the best laid plans

I have this theory that customer service representatives who work for a company that has a bad product are poised to treat everyone asking for help poorly.

A little backstory: my translink card used to work and now it doesn’t. Not only does it not read on any of the translink terminals on Bart, Muni, etc., it doesn’t scan when an attendant tries it, or even the sales lady at Walgreens. I’ve been told to do many things: purchase a new card, report this one stolen, send it in for testing, drive to the East Bay and get a replacement, the list continues. This morning I decided to call the number on the back of the card and see if I could get to the bottom of this Translink fiasco.

Ring… ring…

Translink curmudgeon (TC):  Hello, my name is Darrel, how can I help you?

Kathy: I’m trying to get a replacement for my card, it hasn’t been working for a few weeks.

TC: Well, how do you know it’s broken?

I explain to the man my translink card woes and the TC intrrupts me.

TC: You can take the card to Bart and try again.

Kathy: I’ve been doing that over the last 2 weeks… is there a way to get a new card to replace this one?

TC: Well, yeah… but it’s gonna cost you.

Kathy: How much?

TC: five dollars!

Kathy: Ok, how do I do that?

TC: You have to mail it to us, we’ll test it and if we decide that it’s actually broken, we’ll let you buy a new one.

(I’ll spare you the rest of the conversation.)

At this point, I’m a little floored. I have my five whole dollars in my hand and I’m ready to pay the man for another card, but he needs to verify that I’m telling him the truth. Ok.

So here I go: I’m sending my translink card complete with a dysfunctional card form that I downloaded, printed, and filled out from translink.com, into the void that is customer service, which is a P.O. box in Concord, CA.

Will I ever see my translink card again? I’m not holding my breath.

Done on my way back from a trip to Oahu.

The other day I was coding in AS3 and just couldn’t get things hooked up correctly! As frustrating as this always is, it’s such a sweet reward when I figure it out (although this doesn’t usually happen at work, I’ll solve the problem later in the evening when I’m at dinner, or going to bed). So, when I’m stuck, this is what I do to at least try and figure it out!



PS: I did finally figure it out, and all is back to normal in coder-land

For the past few days, my house has been living sans internet. We feel naked, we feel detached, we feel… strangely liberated! I believe there are emotional stages that a person goes through when they have no internet in the house. First you realize that your internet is out, you casually head downstairs to where your modem and router live, and start to fiddle. You fiddle for a while and think you know what you’re doing because you’ve declared yourself the household network technician. After the blinking lights stop blinking, you head back upstairs to reap the benefits of your genius whereupon you discover that the internet is still out. This dance goes on for about another 30-45 minutes; back to the modem, fiddle… fiddle… fiddle…, back up stairs, internet is still out.

The next stage is realization. This is where anxiety sets in and you begin to understand that there will be no email, no facebook, no twitter, no flickr, no hulu, no youtube, no net tonight! It’s like being stood up. You head back downstairs for a final fiddle… still no internet.

Stage three (final stage): exploration and acceptance. It’s only 8pm, not time for bed, dinner has long been over, it’s too dark to go outside, so you start to wander around the house looking for things to do. Read a book, take a bath, play a game with your roommates.

After a few days of going through the stages, the first two start to becoming less and less important. Since our internet at the house has been out, I’ve read two books, finished a few projects, my room is immaculately clean, and my laundry never piles up! I do still feel the need to check my email, and I know my roommates and I will have to resolve the cyber void, but for now I’m enjoying the imposed loss of connection… besides – I still have my cell phone!

While perusing through Vogue online (Vogue.com: The Age Issue), I came across an article featuring one of my favorite ladies, Christie Turlington. I believe that strong women will guide the world towards a better way of living. Whether these women are idols admired from a distance, or close friends and family we can turn to at any moment, they build strong bonds together in an effort to deepen our impact on positive change. I am so thankful to have such lovely and amazing people in my life!

Valentine’s day is coming, and in the spirit I dug up some of my old poetry books and selected my favorite love poems. There are certainly some classics in here, enjoy!

Good Night

As a stranger I arrived,
As a stranger again I leave.
May was kind to me
With many bunches of flowers.
The girl spoke of love,
Her mother even of marriage, -
Now the world is bleak,
The path covered by snow.

I cannot choose the time<
Of my departure;
I must find my own way
In this darkness.
With a shadow cast by the moonlight
As my traveling companion
I’ll search for animal tracks
On the white fields.

Why should I linger, waiting
Until I am driven out?
Let stray dogs howl
Outside their master’s house;
Love loves to wander
God has made her so
From one to the other.
Dear love, good night!

I will not disturb you in your dreaming,
It would be a pity to disturb your rest;
You shall not hear my footsteps
Softly, softly shut the door!
On my way out I’ll write
“Good Night” on the gate,
So that you may see
That I have thought of you.

- Good Night in Franz Peter Schubert’s Winter Journey

It’s All I Have To Bring Today

It’s all I have to bring to-day,
This, and my heart beside,
This, and my heart, and all the fields,
And all the meadows wide.
Be sure you count, should I forget,–
Some one the sum could tell,–
This, and my heart, and all the bees
Which in the clover dwell.

- Emily Dickinson

i like my body when it is with your body

i like my body when it is with your body.
It is so quite a new thing. Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body.
i like what it does, i like its hows.
i like to feel the spine of your body and its bones,
and the trembling -firm-smooth ness and which i will again and again and again kiss,
i like kissing this and that of you,
i like,, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz of your electric fur,
and what-is-it comes over parting flesh . . . .

And eyes big Love-crumbs,
and possibly i like the thrill of under me you quite so new

- ee cummings

if i love You
(thickness means
worlds inhabited by roamingly
stern bright faeries

if you love
me) distance is mind carefully
luminous with innumerable gnomes
Of complete dream

if we love each (shyly)
other, what clouds do or Silently
Flowers resembles beauty
less than our breathing

- ee cummings

Your Kiss

Your kiss, “beloved, was to me
As if all flowers of Araby,
And every fresh and fragrant rose
That ever blew, shall blow, or blows
Had all her sweetness taken up
And poured into one perfect cup
For me to drain . . .
Kiss me again!

I carry your heart

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

- ee cummings

Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

- Robert Frost

No man is an island

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

- John Dunne

somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond

somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily enclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain,has such small hands

- ee cummings

Nick and the Candlestick

I am a miner. The light burns blue.
Waxy stalactites
Drip and thicken, tears

The earthen womb

Exudes from its dead boredom.
Black bat airs

Wrap me, raggy shawls,
Cold homicides.
They weld to me like plums.

Old cave of calcium
Icicles, old echoer.
Even the newts are white,

Those holy Joes.
And the fish, the fish—
Christ! They are panes of ice,

A vice of knives,
A piranha
Religion, drinking

Its first communion out of my live toes.
The candle
Gulps and recovers its small altitude,

Its yellows hearten.
O love, how did you get here?
O embryo

Remembering, even in sleep,
Your crossed position.
The blood blooms clean

In you, ruby.
The pain
You wake to is not yours.

Love, love,
I have hung our cave with roses.
With soft rugs—

The last of Victoriana.
Let the stars
Plummet to their dark address,

Let the mercuric
Atoms that cripple drip
Into the terrible well,

You are the one
Solid the spaces lean on, envious.
You are the baby in the barn.

- Sylvia Plath