Jan 20, 2009 Milestone of a day

Never ceasing expectations is something Barack has to cope with. When I was in Japan in the 90s, this old priest who was in a Shinto-Xian group I had made friends with, would go on and on about "being there" for MLK's speech - he was 29 then and on a 2 months trip to the US. He'd talk about witnessing history. The sad thing about the group was most of them had deformities that they could all somehow link upto Enola Gay and Little Boy. I wish I had been at the National Mall to experience the emotions first hand. Go Barack! Go America!

But the speech didn't do it for me. Despite the oath's fumbling start and whatever it did to break the rehearsed spontaneity of a delivery, the substance that would make it worthy of a Lincoln heir was just not there. No worries - I suspect for all our sakes he'll deliver, making Lincoln proud.

I was mentally prepared for a prose of a poem and that came close to being an accessible, everyman's poem of sorts.

MS Z2 and the NASA Colombia report

MS Z2 - plain shameful.I am questioning the stock I own.

Reading the 400 page Colombia report, I was surprised at how little testing was done on the Crew Module. And how little to no finger printing forethought at all.

Numbing Up

"You'll feel pressure;hear noise;but no pain."

I hang onto the no pain bit.

40 minutes on,1 wisdom tooth less,I feel no less wiser.

2 hours on, my miscalculations on how the wisdom tooth had really occupied a far corner - rather unused corner - ah, I had far underestimated the far corner's role in chewing anything. I could still carry a tune. Words - well, the person on the other end of the line didn't quite comprehend all of what I thought I said.

I took a good look the bloodied extracted tooth with a little bone on it and proceeded to touch and examine much to my deft dentist's chagrin.
"You should really rinse your fingers now."

During the extraction, I swear I could feel my nose being pulled out. I slipped into my eyes tight shut mode - images of the singing detective, by association, I pondered Robert Downey's Jr.'s like-in-life roles in Scanner Darkly, Wonder Boys,Iron Man .. strike that last one, maybe not ..

"Sweeping motion; Suction there needs to be sweeping motion"

And then she proceeded to take over the suction too. Methinks, "Tough luck, intern."

I remember clearly the point in time[albeit this was a score of summers ago] I gave into gravity face down. How I wish I had planted my hands on my face to reduce the impact. How bad can it be? After all I just fell from my bed to the floor. Half of my front teeth, non-milk teeth, in tiny pieces. I learnt that day, the sum of its parts do not make the whole, this time anyway.

And then came the pain. Real facial pain. Freshly fried salt rolled up up in a ball of muslin pressed against the upper jaw was a valiant attempt at a home remedy by the house help. Not to much avail.

When I saw the 60 person queue at the town's best dentist's office the next morning at 8AM, I had my doubts I would be seen by the next morning. But the persuasion master that my dad remains, I was face to face with the dentist within 5 minutes.
5 hours of grueling surgery with very little numbing up, I felt I had atoned for all my sins thus far and for plenty in the near future. I felt such fear for the dentist chair that I didn't get my front teeth fixed until I got here to America and dentists that numb you up, in earnest.

But truth betold, I came across a Taiwanese dentist here who chided me on my threshold for pain despite being Asian and always had to be numbed up good.

A sombre 2009

I sure hope 2010 will be rung in with gusto. The bottom remains elusive. Is there a definition lurking in economic minds? Does the time it takes to recover define if it's a depression or a recession?

Getting usual chores done around the year end such as wisdom teeth extractions - Numbing Up will make another blog post.