Clearly, Descartes never had SOFA status.

I hate it when I don’t exist. It really throws your day off.

Imagine me at the “Customer Service” desk at the phone company . . . .

“While I’m here I’d like to update the mailing address on file for this account. I’m not sure why it was never done when I started service, but the address the bills are being sent to was my husband’s from when he was here 5 years ago.”

“Maybe you could ask your husband to come in and change that. Perhaps if he has time after work or during lunch.”

“Well, that is not possible since he is in Afghanistan. All I want is to be able to change the mailing address to the correct one so that I can get the bills more than a day or two before they are due.”

“You will need to provide a power of attorney. We cannot make any changes.”

“I have one, but I really didn’t think I needed it just to get you to send my bills to the correct address.”

“I’m sorry, but you will need to bring that in before we can help you.”

This was just to change my address with the phone service. I was not asking for top secret documents. I was not trying to take out large loans in someone else’s name. Just change an address. You take these sorts of privileges for granted, being able to update accounts on a whim and all.

To do anything while living on Okinawa as a spouse, you must have a power of attorney. You simply do not exist without it. Unless, of course, you get caught shoplifting at the PX – then you exist and will face some sort of punishment (and your active duty spouse will be held responsible for the value of the items you’ve stolen), but other than crime, you pretty much legally cease to be. It is kind of a weird thing.

“Cogito, ergo sum – but only if you have a power of attorney to prove it.”

Yes? No? Maybe?

For those not in the know, I am too cheap to pay for tv programming. I just don’t love it enough to buy it. If it comes over the air for free, then I might watch it, otherwise, my life will go on.

When we packed up our lives and uprooted across the Pacific we didn’t bring our rabbit ears with us. Now we have AFN – that’s American Forces Network to you non-DOD types. And by DOD I mean Department of Defense. Sure, the programming sometimes leaves much to be desired, but it is free and has no regular commercials – just AFN-made fillers consisting of DOD news blips, goofy local installation PSAs, national PSAs, and state/national trivia and info. My brother describes it as propaganda programing, but it is no worse than the level of propaganda and institutionalising that kids get from a public education, or from regular cable tv – only different. Oddly enough, it is kind of a culture shock to go visit some friends and see their regular piped-in US commercial cable programing. No wonder we tend to be such mindless consumers.

Recently, AFN began airing a series of commercials/PSAs about having no tolerance for sexual harassment in the work place. They must have made at least a dozen different ads about this. Sexual harassment will not be tolerated!! Ok. If you say so. I’m not going to argue that it should be. But, then they started airing this little ad about how to properly address letters and packages. It is set in a 1930s/50s genre (it is a bit of a mishmash) diner. The idea is that it would be based on a double-entendre-spouting private eye and a diner waitress. The acting is up to the usual par. I don’t have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is the PI character and the waitress’s response, especially in light of the previous commercial (no sexual harassment). Every word that comes out of his mouth is extremely harassing, belittling, and sexual (on one side of the entendre). She just acts like it is cute.

They have a little exchange that goes something like this:

“You got a problem?” he starts out, I forget the lead-in, something about pouring coffee.

She replies, very pouty and petulant. “Yeah I got a problem. I got a problem with my package.”

The PI looks her up and down and replies, lasciviously, “Looks alright to me.”

WTF?! Am I the only one who noticed this? Two commercials, back to back – one says “Zero tolerance for harassment!” then in the 30-second segment immediately following, every word has sexual and demeaning implications – and that’s ok?! Harassment is bad at work, but is ok if it is cutsey and tongue-in-cheek?

Really, who wrote that and who approved it? And what scheduling whiz was asleep at the switchboard when they were played back to back? Or played at all. Maybe they should just stick to more straight-forward messages like “Don’t shake your baby,” “Eat breakfast,” “Don’t drink and drive,” “Your wife is not a terrorist so don’t hit her.” And lets not forget everyone’s favorite, “OPSEC.”

Decorating ideas

Sometimes you see some of the most unexpected things here. Things you would see in the States and think, “OMG, didn’t anyone ever tell you that was kind of a no-no?”

I don’t even know where to take this. I mean, everyone loves a plush jolly Jamaican Rastafarian, right? You’ve got the whole set at home, right? I bet they have tea parties with Hello Kitty.

And right next to the jolly Rastas was this – a fake hemp leaf garland for decorating, well, whatever you decorate with a fake pot garland. Apparently, whoever does the decorating for the store thought it would be fetching on a plastic naked girl. Note the Lilo and Stich merchandise in the background.

And, once you have your jolly Rastas set and decorated with your garland, you can coordinate your bed linens. I’m not really in the market for more bedding, so I didn’t check the price, but it does come in black and green as well.

I don’t think this post requires any more words from me. The pics are enough.

I ♥ Diagrams

Just a couple of t-shirts – 3 out of hundreds I see everyday.

For some reason that makes me think of Bon Jovi songs.

Diagrams are a girl’s best friend.

Life During Wartime

I’ve been more than a little busy lately. For those left behind, deployments are both easy and hard. But not really in the ways I expected. I see or hear about these spouses who pretty much hole-up in their homes and wait it out. Then they lament that their life has no meaning and they are so depressed and they don’t know how they are going to make it through the remaining months. Well, duh. Get out of the house and make a life for yourself.

This is my first experience with this. When my husband got orders to Afghanistan, lots of family and friends asked me (some times a bit hopefully) “Are you going to come home?” No. I am home. Home just now happens to be in Okinawa, Japan. I only get 3 or so years here, why would I waste 7+ months of that back in the States? Then Mother’s Day rolled around and it was time to say goodbye. Ostensibly, it would only be for 6 or 7 months, but it was somewhat up to the discretion of the Marine Corps whether that time would be extended. So, it was kind of a “See you when I see you,” good bye. No specific return date to mark on the calendar, you just hope for the future.

So, he left on Mother’s Day (thank you USMC). He would be gone on Father’s Day. On his birthday. On our anniversary. On our daughter’s birthday. He’ll be gone for Thanksgiving. He’ll be gone for my birthday. He is supposed to be back before Christmas. But that date has already been moved back once so, I’ll believe it when I see it.

The time started out a little slow. I remember driving back from Foster, after having said my goodbye, daughter sound asleep in her car seat because we had been up since 2AM, the sun was coming up, casting everything in pale pink and gold. I remember vividly as I was driving up and over the bridge at the bypass, how suddenly huge this tiny little island felt. It was just me. I was all alone. It was a little awe-inspiring to be that closed-off. Isolated.

I like being alone, but this was different. I hardly knew a soul on this island, certainly none I would call friend. We had only been here a few months. I could not read the signs along the road, nor books, magazines, newspapers. I could not speak to people I met and be understood, nor understand them. The exception to that (English) on the bases is simply not enough. I always took reading signs and labels, headlines and ads for granted. As I found out the night of the deployment, I did not even know how to buy gas off-base. I will never take literacy for granted again.

It seems that this moment of isolation is a point of divergence. Those who can see beyond it, they overcome the despair, the vastness, and carry on with their lives. Those who can only see that moment, never leave it and become trapped in it. I don’t know if this happens for those stationed in the US or if it is part of the experience of being stationed over seas. But, of course, I saw beyond that moment and those feelings, I pulled myself out of that and now the weeks fly by. I had to. There was no other sane, rational choice.

There are times when I see happy families together and it really irritates me. I have to remind myself that they had probably been in my shoes only recently and could be again at any time. That I should be happy for them. Those moments together become all the more precious. Perhaps, in a few months we will trade places and it will be she who will have to remind herself to be happy for me. Maybe it was that mom who only months ago had her child crumple down, as mine did, on the floor of the Jusco market and cry, “I want Daddy!” I’m sorry, Love, but Daddy isn’t here. It is a lesson about life in the military and there is no easy way to learn it, only the hard way. For now, she just has surrogate daddies that toss her in the air, tickle her, carry her when she is tired. For that, I am grateful beyond words. But, I want Daddy, too.

For now, the days are long and the nights are short and there is no guarantee of when that will change. We just have to hope that it will. That the time will come again when I can roll over, just before he starts to snore, and quietly say, “I am so glad we took this crazy adventure together. Thanks for putting up with me everyday.”

Pleo=Pu-re-o=プレオ

I love my car. It is so Japanese. I don’t mean simply that it was made by a Japanese manufacturer, which it was, but I mean also that it is small and compact and a little quirky. It is a cheap minicar (don’t say the r, it is just there for looks). It has a .66L, 4-cyl engine. It is an automatic but also has a push-button shift option and a teeny, tiny supercharger under the hood. I don’t know what the HP is, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it doesn’t crack the triple digits. I’ve seen an STi version driving around and I bet that one cracks the triple digits, which is a slightly terrifying thought. There is a big hole in the middle of the front dash, showing a lot of wiring. I have the wrong radio in there. It’s just a plain old, American-style AM/FM/CD player. The hole will fit a touch screen, hi-def, car tv/radio that I don’t have. Aside from the fact that I never lock my doors and sometimes just leave the key under the mat or in the glove compartment, if someone really wanted to steal my car, they could just get a friend or two to help them pick it up and then run off with it. But this is not America, this is Okinawa.

I tried to find cars to compare it with that are also available in the US, but most cars available in the US are not all that popular here in Okinawa. Up at the top I managed to find a Civic, which are everywhere in the US, but not so much here. The most popular Honda here is the Japanese version of the Fit, which is a little different from the US version and I like it a lot more. I did manage to find a Mini though. Who parked like a yahoo. I had to re-park and scoot over closer to him b/c it was throwing off the pictures, like I didn’t want his cooties or something.

I love my car though. It is about the same size as a Mini, maybe just a tad smaller, end to end, but definitely bigger on the inside. The white plate on the Mini indicates that it has at least a 1L engine. You’ve already heard about mine.

Note the Mini’s front bumper just peeking out.

Quick commercial. Look how cute and versatile it is! And yellow.

I should do this:

Good Eye

Ok, those of you who have perfect vision, count yourselves privileged to never have to deal with some special circumstances. Apparently, I have a talent for special circumstances (see the bat post). I do not have the terrible vision my husband had before he had Lasik done, but it is bad enough to be an impediment.

So let’s do some background and tell the story.

I have been wearing the same pair of glasses (same frames, same lenses, same prescription) since before I met my last ex. I’ve been married for just over 4 years now. It has been a while since I got a new set. They sit on my head crooked and are always sliding down my nose. This leads to that super geeky move where you put your finger on the spot of the frame that goes over your nose and gently push up. I just need a bit of tape. I also can’t see so well out of them. Normally, this is not an issue because I wear a more current prescription of contacts and I wear the contacts all the time. The FDA approved extended wear variety. I could leave them in for a month and then just take them out and throw them away. Brilliant.

So, I ran out of contacts and went to get some new ones. But these aren’t the same anymore. There is a new maker of the extended wear variety and I can’t keep them in my eyes. I tried really hard. I was determined. This was going to work.

If I was still living back in the US this wouldn’t be so much of a problem, but here I need my contacts because I can’t see well enough to drive in my glasses. Driving in America is simple. It is lame. It is uncomplicated. Here, aside from all the construction, the signs, and the lights, there are way too many pedestrians, cyclists, cabbies, crazy bus drivers, motorcyles/scooters, and all manner of in-between vehicles. They all have the right of way. I need to be able to see.

These contacts were driving me crazy. I got them in my eyes and got my daughter to school and went straight to the eye doc’s office to wait until they opened. About a minute after I got there I was so fed up with these deceptively tiny objects of agonising torture that I took them out. No hand washing, no solution, nothing. I had had enough. I would get a new pair of lenses before I left.

Or, at least that is what I thought.

Turns out, all of these little “concessionaire” shops on Kadena have been moved to the new BX, the new “Kadena Shopping Center.” Only I didn’t know that at the time. I was sitting in my car doing a little reading when I look over and notice these huge banners. I mean, I had noticed their existence when I first arrived, but I thought they had the usual message along the lines of “Spend your money with AAFES!” or “Be patriotic and support your base retail outlets with your Military Star credit card! Apply today!” or something useless along those lines. Turns out I was wrong. The optical shop has moved. I can’t see.

Pick up the phone. “Hey Danielle, it’s Jen.”

“Hey!”

“I have a question. Is the Kadena Shopping Center the same thing as the BX? I’m sitting out front of what used to the the Concession Mall and really need a new pair of contacts. I took the old ones out as soon as I got here. The giant signs here say that everything has moved, but they don’t specify the optical place, even though they specify pretty much everything else. Everything looks pretty locked up though.”

“Haha, oh-no! Yeah, it has all been moved over there into one building. The little concession shops are downstairs, the exchange stuff is upstairs. Are you going to make it ok?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. It’s not far, but I can’t go wandering around and I can’t read signs. I just need to know that is where I need to go.”

main road on Kadena

I mean, I can see what is a car and what is moving, but not a whole lot of details. If my prescription had been much worse, I would have just walked over there. It’s not that far. Traffic on the bases is nothing like driving off of the bases. Nobody walks, nobody cylces, the cab drivers are sane, ditto for the busses, motorcycles don’t ride between the lanes of traffic. It is just like boring American driving. Turn the key, put it in drive.

I make it to the BX and can see well enough to get inside. The last obstacle now is that I can’t read the store signs until I walk right up to them and look and I had forgotten that I wouldn’t be able to see the signs and had forgotten to ask Danielle about the layout. This place was much bigger than I was expecting. So, now I have to walk up and down the hallways and stand under each store’s entryway and read each sign individually. I just look like a crazy person.

But I look like that most days, so at least life is back to normal.

Little Things

Some of the best things about life in Okinawa are the very little things.

Sometimes it is the funny ways in which cultural traditions carry over into modern life. For example, when you are driving in the crazy traffic, and someone wants to pull out in front of you, they hold their hand up a little and bow behind the steering wheel. Sometimes they bow 2 or 3 times. Depends on how much they plan to offend you.

In places like coffee houses, in the baskets of sugar packets on the milk/sugar/flavorings table, all the little sugar packets are all lined-up perfectly in neat, orderly rows.

In public restrooms the ends of the TP are almost always folded under to create a tidy little triangle. Convenience store bathrooms never smell like urine and vomit. Many are nicer than the one in my apartment. More on bathrooms in a later post.

All children here are adored by everyone. Even the urchin children. Most of the Japanese and Okinawan children are never urchins though. Once in a very long while I will see or hear one of them having a little tantrum and I get a perversely warm and fuzzy feeling inside (ah ha! their kids really do have tantrums! just like real kids.)

In the mornings, after I drop my daughter off at school, I always pass by the back of the local Toyota dealership where the service garage is. The mechanics are always out infront of the service bays in their matching white-ish jumpsuits doing their morning stretches and exercises, all as a group, all in unison.

High school children work to clean the grounds of their schools. They pick up the trash and sweep the sidewalks- even the public ones alongside the school. I’ve seen tv shows where they clean the insides of the school buildings, too. Not always the regular day-to-day janitorial cleaning (like bathrooms or trashcans) but special cleaning projects like old art classrooms or storage areas.

In the hottest part of the day, outdoor workers will find a spot of shade and lay down after lunch for a quick whatever the Japanese or Okinawan word for siesta is. Sometimes, they doze off in their cars in a shady parking spot.

So, the other day I was really tired. I didn’t have time to go home for a nap since I had to pick my daughter up from school in about an hour. But I was certainly much too tired to keep working on homework in the library. The parking lot for the building where my daughter’s school is located is under the building. Not under ground, just under the first floor of the building. Nice and shady, out of the sun. Sounds like a great place for a nap in the car. I pull up, roll all the windows down all the way, lay my seat back, and blissfully drift off to sleep with a balmy island breeze drifting through the car. It was so peaceful. I did it again the next day.

I have slept in my car in the US, but it was always kind of with one eye open to see who is nearby. The sound of a leaf blowing by would startle me awake. It was always out of sheer and utter exhaustion and with no other reasonable alternatives. But here, I slept with both eyes closed. The sound of cars driving by, of a dog barking in the distance, of leaves in the breeze, all in the background. I even managed to dream a little bit.

Humidity

It is really humid here. Really, really humid. Bear in mind that this is coming from someone who lived in central Florida for 15 +/- years. Most days it is only a little more humid than your average Florida day. But then there are the special days. We have been having a string of special days lately.

When I arrived at the library yesterday morning at opening time (I should have brought my camera, but who knew the library would be such a photo op?) the condensation on the doors was puddling on the ground at the base of the doors. Those little bugs at night that are attracted to lights had flown up against the glass all night long and had drowned in the condensation suspended on the glass. Some had slid down the glass and were collecting in the puddle. Actually, a lot had. It was getting to be more of a paste. Eeew.

It has been really humid here.

This is our local satellite image —>

This is why it is so humid here these past few days.

So, for those who are not geography buffs, let me give you a little orientation to what you are seeing. The big angry swirly thing in the middle is a typhoon (Super Typhoon Melor – when these storms in the Pacific reach category 4 or 5 status they get a cape and super powers. Must have a better union than the Atlantic storms.). In the general 11 o’clock position there are a couple of little dots and slashes. That is where I live. Over to the side, around the 9 o’clock position, is Taiwan and the northern islands of the Philippines. The orange, yellow, and blue cluster sitting on top of those islands is Tropical Storm Parma that just won’t go away. It has been sitting there dumping rain on them for several days. I think it is forecast to do so until the storm disappears. Not good for them.

But if this were back in the US, the weather people and the news in general would be having a field day. They would be setting up “on the scene” broadcasting centers on beaches and giving you non-stop sensationalizing coverage of what horrors might happen. They’d be showing you footage of previous destructive storms. They’d be video taping the local hardware stores and documenting preparation of homeowners. They’d be telling you, “Go buy bread and water and batteries before it is all too late!!!!! Aaaahhhhh! We’re all going to die or suffer agonising financial injury!!! Aaaaghhh!!” It is supposed to just brush by us, but the weather people would still be covering it like it was impending doom.

Here, people just walk to work like usual. Carry their umbrellas with them, as usual. I turned on some local tv channels and they are still showing the same programs as usual. There is not even an “on location” little PIP in the bottom or split screen of any kind.

They are advising you not to go snorkeling or surfing today (despite the waves) because you will probably never come back. But other than that, it is life as usual. A nice, calm day with a raging storm on the horizon.

Just my luck

Evenings here have finally started to cool off. Don’t get any ideas about breaking out the sweaters – it is a long way from that point. You’re still going to break a sweat if you do more than 10 or 15 minutes of exertion. It just feels less awful outside while you’re doing whatever it is you’re doing. So I decided to go for a really long walk and enjoy the breeze and see what there is to see outside the gate.

One of the things you see here in the evening all over the island are bats. Big brown furry fruit bats. Some people are afraid of them, some claim to have been attacked. They eat fruit, not people (that would be a sight) and you are not a fruit. Well, maybe you are, but not fruit bat fruit.

This is a lot of what they eat —> 

It is kind of funny to see big tough-guy marines afraid of bats. These are bigger than ones I had grown accustomed to seeing in Florida, but they are a long way off from terrifying. Sometimes my 3 year old runs around flapping her arms or hands saying that she is a butterfly. Just as often, she’s a bat.

They poo on my car (a lot) and chatter and carry on most of the night which keeps me up, but I don’t generally bear them any ill will. I don’t know where they hang out all day long, but they manage to be hanging out in just about every tree as the sun sets.

So this brings me to my walk.

I’m walking along, having a nice long stroll, not quite sweating yet, pushing the stroller along a tree-lined sidewalk. Suddenly, the inside of my shoe is slimy and wet. What the hell. I stop and look at the bottom of my foot. Somehow, in my special, magical way, I managed to get bat poo inside my shoe. I don’t mean on the edge or by the toes. I mean well under the heel close to the arch of my foot. How the hell did I manage that. Normal people with normal luck just step in unexpected poo. You know, so that it just gets on the outside of their shoe. Not me. Apparently I have some hidden talents.

I wonder if they have to leave the tree to poo, or if they can just hang there, upside down and all, and do it? My knowledge of bat anatomy and function is, apparently, just not up to snuff.