Dear Abby

What is the proper etiquette for rejecting a prostitute's proposition? It was my first time being approached thus and I kept making the apparent mistake of eye contact and a friendly hello. Silly Idaho boy that I am. Then they would follow me for some time and make me feel like I was in an Oliver Stone movie.

Recovering

It was my first surgery. I had a minor "operation" once on my hand, but I don't count that. Even this was pretty minor. But I did have to stay at the hospital over night.

I found out that I would stay at the hospital at about 10:30 am Wednesday. I had to check in to the hospital at 11 am Wednesday. Foreign service per diem rules for medical evacuations being what they are, I had to get to the hotel, pack up all my stuff, call the embassy to fax a letter of credit to the hospital, check out of the hotel, make new flight and hotel reservations for after the surgery, and get back to the hospital in 30 minutes. Amid all this I forgot to tell Katie the name of the hospital and subsequently, in post-surgery fog, did not contact her for some time thus causing unnecessary worry. Sorry.

The hospital staff was unbelievably friendly. I felt more like I was in a spa than a hospital. Every comfort was tended to, but hospital food, even in Singapore, still sucks.

The general anesthetic was administered. The doctor challenged me to count to ten before falling asleep. I thought that would be easy. I didn't even make it to four. I had no idea that stuff worked so fast. I woke up in some pain and everything was very cloudy for the next several hours.

My MBA classmate, Mathew Harrison, lives in Singapore now and came to visit me in the morning and helped check out of the hospital and back into my hotel, which was very helpful given the considerable pain I felt upon hoisting my back pack.

Now I am hanging out at a very nice hotel catching up on seasons 1 and 2 of Downton Abbey. I have wandered Singapore a bit. My impression is that Singapore is what happens when you turn the Duty Free area of an airport into a nation state.

Chicken Sissy

I am a chicken sissy. I can't eat it the way they eat it in South Asia, with all the chicken parts. I just spent ten hours on Thai Airways, during which time they fed me chicken, basically the whole thing, twice. So now I am very hungry because I didn't eat anything. I just stared at my mass of fleshy, fatty, sinewy, multi-colored chicken meat. And that sandy black stuff. What is that? Freaks me out. Nope, not going any where near my mouth. Do you have anything processed? This science experiment gone bad is making me uneasy. Anyone seen Saw IV? It's on my plate.

And when I recline at a comfortable three degrees, it's pavlovian, I MUST have movies right in front of my eyeballs. But I couldn't find the movie screen. Only a foldable tray was in front of me. I let the tray down and looked behind. No movies. I raised the tray up and let it down again. Maybe I missed something. I'm reclined at three degrees, where's the movie? This doesn't make any sense. So I asked my non-English-speaking neighbor if he had a movie screen. He stared at me blankly for a moment and then slowly looked away and moved his elbow from the armrest. "Um stewardess. Yes, you see, I've moved my seat back to the 'reclined' position, and yet there is no movie in front of my eyeballs. I don't understand." She didn't either.

Then I had this brilliant idea to leave my iPhone behind and really go for an iPad baptism by fire. You know, see if it can be done without an iPhone. It can't. The iPad is great for reading/watching on movie-less airplanes (I'm still really confused about that) but for listening to tunes while standing in a customs line, it's a little ridiculous. I just kept imagining that old iPod add with the white ear buds bouncing around in the ears of a super good dancing brightly monochromatic young person...and then suddenly busting out some air guitar on the enormous iPad. See that? Weird right?

The other thing is that my iPhone has all the things I don't want to forget and that now I can't remember, such as the time and location of my surgery. So the iPhone decision was a little hasty. Ill-advised.

Then I finally got to the front of the customs line only to discover that I was the only one of hundreds--probably because while their earbuds were tucked neatly into small pockets, I was trying to figure out which pocket could hold my iPad--who didn't fill out a disembarkation card. So I had to go get said card and return to the end of said line where I had to fumble with said iPad pocket issue for 30 more minutes before becoming literally the last person to clear customs.

Nine months ago, the day before I came to Pakistan, Henry stepped on my glasses. I bent them back into shape and they have remained precariously on my face since. Just before departure for this trip, they gave way, falling to pieces. I have no glasses. So here I am in Singapore with an oversized music-listening device and unable to read any signs until I'm within 15 feet and trying to find a taxi. I didn't immediately see any "taxi" signs but I did see "coach" signs near "transportation" signs. What is this "coach" they speak of? Maybe it's a taxi. A few minutes later I was browsing hand bags, a little confused at why there were no taxis nearby.

As Reported by Katie

"So, next time we see dad, it won't be at our house?" Caleb asked.

"No, he's going straight to Disney World to meet us there."

Pause.

"Will we come back here?"

Pause. "Sure, buddy. We can visit."

Pause.

"Dad won't have to leave again?"

"No. Then he stays with us."

"But he might have to take trips even when we're in Egypt," Madeline interjected.

"Yeah, but for just a week or two."

"That's nothing. That's OK," Madeline and Caleb concluded.

Later, Henry found Katie, "Can you help me?"

"Of course." Henry guided Katie to the kitchen.

"Can you get that box down?" Henry asked. After Katie retrieved the requested box, Henry added, "It's hard without dad around to get things."

What I Do for a Living

U.S. taxpayers, here is my latest report on your money at work in Pakistan: (Feb 3 Report)

My Valentines 2012 Playlist

If My Heart Had Wings, Faith Hill
I Drove All Night, Roy Orbison (I sing it as "I Flew All Night")
I'm Yours, Jason Mraz
She's Always a Woman, Billy Joel
Passionate Kisses, Mary Chapin Carpenter
Breathless, The Corrs
El Talisman, Rosana
Leather and Lace, Stevie Nicks and Don Henley
A La Sombra de un Leon, Ana Belen
And She Was, The Talking Heads

Disney World: 88

Depending upon whether you count from my timezone or Katie's timezone and whether you count my travel day, we are either 89 or 87 days from Disney World. So I'll take the average.

I think I'm more excited about it than the kids. I confirmed Disneyland to be the happiest place on earth among the subset of places I have visited. I haven't been to the Road of Bones, for example, but I'm pretty confident Disneyland is happier.

Now I will test it against Disney World, which I am informed is the one place children can obtain real magic wands, as compared to "this dumb thing that you just shake and nothing happens, even if you know the spells". Madeline requested one for Christmas. Rather than get creative with the Santa myth, I just redirected her to a Christmas list that substituted the iMac (which I was going to buy anyway) for the wand.

After Christmas, however, the request resurfaced, followed by, "And I know we can get one because we're going to Disney World."

Maybe I'm over thinking this, but I have a feeling that magic wand disillusionment will somehow lead back to Santa, and the Easter Bunny. Madeline will see the man behind the curtain and childhood will be over, and she will be trying to borrow the car, and some guy will be asking permission to marry her, and I'll be a grampa, and I'll say, "Why did she have to request that darn magic wand?"

I Have No Hot Water

Haven't had any for days. I shower at the embassy gym, with the four other regulars. No singing. I wear flip flops. I almost said thongs, but that sounded weird.

There is a bathroom down the hall from my office. It is the smelliest room I have ever entered on purpose. My New Year's resolution is to never go there again. That is not a joke. There is a bathroom downstairs that is almost normal. It at least has a toilet anyway. But what Pakistanis do in toilets must be very different from what I do in toilets.

I have never seen a broken toilet seat in my life until this toilet. They replace the toilet seat about every month. And it is always broken the next day. I really can't figure out what the toilet is for, for them, that would immediately break the toilet seat. If I could answer this one riddle, I would be happy with my time here. Or maybe I wouldn't. Maybe I don't want to know.

None of the bathrooms provide any way to dry your hands. No paper towels. No blow dryer thingy. Shake it off. So I use my hair as a towel. But since I forget to bring shampoo to work at least half the time, my hair is often more like noodles soaked in olive oil than a towel. On the bright side, I discovered that three days without washing yields optimally manageable hair. Really, I can make it do anything. Other times I use my pockets as a towel. Or my socks.

Sometimes I just watch all the people walking out of the bathroom shaking their hands like zombies with Turrets.

I got up at 4 am to watch the Super Bowl. Spoiler alert: The Patriots lost. So that royally sucked. And I didn't even have good commercials to console me. No, I was watching on AFN (Armed Forces Network), so I got nice PSAs reminding me to stop cyber-bullying my co-workers. As if. That's how I cope with my confusion over the broken toilet seat.

Hernia Ho!

My bulging intestines and I are going to Singapore for repairs. Apparently they have a pretty efficient operation there. In through the belly button, out through Terminal A, and back to Islamabad in no time.

I guess it's kind of like a free vacation, except that it includes surgery and laying in bed most of the time.

If anyone is going to be in Singapore in a few weeks, bring flowers.

Kickin' Down the Cobblestone

I have time. Evenings weekends. Time. Until this year, the last time I had time was about nine years ago.

So I work out, mostly running, and I plan (it's really more like shopping without intent to purchase, so I call it planning).

Alas, hernia! If this were 1970, I would be fully middle-aged so I would expect to have a hernia, but this is 2012 and I am barely entering adulthood, transitioning from "emerging adulthood." Why do I have a hernia? Do I also have osteoporosis? Menopause?

Anyway, the doc is trying to tell me it isn't an emergency. You know, like when you have a torn ACL, but, hey, you can use crutches, so why would you have surgery?