 NY lawyers Gilen Chan and Gene Preudhomme are preparing for retirement by interviewing retirees for their podcast Retire There. “A podcast," says Gene, "is like a pirate radio show, but legal." Every once in a while someone comes up with an idea so brilliant yet so obvious (once I hear it) that I am amazed and chagrined I didn’t think of it myself. Dreaming of retirement and struggling to decide where to go, New York lawyers Gilen Chan and Gene Preudhomme were just getting serious about their research when the pandemic hit. “Gene thought ‘If we can’t visit places, why not let the places visit us?’” recalled Gil. “And the idea of a podcast about retirement cities was born.” “I have always thought Gil had a voice and presence for radio,” says Gene. “Beginning several years ago, we started considering where we might retire. Once Covid hit, I had the idea of Gil hosting a podcast about places to retire. Although I have the face but not the voice for radio, Gil insisted that she would not do it alone. So here we are.” They spent the summer of 2020 developing plans for their weekly podcast, Retire There with Gil and Gene. When it launched in November 2020 it focused on domestic locations, but gradually they began adding international guests, and this week's interview is with (drumroll please!) Karen and Rich McCann.  Moving abroad changed our lives in ways we could never have imagined. Rich and I thank our lucky stars we took the plunge. When they approached me about the interview, I thought, “Spend time talking about how great it was to move to Seville? I can do that for hours. Just ask any of my friends, relatives, or bartenders!” Rich thought it sounded like fun, and soon we found ourselves in a long Zoom call with Gil and Gene, chatting like old friends. Click here to listen to the podcast, Retiring in Seville, Spain with Karen and Rich McCann. Afterwards, I asked if doing dozens of interviews has helped them narrow down their own list. Gil admitted they are no clearer about their dream destination than when they started. In fact, “This information overload has made our relocation decision more difficult.” “We have conducted over thirty-five interviews and many of the locations sound great,” added Gene. “However, I am hoping that once we hear about the place for us, it will be obvious and beyond exciting. Like the first time I met Gil, I knew she was the one.”  Tavira, Portugal is a charming seaside town — and one of 2021's hottest retirement destinations, according to US News & World Report. I asked what helps people find the right spot. “First, do your research, carefully,” said Gil. “Second, test-drive the location for at least a month, if possible. Third, do not feel trapped! You can always move again if this place did not turn out to be what you envisioned.” What are the biggest worries about retirement? “Finance is, by far, the number one concern,” Gene said. For those trying to figure out how far your money will go, “Some helpful sources include Market Watch, US News & World Report, International Living, blogs, social media blogs, such as Facebook’s group titled “Where to Retire,” etc.”  When their kids were grown, Veronica and David James, aka the Gypsy Nesters, decided to travel the world seeking once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Future retirees, said Gil, have to ask themselves plenty of practical questions. “Do they have enough to live on? Have they saved enough? Can they afford to retire before becoming eligible for Social Security? If they retire before becoming Medicare-eligible, and their former employers do not provide healthcare insurance for the gap years, do they have enough funds to remain in their current location? Some of our guests lived in areas they could afford while they were employed but not after. This last issue is what prompts many people to move abroad. The options of living in foreign countries are endless! And attractive!” (I should mention that Medicare doesn’t cover you when you’re abroad; you’ll need some other insurance. Luckily international policies tend to be far less expensive than American equivalents.)  You can get world class healthcare in many countries. When we needed a minor treatment in Heraklion, Greece we found the Creta InterClinic spotlessly clean, highly efficient, and fully up to date. “Beyond money,” said Gene, “the concerns run the gamut. Some people are greatly concerned about healthcare, while others say they are in great physical condition and healthcare played no part in deciding where to retire. Politics have been of great concern for many of our guests. Some will only live in a blue state, while others will only live in a red state. Some want a variety of outdoor activities and arts, others will only live in any area where it will be convenient for them to play golf every day.” Selecting the venue is the toughest thing to get right, notes Gil. “There are an overwhelming number of places with which to choose and if you factor in other criteria, such as the importance of being near family, it changes your options. One may find their fantasy location to be Portugal, but if that hinders your ability to see family more than once or twice a year, you may need to re-order your wish list. Expect to make compromises.” When asked how couples can navigate disagreements, Gene said, “Surprisingly, most did not seem to have major disagreements. For many of our guests, retirement calmed them. After retirement, they were less likely to start arguments and a number of guests lost significant amounts of weight.”  Retirees Debbie and Michael Campbell have been on the road since 2013, staying exclusively in Airbnbs, which they write about on their blog Senior Nomads. “Retirement is a significant event in and of itself,” Gil pointed out, “and retiring elsewhere is another enormous act. The best advice we’ve heard on the issue is this: couples need to recognize that their lives may markedly change at this point, i.e., a spouse who always worked outside the home may develop new habits post retirement that may surprise or annoy the other person. Recognize and acclimate yourselves to this new life. Make sure both parties find things they like in the new venue.” Gil and Gene don’t seem too worried about disagreements arising over their own retirement. “In general, we are similarly minded, in that we share the same values,” said Gil. “We respect and enjoy each other’s company. The podcast has solidified our decision to relocate after retirement. It would be foolish to stay in NYC when the dollar will go sooooo much further elsewhere, allowing us to live the way we’ve dreamed.” “We want a less congested place where we can enjoy nature,” added Gene. “We love New York City and its people, some of them, but the world is large and we seek to enjoy more of it.”  When Jackie and Joel Smith moved to southern Greece, Jackie launched a lively expat and travel blog called TravelnWrite. When Rich and I visited in 2019, they took us to this 13th century church. Just thinking about retirement opened up whole new worlds to Gil and Gene. “The podcast has been a godsend, an absolute brilliant surprise, thanks to Gene,” said Gil. “We have been in our professional legal careers for over 25 years and it has created new excitement and unexpected, intellectually satisfying achievements. We are producing a show! Who knew?” By the end of our conversation, Rich and I were inviting Gil and Gene to come see us in Seville before they make any final decisions about their own retirement. They would be a welcome addition to the city’s expat community and fit right into the vibrant social life that’s such an integral part of Spanish culture. But whatever their final destination may be, we can all be grateful that for now they are providing future retirees with practical ideas about hitting the reset button on their lives and having a grand time doing it.  Retired filmmakers Maer and Mark now live in France, where they've gone through recurring quarantines closing all shops except those selling bare necessities. “Thankfully,’ remarked Maer, “the French consider wine, pastries, and chocolates to be necessities!” OFF WE GO This week Rich and I are heading to a family reunion in the mountains and will be staying in a cabin that's off the grid — meaning no electricity, phone service, TV, or wifi, although there is a generator and indoor plumbing. The owners keep reminding us to bring insect repellant. You'll hear more about all this in my next post. Just wanted you to know why we'll be off email and social media for a bit. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY HOW'S YOUR SUMMER SHAPING UP? STAY IN TOUCH!
CLICK HERE to get my weekly travel tips, catastrophe updates & comfort food recipes. Feel free to copy the link below and share this article with family, friends, and anyone who may be thinking about where to retire someday. https://www.enjoylivingabroad.com/my-blog/where-to-retire-one-couple-has-the-inside-scoop
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 A 250-pound black bear wandered out of the woods and decided to take a nap in my neighbor’s oak tree. This never happens around here, so you can imagine the uproar. Photo: Keith Marsh Rich never bursts through the door when I’m taking my sister’s online yoga class, so I knew something was up even before he said, “I thought you should know I’ve just gotten an emergency alert. Town officials are telling us to lock our doors and windows and shelter in place. Something’s going down.” Instantly my mind flooded with hideous possibilities: terrorist attack, chemical spill, kidnapping, sniper, some vicious new Covid variant soon to be known as the San Anselmo Plague… “OK,” I said, continuing my cat-cow backbends and trying not to hyperventilate. “Let me know if you hear more.” Half an hour later, all was revealed: A 250-pound black bear was up a tree in our neighbor’s yard. As you can imagine, every game warden, cop, firefighter, and public official within twenty miles rushed to the scene; nobody wanted to miss out on the hottest happening around here since the Great Flood of 2005. The bear soon gave up all hope of a quiet siesta, climbed down the tree, ambled back through the neighborhood, and disappeared into the woods. Town officials texted residents to say it was safe to emerge from our shelters, then immediately addressed everyone’s most pressing concern: “The bear is fine.”  A recent poll showed 6% of humans believe they could win against a grizzly bear in a fair fight. The grizzlies would be happy to put this to the test. Anytime, anywhere. The next morning officials sent out an advisory about bear-proofing our homes. “It says we should keep our trash bins in the garage and our pets indoors at night,” I told Rich at breakfast. Not having a garage, or any pets, we agreed to ignore this advice. “It also says that if the bear gets into our house, we should not engage with it. What do they think we’re going to do, ask it what it’s watching on Netflix these days? They also suggest leaving immediately. Good to have a professional opinion on that! Hmmm, do you think we should distribute jars of honey around the house, in case we have to distract the bear while we make our escape?” In an ordinary year, I’d scoff at the idea that the bear, now named Archie, would return to our neighborhood, let alone invade our kitchen. But these days it’s hard to predict what wildlife will do. Their habits and habitats are so thoroughly disrupted by climate change, drought, wildfires, and human routines upended by the pandemic that you might wake up any morning to find coyotes, bobcats, wild turkeys, even peacocks foraging in your backyard. Last month in Tehachapi, Carol Mickols returned from a weekend getaway to find more than a dozen giant condors, an endangered species with nearly 10-foot wingspans, living on her porch — and willing to fight for their right to remain.  The condors eventually took off, but encounters between humans and wildlife continue to make headlines. On Memorial Day, Bradbury teenager Hailey Morinico saw a bear threatening her dogs and instinctively ran forward to shove the bear over a wall. The only reason she survived the encounter is because her actions were so insanely foolhardy the bear was too flabbergasted to respond. Strange wildlife visitations lend post-apocalyptic drama to the landscape, but they're the least of my householder worries right now. Two weeks ago, after the driest winter in 140 years, county supervisors declared a drought emergency and asked residents to reduce water consumption by 40%. Rich sprang into action researching how to use greywater — the relatively clean runoff from sinks, showers, and washing machines — to protect his beloved garden and our trees, some of which are already dropping leaves at an alarming rate. He spent weeks calculating usage (shower: 17 gallons; washing machine: 19 gallons; dishwasher: 3 gallons) and working out how to collect the runoff using a network of pipes and a large rain barrel. Meanwhile we have a bucket in the shower to capture the water while it heats (2.5 gallons) and another bucket in the sink for non-soapy rinse water. Our first setback was realizing the plants receiving kitchen water looked increasingly morose. We naturally blamed soap contamination but eventually discovered it was stray cooking oil; apparently greasy water is more detrimental to plants than a little mild detergent. Who knew? But the big blow? Turns out it’s illegal to collect greywater in barrels due to smells and worrying bacteria. You have to release greywater directly into the soil via a vast network of underground perforated PVC pipes, which would require tearing out our entire garden, our little brick patio, and who knows what else. Ballpark cost: $3000. Loss of Rich’s sanity watching 15 years gardening effort destroyed: incalculable. So we’re sticking with the buckets for now.  What you won't be finding at the McCann home anytime soon Officials are also encouraging us to conserve electricity in hopes of keeping those pesky blackouts to a minimum this summer. “Maybe this is the year we install solar panels on the roof to power the house — and that electric car we keep talking about,” said Rich. After weeks of research, he reported, “Looks like installing solar will mean replacing the electrical panel. That requires tearing out all the knob-and-tube wiring, so we’d have to pull off sections of the bead-board walls throughout the house, and then replace and repaint. We’d also have to buy new electrical appliances: furnace, stove, oven, and hot-water-on-demand system. Given how little energy we use now, we probably wouldn’t save anything on utility bills. But we would have enough energy to recharge an electric car if we decide to go ahead and get one.” “How much would all that cost?” “I’m not sure I can count that high without getting a nosebleed.” “What happens if we just use the township’s electric vehicle recharging station?” I asked. “It can’t be more than 150 feet from the house. If we ever had to, we could push the car over there.” “Then we don't have to do any of this.” So that’s where that stands. These days I feel like I’m living on the edge, always preparing for the next catastrophe, and the next, and the one after that. I’ve got a constant, low-grade case of the collywobbles — an old-fashioned expression for anxiety, often accompanied by queasiness. Perhaps that's our natural state. Back in the 1950s they told us America had made the world safe, and I somehow expected the feeling to last. But looking back over human history, it’s clear the only time we haven’t been on the edge of a catastrophe is when we’ve been in the middle of one. And that goes double for our animal cousins. Most bears are solitary animals, always struggling to find their next meal, hunted since prehistoric times for their meat and fur. When winter hibernation is over, the safest they’re likely to feel is resting in the arms of a sheltering tree. I can imagine Archie’s sentiments when he woke from his siesta to discover he was surrounded by first responders, many with tasers, guns, animal tranquilizers, and itchy trigger fingers. I picture him afterwards, texting that teenager’s bear: “You’re right, humans are nuts! But hey, any one you can walk away from.”  Giving up all hope of a quiet snooze in my neighborhood, Archie walks home to the woods. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY HOW'S YOUR SUMMER SHAPING UP? STAY IN TOUCH! CLICK HERE to get my weekly travel tips, catastrophe updates & comfort food recipes. Feel free to copy this link and share this article with family, friends, and anyone living in a danger zone. https://www.enjoylivingabroad.com/my-blog/bear-proofing-our-house-other-reasons-ive-got-the-collywobbles  World Famous Hot Chicken shows all the understated elegance we've come to associate with California road food. What do you think of California? Frank Lloyd Wright embraced the continental tilt theory that everything loose rolls to California. (True enough.) Truman Capote sneered, “It’s a scientific fact that if you stay in California you lose one point of your IQ every year.” (False, I hope.) Author Edward Abbey said, “There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.” But as a fourth generation Californian whose family arrived by covered wagon back in the day, I feel the best description comes from Mark Twain’s Roughing It. “It was a splendid population — for all the slow, sleepy, sluggish-brained sloths stayed at home — you never find that sort of people among pioneers — you cannot build pioneers out of that sort of material. It was that population that gave to California a name for getting up astounding enterprises and rushing them through with a magnificent dash and daring and a recklessness of cost or consequences, which she bears unto this day — and when she projects a new surprise the grave world smiles as usual and says, ‘Well, that is California all over.’”  Young Mark Twain learned a lot about California's character, and his own, as he worked his way across the Wild West in the 1860s and tried his hand at travel writing for the first time. To this day my home state remains a dizzying mix of can-do and anything-goes, a living embodiment of the saying “If you’re going to do something, you might as well go too far.” Last Friday I was gobsmacked to discover this was true of The California Museum as well. It was my first visit, and knowing the museum was partly sponsored by state funds, I assumed I'd find a pious whitewash of our checkered past. Instead it showed the good, the bad, the ugly, and the outlandish boldness for which the state is famous. But before I get into that, I would like to pause and point out that the really astounding part of the story was finding myself actually standing there, in our state capital Sacramento, on my first road trip in over a year. Ever since Rich and I made the harrowing journey from Seville to California on May 18, 2020, we’d hunkered down in our San Anselmo cottage feeling lucky to be alive and determined to do whatever we could to stay that way. I actually slept in my own bed for 373 consecutive days — a lifetime record! But with 51% of the state fully vaxxed, and our governor declaring June 15 the end of mask mandates and the reopening of just about everything, even my paranoia is crumbling fast. When four friends suggested a two-night excursion to Sacramento — aka The Big Tomato, The City of Trees, and Farm-to-Fork Capital — Rich and I decided it was finally time to drag our suitcases out of the attic and venture further afield than our backyard and the local supermarket.  As you can imagine, our suitcases were pretty excited to be out of the attic and off on another adventure. We headed northeast on a train so sparsely occupied that we found ourselves in sole possession of the California Zephyr’s roomy observation car. Arriving in Sacramento was like walking into one of those sci-fi movies where everyone’s been vaporized by aliens, leaving just a pitiful remnant of humanity wandering the Earth. We hardly saw a soul as we ambled along the broad, tree-lined streets, admired the handsome Capitol grounds, and meandered past sweet old bungalows and stately Victorians. Restaurants, shops, and museums were mostly open; often we were their only customers. Their proprietors and staff could hardly have greeted us with more enthusiasm if we actually had been the last humans on the planet. Sadly, the Dive Bar featuring professional mermaids (yes, I mean women dressed as mermaids) that Rich and I visited in 2016 was closed due to Covid. And the once-famous Zombie Walks died out somewhere around 2017. When I broke the bad news to our group a few days before departure, Pete replied, “No mermaids? No zombies? Why bother?”  Sacramento's Dive Bar houses a 7500-gallon tank in which, during pre-Covid times, women dressed as mermaids would swim around during happy hour. Even without those attractions, we managed to find plenty to occupy us, including the Railroad Museum, dinner on the deck of the Delta King riverboat (now a haunted hotel), and a Local Roots Food Tour culminating in what was possibly the best gelato I’ve ever had (yes, even compared to Italy’s). We had drinks in the Citizen Hotel’s Scandal Lounge, it’s dark corners and old-school furnishings artfully arranged to make us feel like corrupt politicians making shady deals with nefarious characters. Full disclosure: we stayed at the Citizen and didn’t see anyone who appeared the slightest bit nefarious. Very disappointing, obviously. Our last stop was The California Museum, where we were greeted by a large wooden bear wearing a mask (which will presumably be ceremoniously removed on June 15). I became immersed in exhibits about the contributions and hardships of Asian Americans in my state, and that’s when things got very real. I grew up hearing stories about the abuses heaped on Chinese railway workers and later upon Japanese Americans interned in concentration camps during World War II, but standing in front of those displays, I grew increasingly sad and ashamed. I read the first-person stories, saw a recreation of the pitiful cramped barracks in the internment camps (where a good friend of mine spent her teenage years), and absorbed the full details of the xenophobic laws defining Asian Americans as second class citizens. Employers exploiting foreign workers encouraged racism in the community, laying the groundwork for generations of prejudice and today’s Asian hate crimes. On one wall was a video of George Takei, known to Star Trek fans as Mr. Sulu, helmsman of the USS Enterprise. “I am the grandson of immigrants from Japan who went to America, boldly going to a strange new world, seeking new opportunities. My mother was born in Sacramento, California. My father was a San Franciscan. They met and married in Los Angeles, and I was born there,” he says. “I spent my boyhood behind the barbed wire fences of American internment camps.” Still reeling from those images, I found myself in an exhibit inviting me to become a “unity activist.” What’s that, you ask? It’s about celebrating diversity, organizing the community to protect human rights, and defending the value all people. Amen to that! There were photos of Native Americans occupying Alcatraz fifty years ago, the protest that led to the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, and people who, like the grumpmaster I wrote about last week, refuse to be defined by their gender, ethnicity, or physical appearance. Fairly radical stuff for a museum that’s partly funded by taxpayer dollars! I had my photo taken holding a poster about equality, proud to take my place as a permanent part of the unity activist exhibition. All in all, we had a grand time in Sacramento, even if we didn’t see the Delta King’s ghost, hobnob with nefarious politicians, or encounter large numbers of fellow humans. After June 15, I expect things will get livelier. In the meantime Rich and I are busy planning other road trips to visit family in various parts of the state. Up to now I hadn’t considered a detour to Lake Tahoe, but I might have to revise that. “Three months of camp life on Lake Tahoe,” wrote Mark Twain, “would restore an Egyptian mummy to his pristine vigor, and give him an appetite like an alligator.” I can’t think of a better way than that to jump start post-pandemic life, can you? YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY THINKING ABOUT TRAVEL THIS SUMMER? STAY IN TOUCH!
CLICK HERE to get my weekly travel tips, pandemic updates & comfort food recipes. Feel free to copy this link and share this article with family, friends, and anyone who will be emerging from pandemic conditions into the larger world. https://www.enjoylivingabroad.com/my-blog/our-first-road-trip-in-a-year-the-big-tomato  Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau were classic curmudgeons in the 1993 movie Grumpy Old Men. But as Rich learned in the seminar, you can be grumpy whatever your age or gender. “Democracy is four wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.” Ambrose Bierce “If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.” Dorothy Parker “The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.” Charles de Gaulle Who doesn’t love a zingy wisecrack from a seasoned curmudgeon? In fact, grumpsters — or even ordinary folks experiencing a cranky moment — have a way of breaking through social constraints to voice sentiments we normally don’t dare express. My husband (and I say this lovingly and gratefully) does not have a natural gift for grumpiness. In fact, he’s usually a pretty cheerful, even-tempered guy. But this week he studied at the feet of grumpmaster Rabih Alameddine in the online seminar Five Things I've Learned About Being Grumpy. Rich picked up some useful pointers, and in an exclusive interview at our breakfast table shared some of his newfound insights. “What do you mean by ‘grumpy’?” I asked. “Contrarian,” he replied. “I think one of the benefits of being grumpy is the ability to honestly express yourself rather than complying with the norms of society. As I learned in the happiness course, it’s impossible to be happy all the time. But we Americans are always told to put on a happy face. If I find somebody who is grumpy, I try to cheer them up or solve the problem. But sometimes people need to wallow in their grumpiness.”  Sometimes you just need to tell it like it is. “Can grumpiness go too far?” “Sure. It can turn mean. Look at Archie Bunker.” (For younger readers, Archie was the bigoted dad in the 70s sitcom All in the Family. We all chuckled over his malapropisms such as “We’re just sweeping dirty dishes under the rug,” and “Don’t draw me no diaphragms.” But his more abusive remarks, such as constantly telling his wife, “Stifle yourself!” made us cringe.)  Archie: "This ain't something a man usually tells a woman: I love you, Edith." Edith: I know that, Archie." Archie: "You mean I didn't have to say it?” “Grumpiness can cut off communication," Rich said. "For example, if you bring up climate change with a grumpy person, they might say, ‘We’re all screwed anyway, so who cares?’ Or ‘What a bunch of baloney!’ It can be just another way of saying ‘Leave me alone’ because they’re afraid of verbalizing the existence of a very difficult subject.” He reflected a moment. “On the other hand, grumpiness can open up conversations. People have a tendency to give an answer they think the other person will like — or at least not be offended by. If you’re a grumpy person, you’re an outsider who gives yourself permission to tell people what you think without caring what the reaction is going to be.” An honest outsider’s perspective is, according to Alameddine, vital for our own survival and society’s wellbeing. That's why they had court jesters back in the day. “I was lucky enough to be born weird; I never fit in,” he says. “Being a bit off center allowed me to see the center a bit more clearly.” He explains every society has a dominant culture that defines what’s OK and what’s not, creating expectations about the roles we play and how we interact with one another. This is useful for creating a stable society but has serious downsides, too. “Why limit myself?” Alameddine asks. “Why is being gay what defines me? Why is being five feet four what defines me? Why is being Lebanese what defines me?” While identities can give us a comfortable sense of belonging, they can also be restrictive, making it impossible to be our whole selves. To fit in with society’s preconceived notions, we often, in Archie Bunker’s words, “stifle ourselves.” We might, for instance, be keeping a leash on our inner wild woman, the part of us that secretly longs to quit our job, hitchhike a thousand miles, dance naked in the rain with strangers, and speak the truth when it matters.  "Within every woman there lives a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. She is the Wild Woman, who represents the instinctual nature of women. But she is an endangered species," said Clarissa Pinkola Estés, author of Women Who Run With the Wolves. It’s human nature to fit people into pigeonholes, then think that gives us insight into their psyches. As a gay novelist writing about characters with diverse proclivities, Alameddine was amazed how some critics leapt to outrageous false assumptions about his personal life. “My idea of rough sex,” he says, “is sleeping on sheets with less than 600 thread count.” Identifying with any group immediately separates the world into us and them. “Every identity is also a horror,” says Italian scholar Claudio Magris, “because it owes its existence to tracing a border and rebuffing whatever is on the other side.” Fortunately, borders are permeable; we can cross them, although it isn't easy. “When you leave the comfort of boundaries,” Alameddine advises, “go gently. Try to discover rather than laying claim.” This is a lesson learned by every expat. When we leave the comfort of home to live in a foreign land, we become aliens. It takes patience, luck, an open heart, a delicate touch, and plenty of bellyflops and pratfalls to make even a tenuous place for ourselves abroad, especially when living among those who have known each other since baptism.  Some people are making an effort to be more inclusive these days. The bottom line, says Rich, is “Be fearless.” Embracing your inner grump is one way of claiming your birthright as a complex person living on your own terms. The Buddhists put it this way: “Show up. Be present to the moment. Tell the truth as you know it. Have no attachment to outcome.” This doesn’t mean we have to turn into caustic Archie Bunkers, or start slinging zingers like Dorothy Parker, or develop the kind of barbed wit that led comedian Oscar Levant, when asked about his morning routine, to say, “First I brush my teeth, then I sharpen my tongue.” How we find our freedom and nurture our souls is up to us. “If you don’t want to be grumpy,” says Alameddine, “be Happy, be Sleepy, be Dopey, be any of the Seven Dwarves. Just be more than one identity. Be greater than these limited identities.” And if that doesn’t work for you, he adds, then “blow it out your ear, get off my lawn, and bah humbug!”  "This is my grumpy face," says Alameddine, making an effort to look cranky after chuckling during his introduction to the seminar. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY LET'S KEEP IN TOUCH!
CLICK HERE to send me your email address and I'll drop you a note whenever I publish new stuff. Feel free to copy this link and share this article with family, friends, social media, and all the dedicated grumps you know. https://www.enjoylivingabroad.com/my-blog/rich-reveals-the-secrets-of-being-good-grumpy  "The person who gives food," the Buddha once said to his monks, "gives longevity, pleasant complexion, happiness, stamina, and intelligence." Amen to that! There are few things that make me feel more at home than chaos in the kitchen. Having grown up in a large, boisterous family and hosted countless pot-luck dinners, I love the hubbub, companionship, and delicious meals that somehow miraculously result from the combined efforts of an excessive number of cooks working feverishly in a confined space. It’s one of the things I’ve missed most during the pandemic and was overjoyed to experience again on Friday. My friend Kathryn organized the whole thing, and emails flew back and forth for weeks. My last to her said, “Rich is sharpening the knives!” It was only after hitting “send” that it struck me as sounding a bit ominous — the sort of sentence traditionally followed by, “We’re going to the mattresses!” Luckily we were prepping for a very different kind of occasion: a Zoom course in making Pad Thai, the stir-fry noodle dish that’s a beloved staple of Thai cuisine. Kathryn, her husband Pete, Rich, and I were cooking at our house, while six other friends plus a handful of strangers around the country were joining in via Zoom, letting us all chat with each other as well as the chef.  Chef Rachel seemed astonishingly perky for someone giving a class at 4 am Bangkok time. We asked about pandemic conditions there. She told us they were on lockdown at night, and somehow managed to make it sound like she was grateful to us for alleviating the boredom. Although there were only four of us physically present in my kitchen, we managed to make as much fuss and noise as a small army. I kept glancing down, vaguely surprised no dogs or small children had materialized underfoot. The chatter from our online classmates created a nice background buzz as we chopped and stirred and called out, “Where’s the fish sauce?” and “Who has my pandan leaves?”  These pandan leaves were folded, tied in a knot, then floated in the coconut milk to add extra flavor to the dessert: Kluai Buat Chi, Bananas in Coconut Milk. The truly brilliant part of the Cuiline cooking courses is that they mail you all the hard-to find components, such as proper rice noodles, dried shrimp, and palm sugar, which are all pre-measured and shipped from a supplier here in the US. You then go to your local market for the ordinary ingredients, like fresh shrimp and bananas, and follow detailed written instructions with onscreen guidance from a professional chef in whatever country the dish hails from. (See link to Chef Rachel's recipes below.)  Part of the fun was unpacking the exotic ingredients shipped to us in advance of the course. As I decanted the fish sauce into a mixing bowl, I wrinkled my nose at the fermented anchovy smell (the subject of many revolting comparisons such as wet dog, stinky feet, and zombies). Yes, truly a smell only its mother could love, but a dash does add a piquant depth to the dish, as do the crunchy, salty dried shrimp. I carefully refrained from describing to Kathryn and Pete how I’d once seen villagers drying that kind of shrimp in Vietnam. It was shortly after the rainy season, and dry land was in short supply, so each family threw down a tarp on the main street and spread out the catch of the day. You could just about maneuver a small car down the middle, but if you met an oncoming vehicle, somebody would have to swerve over and drive on the shrimp; I watched it happen, with something akin to horror. To this day, I can’t help feeling the crunchy chewiness of dried shrimp owes something to road grit and rubber tires.  I took this photo of a Vietnam village filled with drying shrimp in 1996. Possibly the shrimp-drying regulations are a bit stricter now. This was not, I felt, a memory to share with Kathryn and Pete just before we all sat down to a dish laced with dried shrimp. Nor was it the moment for Rich’s “that time I ate bad shrimp in rural Mexico” story, which I felt sure he was working up to as Pete trimmed the tails off a pile of glistening raw crustaceans. I shot Rich that “don’t you dare” look all married couples perfect over the years. Actually the story does have a happy ending. I’ll pass over the four days of active torment in the tiny rural hotel, during which Rich subsisted on Coca-Cola and crackers, and I reread the same paperback three times. Finally a concerned neighbor gave me the name of the doctor serving this remote, rural district and suggested it was time for Rich to get professional help. When I broached the subject, Rich sat bolt upright in bed, saying, with more animation than he’d shown in days, “NO! Absolutely not. I’m feeling lots better.” In minutes he was dressed, within hours he was walking around, and the next day we resumed our journey. Sometimes, a good scare is the best miracle cure. Even without the bad-shrimp story, we had plenty to talk about. Rich and I had visited Thailand several times, most notably in 1992 when we took a long trek into the hinterlands. We began the trip at a modest Bangkok hotel full of cheap wood paneling and scruffy backpackers sprawled on sofas, then headed north. There we hiked through hill tribe villages, sleeping rough, if at all. One memorable night we laid out our sleeping bags on a bamboo porch, unaware that the village pigs and dogs would spend the next five hours waging an epic battle just underneath, vying for the privilege of bedding down a few inches below our bodies in what was apparently a particularly choice patch of dust.  Rich and I spent time getting to know the local kids on what would become our sleeping porch. Or rather, the porch where we spent the night; there wasn't much sleeping going on thanks to the barking and squealling war cries of the pigs and dogs. Pretty soon our state of scruffiness made the hotel backpackers look as if they were spiffed up for the Ascot opening race. We spent long, hot, days hiking and only marginally cooler evenings in villages where, this being the dry season, water was scarce and little of it could be wasted on washing.  We could never figure out the elaborate rotation system at the village's single water source. Eventually Rich (yes, that's him at left) just leapt in and lathered up. Everyone was perfectly nice about it, realizing that we were mannerless dweebs and probably nuts, so it was best to humor us. Eventually we wound up on a river in a rice barge, where we were invited to make use of the onboard shower.  Our guide, showing us how to use the shower When the propeller fell off our boat, we limped into a tiny, riverside village. As repairs proceeded at a leisurely pace, I treated myself to the luxury of having my hair washed and combed dry at the local salon.  Eventually we returned to Bangkok, entering our lodgings by a back door. “Wow, will you look at how fancy this place is?” I said to Rich, admiring the glossy paneling and roomy sofas. Then my perspective shifted, and I realized with a shock that it was the same downscale hotel we’d stayed in a week earlier. Only now it no longer seemed frumpy but luxurious, with clean sheets, hot showers, and no squabbling livestock within earshot. It’s been some years since I traveled that rough, and I certainly don't miss the discomfort. But I do look forward, one day, to getting back on the road and discovering more of the world. Last Friday was a wonderful reminder that even if I can’t journey far and wide right now, I can join convivial companions in smaller, more domestic adventures. One of my favorite sayings is that life doesn’t have to be perfect to be wonderful. Or, as the Thai people put it, อย่ายึดวันเพียงแค่จี้ท้อง meaning “Don’t seize the day, just tickle its belly.” I’m still pondering the profound significance of that saying, which is no doubt wise advice, especially when dealing with village dogs and pigs.  It's amazing how many memories can be triggered while preparing a meal with friends. The Pad Thai turned out to be absolutely delicious, much better than any version I've had in a restaurant. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY LET'S KEEP IN TOUCH!
CLICK HERE to send me your email address and I'll drop you a note whenever I publish new stuff. Feel free to share this article with family, friends, and anyone you know who likes good cooking. https://www.enjoylivingabroad.com/my-blog/the-joy-of-cooking-exotic-food-with-congenial-companions-in-my-own-cozy-kitchen  Most of us are turning to comfort food, but some are expressing their angst with voodoo cooking. Photo: Tina Dawson, Love Is in My Tummy It happened at the Punjab burrito place in a nearby village. I was so delighted to see it had finally reopened that I didn’t stop to consider whether, after a year of homecooked food, I was ready for the onslaught of their trademark Indian-Mexican spices. Yowser! Zowie! Boing! When I could speak again, I groaned to Rich, “Yogurt, must have…” I staggered inside and begged for dairy to cool the pain, and it was only as the cook placed two small containers of plain yogurt in my palms that I realized I had failed to put my face mask back on. If I had stepped out of an airlock into deep space without my helmet, I could hardly have been more horrified. I stammered an apology and fled. But then a curious thing happened. I realized it probably didn’t matter. For 14 months I’d assumed the slightest slip up — scratching my nose with unsanitized hands, leaning in to chat with a neighbor, letting my mask slide downwards — could result in hideous illness and gruesome death. But the stakes have changed. Here in Marin County, CA, 68% of us over the age of 15 are fully vaxxed, and 85% have received the first dose. The odds of surviving a 20-second exchange with a cook in an otherwise deserted restaurant? Pretty damn good. But I still felt terrible about forgetting my mask.  Ringo Starr tweeted this takeoff of the Beatle's Abbey Road album cover, with the caption "Peace and love everybody stay safe be cool." Navigating the shifting social taboos is more complicated than I ever expected. When all this started, I vaguely anticipated that someday there would be a joyful moment when we were declared officially safe and could emerge from isolation into rip-roaring celebration. This week, a friend sent me this ad, which captures the zany thrill of my fantasy. That fantasy seems as far off now as it did a year ago. Even those of us who are lucky enough to be in areas stumbling toward herd immunity find ourselves in as much chaos and confusion as ever. Every friend, neighbor, and health official seems to hold strong yet differing opinions on safety protocols. For instance, around here, most people are still wearing masks outside, even though the CDC says we no longer have to in most circumstances, whether or not we're vaccinated. A few days ago, seeing a masked woman approaching on the sidewalk in front of my house, I put on my mask as a courtesy. She said “Thank you,” in a clipped tone that suggested it was the very least I could do, and why wasn’t I wearing it as I walked out my door? There wasn’t time to pull up the CDC guidelines on my phone as she zipped past, or to show her the NY Times report that said, "There is not a single documented Covid infection anywhere in the world from casual outdoor interactions, such as walking past someone on a street or eating at a nearby table."  In a poll last fall, 70% of Californians supported making masks mandatory. Many are still wearing masks outdoors, despite relaxation of the CDC recommendations to do so. Photo: EMS World Misunderstandings abound whenever society shifts gears, leading to endless muddle and mayhem. According to author William Bridges, transitions occur in three phases: ending, the neutral zone, and beginning. “We cannot move forward until we have let go of who we have been, and what has been, in the past,” wrote Danya Ruttenburg in the Washington Post. “Only after we spend some time in the neutral zone does the beginning of our new selves, our new way of being in the world, emerge in earnest. The neutral zone is a time of unknowns. A time when you’ve left one thing and don’t know what will happen next. A time of terror, of possibility, of creativity, of openness, of uncertainty … That’s terrifying. But it can also be so potent, so powerful. Ripe. No doors have been closed. We are not quite at the end of this pandemic. But we’re starting to see what the neutral zone might look like.” It seems to me something called the neutral zone really ought to be a little less terrifying, but OK, I’ll try to embrace it. “Stories are emerging, as the world begins to reopen,” wrote the AP’s Kelli Kennedy, “people secretly dreading each milestone toward normalcy, envisioning instead anxiety-inducing crowds and awkward catch-up conversations. Even small tasks outside the home — a trip to the grocery store, or returning to the office — can feel overwhelming. Psychologists call it re-entry fear, and they're finding it more common as headlines herald the imminent return to post-pandemic life.” In a pandemic that's already exceeded our most paranoid fantasies, how are we supposed to cope with yet another period of uncertainty? One woman suggests “voodoo effect” cooking. “Sometimes, busting through your stress is as simple as reasserting your dominance at the top of the food chain,” wrote Tucker Cummings in Lifehack. “Maybe it’s a little dark, but chopping veggies and butchering chickens can really take the edge off of even the most stressful days. Have a big fight with your boss? Pretend that carrot is his car and go to town on it. By using your ingredients like voodoo dolls, you’ll find that cutting through a couple of pounds of food has really calmed you down.” Yikes! That does sound a little dark. But potentially very therapeutic. Just don’t get carried away when you’re handling sharp knives. If you find yourself enjoying it too much, put down your weapons and step away from the cutting board.  I have to admit, shooting this photo was a lot of fun. Maybe too much fun. Rich seemed a lot less nervous once I put down the cleaver. Give yourself time to transition, advises Miami psychiatrist Dr. Arthur Bregman, who calls fear of emerging from lockdown “cave syndrome.” After the 1918 influenza, he notes, 40% of the population had what we’d now call PTSD. “It took 10 years for the people to get out of this.” Ten years? I’m hoping for a slightly quicker fix than that. And Britain’s Royal Horticultural Society has one. They recently surveyed 6000 people and learned daily gardening improves wellbeing scores by 6.6% and reduces stress levels by 4.2%. Those with health issues reported gardening eased episodes of depression (13%), boosted their energy (12%), and reduced stressed-out feelings (16%). As the Good News Network put it, “It certainly sounds like it’s time to get your Vitamin ‘G’ on.” Since Rich refers to gin by that nickname, I immediately pictured him with a trowel in one hand and a G&T in the other, and yes, he did look pretty zippity-do-dah!  Vitamin G takes many forms. Photo: The Horitcult Whatever therapies you find most helpful, the first step is accepting that emerging from the pandemic — whenever it finally happens — isn’t going to be as easy or quick as we’d hoped. In fact, it’s going to be another tricky, messy, tumultuous time, and there will be days when the only thing that makes sense is hacking up defenseless tomatoes until your kitchen looks like the lair of a serial killer in a particularly noir thriller. But if we’ve learned anything during the pandemic, it’s that we can survive disruption, uncertainty, and extraordinary challenges. Yes, we can. We already have. I recently had coffee with friends Ang and Ryan, who run a location-independent t-shirt business and are now creating stickers, posters, and murals. They're giving away lots for free, partly as a marketing strategy and partly, Ang explained, because they're about things that need to be said — and heard — right now. “Like what?” I asked. Ang handed me this one.  LET'S KEEP IN TOUCH! CLICK HERE to send me your email address and I'll drop you a note whenever I publish new stuff. Feel free to share this article with family, friends, and anyone you know who might be struggling with safety protocols during these uncertain times. https://www.enjoylivingabroad.com/my-blog/voodoo-cooking-yes-another-goofy-coping-strategy  In my view, Rich is already in touch with his inner grumpy. But he feels there is always room for improvement. “It’s a course about what?” I asked incredulously. “Why would you want to learn how to be grumpier?” The subject was a sensitive one, as the atmosphere around our house has been rather wobbly this week. For a start — and I know just how petty and trivial this is — we completed what was supposed to be a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle and realized we only had 999. Somehow that last piece of the puzzle had wandered off, hitchhiking, perhaps, to another room on a fold of clothing, or maybe falling onto the floor and getting sucked into the vacuum cleaner bag; if so, it was already en route to the town’s landfill by the time the full horror of the situation dawned on us.  The nightmare scenario dreaded by every puzzle aficionado A few days later we had to cut down two venerable trees, a pair of 50-foot Liquid Ambers that had presided over our small garden for half a century. One was dead, the other on life support, and the time had come to make the painful decision to pull the plug. Of the ensuing chaos, noise, and staggering expense I cannot yet bring myself to speak. Afterwards, Rich spent hours stomping around the chip-strewn garden fingering plants and muttering, “See that? Used to be a gorgeous hydrangea… Oh my God, the Lamb’s Ears… And the succulents! They weren’t anywhere near those trees. How the hell did they get overturned?” As the final insult, our car — moved onto a village street to make room for the tree fellers’ vehicles — stayed fifteen minutes past the legal time limit and received a $40 parking ticket. “And now you want to learn how to get into a worse mood?” I asked Rich. “Boy, this week just keeps getting better and better.” I probably shouldn’t speak disparagingly of grumpiness, which enjoys a long and distinguished history in other countries, most notably Great Britain, which embraces it with almost unseemly fervor. Hugh Grant, for instance, was dubbed “Grumpelstiltskin” by friends of an ex-girlfriend. Winston Churchill was famous for his putdowns, such as the time Nancy Astor snapped at him, "If I were married to you, I'd put poison in your coffee." To which he replied, “If I were married to you, I’d drink it!” As author Kingsley Amis summed it up, “If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing.”  Hugh Grant, aka “Grumpelstiltskin" According to the BBC article “Why it pays to be grumpy and bad-tempered,” we need to remember that “our feelings are adaptive: anger, sadness, and pessimism aren’t divine cruelty or sheer random bad luck — they evolved to serve useful functions and help us thrive.” Pessimism keeps us from being blindsided by unwelcome events. Anger fuels our flight-or-fight response and gives us an edge in problem solving. Venting our emotions can be cathartic. Imagine how D.H. Lawrence felt after unburdening himself of these sentiments: “Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines, the slimy, the belly-wriggling invertebrates, the miserable soddingrotters, the flaming sods, the sniveling, dribbling, dithering, palsied, pulse-less lot that make up England today. They've got white of egg in their veins, and their spunk is so watery it's a marvel they can breed.” Hey, don’t sugar-coat it, D.H., give it to ‘em straight!  "In actual life," says actress Dawn French, who played the Vicar of Dibley, "I am a grumpy old bag." Was Rich hoping to learn how to craft rip-roaring diatribes and rapier-like zingers during the grumpiness course? Just what was this seminar about anyway? “My name is Rabih Alameddine and I’m a novelist,” says the presenter in a short video describing the May 19 course. “I’m excited to be able to share my seminar ‘Five Things I've Learned About Being Grumpy.’” Short pause. “Hmmm. ‘Excited’ may be a little too much. I’m mildly interested in telling you about my seminar. It covers a couple of things about being grumpy. Five things is way too much.” Alameddine explains that the true subject of the course is the elasticity of identity and imagination. “Identifying as a man makes me see the world a certain way. However, being male isn’t my only identity. My work has been described as immigrant literature. Yes, I am one. I’m an Arab, I’m American, I’m Lebanese, I’m an atheist. I’m a soccer player. I am gay. So many identities, so little time. These days, grumpy is the identity that I feel defines me more fully... Drawing on years of experience of being an outsider—and on sixty-some years of being an oddball—I will share a little about what I think works about claiming a certain identity or having one assigned to you by society, and what is limiting about it.”  Rabih Alameddine has lectured at M.I.T, the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, and other universities. He received a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship in 2002. In the past he divided his time between San Francisco and Beirut; now he divides his time between his bedroom and living room. Photo: Oliver Wasow The upheavals of this past year have taught us all something about our various identities — the ones assigned to us by society, the ones we choose for ourselves, and the ones that are thrust upon us by circumstances beyond our control. Since I began this blog in 2011, I’ve identified as an expat and a travel writer. And yet I’ve spent the last year in one place, adventuring no further than the supermarket or hardware store, writing about how to cope with the tsunami of domestic change brought about by the pandemic. I consider myself a die-hard optimist, yet I’ve had a lot of days when the world situation left me feeling blue, a state of mind the French describe so eloquently as avoir le cafard, literally "having a cockroach." I doubt I’ll ever embrace a consistently grumpy attitude toward life, but I can learn much from those who do — about honesty, realism, and connecting with others more deeply on the common ground of truth. A touch of grumpiness may help me face up squarely to my responsibilities as a concerned citizen dealing with the pandemic, the economy, racial justice, and gender equality — to say nothing of climate change. If we don’t get that one right, soon none of the rest of it will matter so much. But hey, no pressure! The optimist in me says we’ll find ways to make progress. How can I be so positive? Because Rich just walked into the shed that serves as his man cave, stooped down, and picked this up from the floor. And if that isn’t a good omen for better times ahead, I don’t know what is.  Found! Ready to get in touch with your inner curmudgeon? If you decide to take the course ‘Five Things I've Learned About Being Grumpy" offered on May 19, please let me know. I'll be writing a post on the course and Rich's reactions, and it would be fun to include your comments as well. Send them to me at enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com. Click here to STAY CONNECTED! Send me your email address and I'll drop you a note whenever I publish new stuff. Feel free to share this article with family, friends, and anyone you know who might, from time to time, get just a teeny bit grumpy. https://www.enjoylivingabroad.com/my-blog/rich-enrolls-in-a-grumpiness-seminar. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY As my regular readers know, I never get free or discounted goods or services for mentioning anything on this blog. This is a promotion-free zone! I only write about things that interest me and that I believe might be useful for you all to know about.  I don't have a photo of the fraudster I met in Naples, Italy; it all happened so fast! But this picture of the notorious Charles Ponzi kind of captures the spirit of the guy, with his "trust me" attitude and the gleam in his eye. There are guys you absolutely know are going to be trouble the minute you spot them, and the first person I met in Naples, Italy was one of them. Rich and I had been in town just ten minutes, at the tail end of a three-month railway journey some years ago, and already I had a case of the heebie-jeebies. For a start, the train station — said to be a transportation hub serving 50 million people a year — was totally deserted. Pushing through fly-specked glass doors to the street, I saw nothing but shuttered shops, overflowing garbage bins, and empty potato chip packets blowing past like tumbleweed. “What do you figure?” I said. “A nuclear holocaust while we were on the train? We’re the only people left alive on the planet?” “There’s somebody.” Up ahead three teenage boys loitered by the entrance to a dark pedestrian tunnel, the kind moviegoers instantly recognize as shorthand for “mugging about to happen.” “Shall we just throw them our wallets and beat ourselves up to save everybody some time?” I asked.  The local dogs love Naples' frequent, prolonged garbage strikes, which they view as exciting snack opportunities. A few ordinary-looking adults were heading into the tunnel, so we followed. The cavernous walls were decorated with eye-popping graffiti. The ground was littered with broken glass, rotting food, fragments of furniture, and blobs of what appeared to be radioactive waste. “Whatever you do, don’t trip and fall in here,” I advised. We emerged into a busy intersection thronged with Vespas and hurrying locals whose appearance ranged from scruffy to scurrilous. A suave voice behind me said, in English, “Where are you trying to get to?” I turned to find a handsome, silver-haired stranger, impeccably dressed and oozing charm. His smile said, “Trust me!” so irresistibly I naturally assumed he was one of the city’s notorious scam artists. As I drew breath to tell him to get lost, Rich was already showing him the address of our lodgings. I shot my husband a have-you-lost-your-mind look, but he was too deep in consultation with our new best friend to notice. As the stranger explained we’d gotten off the train too soon and showed us the stop we needed, I realized that whatever his regular line of work (fleecing old ladies, corrupting politicians, setting up Ponzi schemes) that day this gentleman was a Good Samaritan. (And before I go any further, I just want to add that after that rough beginning, we fell in love with Naples' high-octane energy and non-conformist spirit. As the pictures below show, it's never dull.) As we thanked our Good Samaritan, I reflected, not for the first time, on the kindness of strangers. People around the world have given us directions, suggested great coffee houses, advised us about neighborhoods to avoid, taken us to their hairdressers, and pointed us towards the most memorable bars in the vicinity. Maybe they’re partly motivated by civic pride or amused pity for a couple of hapless know-nothings, but mostly I think people just like being helpful. And now science is demonstrating that engaging in even brief moments of kindness can improve the health and wellbeing of both parties. This came as a huge surprise to one man assigned to study the subject: New Jersey intensive care physician Dr. Stephen Trzeciak, a hard-science research nerd who placed no faith in all this touchy-feely stuff. Then his new boss, Dr. Anthony Mazzarelli, asked him to find a cure for the rampant burnout among the medical staff and explore whether treating patients with both medicine and compassion could enhance the health of patients and doctors. At this point in the story, I always imagine Trzeciak rolling his eyes; in the book they subsequently wrote together, Compassionomics, he recalls he “thought Mazzarelli was crazy. Literally crazy.”  56% of physicians are convinced there's no time for compassion when you're running around saving lives. Photo of a CA hospital during a Covid-19 outbreak: Washington Post Crazy or not, Mazzarelli was his boss, so Trzeciak got to work studying the data in 1000 abstracts and 250 research studies. He assumed they’d show that compassion might be nice, or even a moral imperative, but couldn’t possibly make any medical difference. To his astonishment, he was dead wrong. Science demonstrated, over and over, that when health care providers act with ordinary human kindness not only do patient outcomes improve, but the medical professionals’ mental health gets a boost and their burnout rate is considerably less. “Expressing empathy produces physiological effects that calm us in the moment and strengthen our long-term sustainability,” reports Harvard Business Review, citing studies on such topics as leadership and burnout. “It evokes responses in our body that arouse the (good) parasympathetic nervous system, and it reverses the effects of the stress response brought on by the (bad) sympathetic nervous system. So not only do others benefit from our empathy, but we benefit, too.”  Getting by with a little help from our friends benefits both of us. Photo: Getty Among the many examples Trzeciak and Mazzarelli cite is a Johns Hopkins study of 1700 HIV patients. It turns out those who believed their doctor knew them as a person were 33% more likely to adhere properly to therapy and — more startlingly — had 20% higher odds of having no detectible virus in their blood. Despite ample proof of its benefits, 56% of physicians say they don’t have time for compassion. So Johns Hopkins researchers did a trial with cancer patients that showed outcomes improved significantly when doctors spoke from this simple script: At the start: “I know this is a tough experience to go through. And I want you to know that I’m here with you. Some of the things I say to you today may be difficult to understand, so I want you to feel comfortable in stopping me if something I say is confusing or doesn’t make sense. We are here together, and we will go through this together.” At the end: “I know this is a tough time for you and I want to emphasize again that we are in this together. I will be with you each step along the way.” Time required: 40 seconds Thanks to the pandemic, practically every medical professional on the planet is experiencing unprecedented levels of stress. In a recent US study “responses collected from the 1,119 healthcare workers surveyed indicated they're stressed out and stretched too thin: 93% were experiencing stress, 86% reported experiencing anxiety, 77% reported frustration, 76% reported exhaustion and burnout, and 75% said they were overwhelmed.” Of course, medical professionals aren’t the only ones suffering these days. Who among us isn’t stressed, anxious, frustrated, exhausted, and burned out? Is anybody feeling serene, sleeping soundly every night, and finding it easy to stay focused on … what was I saying? Maybe it’s time to start looking at every interaction — whether it’s with those closest to us, our doctor, or someone we’ve just met on the street — as an opportunity to be a Good Samaritan. Most of us can spare 40 seconds to share a few friendly words, especially with those who seem particularly lost, frazzled, or freaked out. “There’s no such thing as a small act of kindness,” says Dilbert’s creator, Scott Adams. “Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.” Every time we toss a little compassion out into the world, we contribute to the ripples that will spread far and wide; eventually, if we're lucky, they'll make their way back to us.  Hey, we're just trying to be Good Samaritans, not Perfect Samaritans. Photo: Etsy YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY Click here to STAY CONNECTED! Send me your email address and I'll drop you a note whenever I publish new stuff. Feel free to share this article with family, friends, medical professionals, and fellow travelers. https://www.enjoylivingabroad.com/my-blog/what-i-learned-from-a-good-samaritan-scam-artist  Next time you're complaining your airplane seat doesn't have enough legroom, remember it could always be worse. Cargo handler Gary Hatch demonstrates how he found Brian Robson and his suitcase inside a crate at LA airport after what some called "a freight worse than death." “It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” says Brian Robson — in what, as you’ll soon see, is a staggering understatement. At the age of 19, overcome with homesickness yet unable to clear his debts and pay his airfare home, he convinced a couple of pals to nail him into a wooden crate and send him home as airfreight from Melbourne, Australia to Cardiff, Wales. Robson was a skinny kid and figured he and his suitcase could fit into a box 3’ by 3’ by 2’ for the 36-hour journey. He drilled a few air holes and packed provisions: one pint of water, five cookies, a pillow, a hammer, a flashlight, and a bottle to pee in. After marking the crate “Fragile” and “This Side Up,” his pals hammered down the lid and wished him luck.  At 19, Brian Robson thought, "What could possibly go wrong?" Naturally, things began to go wrong almost immediately. Offloaded by careless freight handlers at the Sidney airport, Robson spent 22 hours upside down, sliding in and out of consciousness. “I spent most of my time, if I be truthful, in trying to control myself, i.e. calm myself down, because I didn’t know if I was dreaming it,” he recalls. “Was it a nightmare? Was I really there? And in between all that, of course, I couldn’t breathe properly half the time. I couldn’t move... Most of the water had spilled out.” He was then loaded onto the unheated cargo hold of a Pan Am flight that had been diverted to Los Angeles. There, five days after leaving Melbourne, he found himself on solid ground and shone his flashlight through the air holes, alerting ground staff to his presence. There was a bit of an uproar involving the police, CIA, FBI, airport officials, and a judge. But it never got ugly. “Nobody was mad at me,” he recalls. “They just thought, ‘Oh, it’s this silly kid getting himself into trouble.’” Eventually Pan Am flew him home to Wales, first class.  Not the most comfortable way to travel There are many astonishing aspects of “The Crate Escape” as it was dubbed. For a start, as near as I can discover, no alcohol was involved. (What are the odds?) Also, nobody seems to have considered for one instant that this kid could be a terrorist and should be detained in Guantanamo. Why? Because this was 1965, decades before 9/11 put us into a constant state of hypervigilance. And this wasn’t the first time such a stunt had been tried. The year before, an athlete named Reg Spiers caused a sensation when he successfully airmailed himself home from England to Australia after his wallet was stolen. What made him try it? Having once worked in a cargo area handling live animals shipped in crates, he told reporters, “I thought, “If they can do it, I can do it.”  Reg Spiers' 63-hour journey was more comfortable than Robson's in a larger, custom-built crate fitted with straps. Photo montage: Daily Mail My point (and I do have one) is that we tend to judge the looniness of ideas by their social context. Many regrettable incidents begin with the thought, “If they can do it, I can, too.” Social context can also lead us astray in the other direction, causing us to scoff at ideas that should be no-brainers. Take seatbelts, for instance. Today they’re routinely worn by 86% of Americans and are credited with saving a million lives worldwide. But back in the 1960s they were new and weird and (does this sound familiar?) viewed as an infringement of personal freedom. Opponents — who often cut the seatbelts out of cars they bought — insisted that crashes were safer when you didn’t have to unclip a restraint to get out. While it’s true those who haven’t buckled up are 30 times more likely to exit the vehicle during a crash, their departure usually involves being flung headlong through glass onto pavement, with exceedingly unfortunate results. Despite all the evidence of lives saved, when a Michigan lawmaker introduced a mandatory seatbelt law in the 1980s he got hate mail comparing him to Hitler. A fellow politician called the bill “a pretty good lesson in mass hysteria created by a corporate-controlled media” adding that if they didn’t squash this madness, they’d soon be outlawing smoking. Gadzooks!  While doctors were busy making cigarette commercials, nurses were lighting up in the break rooms and providing patients with bedside ashtrays. In the hospital where Rich worked, smoking was permitted until 1975. As you may have noticed, cigarettes haven’t been outlawed, but they are now banished from many places where they were common when I was a kid. Rich had teachers who smoked during class. I recall sitting in the loge section at the back of movie theaters so my parents could light up during the show. Sixteen years ago, when Rich and I moved to Spain, some of our favorite bars and cafes were so smokey we could hardly see across the room. That was normal then. It isn’t now. But then, the concept of “normal” has always been a moving target. Our ancestors ran around naked eating raw meat from animals they’d killed in the wild. (I’m talking all the way back, not anybody I’ve known personally from my family tree.) No doubt there were Stone Agers who strenuously objected to the idea of clothing as an infringement on their personal freedom and thought the whole idea of cooking meat was just a bunch of newfangled hooey. And cover your feet? Are you nuts?  This shoe design was very avant garde 5500 years ago. No doubt some neighbors mocked Ötzi the Iceman (artist's rendering at left) whose mummy was found in this style of fetching footwear made from deerskin and straw with bear hide soles. Photo: Wikimedia Commons. One of the side benefits of the pandemic (yes there are some!) is that we humans have taken a hard look at this whole “cover your feet” concept and decided to jettison 5000 years of increasingly stiff, uncomfortable dress shoes in favor of sneakers, Uggs, Crocs, and slippers. According to people who track such things, modern footwear is being redesigned as we speak to have wider, thicker heels, more bouncy padding on the insoles, and greater overall stability. Now that’s a new normal I can live with! As we stride into the future in our comfy new shoes, we’ll find it’s changed considerably since Covid-19 began ruling the earth. But some things remain eternal. People will resist any change until it becomes embedded in our way of life, and then they’ll resist changing that. Politicians will blame the media for everything. And kids will continue to do incredible stupid things. If they’re lucky, they'll survive to be scolded and sent home, serving as a welcome reminder that sometimes the world can be kinder than we ever imagined.  "The Americans, the FBI, the CIA, and everything else, they were brilliant," Robson recalls. "I mean, I fell in love with America, because I’ve never been treated so well. Everybody there really looked after me. And they just thought, 'Oh, it’s this silly kid getting himself into trouble.'” YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY Click here to STAY CONNECTED!
Send me your email address and I'll drop you a note whenever I publish new stuff. Feel free to share this article with family, friends, and fellow travelers. https://www.enjoylivingabroad.com/my-blog/mail-yourself-overseas-in-a-crate-is-this-the-new-normal  Gloria Gaynor's 1979 hit "I Will Survive" has become one of the anthems of our times. Do you have a pandemic playlist? Me neither. But then, I’m the least musical person on the planet. At the other end of the spectrum, the folks giving out vaccines at San Francisco’s vast Moscone Center decided to energize the staff and patients by playing songs that have now become famous around here for reducing people to tears of joy. “Getting vaxxed at moscone and they’re literally playing Here Comes the Sun on the PA and I’m shaking,” SF Chronicle restaurant critic Soleil Ho tweeted on March 17. “I’m gonna f—ing cry.” The Moscone vaccinators soon learned that what people want to hear as they get the lifesaving jab is often the kind of cheerful, sentimental oldies they used to scoff at when their parents danced to them at weddings: “Walking on Sunshine,” “I Will Survive,” “O-o-h Child (Things Are Gonna Get Easier)." Now San Franciscans are going around comparing notes about what was on the loudspeaker when they got theirs and growing misty-eyed when “their song” comes on the radio. As for me, I was in a suburban Rite Aid (the pharmacy originally known as Thrif D Discount Center) and I can’t quite recall whether the loudspeaker was saying, “Cleanup on aisle five,” or “Attention shoppers: we’re having a special today on hemorrhoid cream.” Obviously I’ll never again hear either phrase without welling up.  Will a Yoda t-shirt help you feel the Force of your vaccine? Photo via Etsy.com If you’re not yet vaxxed and would rather ensure there’s a more fitting soundtrack to your big moment, bring along the Moscone playlist (also available on Spotify). 1. “Here Comes the Sun,” The Beatles 2. “Happy,” Pharrell Williams 3. “Lovely Day,” Bill Withers 4. “Higher Love,” Steve Winwood 5. “Lean on Me,” Sandro Cavazzo 6. “Best Day of My Life,” American Authors 7. “ABC,” Jackson 5 8. “Walking on Sunshine,” Katrina and the Waves 9. “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” Justin Timberlake 10. “I Will Survive,” Gloria Gaynor 11. “Don’t Worry Be Happy,” Bobby McFerrin 12. “Sidewalk Talk,” Madonna and Jellybean 13. “Sleepyhead,” Passion Pit 14. “Alright,” Supergrass 15. “State of Grace,” Taylor Swift 16. “Jump in the Line,” Harry Belafonte 17. “Sir Duke,” Stevie Wonder 18. “O-o-h Child,” The Five Stairsteps With or without the right soundtrack, there are moments from this year that are forever fixed in our minds. The first time we went out to the market dressed for the apocalypse. Buying our first mask. Learning Zoom. Realizing with horror that we’d touched our face without washing our hands. Finding out someone we know was hospitalized with Covid-19. Figuring out how to put the happy back into the holidays, in spite of everything. And throughout it all, spending a ridiculous amount of time watching Netflix and ordering on Amazon. Like most people, I try to use Amazon responsibly, only buying things I can’t get locally and clicking the button that says my items will be combined and delivered in fewer packages (yet often, inexplicably, aren’t). But it’s pretty clear that for some, the online retail giant is all about entertainment and indulging in some seriously questionable fantasies, as journalists Shanon Maglente and Katie Bourque reported in “40 Weirdest Products on Amazon That People Actually Love.” How did I not know about these when I was making out my holiday gift list? Which of my friends and relatives couldn’t use a nice chicken leash, some pickle-flavored lip balm, or a potato with their very own photo on it? Now that I’m vaccinated, I’m making a serious effort to cut down on my online shopping in hopes of reducing my wrap rage and packaging guilt. Wrap rage is the the fury and frustration we feel during our efforts to extract a simple object — a lightbulb, a computer cord, a set of measuring spoons — from a plastic clamshell clearly designed to protect the contents from a fall off a 20-story building during a nuclear blast. Every year 6000 Americans wind up in emergency rooms with cuts, abrasions, and wrist injuries incurred while attempting to penetrate protective casing. Of course, excessive plastic packaging is even more damaging to the environment, polluting our land and water, eventually finding its way into the food chain and our stomachs. On top of all that, it’s just plain silly, as writer Phil Forbes demonstrates in “13 Bad Packaging Examples That’ll Make You Cry for the Environment.” We can’t blame the pandemic for superfluous packaging, which has existed ever since the days when you ordered via rotary phone and waited weeks for stuff to arrive by mail. And while I try to be responsible, I do believe there are times when a little retail therapy is as essential to our psychological survival as music, chocolate, or wine. And now my shortlist of necessary indulgences has a surprising new addition: poetry. This week, for the first time in more than a year, Rich and I had another couple over for dinner, and upon arrival Tobey Hiller, a distinguished poet herself, gave me a copy of Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins. I confess I’d never heard of Billy Collins, who turns out to be a Poet Laureate of America and, according to the NY Times, “the most popular poet in America.” I opened the slim volume and it was love at first stanza. As Daily Beast puts it, “Whereas some poetry ignores its reader and seals itself in a shell of its own construction, Collins engages with his audience. One of the ways he welcomes the reader with open arms is through humor. He’s pretty much always funny; it is part of his aesthetic, his poetic DNA.” “There’s something very authentic about humor, when you think about it,” Collins once said. “Anybody can pretend to be serious. But you can’t pretend to be funny.”  America's favorite poet, Billy Collins, is a genuinely funny guy. Photo via Daily Beast Here’s the first Billy Collins poem I read. Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House The neighbors' dog will not stop barking. He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark that he barks every time they leave the house. They must switch him on on their way out. The neighbors' dog will not stop barking. I close all the windows in the house and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast but I can still hear him muffled under the music, barking, barking, barking, and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra, his head raised confidently as if Beethoven had included a part for barking dog. When the record finally ends he is still barking, sitting there in the oboe section barking, his eyes fixed on the conductor who is entreating him with his baton while the other musicians listen in respectful silence to the famous barking dog solo, that endless coda that first established Beethoven as an innovative genius. That’s an image I’ll treasure forever. And I can only hope that somewhere in the Moscone Center vaccination playlist there is room for that Beethoven symphony with the famous barking dog solo, and that an entire generation of vaccinated San Franciscans will get teary-eyed every time the neighbor’s dog begins to make a ruckus.  What songs have gotten you through the pandemic? What other indulgences have kept you going? Let me know in the comments section below. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY Click here to STAY CONNECTED!
Send me your email address and I'll drop you a note whenever I publish new stuff. Feel free to share this article with family, friends, and your local vaccination center. https://www.enjoylivingabroad.com/my-blog/barking-dog-solo-and-other-survival-songs-we-need-right-now |
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As my regular readers know, I never get free or discounted goods or services for mentioning anything on this blog (or anywhere else). I only write about things that interest me and that I believe might prove useful for you all to know about. Whew! I wanted to clear that up before we went any further. Thanks for listening.  Karen McCann
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I'm an American travel writer based in Spain and currently living in California. As we journey through the pandemic together, my blog provides a regular supply of survival tips, comfort food recipes, and the wry humor we all need to lighten our hearts on dark days. I think of my blog as an ongoing conversation, so please join in and leave comments at the end of my posts. Sign up below to get updates when I publish anything new. 
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