iPhone4s and the Camera+ app.
Because I’ve just lived this day, again.
Originally posted March 8, 2011
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Did You Ever Have The Kind Of Day Where….
Did you ever have the kind of day where you are going ninety miles an hour at your work desk, cranking out the emails, spreadsheets and taking phone calls left and right, all while balancing the Greyhound bus stop that is the chair in front of your desk….
And despite all the chaos and kerfuffle, just in the nick of time, you manage to whip out your one page, beautifully wrought, easy-to-read table that contains the cheat sheet you’ll need to answer every question that will be machine gun fired at you at your 3:00 meeting.
So you send that sumnabitch to the printer and grab your notebook, hike up your pants, run to the copier, and grab that thing off the machine so you can make it to your meeting at something less than five minutes late.
Then you squeal around the corner into the copy room and you are heartened to hear that the machine isn’t working. It’s done. It’s printed your copy.
Only it hasn’t.
The screen reads “out of paper, load tray three.”
Inside your head, you say, “I can deal with this.”
So it’s one of those big industrial machines and to fill the paper tray takes not one, not two, but three reams of ecologically friendly 50% post-consumer lily white paper.
Being a good office citizen, you could throw half a ream in there and call it good, but you don’t. You fill it up to the top, slam the drawer and the machine fires up.
Sweet sound of the Gods!
And the machine begins spitting out page after page after page…..
After page.
After page.
And you realize the guy in front of you must be printing like a hundred copies of his forty page slide deck and it’s HIS FAULT that the machine was parched for paper when you arrived.
Nothing you can do now but watch that machine like a bird dog after a duck, all the while not-my-copy, not-my-copy, not-my-copy shoots out of the machine, perfectly stapled and collated and tidy as you please.
“Ok,” you say to yourself. “I can deal with this.”
Then the machine stops again. The engine winds down.
“Thank god!” you think.
But wait, your copy isn’t there.
“WHAT THE [EXPLETIVE DELETED]!!!” You may or may not shout.
The LCD screen on that machine says “Replace Toner” and provides helpful animated arrows to guide you through the process.
“Ok,” you think to yourself, “I can deal with this. It can’t be that hard.”
So you find a box with a new toner tube and you follow the bouncing arrow on the screen and the old toner comes out and the new toner slides in and now you may or may not have black toner dust peppering your arms.
But you slam closed the toner door and the machine begins to make a noise.
“Warming up,” it tells you.
And you wait for what must be an [expletive deleted] eternity while the machine “cleans the wires” and “recalibrates” itself at the pace of an anemic snail.
Then holy mother of Xerox, the machine starts spitting out copies anew and more and more of not-my-copy of someone’s presentation comes out.
Then, most miraculous! The single sheet that you desperately needed finally exits the machine!
Victory!
So to be helpful you pull the other copies off the machine to lay them aside in a nice, neat stack.
And because you are nosy by nature, you look to see exactly what is the document that held up your progress and made you irretrievably late for a very important meeting, and you come to realize that it is…..
Handouts for someone’s upcoming Cub Scout meeting.
You ever have a day like that?
No way, right? Because that story just *has* to be made up. Unless truth really is stranger than fiction.
Photo by Alex Furr and used royalty free from stock.xchng
As posted to Instagram….
At least there is *someone* who is happy that it’s raining.
Because I’m not.
Photo Copyright 2012, by Karen Fayeth. Subject to the Creative Commons license in the far right column of this page. Taken with an iPhone4s and the Hipstamatic app.
On one of my free days while in the world class city of Singapore, The Good Man and I had occasion to visit a little touristy spot called the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum in Singapore’s Chinatown district.
It is a profoundly beautiful place, filled to the gills with statues of various forms of the Buddha.
Along one wall there was a display of what they called guardian Buddhas.
So, based on your sign under the Chinese Zodiac, there was a Buddha assigned to be your guide.
Ok, fair enough. Each guardian was rendered in a beautiful, colorful statue and surrounded by tiny Buddha statues.
So while I don’t always believe in stuff like the zodiac, Chinese or otherwise, I figure if there’s a benevolent entity who is going to be on the look out for my often troublesome self, well, why not give that at least a passing nod, hey?
I walked down the line of Buddhas, all gazing out into space, showing different hand and tool configurations.
All are beautiful. Kind looking. Strong. Compassionate.
Then I came across the Buddha that represents me:
Yeah. I, um, called him the Red Ass Buddha until The Good Man told me to cut it out since that’s disrespectful. I said most Buddhists I know are very calm and have a great sense of humor. He wasn’t buying it so I stopped.
But look at that face! The snaggly teeth. The blue skin. The stick in his hand and what is that? A cat-o-nine tails or something? And the flames? Oh the flames!
My goodness. He’s quite a high maintenance looking Buddha. It was sort of odd to see this guy as just the day prior I had well and truly ripped one of my under performing suppliers a brand new pooping chute. I had later felt a couple moments of remorse about it.
Then I saw this guy and was like “No, I was right to do what I did. Red Ass Buddha would approve.”
So I snapped a photo and put some money in the donation box under his area.
Then The Good Man and I moved on to the next guy. The guy who represents The Good Man:
Yeah. That calm guy. Hands all up in a mudra. Mellow colors in a shell behind him. Thoughtful.
That’s my man. To a tee.
Looking at these two statues sitting side by side became sort of a metaphor for our relationship.
Me all red ass and reaching out with that bapping stick to whack some folks around. The Good Man all calm, thoughtful and serene. The yin to my yang.
Maybe, perhaps, kinda sorta there might be something to this whole Chinese zodiac thing?
Images Copyright 2012, Karen Fayeth, and subject to the Creative Commons license in the far right column of this page. Taken with an iPhone4s and the Camera+ app.
That’s a very popular question, I’ve found, among the people of Asia. It is like a badge of courage to pay a visit to many of the closely grouped countries.
There is a lot of hometown pride there, and I think I can appreciate that. (ahem, note the title of my blog fercrimenysakes)
As mentioned, my purpose for traveling to Singapore was to meet with a very large supplier who works almost like an aggregator. On this trip I was to meet individually with the representatives of fourteen different Asian countries and companies.
Without fail, after introduction, one of the first questions I was asked was “So, have you ever visited my country?”
Since this was not only my first trip to Asia, but my first international trip ever, the answer was always going to be no.
I felt that simply saying no straight out is a conversation stopper. Instead of saying no, I tried to find some way to create a common bond to keep the flow going.
So, for example, when the two ladies visiting from Malaysia asked me if I’d ever visited their country, I replied “No, but my brother lives in Kuala Lumpur.”
“Oh!” they replied, and suddenly we had some basis for common ground.
When asked by the gentlemen from Japan, I replied, “I have not, but my husband has spent some time there and found it to be just beautiful.”
“Oh? Yes!” they replied and we spoke of Tokyo and snow monkeys and moved with ease into business.
But there were two instances of this conversation that really stick with me, now some two weeks hence.
First was the conversation I had with the two gentlemen from Pakistan. We spoke, carefully at first, and later without hesitation, about the many troubles the country of Pakistan is facing and the challenges this causes us doing business together.
One of the two men had gone to university in Australia, so he’d spent time in the Western world and got the chance to step back and see his country with different eyes.
“Do you think you would ever visit my country?” he asked, then said, “It’s very beautiful.”
I smiled and said, “I would like very much to see your country.” Then I looked him square in the eye. “Let me be very candid. Do you think it would be safe for me to make a visit?”
He paused, tried to smile, but a sadness washed over his face.
“I’m sorry to say this, but right now probably isn’t a good time. It’s very difficult for Westerners and especially Americans. I have a hard enough time explaining to my children why these people who do things I don’t understand make it so that I can only go to work and then go home. We never go out because any event like sports or a concert are just too dangerous.”
We were quiet for a moment.
I felt his sadness and I cannot even begin to imagine what that must be like. I really would like to visit Pakistan, to see the beautiful country he described. I often wonder if that could ever happen in my lifetime.
It seems unlikely.
And the other…
I sat at a table with three men from South Korea. One an older man, probably in his 50’s with very limited English skills. The other two were young, probably in their mid to late 20’s with full K-pop hair and dark rimmed glasses.
They were a funny trio, much like a dad and his two kids. One young man spoke pretty good English and he became the spokesperson.
“Have you ever been to my country?” he asked.
I smiled, and stopped to think if I knew anyone among my friends or family who had visited South Korea.
Yes. There is one. My dad.
He was in the Air Force and is a veteran of the Korean War.
Well, I didn’t say that to these men as talk of war, even among allies, isn’t always the best fodder for conversation.
But this fact hit bottom in my soul. I realized…What a difference a generation makes.
It took me a moment to regain my mojo. I smiled and said “No, but my plane will stop at the Incheon Airport on the way home.”
They smiled back.
“You know, that airport isn’t actually in Incheon,” the young man said.
“Oh?” I replied. “That’s like San Francisco. The airport is actually some distance away.”
“I’d like very much to visit San Francisco” he said, and we were back on track.
But I can’t stop replaying that conversation in my memory.
It’s actually rather meaningful.
Every one of the fourteen face-to-face meetings I had was deeply powerful and incredibly worthwhile.
Each group expressed their gratitude that I had traveled such a long distance in order to meet with them.
The travel was good for my program and good for my company.
It was good for me personally, too.
Those fourteen conversations held on the 21st floor of a towering highrise on a sweltering Spring day in Singapore left a lasting impression on my soul.
I look at the world a little differently now.
All that learning to be had just on the other side of a passport stamp.
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.
.
To my credit, I didn’t ask a single person “So, have you ever visited New Mexico?”
I thought about it, though.
