Waiting for the funicular on Petrin Hill in Prague

 

"Hey, at least we didn't walk up Petrin Hill, right?" 

Travelling With Your Spouse 2

A married couple's first trip to a foreign city or or, as is frequently the case, a number of foreign cities over a number of days, can be a close-up photagraph of that couple's marriage. A journey with limits to time and budget will draw the differences between husband and wife quickly and dramatically to the surface. And conflict ensues. I've heard a husband say that he can pretty much count on at least one quarrel with his wife during each and every trip. Our first trip to Paris as husband and wife involved a quarrel literally on the Eiffel Tower.

On the other hand, at a certain point, if a couple has travelled together enough, each spouse knows to sidestep potential areas of conflict, like landmines as it were. There are also some quarrels that have happened so frequently there's no longer an point in going through the charade. A smirk and a grimace functions well enough when conflicts are like well-worn grooves in wood or imprints on the ground. Wife and husband are also able to create their compromises and matter-of-fact strategies that neatly avoid full-on conflict. In travel, as in life, two people can each accomodate the other's needs and wants - in this way, they engender their own unique travel habits - this, of course, makes it a little more difficult to find another couple to travel with, but I digress.

- We pack light and separately - each party being responsible for their own stuff - including their own dirty laundry.
- On the plane over, we recognise the need for rest and sleep - and will limit ourselves to one movie.
- T knows that I require a substantial breakfast if I am to get through the day though previously it was his penchant to not eat anything till starvation set in, and only then would he concede to buy cheap and easy street food.
- I know now not to force the issue of a sit-down lunch, having come to understand that this is frequently a waste of time when there are so many places to go and things to see. The midday meal must be a quick affair - even taken on the go, on the run - a sandwich, street food or a few rolls from a bakery.
- We both understand that while there is daylight, we have to be on the move - seeing as many things as possible, ideally on foot.
- It is understood that I am to ask strangers questions - whether it's a request to take our picture or a plea for directions, for the reason that I am the one who most often believes I am lost.
- If there is a high point to climb to with a view of a city, we will certainly do that. Similarly, if there is a bridge to cross, we will cross it.
- T is now also accustomed to my need to create concept pictures with odd poses that often cause passersby to stare. I consider it quite a triumph now because even he himself will deign to pose in that manner.
- If there is bookstore, we must enter it and time must be allotted for browsing.
- If there is a military centre, monument or museum - it must be visited.
- We have also agreed to disagree once or twice - and no longer have to be joined at the hip. Now apparently, we can separate and agree to meet an appointed place when one wants to do a particular thing that isn't what the other wants to do.
- We also know that while I might want to talk about life and plans say, for the next five years during a trip to a foreign city, T will most definitely not to want to do that - reserving any such conversations for bedtime, if at all.

And once a unique modus operandi has been cobbled together, no matter how imperfectly, travel to foreign cities can indeed be the wonderful experience it is meant to be. Fortunately.

Bankers in Zurich

People who work in creative industries like music, advertising or publishing constantly celebrate the joy of their jobs. How wonderful it is, they will say, that we genuinely enjoy our work. How remarkable is our passion - that we can get up in the morning of each day and sincerely look forward to the hours that lie ahead. To get such a high, such a kick and to get paid for it? What could be better than that?

Invariably, I have heard one or another of us compare our jobs against what we, rightly or wrongly, percieve to be the dreariest of occupations. The words, "Imagine, working at a ... bank?" have been uttered with pure, unadulterated incredulity, to the point that the last word is said with such palpable dismay that the "k" sound at the end of the word hangs in the air like a resonating "ick ick ick ick."

As someone who only very slightly resisted the conventional English major's path,I understand the issues at stake. The money vs passion argument, which unfortunately, does come into play in the choice of occupation. My first ever job interview was for the position of a research and financial analyst for a securities firm. I am well aware that had I chosen to accept this offer, I would surely be making four or five times my current salary at this point. Instead, I chose to enter advertising, but harbored the actual desire to be in account management as opposed to creative. The position was as an account executive, but fate in the form of the Senior Vice President for Creative, entered and, rightly or wrongly, thwarted my plans as a creative position was instantly created for me.

I did however, marry a banker. T is the proverbial creative stuck wearing a suit - unflinchingly, but not without a measure of discomfort. As colleagues writing for the university paper - he made his position to me quite clear. "It's where the money is," he said with resignation. And he made this decision with wide-open eyes, pushing aside his own creative impulses, his own personal yearnings. Ultimately, we make our decisions and suffer the tradeoffs while we reap the practicalities.

Similarly, the young, sensitive, musing M has made her own choice.

I want to tell her, even as I know my words are ineffectual at best, that the most important thing is to do what makes you happy and not look back. Or at least, not look back too much. I want to tell her that of course, it is impossible to be completely sure what will make you happy in the long run. I want to tell her that there do happen to be happy bankers and accountants who exercise their soul and passion and creativity both in but more frequently outside of their work. R who does tax accounting in New York, for example, finds the time to take cooking classes and publish the occasional story. But there yes, there are those who are not so happy - those like L who leave an industry, say publishing, to work in finance and four months later, wanting to return because the money just wasn't worth it.

The point is no one can have it completely both ways. There will always be the stuff you give up and the stuff you have to live with, whatever decision you make. There will always be little spaces in your heart in which reside tinges of regret, perhaps a tipple of yearning for something else or something more or even, the road not taken. But that, it is likely M is already learning.

Recent travel ended quite fittingly I thought, considering these musings, with a day in Zurich, Switzerland. Zurich, I'd been told, is a bankers' city. So not very imaginatively, I pictured a staid, business-like place - a city of grey pin-stripes, laptops and manila envelopes. Instead T and I were pleasurably surprised by a fresh briskly green little city with glowingly blue-green bodies of water flowing through it. We gasped at the clean breezes flying off the clear wide expanse of Lake Zurich as well as soaked up the verdant meadows and the stunning views of the Felseneg mountain. Everywhere, people were on bicycles, swimming in the lake, playing with their children.

T and I looked at each other. Perhaps it is possible to have it completely both ways. If ever anyone had it all, would it not be these people? Laughing, we acknowledged yet another new yearning - to be a banker in Zurich.

The sidewalks of Prague

From the Meteor Plaza Hotel in Prague

It's all about walking. You need to feel a foreign country with your feet, and you can't do that without a large measure of walking. But thankfully, the city of Prague lends itself well to our footfalls. While we both marvelled at the majesty and the grandeur of the old town square, the stunning Charles bridge, the castle and the great cathedral within, I also found myself hypnotised by the sidewalks.

All the sidewalks are paved mosaic style with squares or parallelograms of coloured stone - white, gray, black, pink. Granite? I promise myself I will look it up once I get the chance. And such a variety of patterns. The white diamonds wrapped in black squares. The large black and white checkerboards. The pink rectangles with the grey borders. The pink crosses lined with white. The white crosses enclosed in black squares. Such simplicity in what seems to be a complex way of paving what will simply be trodden upon. Why? What for? It certainly can't have been easy to lay all those square stones evenly enough, and yet not so evenly - with imperfect perfection.

T says, "Isn't there just one basic pattern?" I insist I've counted more than seven.

And as we walked and walked through the old town and the new, sauntering through Kafka's beautiful city, we felt it pulsing upon the very soles of our feet, with every step we took.

Travelling with your spouse

from an internet cafe in the Frankfurt train station

Count on the following proverbial laws of Murphy:
-one of you will be hungry when one of you isn't
-one of you will need the facilities at an ill opportune juncture
-one of you, at a certain point, would rather shop for shoes than go to a military museum

But all ill will be forgotten in an instant when encountering something great and wondrous. Like a church that is hundreds of years old.Or a beautiful green graveyard at the edge of a city. Or a painting by Pissaro or Latour.

And you will laugh together - all because the z is where the y should be on a German keyboard.

Growing Pains

"I feel really lonely about this."

When my son said this late last night at bedtime, I swear I almost burst into tears.

He's going through a tough time in school, being teased for being "fat" by his entire school bus. We feel a lot of this has to do with the fact that he is very different from his schoolmates, both personally and in his physique. Beside most of the local boys who tend to be on the scrawny, shrimpy, toothpick side (clearly I am upset), C is a big boy. Ironically, back home in the Philippines, he would be just average...big, perhaps, but not fat and certainly not obese. In the US or the UK, he would be just average. But yes, here he is fat, plain and simple. And children can be as cruel and as narrow-minded as adults can.

So what's happening now is when he steps onto the bus, the entire troop yells, "Hi fat Carlos." And apparently, yesterday, one kid says, "Everybody who thinks Carlos is fat should whack him." And more than a number of them kicked him on his shins. I called the school bus coordinator first thing.

T and I sat with him last night to try and strategise. Because it's the entire bus and not just one or two, he can't really pick a fight - he'd be outnumbered. He has tried smart remarks, but with so many of them, he is outshouted. The other problem is that he refuses to just ignore it.

"They make me so angry, I'm tempted to say something back."

One of my suggestions is to answer, "Hi, toothpicks." Or even better, just hi, and simply ignore it. Lola's suggestion is to threaten to sit on them - however, I think that would backfire. T says to ignore it, to act like it doesn't bother him. But C was adamant. It does bother him, and why wouldn't it? He is an outspoken boy. He can't just ignore it.

Wisely, he vetoed the idea of either me or T coming down and shouting at the entire busload (which actually, I'm very tempted to do). But I know, the minute the bus gets on the road, it will simply start again.

He's now very conscious of what he eats and wants to be "thin." But I told him that he can't lose that much weight as he's still growing. Besides, no matter how thin he gets, he will always be on the bigger side - it's in his genes. He sighed and buried his face into the pillow. And that's when he said it.

"I feel really lonely about this."

You start remembering such moments in your own childhood when you felt "very lonely" about something. My moment was in the fourth grade, when the entire class of 17 girls decided to give me the silent treatment for no apparent reason. It lasted a week and a half, until one girl simply got tired of it and the rest followed suit. I ended up forging friendships with the boys. It was humiliating because even the teachers asked me what was going on. At 38, I still vividly recall the loneliness. And here C is feeling the exact same thing. Faced with small minds attached to smaller bodies, what's a boy of seven to do?

With aplomb, he wakes for breakfast. He puts on his clothes and goes to school, anyway. There are no tears, no resistance to what he has to do. He tells us he loves us. He says goodbye. He is resolute, perhaps a tinge hopeful, building inner strength and steeling himself against the feeling of forlorn aloneness.

I am sure he will survive this. He will emerge strong, I'm certain. But there's no denying that ache, that hardness in the heart. Be reassuring. Tell him this too will pass, even while knowing it will stay with him forever. What else is a mother to do?

If these people had blogs...

I would read them:
- Needless to say, I read every blog I've linked to right now, because, well, because I'm interested in the nitty-gritty of people's lives. I like being on other planes
of consciousness.

- My dear friend, creative writing Pinoy poet and teacher Rofel Brion. His would be pure Pilipino, spare and clean and to the point just like his poetry. Every now and then, his would have talasalitaan - some little known or perhaps archaic but useful word that people have stopped using. Now, wouldn't that be interesting?

- I would read TRM. He's an old, old, old friend who frequently drives me up a wall with his grumpy moods and carmudgeonly ways. But I know that deep down, we share a friendship, a history. He's a wire news service editor, very likely the best in his field, I'm sure. Right now, he lives in Beijing. He used to write fiction, likes writing sports, and now burns cds and creates photo journals. I hear he's taken up cooking. I asked him once why he didn't blog and he mocked me. He said (and I'm paraphrasing): "My thoughts are ephemeral, there for the instant for whomever is present, and then gone with the wind." Whatever. If he did I'd read.

- I would read BB's blog, if she had one.Maybe she does, but I have no way of knowing. BB was one of the writers in my writing program. I last spoke to her in 1997 on a trip to New York. She had a permanent temp job at a bank and had just gotten one of her plays running off off-Broadway. In school, she was a tiny little thing with broad midwestern drawl and a skull cap of chestnut curls that she then shaved off ala Sinead O'Connor. At the end of our two year program, she and one of our other classmates ran off to Mexico together. He left his wife for BB. Come to think of it, I would read that guy's blog, too.

- My cousin, the playwright Floy Quintos. I'm not certain what his blog would have. Not showbiz gossip, that's for sure. Well-crafted essays about antiques, architecture, theatre and family. Maybe the beginnings of his memoirs.

- My first ever beloved boss Emily Abrera, who saved me from a life of account service (although I now think I'd probably be making more money today if I had gone into it). Anyway, I would read hers...everyday. I would check it everyday. Very definitely.

- I would read my parents and my sisters. And my cousin Jon, a cardiologist in Chicago - especially if it had hospital anecdotes. Oh...and if Celeste Soliven, Camille Genuino, Angelique Faustino, Christine Esteban, Janette Martin and Leia Castaneda had blogs, I'd read theirs regularly. They live so far away and they rarely write. And Jaypee Sevilla who I believe is living in South Africa right now with his wife, on a project for the Harvard School of Public Health where he's there on tenure track.

- I would read Woody Allen's blog but it's not likely he would have one since he can charge the New Yorker for it. I would read Ethan Hawke, Jodi Foster, Steve Martin, Carrie Fisher. I would read Anna Wintour and Miuccia Prada. John Irving, Alice Munro and John Updike - but why would they blog, they've got books to write...

Clearly, I could go on...

Change is good, right?

Feeling a little hesitation. Maybe that's too strong a word. Minor reservations might be the best way to describe it. How does one cope with certain and impending change?
Think of it like a yoga posture...you just have to do it, move yourself through it with as much grace and serenity you can muster. At the end of the day, it's just another thing. And another thing.

The funny thing is the more things change, the more they stay the same, to use that cliche. I'm still battling the same enemies. Still rushing to make time for the things I want to do and the people I want to do them with. Maybe the change will be better for that.

Anyway, the kiddies are on school break...and I'm afraid I've left them to their own devices in the way of activities. Haven't signed them up for anything. I've said they can do the things they want to do this week, in their own time, at their own pace. I told them to enjoy being bored when they can't think of anything to do. Or perhaps, they can just sit around and do nothing for a bit. That was a large part of my childhood. Adults don't do that nearly enough...