iLife or myLife

I don’t know whether you have noticed, but a rather unethical trend has developed in the electronics industry to boost profit margins. The scheme is as effective as it is cunning and, as far as I can see, it is quite pervasive. Everyone has a story or two to share. Here is mine:

As you may remember, we switched from PC to Apple about two years ago -- just like all the others who have filled the coffers of that Steve Jobs guy. And just like them, we fell for the slick marketing. After all, how could an Apple be worse than the ever crashing PC, right? Editing photos, posting podcasts, and sharing videos on a Sunday morning is supposed to be pure bliss. They call it “iLife”, you see.

Two years into owning that little snazzy device with all its nifty applications, and after having swallowed that initial lure, iLife has taken quite a different meaning.

At times I can’t help myself but smile at how they managed to reel me in, cunningly, patiently, but also mercilessly -- me, the hefty lunker, thrashing about spewing and gaping. But they succeeded. On too many Sunday mornings it has been either iLife or my Life.

Guess what I did last week...

I once again drove out to an Apple Store twenty miles away, my MacBook giving me the silent treatment on the passenger seat next to me. After many Sunday mornings spent in a not so blissful routine, I had resolved to give it another try at finding the answer to one of the most annoying glitches with one of its oh-so-marvelous programs.

This particular one has kept bothering me for the last eighteen months: iPhoto keeps loosing my pictures. Now, loosing pictures is a rather severe problem considering that iPhoto supposedly is all about STORING pictures.

However, thirty-four minutes later and after a heartwarming chat with two of the groovy young chaps leaning against one of the display tables with a self-conscious nonchalance, I left the store with a $200 purchase in my elegant fruit bag.

They had done it again!! They had sold me hope. They had convinced me that the only way to solve the software problem I was experiencing was to buy more products from them.

I bought AppleCare, and with it the hope that some time in the future I will get my money’s worth out of an investment in a product I made two years ago.

Boy, they are good at what they do!!

Not only do they keep getting a seizable chunk of my money, they also get my time and energy. Because, let’s face it, it won’t be Apple fixing the product, but I. I will be the one in front of the screen with some heavily accented person babbling in my ear about where to lick, double-click, or pull down on.

In Apple’s defense, however, I have to mention that Gateway Computers had me on my arms and knees behind my desk armed with a flash light, a pencil, and a screw driver unscrewing the back of the hard-drive encasement ten years ago....

And you’ve got to give it to them all. They have got it right. There is no doubt that it is a lot cheaper for them to have Ms. Jordan and a low cost third-world engineer figure out what’s wrong with their over-prized nothing-but-image product, than having a first-world engineer give it a try.

Chances are, they wouldn’t figure it out either, anyway. And for that there is a rather obvious explanation: The Jobs’ and Gates’ are much better at making money than they are at making computers.

So, no iLife for my life.

At least not today.

Tea Time (Take 2)

So here I am in this quaint...no, I can’t do that one again. So here I am then in this stubborn...nope. That won’t do either. Well, darn, here I am in this place I am trying to figure out while madly falling in love with it. How is that?

It’s a bit of a scary thing to fall head over heals for someone you don’t really know. But it’s even more hopeless to become enthralled with a culture that will forever identify you as a stranger.

And that much is for sure: I don’t know the first thing about being English. I am clueless when it comes to the Royals, mince pie, and, for that matter, tea.

Unfortunately, I thought I could feign it. After all, how difficult can it be to make a cup of tea. Most Brits nowadays use tea bags anyway. So by buying the real thing...actual loose-leaf Yorkshire tea, I was light years ahead of the game. Or so I thought.

That was last week. Since then, I have suffered unspeakable agony, almost peed my pants, and developed a hideous rash on one side of my neck. Not undeservedly, I have to admit.

What was I thinking?

Well, I’ll tell you. I thought that it was a ‘smashing’ idea to have my dear new neighbor, Mrs. Bumble, over for a 3 o’ clock cup of tea together with her friend who also happens to live on our street. In these past weeks, Mrs. Bumble had been very kind to me and the children.

For one, she didn’t as much as frown when Julian nonchalantly ripped out the first tender signs of Spring from her front yard when we were passing by the other day. But then, she also went out of her way to introduce us to a young family with children the same age as ours in addition to hooking us up to an organic milk delivery service and a highly acclaimed orthodontist.

No, Mrs. Bumble didn’t deserve what she had coming when she set foot in my house earlier today. And it is with the most sincere guilt-stricken remorse that I confess to what I did. But even if ignorance is no excuse I must say this much in my defense: I was trying to do the right thing.

In the week leading up to my innocent proposal, I had purchased not only a reputable brand of tea but also what I had believed to be a proper tea pot. Let it be said, this was but another proof of my ignorance.

I don’t know what exactly I bought but it didn’t serve me properly in my attempt to make that perfect little three o’ clock cup of tea. Again, I have only myself to blame because I didn’t even test the device prior to three-oh-five o’clock today.

As I said, I thought I knew what I was doing. After all, just a couple of days ago another helpful neighbor had loaned me his worn out edition of the highly acclaimed Mrs. Beeton household reference book to look up just exactly how to prepare and serve a proper cup of tea.

Tea, tea pot, terse three-step instructions, and a load of good intentions should be enough to achieve a mild success. So I thought.

By 3:11 today, however, I was bathed in sweat and showing the first signs of a blotchy rash.

Of course, with a maximum steep time of three to three and a half minutes, I was already more than two minutes over due...and still I was nowhere close to solving the riddle of how to get the boiling hot tea out of the pot and into the cup without the leaves.

The water had been poured (after appropriately having ‘warmed’ the pot beforehand) and the tea was sitting there, when it suddenly occurred to me that possibly I should have used some kind of filter for the tea. But on second thought it seemed to me that the pot was much too deep and wide to allow the tea leaves to even touch the water if they had been suspended in a filter.

Had I bought the wrong pot? Had I misread the measurements? Was I about to ruin tea time for two very fine ladies?

At that point the urge to pee suddenly manifested itself. But since steeping tea requires immediate action, I instead resolved to dart around my kitchen in an effort to locate a cup-size sifter.

Needless to say, I found none. And despite my cursing at long gone maids, movers, and miserable two year-olds, the situation wasn’t getting any better as the tea was steeping quietly with an unconcealed indifference to me and my desperate situation.

By the time I appeared with my devilish concoction in the door frame of our living room, it was 3:15. I was doomed.

The agony that followed in watching Mrs. Bumble and her friend take a first and then a brave second sip was unparalleled. Neither of them said a word nor did they add more milk. Unlike my disheveled self, both of them served as a lesson in composure and equanimity. Mrs. Bumble even smiled encouragingly at me before she raised the cup a third time.

At that point I broke down. “Don’t do it,” I shouted. “Please, it will kill you. I am so sorry. Let me try this again.” And in a frantic attempt to save lives if not honor I stumbled away from the table and back into my kitchen.

I did manage to brew another cup of tea by pouring the tea first through a veggie colander into a large measuring jug and from there back into the pot to serve it in just under three and a half minutes while apologizing for the amount of noise I had made in the kitchen.

But I am not sure as to why I had to top it all off by adding my ill-advised version of British humor.

“At least, I am glad to report,” I announced with a deceptively confident smile, “That I caught the rat that was having a good old time swimming around at the bottom of the tea pot.”

No, I didn’t deserve a smile. What I deserved was for my clothes to melt away and my bladder to finally let go.

But I was saved. I got the smile instead. “You did very well, my dear.”

I am in love and I am so lost.

An Afternoon's Journey

My friend wrote a piece the other day on her blog that stirred me. It is an afternoon’s journey into the meaning of life -- her life.

For the past three years I have watched that life flow alongside mine in ever changing bends and turns. During that time we sat together often comparing notes on motherhood and its effects on the female biography.

On those warm rainy nights under a canvas of hibiscus shrubs, tucked away from the world with nothing but a bottle of red between us, we hatched daring plans to overcome the schism between our ever pulsing productive and reproductive forces.

We were daring enough then to stare the world right into its ferocious eyes and holler, “Is that all you’ve got?”

It was a fun time. A time of reckoning as much as of madness and sheer exuberance. We did end up producing several shows for a podcast, I started womazzle.com, and she wrote several excellent pieces on her blog, motherjungle.com.

But of course, life did have more coming for us. And, being the good girls we are, we took it on.

In the past months, we both moved on to new lives. Major changes have marked the currents of our daily routines, and the minute by minute management of motherhood has once again flung a tight bridle over my head.

But in a way, that short awakening of the Spring 2007 has given me hope. After long years of brooding silence I now allow my mind to wander off and, once again, question what I see.

Unlike the years before, I now am optimistic that no matter how irrelevant my existence and how unmemorable the sum of my thoughts and actions may be, I am determined to make the best of it.

It is my life, after all, and I am here to live it.

You Gotta Be Nuts

CNN today entitled one of its top stories “Female Bomber Blows Up Baghdad Store.” Perhaps this was done in a quest to draw our attention (once again) to the ongoing violence in Iraq.

Just like in other regions where reports of ongoing violence have reduced our ability to engage our thoughts and emotions for more than a fleeting moment, the waves of suicide bombings in Iraq have numbed our empathy.

After all, it’s always the same, isn’t it? Moslem male gets promised sexual liberation in the after-life in exchange for a violent jihadist exit out of this life. So he goes and blows up a market.

It is disturbing as much as it is insane. And yet, the bomber’s gender is so consistent that we don’t even mention that the killer is male.

But not this time. Here we have a female bomber. That changes everything. At least for a second or two...just enough to make us linger on the page a little longer, maybe even click on the article.

I clicked, because I wanted to see whether the article went into the gender issue. It didn’t.

However, it did lead on to another article that revealed that the woman was an inpatient with a psychiatric disorder and that, once again Al Qaeda (a male dominated organization), was behind this most recent suicide attack.

And yes, you gotta be nuts to do what they tell you to do.

I would think that’s a worthwhile conclusion. One no one will print, of course.

Calmer Waters

So here we are in our quaint little house on this quaint little street in this (you guessed it) quaint little town in the U.K.

As I am sitting here in the smallest and most crowded room of our house and look out of my gabled window onto the sun glazed white walls of our neighbors’ house across the street, I can hardly believe that after all these years I have made it back to where I came from: the middle class Europe of my childhood.

Although still alive and well, the middle class seems to be struggling a little more now than when I was growing up. The basic desire to “get ahead” is weighing upon people in this world that is ever more...I think ‘global’ is the word.

For example, a lot of money, time, and energy is dedicated to placing one’s off-spring at good schools and pursuing worthwhile after-school activities. But all and all being middle class in Europe is still a good place to be since the same old values that keep it all together still prevail. Foremost is that sense of caring about community and what’s good for everyone. The ideal of sharing one’s fortune and contributing to the common good is another.

There are well maintained parks that one can walk in at any time, there are libraries, museums, pools, playgrounds, sidewalks, crosswalks, recycling facilities, and lots of ways to meet the neighbors. There is a sense of civility based on the underlying certainty that the golden rule holds sway.

There also is reason to believe that everyone is taken care of and that there is enough for everyone to go around. And in my opinion, that precisely is the way to achieve quality of life.

Of course, it is great to strive upwards but not as much as when everyone moves ahead and shares in the happiness and good fortune.

What good is it, after all, to have a private tennis court, pool, waterfront, and two or three cars if wealth and security ends on the other side of the barbed wired fence of one’s own property? It is nothing but the proverbial golden cage!

That was what life was like in Costa Rica and as it is that’s what life is like wherever the sense of community has been washed away by the personal greed of a few.

It was sad to see a beautiful country and its middle class exploited by big money. And it is disheartening that Costa Rica isn’t by far the worst case in the world.

These days, the governments that try to mitigate the impact of a capitalist economy are struggling. In fact, there are fewer attempting that now than there were twenty years ago.

Fred would probably state with sincere darwinistic conviction that that proves that capitalism is superior.

I would, of course, venture to say that that proves nothing but our human weakness because, in the end, capitalism, too, will die leaving behind uncounted casualties, one of which might be our planet.

As a matter of fact, what makes capitalism so dangerous is that it taps into our primordial and ever nagging fear that unless we secure that next bit for ourselves, we and our kin, and therefore our gene pool, won’t make it.

That fear is a formidable force to reckon with. In fact, it is also stupid, because as we all should remember, human beings would not even exist any longer if it hadn’t been for their ability to coexist and cooperate with each other.

However, if left unbridled, that primitive fear will take over and only die with us.

In a way, it is only natural that fear becomes most virulent in us when we see others beginning to grab and hoard. That is precisely the point when the social contract that lies at the base of our peaceful coexistence starts to crack and the rule of the strongest reestablishes its brutal reign.

I am not blind to the changes I see around me even here, but for now I enjoy being in quieter waters again. The Americas were stressful even when we managed to find little niches here and there where life was still a thing to enjoy with others.

Done Pulling

I am getting down to pulling out the last of my gray hairs. Therefore, no more hair pulling for right now. It is a rather time intensive activity anyway and doesn’t get either my DVD player or vacuum cleaner cooperating in a more suitable way.

Of course, I really feel the urge to holler at my newly acquired U.K. appliances, “Shape up you buggers or else!” But all I would get in return is reproachful silence, and I don’t take that very well.

The good news is that now that all the hair pulling is done, I actually have managed not only to locate my iPod among all the still to be emptied boxes and cartons, I also was able to download some of my favorite podcasts (thanks again to this friendly and generous wireless neighborhood).

So this Saturday morning in this wonderful U. K., with Bill Moyers and Barbara Ehrenreich whispering into my ears, my life never looked brighter.

If you had seen me then, however, you would have wondered what possibly could have brought me to that conclusion.

After all, there I was clad in a ‘borrowed’, slightly faded bathrobe from one of Matt’s work trips, puke green rubber gardening clocks on my barefoot feet, and the filth of many days in my hair, not to mention the acid smell of hard labor exuding from my armpits.

Around me nothing but more filth and sorry disarray and with me nothing but a mop and unyielding determination.

But I can tell you that after four years of not touching neither pail nor broom, it feels good to do some dirty work again. Because during these last years it actually never seemed quite right to skip off to the Country Club while someone less fortunate swept our floors on a Saturday morning.

It feels good not only because the decent thing to do is in fact to clean up after oneself, but also because accomplishing something so desperately needed leads to satisfaction.

I may be stealing somebody’s job by cleaning up my own mess these days but then, with the cost of living in the U.K., it’s not likely that I am ever going to be a good employer anyway.

I am down to offering nothing but minimum wage and no benefits and only my children will accept that for now.

Brand New Everything

We have now moved on to the U.K. where we hope to find a new life. And as far as I can tell we got what we wished for because everything is new.

Apart from the obvious novelty of driving on the wrong side (and, sorry, dear Brits, it is rather wrong of you to insist on twisting our poor continental minds in this brutal manner), with the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car (ditto), we as a family also decided to switch from automatic to manual and from gasoline to diesel.

That means that driving has become a thing best to be avoided. Not bad really considering my endless diatribes on cars, driving, and the car culture. The problem, however, is that everyone else is still driving. The only one stuck in her over-prized townhouse is me.

The last time I ventured out to hunt down some dearly needed sushi, I came home with a giant headache and decided that it wasn’t really that dearly needed after all.

Nothing really is, and so I now stay put most of the time. My children keep eying the gapingly empty shelves of our fridge, which actually fill me with quiet satisfaction, while my head remains fresh and clear ready for the other tasks that await me.

There is, for instance, our new vacuum cleaner, a masterpiece of German engineering. It has, however, refused to vacuum the green carpet as well as it cleans all the others. Since most of the floors in our house are covered in that same green carpet I have been kept fairly occupied trouble shooting.

Apart from that, all our electrical appliances are beeping and sending error messages and the internet only works because we are bumming off of one of our generous neighbors.

No need, therefore, to hop into the car and marvel at all that’s wrong out there. There is enough to pull my hair out over in here.

Excellent!