Birds and dreams

It is said that dreaming about birds has deep meaning.  Asking the internets, I find answers that sound more like a horoscope than something deep. 

Yesterday was an evening of birds.  I left work early to go to the Berkeley Marina to fly kites with a colleague.  We were the only kite flyers there on a chilly Friday afternoon.  As I arrived, I saw a large, soaring bird.  Or was it a kite?  It was so stationary, just hovering in one place.

Then it flapped.  A big, slow flap that only a big bird can do. 


"Cool, a turkey vulture at the Marina." was my thought.  I love turkey vultures.  Their scientific name, Cathartes aura, means "purifier" or "pacifier," and Cherokee Nation calls them Peace Eagles.  They cannot kill, and by eating rotting flesh they provide cleanliness and dignity to the dead.  Their courtship involves many hours of spectacular follow-the-leader aerial patterns.  For myself, I categorize them as "V birds" because (1) vulture begins with a V; (2) when they soar, they keep their wings in a dihedral, or V, that is quite distinctive (and in that postion they have a distinctive wobble), and (3) because  seen from below (as they usually are), they show a dark "V" of body and leading wing feathers against their white wings.  They are quite intelligent and gentle.  When they are on the ground, they are awkward, so their method of defense is to vomit.  In place, not even projectile.  The smell of their vomit is so foul that it defends them well.

I also love how absolutely enormous they are.  I think my next kite will be a huge delta kite.  My most recent kite is a yellow Wala, about four feet wide, with a 45-foot tail (22 feet when looped).  Big, but let's go bigger!

So there I was, for a fraction of a second (much shorter than it takes to read this), thinking, "I've never seen a turkey vulture flap! Or fly so low!" when I realized that it was not one.  Wrong wing shape, wrong head size, no dihedral, no wobble, no V pattern on wing.  And smaller.  It was shaped like a red-tailed hawk, another bird I can spot fairly easily, and another bird I adore.  Also exciting!  It looked like a red-tail except its tail was not fanned and not red.  I started taking pictures on my iPhone.

Then it soared closer.  And closer.  Finally settling about 15 feet above the ridge, entirely still.  With my Wala in my hand, I strolled toward it, trying to get a look at plumage to see if it was some other kind of raptor, hoping not to scare it.  I finally got within about 25 feet of it.  It paid no attention to me, as it was staring down at the ground, watching for rodents (this was an excellent place to look for them).  It still looked like a red-tail, a little ragged, and certainly it looked a bit unsteady.  It periodically let itself catch a breeze and soar off to the side or below, but it would come back to the same spot.  Once it fell (attacked a rodent?) to the ground, and I got a look and a picture of it, legs apart (they have a wide stance), pantaloons (no spindly legs showing), fierce raptor gaze in my direction, pissed off that I'd seen it be awkward.  Then back to the air.  It did fan its tail, and it was definitely the right shape, although not the usual bright rust red.

I decided it was a juvenile practicing its hovering and hunting.

When I got home, I looked red-tails up in my bird book.  Because red-tails have an infinite variety of colorings (at most basic, Western and Eastern, light and rufous), it may have even been an adult, but I'm still thinking it was a juvie.  The book and the internets verified that this location is red-tail perfect and that red-tails have been spotted there.

How special to have had such a close encounter with a big raptor.

[Note from the next day: I went back and asked one of the regulars if he'd seen a bird like that.  "Oh yeah," he said, "That's the marsh hawk."  Now, I'd never heard of a marsh hawk so I figured he was wrong until I got home and discovered that that's another term for northern harrier, a bird that perfectly fits the description of what I saw.  Yet another local raptor to watch for!]

I also read the news

and saw that an endangered bird, the clapper rail, has been spotted in San Francisco. 

And, to get to the dream part, I dreamt about red-tails and that I saw a flying clapper rail.  I was amazed that I had just read about the clapper rails and appreciative that if I hadn't I wouldn't have recognized this rare bird.

The slow life?

I came home, ran the water in the sink for a few minutes (literally: minutes) to get it to be hot.  Went to the living room, hit the TV power, and while it was powering up I turned on my lamp, which has a CFL bulb and so takes a while to light fully.

Waiting for the water, the TV, the lamp.  No instant gratification here.

The iPad arrives

Once it hit Oakland, it moved quickly.

Interestingly, the return address on the box is Elk Grove, CA.  Looking at the labels on it, there is very little evidence of its travels.  However, on the FedEx mailing label, it has text that says "bill third party" (I assume the Shenzhen shipper was a FedEx affiliate), and, above the Elk Grove address, it  says, "ORIG ID: SZOA" and a series of numbers.  I googled this, and it stands for Shenzhen Optometric Association, a major glass manufacturer. 

I haven't even opened the box yet.  I'm way too interested in the packing labels!

The journey of an iPad

My iPad is due to arrive tomorrow.  Through the miracle of Fedex tracking, I've been watching its every move on this journey.

Like so many products, it seems to have been manufactured in Shenzhen, right near Hong Kong.  And then it moved to Lantau Island -- home of the Big Buddha!  It's a big island and is also the home of the Hong Kong airport, so that wasn't a surprise.  The bigger surprise is that Shenzhen ships from Hong Kong.  It makes sense, but there is an informal country barrier there.  What did Shenzhen do before Hong Kong airport opened up for shipping?

It was a bit of a surprise to see that it sat on Lantau Island for so long.  On June 3, 4, and 5, it checked in as "at the facility."  As I tracked the iPad, as each of those days passed and it just sat there, I wanted to pick up the phone and call someone: Don't you know that my iPad is at your facility?  Can you do something to change that status?

Chek Lap Kok was a new one for me.  It's apparently the actual name of the Hong Kong International Airport.

I like the "local scan time."  It arrived in Anchorage six and a half hours before it left Hong Kong.  

Now it's in Anchorage.  I've been watching for two days: why has it just been sitting there?  For 26 hours?  Fedex keeps telling me it's going to arrive on time tomorrow.  It seems to be on a plane to somewhere now....  Will it go right to Oakland or to Fedex in Nebraska before being shipped to Oakland to Berkeley, to me?

I will be watching this and haunting the mailroom at work tomorrow.

iPad genius

The iPad is far more revolutionary than it gets credit for.

Because it is wireless and has no disk drive, you can only get things like software, music, movies into it via the air.  As a result, as an anti-piracy tool it is spectacular.  No more handing someone else a CD and allowing them to make a copy.  Piracy moves from the privacy of one's home, which is hard to police, to the ether, which, while still hard to police, is a far more public place.

Microsoft gets screwed.  Or perhaps it is screwing itself.  There are no Microsoft products available on the iPad.  Suddenly, Pages and Keynote become not just the fabulous-but-I-use-Office-anyway apps, but become something we have to learn.  And we will learn to love them.  Until Microsoft builds its apps for an iPad, Apple has a head start in persuading its customers that there are alternatives.

Before putting this thought toward iPads, in a recent presentation (done with PowerPoint, although I'd also done a small presentation in Prezi), I talked about things I think will go away in five years.  Mice, I said, because they were created to help us point at screens, and now we can touch our screens.  Cables connecting things, definitely.  Keyboards, potentially, although I just purchased an iPad keyboard (and I don't even have my iPad yet).

And, as reinforced by the iPad, local storage.  Cloud computing and things like Dropbox (which I just signed up for, to serve my future iPad) means that we won't need a lot of disk space any more.

I like the idea of not using local storage.  I am OK with learning the iWork suite.  I sadly wave goodbye to friendly piracy.

Object of study

As I was walking home up beautiful Doyle Street in Emeryville, I realized that I've gone to two teaching clinics today, both incredibly convenient.

1. This morning I picked up new glasses at the UC Berkeley Optometry Clinic, which is right next to my own building on campus.  A nice young woman with long chestnut hair gave me my new glasses and adjusted them for me.  Her demeanor was a little shy or unconfident, but she did a nice job.
2. This evening I had a massage at the National Holistic Institute, which is five blocks away from my home.  A nice young woman with short spikey pink and platinum hair gave me a pretty good massage.  Her demeanor was a little shy or unconfident, but she did a nice job.

So I have participated in the education of students today in two ways beyond my usual work.

Movie summary: "De-Lovely"

Cole Porter marries Ashley Judd.  Everyone speaks in clever sentences.  She dotes on him with all her dimples.  He is gay.  She becomes increasingly dissatisfied with the marriage.  He is gay.  The music is good, and you play "Spot the famous musician."  Everyone dies very slowly, pondering the sadness of it all as they go.  Repeat and fade.

The country day and the city day

A breathtakingly great day.  My decompression last night seems to have given me a very robust second wind.

1.

I could see the escalator from my hotel room.

I met my colleague (now friend), Tom, at the lobby of Nomura in IFC (because we know all the bank lobbies!) for a trip to Lantau Island.  I got to take the Mid-Levels Escalator down, a direction in which it only runs from 6:00 to 10:00 AM.  Since I am actually in Central already, it was a very short ride.  I was in IFC in four minutes.  What an amazing location my hotel is in. 

Grabbed a Greek yogurt (full fat, oops and yum) and a hot croissant at a cafe, then found Starbucks with comfy chairs and had my tea and breakfast.  The stores of IFC were closed.  It is a beautiful mall, and it was delightfully peaceful.

2.

MTR to Lantau Island and then gondola to the top of the mountain to see the largest outdoor seated Buddha in the world.  Because it was hazy, the views of the South China Sea were not terrific.  At the top, we stopped into a souvenir store, one that was not typical of the souvenir stores we'd seen, and we spent a while there asking a very nice young woman about the music and the paraphernalia.  I bought a CD of someone who is apparently famous singing the Heart Sutra, which is the only CD they had that was in Chinese and not Sanskrit.  I fell in love with the "wooden fish," which, she explained, is just the word for "wooden," but it is also the word for "fish" or something, although it doesn't look like a fish.  It's a percussion instrument that you tap to focus your meditation.

At this store, they had the lots that I drew for my fortune yesterday.  The young woman was impressed that I knew how to shake the jar.  The lots come with a book that tells you your fortune based on the lot you draw.  My fortune was good.  The young woman said that you can do the lots once per day and that my fortune could be good today even if it wasn't yesterday.  Yes, I hear that and feel optimistic -- what is that?  I spent a long time thinking about buying a jar of lots, and I didn't, and I should have, but maybe I can find them (and the wooden fish) in San Francisco.

I appreciate that Tom is an endurance shopper.  We both spent a long time at that store.

3.

We ate at the vegetarian restaurant at the Po Lin Monastery.  We paid a little extra to sit in the "VIP Room" and theoretically had better food.  The food was abundant and delicious.

4.
This was the experience that I did not have at the Wong Tai Sin temple yesterday, only without urban crowds.  Lots of incense (of various sizes, to say the least), lots of places to burn them, people davening.  For the big Buddha, the davening happens on a plaza well below it because it's so big that when you get close you can't take it all in.  It was beautiful.

5.
Tom seems to dither on decisions as much as I do.  So after the Buddha we debated hiking back down the mountain.  We tried to gather information, which is my style of dithering, too.  We looked at maps.  We followed signs.  We decided to visit the Wisdom Path and before making a decision.

The Wisdom Path is a magnificent infinity-symbol of wooden pillars with the Heart Sutra written on them.  Beautiful and peaceful.

Then we looked at more maps, decided to hike in a little circle and then take the bus down.  Halfway through the hike, dithering at a new map (and they reoriented the map at every hiking point, which was incredibly confusing), we chatted with two French guys, who asserted that this particular road would take us back to the subway.  We followed their decisiveness and began walking down the path together.

They went on ahead; luckily, my guidebook had instructions about where to turn, and I believe they are still wandering the hills of Lantau right now, because there are some really obscure turns on that walk.  We got to the bottom and discovered we were not near the subway station (because we could see the gondolas waaaayyyy in the distance) and kept walking.  Near a massive apartment block structure, we saw creatures of some sort.  Urban Tom and I weren't sure what they were.  He said bulls (no udders; but also no bull anatomy); I said yaks.  Either way, they were grazing by the side of a busy road with a bus stop nearby.  We were afraid, and then a local woman just marched right between them, so I got close and took pictures.  I am not sure I've ever been that close to horns.

Much more walking and wandering, and Tom asked for directions, and we found a group of local hikers who were walking back to the MTR station.  All in all, several hours of walking.

6.
Back in Hong Kong, we met Tom's friend, Susannah, and we went to the Manchurian restaurant the rabbi had recommended, the one I had tried to go to last night but found that it was fully reserved.  Another fantastic meal!  Then I found that they were partiers, and we walked around Soho, stopped in a bar called Lotus for a drink (a black pepper-infused vodka pineapple martini -- the best drink I've ever had).  It was 10:00 PM, and they were beginning their night of bar-hopping, and Tom knows some fairly well-hidden late night clubs.  I had committed to myself to get a Shanghai pedicure, which I had googled that morning, so I took my leave of them.

Tom emailed me at 2 AM, when I was also still awake, to say that Hong Kong is dead on a Sunday night.

7.

I went to a reputable place for the Shanghai pedicure, Happy Foot.  There is some strict accreditation around doing this kind of pedicure.  The dead skin was very finely shaved off my feet with a scalpel.  The guy even cut my toenails with a scalpel.  The Mandarin Oriental Hotel here apparently offers this kind of pedicure, which is considered the best in the world.

Since my neck and shoulders had been spasming all week, giving me horrific headaches, I asked for a neck and shoulder massage.  "Full body massage," the pedicurist said.  Neck and shoulders, I gestured.  He directed me to a room.  "Full body massage," he indicated.

A full-body acupressure massage.  What was I thinking?  After hours of hiking in the cold, why wouldn't I want a full-body massage?  At 10:30 at night.  Fantastic.

I walked the three blocks back to my hotel and celebrated my day.