My Chinese character recognition has improved this week by 10 times the amount of characters. Booya! Consciously utilizing my synesthesia to learn new characters is really helpful. I've actually been speaking pretty little chinese, however, so my speaking skills have not improved.
8. The midi-ized bell tones just rang for the hour... but it's 11:20!
9. The escalators, and doorknob directions, are not consistent/correct. In America you'd be hard pressed to find an escalator heading away from you (i.e. that you can use) on the left of the one approaching. As for doorknobs, I guess they never heard of "righty-tighty, lefty-loosey", but I guess that's probably not as catchy in chinese as it is in english.
10. More about buses! There are several flavors of buses that I've experienced here, a much greater variety than just AC transit (new and old) and muni buses (electric and gas, and occasionally super old). So far, I have been on:
Upper-deck only, double seats with an aisle down the middle
4 sets of double seats in the back, standing room/four priority seats
Same as above, but with two priority seats facing the back
8 single/priority seats in the front, lots of standing room with plastic handles, double seats in the back
Only side-facing seats, less standing room
And there's probably more that I haven't seen.
People really respect the sanctity of priority seats here, to the point where young and capable people get on a bus and stand instead of taking a priority seat until a senior citizen gets on. Unlike the American way of doing it, which is "I'll just sit here until I see someone who needs it. Then I'll get up, no harm done to anyone, right? I'm just utilizing the space." But when I take the priority seats in the front (in the absence of old, handicapped, pregnant women and mothers with children), I get tons of stares that I only notice if I'm in a backwards-facing seat. But no one ever says anything, so suck it, passive-aggressiveness. Then again, I also get stares from dancing on the subway to my headphones. And singing. On a crowded car. But chinese people are just weird.
Lastly, this trip I've gotten over the fear of taking the bus in a foreign country. I mean, come on, I can't even read the stops or know where I'm going most of the time - I feel comfortable taking any random MUNI line in SF because I can at least figure out which neighborhood I'm in or where north is, but with the perpetual cloudy weather all week I have a very limited internal map because I don't know where north is. But I've used the bus pretty frequently, once or twice a day, and it's not so scary anymore. Especially because the taxis are so cheap here, compared to America, so no matter how lost I get it'll probably just cost six dollars to get back.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
This is what happened: Tales from Taiwan 2011 edition part 3, mosquitos
Labels:
Tales from Taiwan,
This is what happened
|
I just realized how much better these would be with pictures, but I didn't even bring my computer to Taiwan, so I may just add them retroactively once I get back to the states.
7. I haven't been sleepiing well lately, and last night was the worst. Having been exhausted from a full 7 AM to midnight day, I brushed my teeth and went to bed immediately after getting home.
A good night's sleep was not in store for me, however. Imagine the least soundproof house ever and a solid wooden bed frame where the word "mattress" had never been uttered nor heard in the house. The comforter provided some cushioning, so I slept on top of it in all my clothes and another thin blanket, but it's been about 13C so I was never really warm.
I had barely closed my eyes, it seemed, when a phone rang at rock-concert level decibels in the living room. The ringtone was unfamiliar and I wouldn't have put it past the lack-of-insulation to say it was coming from a neighbor's house. Each morning from bed I could hear the conversations of the open-air breakfast place downstairs and across the street, after all. But after half a minute both my mom and my grandma's doors opened and the phone stopped, followed by their conversation in Chinese - it turns out my grandma called it, or set it off somehow, because she wanted to test if it was working. My mom had brought back that phone for her since she was losing her hearing and needed a louder phone. Go figure.
Being very sensitive to light, I couldn't sleep for another ten minutes while my grandma used the bathroom and settled back into bed. I slept, but was pulled slowly into half-consciousness by my hand continuously itching my other wrist until I realized I had a mosquito bite. I put some saliva on it, the quick fix, and was woken again when I realized I was scratching my other arm. As soon as my sluggish mind figured out it wasn't the same bite, meaning I was being actively bitten, I cursed the little bastard that was getting full off my blood and keeping me awake.
Keeping someone awake is a form of torture, did you know that? It feels terrible, really. It's one of the few interrogation techniques officially approved by the US army to use, since you're not actually causing blows, or something like that. I could almost metacognitively see my thoughts descending into madness.
It's actually impossible to sleep if you know a mosquito is in the room. My mom and aunt both testified to this at dinner as soon as I mentioned that I knew I kept getting more bites throughout the night. The presence of the little bugger is more harrowing than a tiger in the room. At least a tiger you can hear coming; with a mosquito, you are left with nothing but despair after the fact of having been bitten. At first all I wished was that it would leave me alone after the initial strikes; then I hoped it was not under the covers or inside my shirt; then, when it confirmed its presence by buzzing past my ear, that proximity alarm like a shark fin circling me in the ocean, I just prayed that it would not bite me in the ear, so I wouldn't lose my hearing.
There was no way that I could rest my head without leaving one ear exposed, however, and being completely facedown or face up would expose both, so that was out. Which ear would have to go, then? My left, decidedly, though it had better hearing. If I tried to sleep with one hand over it the back of that hand would just be bitten, and if I tried to sleep under the cover, well what was the point in doing that if it was small enough to get under my covers anyway? I needed to leave a hole to breathe, and surely it could follow the draft of my breath. Or what if it was under my covers anyway?
At the end of theday morning - thirteen bites. Three on my left hand, three on my face, and seven on my right. And maybe, total, an hour's worth of sleep.
7. I haven't been sleepiing well lately, and last night was the worst. Having been exhausted from a full 7 AM to midnight day, I brushed my teeth and went to bed immediately after getting home.
A good night's sleep was not in store for me, however. Imagine the least soundproof house ever and a solid wooden bed frame where the word "mattress" had never been uttered nor heard in the house. The comforter provided some cushioning, so I slept on top of it in all my clothes and another thin blanket, but it's been about 13C so I was never really warm.
I had barely closed my eyes, it seemed, when a phone rang at rock-concert level decibels in the living room. The ringtone was unfamiliar and I wouldn't have put it past the lack-of-insulation to say it was coming from a neighbor's house. Each morning from bed I could hear the conversations of the open-air breakfast place downstairs and across the street, after all. But after half a minute both my mom and my grandma's doors opened and the phone stopped, followed by their conversation in Chinese - it turns out my grandma called it, or set it off somehow, because she wanted to test if it was working. My mom had brought back that phone for her since she was losing her hearing and needed a louder phone. Go figure.
Being very sensitive to light, I couldn't sleep for another ten minutes while my grandma used the bathroom and settled back into bed. I slept, but was pulled slowly into half-consciousness by my hand continuously itching my other wrist until I realized I had a mosquito bite. I put some saliva on it, the quick fix, and was woken again when I realized I was scratching my other arm. As soon as my sluggish mind figured out it wasn't the same bite, meaning I was being actively bitten, I cursed the little bastard that was getting full off my blood and keeping me awake.
Keeping someone awake is a form of torture, did you know that? It feels terrible, really. It's one of the few interrogation techniques officially approved by the US army to use, since you're not actually causing blows, or something like that. I could almost metacognitively see my thoughts descending into madness.
It's actually impossible to sleep if you know a mosquito is in the room. My mom and aunt both testified to this at dinner as soon as I mentioned that I knew I kept getting more bites throughout the night. The presence of the little bugger is more harrowing than a tiger in the room. At least a tiger you can hear coming; with a mosquito, you are left with nothing but despair after the fact of having been bitten. At first all I wished was that it would leave me alone after the initial strikes; then I hoped it was not under the covers or inside my shirt; then, when it confirmed its presence by buzzing past my ear, that proximity alarm like a shark fin circling me in the ocean, I just prayed that it would not bite me in the ear, so I wouldn't lose my hearing.
There was no way that I could rest my head without leaving one ear exposed, however, and being completely facedown or face up would expose both, so that was out. Which ear would have to go, then? My left, decidedly, though it had better hearing. If I tried to sleep with one hand over it the back of that hand would just be bitten, and if I tried to sleep under the cover, well what was the point in doing that if it was small enough to get under my covers anyway? I needed to leave a hole to breathe, and surely it could follow the draft of my breath. Or what if it was under my covers anyway?
At the end of the
Monday, March 21, 2011
This is what happened: Tales from Taiwan, 2011 edition part 2
Labels:
Tales from Taiwan,
This is what happened
|
A few more observations and an actual tale this time. Still fun stuff. This is not the heavy post.
4. The buses here still move with the doors open. I'm pretty sure in the States the buses are hardcoded to be unable to disengage the brakes while the doors are open. Everything is faster this way but it makes me nervous like when I start driving away in my Odyssey before the passenger door is closed.
5. Old people have absolutely no shame in staring at me. I think they're trying to figure out the color of my hair. It's still kind of creepy.
6. I was at lunch at a restaurant so proud of their Peking Duck that they put it up in huge English letters where their title should be. This story is not about the duck. I got up during the meal to go to the restroom, but as since I was being treated to lunch by my rich Aunt, we were many folds deep in the restaurant's many corners and layers. I asked the closest waitress whee the restroom was and was given a rapid string of turn directions I forgot immediately except for the first two. But as I started on that trek, every waitress I passed gestured my next turn before I even had time to make eye contact and look at them pleadingly. Each of them knew what I was looking for, but how? There was no way the first waitress could pass the word to look out for a good-looking ABC wandering the restaurant with a full bladder. The only proper conclusion is they all have telepathic powers as part of the job description. I found my way back just fine.
4. The buses here still move with the doors open. I'm pretty sure in the States the buses are hardcoded to be unable to disengage the brakes while the doors are open. Everything is faster this way but it makes me nervous like when I start driving away in my Odyssey before the passenger door is closed.
5. Old people have absolutely no shame in staring at me. I think they're trying to figure out the color of my hair. It's still kind of creepy.
6. I was at lunch at a restaurant so proud of their Peking Duck that they put it up in huge English letters where their title should be. This story is not about the duck. I got up during the meal to go to the restroom, but as since I was being treated to lunch by my rich Aunt, we were many folds deep in the restaurant's many corners and layers. I asked the closest waitress whee the restroom was and was given a rapid string of turn directions I forgot immediately except for the first two. But as I started on that trek, every waitress I passed gestured my next turn before I even had time to make eye contact and look at them pleadingly. Each of them knew what I was looking for, but how? There was no way the first waitress could pass the word to look out for a good-looking ABC wandering the restaurant with a full bladder. The only proper conclusion is they all have telepathic powers as part of the job description. I found my way back just fine.
This is What Happened: Tales from Taiwan, 2011 edition
Labels:
Tales from Taiwan,
This is what happened
|
This is what IS happening? welcome to a special edition of TiWH as I write with brevity and lack of punctuation because I'm only able to access the internet via my kindle which is a terrible writing tool.
1. the words painted on the roads in Chinese are ordered correctly, as in you will read it correctly instead of backwards like in the US. so you never get things like the chinese equivalent of Ahead Stop or Only Turn Right when you read it from top to bottom.
2. My grandmas first question upon recognizing me was of course, "Do you have a girlfriend yet?" Though I guess its an improvement that she mistakes me for 22 now instead of 12
3 The distribution of SIM cards/unique phone numbers is strictly controlled by the government-you need to have two forms of idetification, like many things in Taiwan, and it takes half a day to getr your number activated. don't remember the process being so hard. Probably all this to deal with fraud companies with which I am familiar on a face-to-face level... it would be interesting if my actions two years ago somehow influenced this change. But thats a story for another time.
more to come!
1. the words painted on the roads in Chinese are ordered correctly, as in you will read it correctly instead of backwards like in the US. so you never get things like the chinese equivalent of Ahead Stop or Only Turn Right when you read it from top to bottom.
2. My grandmas first question upon recognizing me was of course, "Do you have a girlfriend yet?" Though I guess its an improvement that she mistakes me for 22 now instead of 12
3 The distribution of SIM cards/unique phone numbers is strictly controlled by the government-you need to have two forms of idetification, like many things in Taiwan, and it takes half a day to getr your number activated. don't remember the process being so hard. Probably all this to deal with fraud companies with which I am familiar on a face-to-face level... it would be interesting if my actions two years ago somehow influenced this change. But thats a story for another time.
more to come!
Thursday, March 17, 2011
This is what happened: Stories 2
Labels:
This is what happened
|
All from today, by the way. None of these have any point.
At Cafe Strada in the morning: I got my drink (a large mocha) from the barista on the right, and walked it over, with the smoothness only a marching band nerd has, to the counter with the lids. I grabbed a larger one and tried to put it on. As I pushed on one side, the other disengaged - ah, it's gonna be one of those cup/lid combinations that wouldn't succumb without a struggle, or would feign synergy until a most opportune moment of my unawareness and disengage as I tip it deeply for a long sip, and ruin everything.
I held two points of it down with my middle finger and thumb at the 3 o'clock and 6 o'clock position, and then subdued the 12 and 9 o'clock with my other hand. It fit securely and I even lifted it by the lid to make sure it was on properly. Then I noticed the little arrow on the opposite side of the drink-opening that said, "align with cup seam." It was already perfectly aligned. I did it without even knowing.
I walked down Bancroft, both hands around my coffee to warm my fingers since it was still chilly. I noted briefly to myself how busy, yet silent the edge of campus was on a school day - everyone was just going somewhere, to class or lab or research, not walking to a club or event with friends. After I passed the RSF and the sidewalk crowd thinned out, I noticed another set of footsteps echoing mine, and the distinct muttering that accompanied it.
The muttering was distinct and irregular, and I wanted so badly to give him the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to a cell phone conversation, but I could hear every word and they didn't form coherent sentences. Instead they were conversationally spaced phrases, full of that charming ebonic inflection and catchwords ("brother"), and I consciously decided not to put in my earphones and instead listen to him. After living in San Francisco for three years now, I've accepted that I have phases of tolerance for the homeless and hippies and black people - sometimes their words and rants, while probably life-enriching with their prospective, simply wear me down, like the black man who sat across from me on the bus last week and just ranted about Asians for the ten blocks he rode the bus, while I pretended to listen to music on my earphones that weren't plugged into anything. So I listened to this man behind me for a few minutes, just analyzing and absorbing his unique inflections and deep voice until he overtook me at an intersection (I observed the stoplight, he thought it was invisible).
Between my midterm and lesson I went to Blue Bottle for some caffeine, in celebration of finishing and in necessity for my lesson. The only person was a man with a carriage, so I only waited a few seconds before making eye contact with one of the baristas, whose face I knew but name I didn't. "What can I get for you?"
"Can I get a latte, please?" I raised my voice, just in case, so I wouldn't have to repeat myself.
"Sure... do you want a free cappuccino instead?" Was this a trick question? I've never been offered anything free at Blue Bottle before. Maybe someone had ordered it and hadn't come to claim it for half an hour, I thought.
"Um, sure." I walked forward, but he had made no further indication of permission. He wasn't smiling like usual. I felt awkward and a little guilty of receiving something for free. "Um... did someone just not claim it, or something?"
"No, I just made an extra one." He stated. He looked angry - at himself? Or disappointed? I sorted out the ninety cents I got in change from Cafe Strada in the morning and put it in the tip jar. It mollified at least a little of my uneasiness at taking something for nothing.
"Alright, thanks a lot, then. Have a good day." I walked quickly away, and ran across the street to catch the light.
Maybe once or twice a week when I get to my doorstep, I spot some suspicious dark spot on the floor and have to assess what it is before setting foot near it. Usually it's just a stain (and the same stain, at that), but with my fear of spiders I always have to visually check before stepping foot near it. Today when I got home there was another dark spot. This spot had a tail. This spot was mouse-shaped. It was a little mouse and it wasn't moving.
This was so extraordinary that I just stepped carefully around it, took off my shoes, opened my door and went in. I was carrying my briefcase, my backpack, a sweater and jacket that I had taken off since it was much warmer by the afternoon. I was mentally exhausted and went through the ritual of putting everything away (on my bed), hanging up my keys and washing my hands. I went back out, put on my shoes and stomped the floor near the mouse to see if it would scamper away. I thought I saw it fidget at one point, but I was pretty sure it was dead.
I didn't want to touch it with any part of my shoe. I went back inside and looked for a small box, but only had a particularly rigid Berkeley Bowl bag to put it into. I remembered the broom the house had in the garage closet, and also found a dustpan so I wouldn't need my Berkeley bowl bag. I mechanically swept it onto the dustpan, except I kind of just rolled it over onto its back, where I could see its little paws and mouth and chest heaving as only a little mouse could. On its back it moved weakly to try to flip back over onto its stomach. It wasn't in mouse heaven but it was on its way.
It's so cute, I thought briefly. Then I opened the garbage can and dumped it in.
At Cafe Strada in the morning: I got my drink (a large mocha) from the barista on the right, and walked it over, with the smoothness only a marching band nerd has, to the counter with the lids. I grabbed a larger one and tried to put it on. As I pushed on one side, the other disengaged - ah, it's gonna be one of those cup/lid combinations that wouldn't succumb without a struggle, or would feign synergy until a most opportune moment of my unawareness and disengage as I tip it deeply for a long sip, and ruin everything.
I held two points of it down with my middle finger and thumb at the 3 o'clock and 6 o'clock position, and then subdued the 12 and 9 o'clock with my other hand. It fit securely and I even lifted it by the lid to make sure it was on properly. Then I noticed the little arrow on the opposite side of the drink-opening that said, "align with cup seam." It was already perfectly aligned. I did it without even knowing.
I walked down Bancroft, both hands around my coffee to warm my fingers since it was still chilly. I noted briefly to myself how busy, yet silent the edge of campus was on a school day - everyone was just going somewhere, to class or lab or research, not walking to a club or event with friends. After I passed the RSF and the sidewalk crowd thinned out, I noticed another set of footsteps echoing mine, and the distinct muttering that accompanied it.
The muttering was distinct and irregular, and I wanted so badly to give him the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to a cell phone conversation, but I could hear every word and they didn't form coherent sentences. Instead they were conversationally spaced phrases, full of that charming ebonic inflection and catchwords ("brother"), and I consciously decided not to put in my earphones and instead listen to him. After living in San Francisco for three years now, I've accepted that I have phases of tolerance for the homeless and hippies and black people - sometimes their words and rants, while probably life-enriching with their prospective, simply wear me down, like the black man who sat across from me on the bus last week and just ranted about Asians for the ten blocks he rode the bus, while I pretended to listen to music on my earphones that weren't plugged into anything. So I listened to this man behind me for a few minutes, just analyzing and absorbing his unique inflections and deep voice until he overtook me at an intersection (I observed the stoplight, he thought it was invisible).
Between my midterm and lesson I went to Blue Bottle for some caffeine, in celebration of finishing and in necessity for my lesson. The only person was a man with a carriage, so I only waited a few seconds before making eye contact with one of the baristas, whose face I knew but name I didn't. "What can I get for you?"
"Can I get a latte, please?" I raised my voice, just in case, so I wouldn't have to repeat myself.
"Sure... do you want a free cappuccino instead?" Was this a trick question? I've never been offered anything free at Blue Bottle before. Maybe someone had ordered it and hadn't come to claim it for half an hour, I thought.
"Um, sure." I walked forward, but he had made no further indication of permission. He wasn't smiling like usual. I felt awkward and a little guilty of receiving something for free. "Um... did someone just not claim it, or something?"
"No, I just made an extra one." He stated. He looked angry - at himself? Or disappointed? I sorted out the ninety cents I got in change from Cafe Strada in the morning and put it in the tip jar. It mollified at least a little of my uneasiness at taking something for nothing.
"Alright, thanks a lot, then. Have a good day." I walked quickly away, and ran across the street to catch the light.
Maybe once or twice a week when I get to my doorstep, I spot some suspicious dark spot on the floor and have to assess what it is before setting foot near it. Usually it's just a stain (and the same stain, at that), but with my fear of spiders I always have to visually check before stepping foot near it. Today when I got home there was another dark spot. This spot had a tail. This spot was mouse-shaped. It was a little mouse and it wasn't moving.
This was so extraordinary that I just stepped carefully around it, took off my shoes, opened my door and went in. I was carrying my briefcase, my backpack, a sweater and jacket that I had taken off since it was much warmer by the afternoon. I was mentally exhausted and went through the ritual of putting everything away (on my bed), hanging up my keys and washing my hands. I went back out, put on my shoes and stomped the floor near the mouse to see if it would scamper away. I thought I saw it fidget at one point, but I was pretty sure it was dead.
I didn't want to touch it with any part of my shoe. I went back inside and looked for a small box, but only had a particularly rigid Berkeley Bowl bag to put it into. I remembered the broom the house had in the garage closet, and also found a dustpan so I wouldn't need my Berkeley bowl bag. I mechanically swept it onto the dustpan, except I kind of just rolled it over onto its back, where I could see its little paws and mouth and chest heaving as only a little mouse could. On its back it moved weakly to try to flip back over onto its stomach. It wasn't in mouse heaven but it was on its way.
It's so cute, I thought briefly. Then I opened the garbage can and dumped it in.
Monday, March 14, 2011
This is what happened: Headlights
Labels:
This is what happened
|
"The best time to fix the roof is when the sun it out." A slightly more modern metaphor is, "change your lightbulb when it is still day." My personal application (which I have yet to learn) is, "don't change your headlights in the dark."
I forgot the context, but one evening I had also driven my Odyssey to meet my mom at Costco so I could get gas. As I was trying to follow her car out of the parking lot, she stopped, called my cell phone and told me one of my headlights was much dimmer than the other, and to go replace them immediately. It was dark. I asked if I could go get it in the morning, and she said no.
Did you know you can't change one headlight? They come in packages of two, even, but everyone and every site on the internet says you must change both at once. You also can't touch the bulbs with your bare fingers, or they will burn out in a matter of days. So I bought a pair of new headlights, drove home, and had to wait until my engine cooled off before reaching inside and messing around.
I spent the cooling hour looking at first through the manual for instructions, but the procedure wasn't even referenced, so I went inside and searched for instructions on changing headlights on a year 2000 model Odyssey. The instructions are hard enough to follow, I think, with adequate lighting, since it's all in text and referencing parts of the engine with names that mean absolutely nothing to me. As soon as I started, with construction worker's gloves and a flashlight between my teeth, I realized pictures wouldn't have helped anyway; what I was working with was almost always visually obscured by other engine parts.
I can't tell you what I did, because most of it wasn't correct, and I spent a lot of time unscrewing parts I ultimately didn't need to, and removing entire plastic panels just to get vision of the wrong section, and getting my hands very, very greasy. Now you might not know this, and I certainly didn't see this coming, but the access routes behind the left and right headlights are not symmetrical. There I was, 45 minutes in the darkness, sweating and now heavily salivating over the grip of my flashlight, proudly having taken out one headlight and finding everything on the other side unsettingly unfamiliar.
The most difficult part of the night, measured by time spent on a single step, was installing the new lights and trying to get them to stay. There's this little piece of metal behind the holding mechanism that locks the headlight into place, and it's held into its hinge by a screw. However, it pops out quite enthusiastically when you are removing a headlight, and I wasn't paying attention to its original position when I took both the original ones out and dropped the first one, and caught the second. For over ten minutes I struggled with getting this oddly-bent piece of metal in the correct orientation, and which part to insert first, and at which angle, all by feel since I couldn't see anything and my mouth was tired.
I had long since given up on the gloves since I needed the tactile feedback, and everything inside a car engine is coated with the most stubborn glue of oil and years of dirt tempered by engine heat. Like during all my high school physics tests, I was reconstructing in the moment what I should have taken the time to memorize and understand ahead of time. Finally, with a hardly-satisfying ping each headlight locked into place. I reinserted the large rubber stoppers I didn't even know existed prior to that night, put the sections of a plastic vent back into place, replaced the panels and tried my best to close the engine without getting the grease over too many things. It took me a day of constant hand washing to get my hands clean again.
Though I did feel like a bad-ass from that hour of entirely manual labor, it took much more time to fix in the night than it would have taken during the day. Or at least with proper lighting.
Did you know you can't change one headlight? They come in packages of two, even, but everyone and every site on the internet says you must change both at once. You also can't touch the bulbs with your bare fingers, or they will burn out in a matter of days. So I bought a pair of new headlights, drove home, and had to wait until my engine cooled off before reaching inside and messing around.
I spent the cooling hour looking at first through the manual for instructions, but the procedure wasn't even referenced, so I went inside and searched for instructions on changing headlights on a year 2000 model Odyssey. The instructions are hard enough to follow, I think, with adequate lighting, since it's all in text and referencing parts of the engine with names that mean absolutely nothing to me. As soon as I started, with construction worker's gloves and a flashlight between my teeth, I realized pictures wouldn't have helped anyway; what I was working with was almost always visually obscured by other engine parts.
This is what I had to work with.
The most difficult part of the night, measured by time spent on a single step, was installing the new lights and trying to get them to stay. There's this little piece of metal behind the holding mechanism that locks the headlight into place, and it's held into its hinge by a screw. However, it pops out quite enthusiastically when you are removing a headlight, and I wasn't paying attention to its original position when I took both the original ones out and dropped the first one, and caught the second. For over ten minutes I struggled with getting this oddly-bent piece of metal in the correct orientation, and which part to insert first, and at which angle, all by feel since I couldn't see anything and my mouth was tired.
Here is a shark riding shotgun.
I had long since given up on the gloves since I needed the tactile feedback, and everything inside a car engine is coated with the most stubborn glue of oil and years of dirt tempered by engine heat. Like during all my high school physics tests, I was reconstructing in the moment what I should have taken the time to memorize and understand ahead of time. Finally, with a hardly-satisfying ping each headlight locked into place. I reinserted the large rubber stoppers I didn't even know existed prior to that night, put the sections of a plastic vent back into place, replaced the panels and tried my best to close the engine without getting the grease over too many things. It took me a day of constant hand washing to get my hands clean again.
Though I did feel like a bad-ass from that hour of entirely manual labor, it took much more time to fix in the night than it would have taken during the day. Or at least with proper lighting.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
