Puerto Rico

The day after the hurricane, when I learned that the majority of Puerto Ricans had NO DRINKING WATER, my face turned pale. I could not imagine a way that thousands wouldn't die.

I am not expert in such things; I just know human beings can't live without water. So I can't understand how our government - even our corrupt, fake one - failed to recognize the severity of this for over a week. A trombonist reacting to TV news should not be more clued in than FEMA, the White House, and our armed forces, with all their data and expertise, when it comes to matters of disaster aftermath.

I pray it's not actually that bad, and that the military, having finally arrived, will stabilize things and this will turn out to be a trauma and not an apocalypse. But, again: I know, even without special expertise, that human beings can't live nine days without drinking water.

When we finally see what happened, it may chill the world. I have a choking fear that it's been a killing field. If so, this, not the Russian collusion, will be Trump's downfall. Those football tweets may one day be recalled like Nero's fiddling amid Rome's burning - an epic display of failure and evil that will echo in shocked disgust for centuries.

Hopefully I'm wrong. I'm overreacting, and there've been dozens of deaths, not thousands, and Trump will be just an idiotic transient blot on history rather than a Nero. That would be fantastic. But something tells me we need to brace for impact when the full outcome (e.g. from rural sections) finally emerges.

Situational Awareness Vs Narcisissm

Walking People prefer to walk in straight lines. It irritates them to deviate. The problem is you can't have a world where everyone walks in straight lines. At least one person has to budge. I am that person.

Cars and Shopping Carts Whether pointing a shopping cart, baby carriage, or Toyota Prius, people want to get to where they want to get to next. This of course leads to clashes, because often other people want to get there, too. This is an offshoot of the walk-in-straight-lines thing, and, again, the world would not work if no one backed down. Someone needs to anticipate the clash, and willingly step aside. That person is me.

Stopping and Going When halted, you expect others to go around you. When moving, go-arounders humiliate you. This becomes a problem when stoppers start going. At that moment, the sloppily-stopped (counting on the community to accommodate) instantly transform into proud individualists. But what about the people currently going around them?

Someone needs to endure the aggravation of starting to go around, then hitting brakes to gallantly allow a thoughtless impediment to blossom into a dynamic predator. That'd be me.

Emergency Vehicles True fact: emergency vehicles originally were outfitted with lights and sirens for practical purposes beyond merely annoying everyone. In olden times, they reminded us of our obligation to move aside and let them pass. Nowadays, of course, we've all agreed that emergency vehicles can go fuck themselves, and their drivers have adapted by learning to weave through traffic.

Still, traffic lights are a problem. While permitted to pass red lights, emergency vehicles can't do so while other cars wait behind the intersection. Someone must be willing to undergo the contortions of working their budged car sufficiently aside to permit passage. Me.

Situational Awareness I am, it appears, the only remaining human being with situational awareness. But the crux of the problem is not that others lack it. To accommodate other people, you first need to register their existence. Once you recognize that there are other human beings - and if that fact holds any interest for you - you may then, and only then, proceed down the path of developing situational awareness. You must 1. know, then 2. care, then 3. learn, then 4. apply. The problem lies at step one, not step four, for our sour-pussed, self-involved population of oblivious rich-world narcissists.

Yep, I just got back from Trader Joe's.


I lack situational awareness for the movement and needs of unicorns because I've never seen a unicorn. People lack situational awareness for the movement and needs of other people because they've never seen a person.

Mexican Photos

I dreamed about that Mexican place all night last night. Had to go back for lunch today. I ordered pork ribs in green sauce with black beans (note: do NOT expect spicy, jazzy blackbeans, ala Cuba, from Mexican chefs, who make them as homely and grounded as pinto beans). For what this place is (no cleverness, no assured flavor layerings, nothing but authentic grandmotherly love), it's, again, a 10.

I also took photos of the squeeze bottle of chile (maybe you can get some vibe out of it), and my strawberry drink (agua de fresa). The fact that I'd order any such drink speaks to my deep confidence for these guys. As always, lunch was $12.

They have not yet registered that I always finish my tortillas. Once they do, and ask me if I want more tortillas, I'll know I've arrived..

Singapore Score

My binge of ultra-low-budget travel continues. Upcoming in November: Singapore for $435 (roundtrip, including taxes and fees). Courtesy, as usual, of theflightdeal.com, which I previously wrote about here.

Loads of AirBnB rooms are available in Tiong Bahru, near the hawker food center, for circa $25 USD. If I keep food expenses low (I don't expect to do blow-out meals), the five days will cost under $750. That's actually still a record high for me, but, hey, it's Singapore! My first trip there! What's more, native Singaporean, Chowhound veteran (and Eat Everywhere editor) Limster will be in town for at least part of that (here's a report from Boston Globe of the time we chowhounded Boston).

Any tips? Please leave comments!

Like Your Mexican Grandma Cooking for You

I just posted to Chowhound about "La Frontera Taqueria Deli" (257 Battle Ave, White Plains, NY; 914-607-7684), an astounding little Mexican place up in White Plains offering an ultra-rare glimpse of serious Mexican home cooking:

It's pure grandmotherliness. This is how kids eat in Mexico when they come home from school and grandma cooks for them. It's all permeated with love, and utterly transportive. This is the serious stuff. We shouldn't be able to just walk in here and eat this. Usually you need to marry into a family.

In that posting I included a side mention of The Best Mexican I Ever Found in NYC, Oaxacan "Cienaga Grocery And Deli" (10432 Corona Ave, Corona; 347-353-2366) in Queens, which apparently no one ever tried. Some places I rave about become immortal legends, while equally great ones remain untouched. I realize chowhounding isn't for everyone, but if 20 year-old me was a reader of 30 year-old me, he'd be out the door to try every single one of these places.

The Curse, Part 2: Going Kafka

In part one, I described how, at a moment of extreme stress and pressure, I'd infuriated a stranger with whom I'd been kind and friendly. It marked the beginning of a very strange, very painful period which I and a few friends would come to call "The Curse".


It got worse. Everywhere I went, people would be visibly angered by my presence. Old friends weren't affected as much; this was mostly in encounters with new people, including randos like cashiers and waiters. If you've ever played role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, you know about "reaction rolls". Whenever your in-game character meets a stranger, dice are thrown to determine the other person's reaction. Usually, it will be unsurprising. But, every great once in a while, a stranger will want to worship you...or else immediately attack you for no particular reason, even if they're normally peaceful. As in real life, it's a matter of bell curves and edge cases. Well, virtually all my reaction rolls were edge cases. It reached a point where I started to worry that I might be randomly assaulted. If this sounds overly dramatic, that's only because you weren't there. It truly was that bad.

One good result: I learned I don't have a paranoid bone in my body. It was perfectly clear that the problem was with me, not "them". Something about me was triggering people. And while I didn't enjoy my outcomes much, the main horror was in provoking such negativity in people - nice people! Good people! Never mind what the world was doing to me; I was doing terrible things to the world, increasing its load of poison and anger. This predicament - this "curse" - was the perfect ironic punishment for someone who makes a point of trying (certainly not always consistently, let alone successfully) to be helpful and to lighten loads.

More out of curiosity than anything, I would ask people (either the strangers who'd rage at me, or friends and observers who watched it happen) what, exactly, was going on. I never got back anything useful. Observers would shrug helplessly, and the strangers never managed anything more than a sputtering, inarticulate reaction amounting to "You know what you are!".

Have you ever seen an emotionally riled-up person try to explain themselves, and they 1. can't, but 2. this doesn't make them question their emotional state? Strong emotions always feel valid. If you push someone to explain, they'll pull out some random thing to hang it on, but, really, it stems from a deeper knowing; a self-evident obviousness. So it was "You know what you've done!"; "You know who you are!" There was no "there" there. It was entirely emotional - perhaps even pheromonal.

The friendlier I'd try to be, the worse things got, so I went the other way, trying to retract into being an "extra" in the movie of life...the guy who whisper/mutters "thanks" to the pharmacy cashier, eyes downward, and gets the hell out ASAP. It started to feel far more comfortable to be wholly disregarded than to be noticed, so I shrank down to nothing, ala a Kafka character.

Talking and engaging less was my first step. But it didn't help. I'd walk into a bar, silently sip my beer, and, within minutes, stools on both sides of me would clear. There were times when entire restaurants would empty. Jogging at my gym, no one - even at prime hours - would use an adjacent treadmill. If someone did step on, there'd be a frozen moment, followed by a hasty dismount. Body odor was not a problem (it was checked). I wasn't drooling or muttering to myself (it was checked). I wasn't staring at anyone, or engaging with anyone. I was just concentrating on my jogging. Minding my own business.

There are lots of greyed-out, fuzzy-focused, seldom-noticed people out there who very studiously mind their own business. Not just introverts, but people who intentionally shrink down to nothing with an almost palpable degree of self-awareness. Not depressed, defeated, nor malevolent, yet deliberately evading attention. I can't help but wonder whether such a "curse" might be less unusual than we imagine.


Continue to Part Three

Loch Kelly

Loch Kelly is a spiritual teacher of the unaffected, down-to-earth sort. He's from the very interesting and little-known Dzogchen school of Buddhism. No ritual, no believing, no joining, no authority structure. Stripped bare, in other words.

Kelly has written a book that's one of the best Dzogchen resources in English, but it's flawed (like all of Kelly's stuff) by his verbosity and intellectualism. It takes effort to persevere through his prose, so he's not for everybody. Kelly's not for beginners; a lot of what he says will be gobbledygook for those without previous experience in this realm, but for others, he's uncommonly sincere and clear....so long as you're willing to parse his language.

Kelly recently announced a six week online course in "mindfulness". I recommend it because while Kelly is gifted at instilling a sense of expansiveness and coaxing people easily into a perceptual flip, that sort of thing greatly benefits from reinforcement/repetition. And this offers six sessions - in which you can even ask questions. And it's inexpensively priced (considering the rarity of the teaching - this is way deeper stuff than your average YouTube spiritual homily).

Sign up here. There's a "sample" available at the bottom of the page, which will help you determine whether his style of expression is a deal-killer.

Loch Kelly teaches under the aegis of a teacher named Adyashanti, who's pretty much the most solid and expressive English-language spiritual teacher of his generation (he was a Zen guy, but doesn't teach from any particular tradition). If Kelly isn't for you (and even if he is), Adyashanti is able to express things way more simply - though he doesn't offer much in the way of daily practice. If you'll take time to read this older interview, you may feel moved to seek out his videos and writings.

If you're looking for a simple, stripped-down, highly effective no-bullshit meditation practice, this is what I do - and have done for twelve years. Over the years, I've also gradually added this and this. I do not recommend the associated forum, retreats, etc. Just the core lessons.

6% Profit, Very Low Risk

Apple is 6% off its recent high due to a connectivity issue with their new watches. Want to make an easy 6% profit (not bad at today's interest rates)? Buy the stock. Want to make a little more? Wait till it goes down further.

The stock market is populated by twitchy short term geniuses. So when there's a problem, the stock price must go down, whether it's an existential problem or a superficial one. With most (perhaps all) other companies, it's hard to distinguish. But not Apple.

If Apple is so rocked by this crappy little problem that it gives up its watch business entirely, and, for that matter, its computer business....and demolishes its brand new $5 billion campus and builds another one from scratch at twice that expense, and becomes a luxury yacht maker, and fails, and becomes a candy company, and fails, it can still buy Boeing and a couple other companies, and apply their superior talent and vision for success, all while maintaining at least a multi-tens-of-billions war chest to lean on for years as they ratchet up to speed.

Apple won't be dominant forever, but this watch issue will not be the death of them. Count on them springing back from this dip. I just can't tell you when. (Unlike the aforementioned twitchy geniuses, you and I have the patience to wait.)

As I noted earlier this year, upon selling most of my shares at $133 after the company had rebounded from its latest drift to the nineties for no substantial reason:

[Their $250 billion] "cash horde alone - which doesn't even do anything! - dwarfs the total market value of all but seven other corporations. Apple could throw their entire mega-successful business in the garbage and buy Starbucks, Boeing, and Goldman Sachs. If customers update their iPads more slowly than expected, or a phone antenna doesn't work properly, or a new product line undersells expectations, that's just not going to cause a death spiral."

I won't buy here, myself. I'm not a day trader. I don't like paying taxes on short term gains, and this seems like a quick blip. But if I'm wrong and this is the start of yet another months-long 30% Apple sell-off, that'd be great. Count me in (though I'll wait for it to drop way more)! I've made a good living with the past three sell-offs. But if you invest here, and it's a blip, you may have some extra Christmas money come December. Or, if it keeps falling, just forget about it until it hits the low hundreds and/or nineties, then buy more and go back to forgetting about it.

Either way, I'm confident you at least won't lose your shirt. Is it 100% certain that Apple will spring back all the way to $165? Nothing's 100% certain. But the company is not going bankrupt any time soon. So every dip, and every sell-off, is a buying opportunity.

Sympathy

Sympathy doesn't exist.

Empathy does exist. Empathy spurs action. It makes us help each other, solving problems. That's a thing! But sympathy - the static expression of emotional commiseration - is a phantom. Three unhealthy mechanisms are mistaken for this apocryphal "sympathy" thing:

1. Pity

"Wow...it sucks to be you!"

Never helpful. Never pleasant.

2. Leverage

"I can see you're in pain. Let me make a display of saying and doing the sorts of time-tested cinematic things people do when they want to come off as sympathetic, so I can bank your gratitude and trust."

If you want to attract predators, indiscriminately project your vulnerability.

3. Reflected Schadenfreude

"Hearing your grueling story, I place myself in your shoes, and....YEESH."

You've shared your woes, asking someone to identify with them - to experience your anguish. But making people unhappy is not a healthy thing to want to do. If you watch them cringe (i.e. register "sympathy") and that makes you feel better, you need some garage time for major repairs.

I've experienced touches of this. There've been people in my life who, when I told them about bad things that had happened to me, would get agitated, and even lash out at me - just because they were perturbed and had no one else handy to unleash on. It was a backfire of my play for sympathy, and while my first instinct was to blame them for their "lack of support", I eventually saw that my intentions were twisted in the first place.

Some people may have the bandwidth to go through the motions of trying to soothe you, despite what you just put them through. But that doesn't change what you've done. If you feel better by making people unhappy, then you're the problem, not the victim.

In my early twenties, I believed that I was a rarity - a genuinely sympathetic person. But I discovered that people who seek sympathy are highly manipulative (again, feeling strengthened by making others unhappy is not healthy). If who're someone who aims to be helpful, you'll eventually learn not to submit to the will of control freaks, nor to bring vodka to alcoholics. You don't enable.

This was the same period when I began to recognize that people's "problems" usually turn out to be fake drama, anyway. That's why so few of us actually want our problems resolved (in fact, we often bitterly repel efforts at solution). What is more often sought is sympathy, not solution. Problems are treasured, because they confer a special power never enjoyed by the less flamboyantly burdened. Consider the many people whose proudest accomplishment is to be, say, a "cancer survivor" or "family of the victims". Victimhood nostalgia is not a resilient attitude. It's possible to fall in love with problems to the point where they become fundamental to one's very identity.

I'm no longer sympathetic (or whatever psychic glitch I'd confused with sympathy). Having largely stopped creating my own fake drama, I don't want to get entangled with anyone else's! I will, however, do whatever I can to help fix genuine problems (which are very rare in the First World). That's empathy, not sympathy. Up with empathy, down with "sympathy"!


Here's what all those "strong/silent" types are telling you: "If you don't want to work on fixing it, then I don't want to hear about it!"

I Want an Autonomous Camper

Here's where autonomous cars will hit very bigly: campers. This sector - which does not yet exist - will one day be a phenomenal investment for stockholders of whatever carmaker jumps into this.

Past a certain age, it's enormous strain to get yourself to an airport, onto a plane, and then reverse that process...with luggage. Shoot, that's a strain even for 35 year-olds! Same with trains or buses. Cars are easier, but you still have the long drives, the transfer to hotel, etc. Older people miss out because the overhead of going out and about becomes too much (anyone who's ever had the flu can relate!).

Here's what I want for my 75th birthday: an autonomously-driving camper. If I hear about a great breakfast place in Maine, I can get into my camper at midnight, crash in the back, and wake up in front of the place at 6 am. I can shop and sight-see without hassle, calling my vehicle back whenever I need it.

This will be awesome; the greatest lifestyle enhancement an elderly person could hope for. Really, it's shockingly anachronistic that such a huge swathe of our population barely participates in day-to-day life. With an autonomous camper, all you need to do is get yourself and your overnight bag out to the driveway, and, after a night's sleep, step off the curb and into your destination, while the camper parks itself. I could manage that even with a walker!

Older people are already famously into RVs, though they're clunky to drive and difficult to park. Remove those issues, and this would be a must-have. There will be 80 million elderly Americans by 2050. While not all will be able to afford an autonomous camper (though I suspect much car ownership will be replaced by spot-rentals from a fleet), I can't imagine even one of them not wanting this. Shoot, I'm only 54 and I'd buy an autonomous camper now in a second if it were affordable (and electric-powered, to avoid gasoline cost). For comparison, about 18 million new vehicles are sold annually in America. See the possibilities?

I'll be watching for it. This new electric motorhome covered with solar panels is a start, at least, but the field is still wide open. If Tesla's stock ever finally dips a little (I've been waiting since July), I might buy in on the mere chance they'll eventually think of doing this.