Today’s church sermon was about being a good friend – a topic I think we’ve all given thought to as we form relationships and meet people over time.  I know, at least, that I’ve struggled with what it means to be a good friend throughout the years and it has been on my mind lately.  When I wrote my Digital Divide: Poems book throughout this past year, I thought much about friendships and the connections we make/maintain online – they became the topic of a number of poems.  Like everything in life, there are both negatives and positives.  You can’t have one without the other – and that’s okay.  It is William Blake, after all, that tells us that “without contraries is no progression.”

This poem Without You from my Digital Divide collection speaks of the good side – of my appreciation for the people in my life and the technology that helps keep us together.

-cct

Without You
by Charity C. Tran

If I did not hold
A place in this digital space
Would I be without you?

If experiences were mapped
By string
Threaded and multiplied
Across this network these networks
Would I find my way
Home to you

I want to believe
That it is not this online space
That keeps us alive
That it is not this digital place
That is the heart of our connection

I do not think that this is true

I would not be here
You would not be here
If we were just
Almost faceless friends
Connected by
A confirmation button

But it would be a lie
To not recognize a pulse
That could be faint and threaded
That could run strong and true
Along this line
That leads me
Connected to you

So while I would rather
See you from across the way
To hear your voice
The magic of your laugh
Unwedded from this web
I am glad to not be
Without you

Pictured: Tulips of Friendship, Washington D.C.: A Gift from the Netherlands.

Where To Add Organ Donor Info on Facebook

I read today that Facebook is encouraging organ donations.  I think this is a great effort and more people should be organ donors.  Ultimately I want this campaign to be successful (and it looks like it is) , but I do have a few concerns:

1. This feature is kind of hidden away.  In fact, I didn’t realize the amount of “Timeline Life Events” I could indicate until I started writing this.  This speaks to a larger problem Facebook has with rolling out new site changes without really communicating to their end-users that it’s happened. See the blog post photo to help with finding this feature’s location.
2. Life Event or Ease of Use? Part of the challenge in organ donations is that it makes us confront our mortality.  I’m not sure Facebook, with its real-time & past timeline focus, changes that mindset. Being an organ donor is kind of like the ultimate bucket list item – one day you’re gonna go and hopefully save some lives when it happens – but does that energy exist as a “life event” when you sign up?  Is it easy for me to just “like” that someone is a donor, but not do it myself or declare that I am one?  Is the campaign’s success hinged on it being a “life event” or that it’s just easier for people to sign up since usually we’re asked to make this decision only every few years with our driver’s license renewals?
3. Other Life Saving But Less Mortality Confronting Campaigns. Why not start with something life-saving that is also giving…while you’re still living?
1. Bone Marrow: Why not start a campaign for more people to register as Bone Marrow Donors?  Bone marrow donors require a genetic match and the more people who register, the more likely it is that a person who is suffering from life-threatening diseases like cancer can find a match.
2. Blood Donations: Why isn’t Giving Blood a life event? According to the Red Cross, “currently only 3 out of every 100 people in America donate blood” and “1 pint of blood can save up to 3 lives.”  And if you donate platelets, one donation can be worth 3 single doses for 3 patients – the equivalent of 12-18 whole blood donations.

I’m guessing you had somewhere to go. I mean, obviously, since you couldn’t wait the few seconds between the train stopping and the train operator opening the doors that you had to pull on the emergency door stop.

Maybe it was a life or death situation.

Maybe those seconds were crucial in a 24 montage way and I should actually be addressing this to “Dear Guy Who Thinks He’s Jack Bauer” and thank you for saving the world.

Erm…somehow, I don’t think so.

You didn’t look very secret agent-y or like you were special ops.  You just looked annoyed and impatient.  And, not that this is an excuse, but you didn’t seem to be scurrying out the door to somewhere special either.

So here’s some advice about safety: The subway doors are not your personal car doors.  The train operator opens them at a specific time for a reason.  I have seen moments where the train stops and then needs to move a few inches before it stops again to open the doors.  So, given that scenario, pulling the emergency stop is probably not the best thing to do unless there’s – oh I don’t know? – an emergency.  And squeezing yourself through the doors is both un-becoming and probably not the smartest move either.

Do you know what also happens when you pull the door stop?  It is not a emergency door that automatically closes after it’s been open.  Someone (in this case: me) has to push the door knob back in.  I did this while I walked in, but just as the train was ready to go, it turns out the other door in the car had also been open by an emergency door stop.  This means,

• You probably passed on your bad behavior to someone else.
• The seconds you saved were seconds an entire subway train lost because we were delayed by the unnecessary use of emergency doors.

This is the anti-thesis of the Pass It On campaign.

So, next time, do the rest of us a favor: Be a little patient.  We all have somewhere to go and let’s get there safely.

-cct, a carless Angeleno

I randomly decided to learn how to make sushi and somehow Star Wars haunted me every step of the way (it must have been the Force…naturally).  This cooking adventure started because the online recipes I found didn’t look too difficult and given endless sushi filling possibilities, it was also a great food know-how to add to my “newly vegetarian” arsenal. My parents also gifted me a spiffy Zojirushi rice cooker years ago that has a “Sushi” button, so I had no fears there either.  However, after years of making spring rolls, I knew how deceptively simple this all seemed to be.  Was the Force really with me?

I should have known the theme when Yoda made an appearance in the chaos.  I had decided initially on teriyaki tofu as a filling, but then thought to add in shiitake mushrooms and then remembered I had just a little bit of spinach left…okay – so perhaps this wasn’t my most well-planned and strategic food adventure.

In the midst of making these fillings, my rice completed cooking.  Turns out my spiffy rice cooker makes sushi rice the same as regular white rice – just that I use medium rice grain.  However, sushi rice requires the addition of rice vinegar, sugar, and salt after it’s been cooked.  My rice cooker’s instructions for sushi rice actually calls for using a fan to help speed up the cooling process while mixing.  Thinking I didn’t have a fan, I initially attempted this process without one – but then remembered I had two: two Star Wars paper fans from Comic-Con 2011.  They were free hand-outs for the Blu-Ray release of the saga.

Here’s the thing about these fans: one is Yoda and the other is Darth Vader. So I stood for a nerdtastic second actually divided between the Dark Side and the Light Side.  I chose Yoda figuring Darth Vader’s cyberengineering didn’t preach to any culinary positives on his part – let alone the assurance that post-Anakin he actually ate real food.

So there I was fanning rice with a Yoda fan, contemplating the fact that despite all this work, I hadn’t gotten to the part of sushi-making that I knew would be a challenge: the actual balance of filling the roll and making a sushi roll.  Talk about needing the Force – not to mention, the whole Do or Do Not There is No Try business.

Round #1

A few possible names: “The Not Taco”, “The Sushi Mini Subway”, “The Almost Accidental Hand Roll”.

Round #2

This second round might have also turned out better except that my knife wasn’t very sharp – making the cutting process not my finest moment.Of course, the closing moral of the story would be: you never know when you need some form of lightsaber.

-cct

On my walk back to the office from lunch, my co-workers and I were stopped by this really large protest.  It even blocked traffic coming from off the freeway – sorry Los Angeles drivers and bus transit riders.  It turned out to be a protest for Justice for Janitors, emphasizing more affordable healthcare and fairer wages.

A protest like this gives reason to pause and more than just for the inconvenience of traffic. A few minutes of protest is nothing compared to where we would be without our janitorial services.  Why do we then pay people who work this difficult job poorly?  Why do we then shrink on their healthcare?  Try going a week in this city without the people who help maintain the offices of government and corporate America.  It would be pretty darn terrible for everyone all around.

The janitorial staff at my building are some of my favorite people.  They don’t seem to judge me when I work late at night (sometimes when I’m singing aloud to whatever I have playing on Pandora) and always say hello and ask me how I am as they go about their jobs after office hours.  There is a janitor that maintains the glass doors and reception area of the building during the morning, who I see almost every day.  When I arrive really early to work, he comments on my change in routine. While I may not be working on projects with this staff and while there might not even be a sharing of our names, I really appreciate their presence in my life and what they do.  This place would fall apart without their efforts, as I’m sure all the other buildings would too.

People who think they run the world because they make business decisions are wrong.  That’s only part of the process.  There are other people who keep this world running too, and one of them is likely the person that pulls in a squeaky-wheeled trash can to sort out your office recyclables.

-cct