Approaching 2019

[Above photo: From my deck—Yangon General Hospital in foreground, Shwedagon Pagoda in rear.]

31 December 2018

This year is incompetently, impulsively, and dishonestly growling to a close. Talk about losing youthful idealism. In His case, I don’t think it ever existed. If I’d seen him as a child in my office and with his parents, I’d have felt sympathy for him and his plight but I feel none now.  2019 holds great promise of improvement.

Although I resisted joining Facebook for years, thinking I would be unable to ignore its siren song, I finally became slightly active and joined the Yangon Expat Connection, requesting leads to an apartment. BAM!! 8 or 10 realtors were on it. Impressive. I scheduled 6 realtors and saw 16 apartments in two days. Some were large, soulless marble affairs in peripheral townships. Number 12 is a 9^th floor penthouse, two bedrooms/bathrooms, a deck with plants and outdoor furniture, views of everything, a “Smart” Sony TV the size of a movie screen, new furniture to my specifications, and a nice river breeze. Oh, and free utilities, cable TV and WiFi. I’ve never had cable TV. Plunk in the middle of Chinatown, which is where I want to be. The bustling side streets hold tiny restaurants, fresh meat, flower, and vegetable stalls, etc. There are blocks with nothing for sale but new and rusty tools, piles of used angle grinders and electric drills, and rusty and new bolts. On adjacent blocks are clothing, dishware, and so forth. The price of the apartment is half of the housing stipend Fulbright gives us, so I’ll pocket the balance and use it for taxes. There is almost everything you could want in my neighborhood.

Except true love which is back in Maine, of course. However, I have had companionship in the form of the daughter of good friends of ours in Malawi who has been working here on a project with the British National Health Service helping Family Medicine docs improve their critical thinking. See what you can do if you have a coherent single-payor universal health care system? Global health care teaching and improvement. Anyway, Cecily has shown me around and taken me out to supper with her friends. We ate at an Indian vege place, then moved for great gelato to Sharkey’s, and finally landed in a bar where a loud band played covers of jazz classics, taking great liberties. Dave Brubeck’s Take Five has an unmistakable beginning which the band used before venturing out on their own musical voyage. I doubt Dave will sue for copyright infringement. I had a Japanese Mule, which had sochu, mint, lime juice, and their home-brewed ginger beer, almost healthful.

I can see I’ll spend most evenings alone. The apartment with its views and privacy will be ideal for the same. And if I want something, I can just bop down the stairs and get it. There is no need for a fridge, although I have a new one, except for the left-overs as all food is freshly available. And think of the stair training, going 9 floors several times a day. There is a lift if I want to use it.

Three days ago I walked to the Shwedagon Pagoda and up its many stairs, circling it. I could not recall if one is supposed to walk clockwise or counterclockwise so I watched others.  They were evenly divided so I guessed counterclockwise, which I later discovered is wrong. Even with its construction hairnet, the Shwedagon is magnificently glittery. One Burmese queen donated her weight in gold to be put on the dome.  I can see it from one end of my new apartment deck. It is an estimated 2500 years old.

Two days ago I cruised through 2/5 floors of the National History Museum which is right up the street from my hotel. There were lots of amazing artifacts, including the massive gilded Lion Throne, returned from India to where it had been taken. Think of the lives of royalty, with their silver chin rests, gilded arm rests, lacquerware pillows, and glorious silver betel nut juice spittoons.

There is a prehistoric floor with cases and cases of fossilized teeth and jaws and tusks of animals great and small from the Pleistocene (5 million years ago) and the Eocene (40 million years ago). Stegodon was a massive elephant with tusks to match, dwarfing our current pachyderms; it made me feel pretty insignificant in the Grand Design to see Stegodon’s fossilized molars from 5 million years ago, imagining him chewing up tree branches and leaves.

I rode the train today to sightsee. The circular route takes about 3 hours to traverse the periphery of Yangon, travelling at 15 mph. I could not find the station so looked in my trusty phrase book and the second person I asked actually understood my primitive attempts at Burmese. The ticket cost the equivalent of 12 cents, a bargain for just about anything. But the circular train either hasn’t run for 6 months or won’t run for another 6 months; I couldn’t discern. So I took the train running between downtown Yangon and Pyay, planning to get off at some town and catch the return. After about an hour and many stops and pauses, I exited at Insein (pronounced “insane”) where the feared prison is. I crossed the tracks and got on the train going the other direction, passing the stop near my hotel so I could locate the next one, which will serve my apartment.

Even though it is a national holiday, New Year’s Eve, the outbound train was full. There was a constant flow of vendors working it, carrying and selling bags of lychee fruit, bushels of clementines, baskets of quail eggs, bags of peanuts, sliced green mango with a dab of turmeric or hot sauce, and so forth. I bought clementines and lychee fruit and have been devouring them in my hotel room. The watermelon seller was remarkable, a tiny woman (4’8” on her tip-toes) carrying a little plastic stool and a large tray on which were a broad, very sharp knife and large wedges of watermelon. These she would expertly chop into smaller slices, slip them into a plastic bag, and discard the rind. I watched her halve, quarter, and further slice up an immense watermelon, then stand and put the entire tray on her head and cruise through the train crying out her watermelon pitch. It was impressive. One very enterprising youth had prepacked plastic bags of clementines and with a very deep voice he moved quickly, selling out his entire bushel in only one of the cars. Others with full bushels, but not pre-packed, didn’t sell nearly as many. People really like pre-packed food, unfortunately for the environment.

I’ll again join Cecily and her friends for supper tonight, then probably retire to my new apartment roof to watch the fireworks while the youngsters go clubbing. They are sweet and interesting but there is a generational thing here that I cannot ignore.

I’ll wish at midnight, wherever we are, for Peace on Earth and Good Will Toward Men, Women, Flora, Fauna, and the rest of the Environment of our amazing little sphere.