The Yoga Class and the driver's test

Last week I took part in my first ever yoga class and my zillioneth ever driver's license renewal test. I did fairly well with yoga--my wife has been trying to convince me and coax me to join her in the gentle chair yoga class with her favorite instructor, Linda. As for Linda, she was amazed to see me there. She made me feel very welcome and helped me to achieve several yoga positions that I never would have dreamed possible. At the end of the class I was able to get up from the chair without the need for a crane.

The written driver's exam also went well: I aced the 18 questions, including a couple that I guessed correctly. When it came time for the eye exam, I tried an old trick that has served me well for my last two tests: since I can see better out of my left eye, I am very good at reading the charts when they ask me to cover my right eye. Then when they ask me to cover my left eye, I do a sleight of hand and cover the right eye again. It has worked the last couple of times, but this time they caught me right-handed and made me actually switch to my bad eye. Still, I only messed up with a "t" and an "f," good enough to pass.

They didn't tell me to come back for an actual driver's test behind the wheel, so I am good behind the wheel for another five years!

Technical Prowess

I could be wrong (that has happened to me several times) but I think my technical prowess is practically boundless. I recently purchased a Barnes and Noble Nook Color and slowly but surely I am turning it into a tablet. I now have an email app and hope soon to be able to put my expensive Blackberry with the huge monthly charge in a drawer that is full of other, older, abandoned cellphones and check my email almost as often at free Wi-Fi spots with the Nook. I am building a library on the Nook, and I get a daily subscription to the Los Angeles Times, plus a free Wall Street Journal every time I visit a Starbucks. All the other customers are whacking away at laptops and netbooks, and I always sit conspiculously at one of the tables where I will be most visibile while fiddling with my "near tablet." I'm sure they all want to look over my shoulder, or sit down with me and ask me "what is that thing? Where can I get one? How much does it cost? Wanna come over to my place for a glass of wine or go to a movie with me?"

Recently I put all my I-tunes library in my new Amazon Cloud, so now I can put my earphones on, log on to Amazon and listen to music (Brazilian, Irish, Classical, rock and Jazz) while I read the LA Times or WSJ or the Bible, making myself even more conspicuous.

Surely, greater things are ahead for me!

Feeble Attempt at Humor

Well, another feeble attempt at humor! We celebrated my wife's birthday this week at Hector's Mexican Restaurant, here in Chula Vista, California. The mariachi's there know us very well and they came over to play Las Mananitas for my Brazilian wife, Dinéa. Then they played Frenesi, singing it with great gung ho gusto. At all the points where they sang the word "Frenesi!," I tried to be the funny guy and chimed in with them "Tennessee!"  A couple of kids sitting with their family near us giggled a bit, but when the song was over one of the guys who plays a trumpet leaned over and whispered, "Your Spanish is pretty good, but you mispronounce some of the words. It should be Frenesi, with an F and an R. You make it sound like a T."

Everything is A-OK, diigital-wise and otherwise.

Recent days have brought many digital blessings. My third oldest grandchild, 10-year-old Zélia now has her first email account, thus joining two of her cousins, Moira and Liam, in cyberspace.  I'm sure my youngest grandchild, Gabriel, can't be far behind. Not 100 percent sure but I think Zélia's first email was to her mom and the second one to me.

Also, I read the David Pogue article on the Amazon Cloud Drive and this solved a vexing digital problem for me: how do I get my i-Tunes music from my Mac desktop over to my PC laptop. I tried flash drives and those didn't work, but after more than 20 hours of upload time, I now have all my music up in the clouds and can access it any time, any place. It was a very easy process, and as Pogue said, it's almost free. I bought an Amazon MP3 file with 99 of Debussy's best stuff for $6.99 and got 20 gigs of free space.

Finally, I took the plunge and bought a B&N Nook.  Again, I had heard and read reports that one can "root" a Nook and make it into an Android Tablet at half the price, if you don't mind voiding the warranty. There's even a you tube video showing you how to do it. However, when I bought the Nook yesterday, I was told don't do it: we are coming out with an app that will transform the Nook into a Tablet!

So, there you have it! All goes well for me, digital-wise and otherwise!

Gospel according to John

Tonight we finish a 3-day Lenten retreat conducted by Fr. Felix Just, S.J. He is a noted biblical scholar and Director of Biblical Education at the Loyola Institute for Spirituality in Orange, CA. Father has shown us some of the contrasts between the Fourth Gospel and the three Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. He has opened our eyes to the literary features and the theology of John's Gospel and reinforced what my wife and I have learned through our encounters with Centering Prayer groups and with the Benedictine Spirituality we have experienced as Oblates at Prince of Peace Abbey. Fr. Just has a great website at http://catholic-resources.org.

My first and only strip tease show

No, I didn't GO to a strip tease show: I PUT ON a strip tease show.

As PR guy for a Chicago-based financial futures exchange--you know, one of those places where the trade futures contracts for foreign currencies or stock market indices--I helped, in a small way, set up other exchanges in Singapore, Ireland and Brazil. 

One of those exchanges was in São Paulo, Brazil. BTW, that exchange now is one of the world's biggest and most successful, but not because of me. I only helped get them started. Anyway, after helping them with the easy stuff for a month or so, it was time for me to go back to Chicago for my real job. My new Brazilian friends staged a farewell lunch for me, and I decided to have a little fun with them.

There had been a lot of political turmoil at that time, and the guys in power had set up a parliamentary system, with a handpicked prime minister. But there were a bunch of other guys who were demanding direct elections and a return to the presidential system. The “Diretas Ja” (Direction Elections Now!) movement, calling for immediate presidential elections, was in full swing at that point. I bought a tee shirt with that slogan emblazed on the front. The day of the lunch I wore it underneath my dress shirt and tie. 

While I was giving my farewell speech and thanking my hosts, I said that I was feeling a little hot so I took off my paletó (suit jacket), hung it on my chair and resumed talking. Then I wiped my forehead and said, “Forgive me, but it is really hot in here,” taking off my tie and hanging it on the suit jacket. After a few more sentences, I again complained about the heat and to the astonishment of my friends, I finally removed my shirt, showing the slogan that had become the marching song of such political figures as Tancredo Neves and Leonel Brizola, as well as several popular Brazilian signers such as Gilberto Gil and Chico Buarque de Holanda. 

There was a moment of stunned silence, then they all broke out in laughter and I finished my “strip tease speech”to the loudest and longest lasting round applause that any of my usually boring speeches has ever received.

Okay! Okay! It wasn't a complete strip tease. But I wish my mom had been there. When I was a kid she and I used to sing duets, mostly Irish songs. But there was one that we really liked about "Queenie, the cutie of the burlesque show who stopped--and always just in time." That's what I did that day: I stopped just in time.

My brief career as a presidential interpreter

As a PR guy at the Federal Reserve Board in the early 80s, then Chairman Paul Volcker called me into his office one day and told me he was going on an official visit to Brazil. "Do they speak any English down there, Sims?" Sensing an opportunity to gain an official passport and take a whirlwind trip back to my beloved Brazil, I said "No, sir. You will definitely need an interpreter.

So I accompanied him in September 1981. As we walked with finance minister Ernane Galveas and the head of the Banco Central to a meeting with then president João Figuereido, Galveas--whom I knew well from my days as a journalist down there--whispered, "Joe, the interpreter is running late. You'll have to do the job." I gulped but agreed. The president lit into Volcker because of high interest rates and other stuff, and Ernane kept trying unsuccessfully to get him to stop so I could translate. After about 15 minutes he did stop, and looked at me to tell the Fed chairman what was wrong with the world economy. I turned to Volcker, who was also looking at me expectantly. I took a deep breath and said, "he says interest rates are too high, it's hurting the Brazilian economy and you're to blame." Everyone looked at me as though I would have more to say, but I folded my arms and waited for Volcker's reply. "He's been talking for 15 minutes and you mean that's all he said?"

"Well, yes, that's pretty much it," I explained weakly.