Scientific Ink

Dunrie Greiling Ph.D., Ann Arbor, MI 48105

Travel

Pretty and Nice

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We rented a canal boat in France in May with friends. We piloted it ourselves and moved between small towns on the Saône, the Seille, and the Canal du Centre in Burgundy. We had a great vacation, enjoying the sights, the countryside, the cheese, and of course the wine of France.

Five of the six of us had taken French in high school, one much longer, and so we got by in French much of the time. Additionally, the English of many folks in the hospitality industry was much better than our French, so we switched often. For instance, we conversed easily with the staff at the port where we picked up and dropped off the boat, the mechanic who came to help us when we had battery trouble, people in restaurants, and the staff at the capitaineries where we payed to moor the boat, hook up to shore power, and take on potable water.

Some in the group enjoyed using their French, while others of us felt overwhelmed. My joke is that I don’t really like speaking in English, and speaking in French is even more intimidating! Still, we enjoyed the little pleasantries, such as when we bought our pain au chocolat in the morning, we chatted amicably in French with the vendor. We said we were happy to have the pastries because we were hungry, to which he replied “c’est une bonne maladie!” A good problem, especially in France. Before we left, he wished us a pleasant journey, a great day, and a few other nice things. It was difficult to match the ardent good wishes and blessings we received!

M. Malaprop strikes!

As you might expect, we managed a few hum-dingers with our half-remembered French. We had a wonderful time at the tasting room of Domain Mestre Père et Fils in Santenay. It took us a lot longer than we expected to traverse the eleven locks from the Saône up to the wine country on the Canal du Centre. The locks make canal travel slow-going, and our trip was further slowed when we got stuck in one of the automatic locks. Its doors closed after the first boat exited and before we were able to leave, so we had to wait for the remote lock-keeper to drive up and free us. We became fast friends with the lock-keeper and saw him on several of the locks going up the Canal and then going back down the next day.

By the time we got to Santenay, we were running up against the end of the day. We had called ahead, and although we were initially told they closed at 6PM (or 18 hours), we switched to English with someone else on staff who offered to give us a wine tasting if we arrived before 6PM. We got to Santenay a little after 5PM, and although it was a short walk from our mooring on the Canal du Centre to the center of town and the tasting room, it likely wasn’t much before 6 when we arrived at the tasting room.

We had a wonderful tasting, we enjoyed the wine, learned a lot, spoke in both English and French, and picked up some bottles for later in our trip. We would have bought more if we could take it home easily. At the end of our tasting, after we were shown their wine cave with stacks and stacks of bottles below the tasting room, we thanked our host in French. Instead of saying, it’s so nice (“c’est très gentil”) one of us said it’s so pretty (“c’est très joli”) – they actually sound more similar in French, although they are not homophones. We corrected ourselves immediately. Our host, without skipping a beat, replied, in French, that he was both pretty and nice. That describes our experience perfectly – pretty and nice, and good humored.

If you’d like to travel by boat on the Saône, Seille, and Canal du Centre, we had a great time with le boat!

Travel off-season, a fall trip to Greece, part I

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I flew to Athens earlier this month, to meet a college friend who was on a business trip. She was speaking at a medical conference, and I came only for the sightseeing and the food. Her trip was a couple of days, constrained by work obligations on either side. I took the whole week, figuring if I was going to travel that far, I should make time to explore.

It wasn’t high season for tourism, yet everyone told us we had exceptional weather. So I think we lucked out – not too many crowds (though we heard many many languages other than Greek) yet shirtsleeve weather.

I spent most of the week in the Athens area, walking in the pedestrian areas near the Acropolis, visiting some of the more minor museums, saving the top of the Acropolis and the National Archaeological Museum for when my friend arrived later in the week.

The people I met in restaurants, stores, and on the street all had more than enough English to make my trip easy, and many positively beamed when I offered up the most basic conversational niceties in Greek, such as hello/goodbye (Yassas), good morning (Kalimera), or good evening (Kalispera).

And the welcome was almost infallibly gracious. For instance I saw a beautifully coiffed, expensively clothed businesswoman in Constitution Square stopped at the pedestrian streetlight help a pair of Asian tourists struggling with a map. She looked like she could have been going to the Parliament building across Syntagma Square to serve in some important government office, and there she was, helping a couple of disoriented tourists locate where they were on their map.

I experienced such a warm playful conversational spirit there – many of the really touristy street restaurants have barkers out front to engage passers by and invite them in, but honestly they seemed happy enough for a little repartee (“maybe later” was enough to disengage without rudeness on either side, and once “why not?” when parried with “I just ate!” made me and the barker laugh), so it wasn’t annoying but kind of fun.

I was humbled to hear all of the conversations in English by non-English speakers, German, Scandinavian, French tourists speaking in English to the Greeks in the restaurants and hotels, and the Greek staff responding in English.

Given that tourism is Greece’s #2 economic driver, after shipping, I expect that the spirit of welcome may be there year-round. Perhaps since I went in the off-season, I received more, as it was undiluted across a throng of other tourists.

I had a wonderful time and was in tears in the airport. I told the gate agent that I didn’t want to leave, and she looked at me sweetly and said I could always come back.

Surfing the web, not surfing the waves, in Hawaii

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We had a lovely, wonderful, amazing, restful trip to Hawaii in March.

The one thing I noticed, though, was that wireless internet was ubiquitous. Even at our sweet secluded little B&B near Hawaii Volcanoes National Park (Hale Ohia).

I suppose the problem isn’t that there was wireless internet, the problem was that I was using it while I was on vacation.

I sometimes used it for recreation (goofing around on Ravelry.com looking for a pattern for the yarn I brought). We sometimes used it for vacation research – for instance, I used it to find a highlight on Kauai – the amazing quilt/fabric shop – Kapaia Stitchery. And we used it to keep up with local/current events (wait, was that an earthquake? OMG).

But we used a little too much to keep up with work. You might argue that some of it was in self-defense, we were clearing the email brush to prevent any stress conflagrations at the time of re-entry. Think of it as a back-burn or firebreak. Yet, that strikes me as the self-delusion of an email/work addict. And, to be fair, sometimes the strategy backfired – the email traffic might also ignite little stress events during the R&R, drawing us into the work mind we intended to leave at the office.

We both do client work and have folks who depend on us, which makes going incommunicado a challenge and a little bit scary. I do believe that setting things up so they succeed especially in my absence is a sign of good work. So, perhaps I didn’t trust myself enough to leave completely? I’ll have to keep trying and keep vacationing to solve this conundrum.

Do you find checking in on vacation restful or stressful? What’s your optimum prescription for rest and sanity with email on vacation?

Place of Refuge – Pu’uhonua o Honaunau

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On the Big Island in Hawaii is a national park called Pu’uhonua o Honaunau, or the Place of Refuge. The place is special, white sand, black lava stone walls, ki’i figures bearing their teeth at the wind and the water, tall palms swishing their fronds in the wind. There are usually a few sea turtles bobbing around in the waves and happily grazing algae. Sometimes one pulls itself out of the lapping waves for some warming sunshine.

In the park, there are some lava stone walls and platforms, some buildings and figures, but mostly it contains peace and beauty.

What’s important to know is that inside these walls was safety. Historically, the place of refuge provided an escape valve of sorts out of the strict rules of Hawaiian society. To my superficial understanding, that traditional culture had strong kapu – or what we might call taboos – protocol for who is allowed to do what where. Some sound social-caste-driven – commoners couldn’t touch the shadow of nobleman – others seem much more about alignment with ecological forces – letting land or fishing areas lie fallow to recover from harvesting pressure. There were also political struggles. Those who had transgressed the rules or been on the wrong side of a battle could reach one of these zones of…is it forgiveness? or maybe absolution?…and enter a process to be reincorporated into society.

A hut near the entrance holds the bones of priests, and it is their power, in my language perhaps the power of their intention, that gives this place its power of peace. The place is magical. Maybe it is the warm sun, the closeness of sea turtles, the graceful swaying of the palm fronds. Or maybe the years of peace and renewal in this spot has left an aura of deep calm.

While there are moments of transcendence and sublime beauty, life also contains moments of annoyance, small-minded prejudice, mistakes of inattention, bad luck, and bad intentions. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a place where we can go and be forgiven?

Of course, the spell breaks when envisioning larger transgressions, or repeat offenders. And, while I cannot imagine setting this up for a larger society, this place does inspire me to create openness and forgiveness for myself, for the day to day departures from intention, misfires, and missed opportunities, for the ways in which I find myself lacking and lecture myself on doing ____ better, more often, or never again.

As I near my 40th Birthday, my goal is to carry that safe place around for myself and for those close to me. My meditation practice is the practice of building that space, and my meditation room is its physical manifestation.When I am calm and at peace, I create peace around me. When I let myself become disturbed, I disturb.

What is your place of refuge? How can it be extended to increase your own well-being and that of those around you? How do you nurture your hope?

A happy coincidence – finding Hong Kong House in Knoxville (gratitude #49)

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My sister used to live in Marietta, GA. I was reading a great food blog about Atlanta, the Blissful Glutton, which reviewed Tasty China, a restaurant in Marietta that served Sichuan style food. They specialized in cooking with Sichuan pepper, which provides a numbing experience/taste.

The food at Tasty China was delectable. We enjoyed several items, including hot and numbing beef rolls, fish cilantro rolls (no pepper here), dry fried eggplant (kind of like eggplant potato chips, but numbing), and more. The Sichuan pepper numbed our tongues so that regular tap water tasted kind of like Sprite (carbonated and kind of sweet). After our first visit, we tried to stop there or get takeout each time we visited my sister. Well, eventually the Tasty China founder (Peter Chang) left, and when we visited after that, the food was still good in our book. I think he was gone by fall 2007, and our take out was still a highlight of our 2007 Thanksgiving.

Well, my sister and her family moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and I went to visit in early December. On my sister’s fridge when I arrived was a review of Hong Kong House in Knoxville, about 30 minutes away. Turns out that Peter Chang, the chef from Tasty China, had taken over an existing restaurant, Hong Kong House, in Knoxville and he was cooking up the same yummy menu we had loved in Marietta.

Glad my sister and her family followed Peter Chang to the Knoxville area.

Here’s a review in the Knoxville paper.