Nothing But Words

• Maria's in DC all week, for a fellowship with CSIS http://csis.org/ – she was invited by Michael Green, who served on Bush's NSC #
• The "Toppa" candies are back for exam season in Japan http://bit.ly/cKkzUL (and my post from a couple years ago http://toppa.com/pd6z ) #
• @hakjoon We might come to DC the 1st weekend in March. I'll keep you posted. Maybe I'll bring the snow with me then too. #

• Tiled entryway yesterday – finally had a day over 40 deg., so I could use my wet saw to cut tile without turning myself into an ice cube #
• Watched "Tokyo!" last night, which is 3 short films: "Merde" was awful, but the other two were fun http://www.tokyothemovie.com #
• @zensmile I recommend taking a look at the counter-arguments to Thiessen http://bit.ly/7J3ZJ6 http://bit.ly/xmiYw #
• http://twitpic.com/yvjs4 Kai & I have been playing "Magic" a lot w/ my old cards ('93 -'96; I don't want to sell them) http://bit.ly/11cgU4 #
• Bush era torture cover-ups coming to light despite the Obama DOJs attempts to keep them hidden http://bit.ly/5wC9i8 http://bit.ly/36wGca #
• The whole work and life thing is really getting in the way of my tweeting and blogging these days. #

• @zensmile Congratulations! http://post.ly/Ht1w #
• Today's my first day as manager of the web team (same place, new job). The biggest change is I don't have time to eat or go to the bathroom #
• RT @scottspitzer I'm glad priorities are in order. http://bit.ly/881cmI #
• Odds of catching the flu go from 8:1 to 2:1 if you have kids http://bit.ly/7kzCSw #
• Good (but depressing) infographic on US unemployment rate: http://bit.ly/2tJgJV – scroll right to see recent years #

This past summer, I spent the many hours of my flights between Philly and Prague engrossed in Haruki Murakami’s 1997 novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. It was such a pleasure to read, it’s come very close to supplanting Philip K. Dick’s VALIS as my favorite novel. Murakami’s writing style is nothing like Dick’s, but he shares Dick’s talent for spinning tales that are bizarre, dryly humorous, philosophical journeys of self-discovery.

If you are a fan of the TV show Lost, you will love Murakami. There are several elements of the show that are undoubtedly drawn from Murakami, such as the characters’ frequent trips down wells and other dark holes as catalysts for finding themselves. Lost has already acknowledged its debt to VALIS – we’ll see if Murakami gets his due in Lost’s upcoming final season.

To give you a sense of how many clever analogies Murakami can pack into a small space, here are a couple paragraphs from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. This is the protagonist describing a strange man he unexpectedly finds waiting for him in his house:

He was a short man, dressed in a suit. It was hard to guess his height with him seated, but he couldn’t have been five feet tall. Somewhere between forty-five and fifty years old, he looked like a chubby little frog with a bald head – a definite A in May Kasahara’s classification system [his friend May made wigs for bald men]. He did have a few clumps of hair clinging to his scalp over his ears, but their oddly shaped black presence made the bare area stand out all the more. He had a large nose, which may have been somewhat blocked, judging from the way it expanded and contracted like a bellows with each noisy breath he took. Atop that nose sat a pair of thick-looking wire-rim glasses. He had a way of pronouncing certain words so that his upper lip would curl, revealing a mouth full of crooked, tobacco-stained teeth. He was, without question, one of the ugliest human beings I had ever encountered. And not just physically ugly: there was a certain clammy weirdness about him that I could not put into words – the sort of feeling you get when your hand brushes against some big, strange bug in the darkness. He looked less like an actual human being than like something from a long-forgotten nightmare.

…

The man had on a brown suit, white shirt, and red tie, all of the same degree of cheapness, and all worn out to the same degree. The color of the suit was reminiscent of an amateur paint job on an old jalopy. The deep wrinkles in the pants and jacket looked as permanent as valleys in in an aerial photograph. The white shirt had taken on a yellow tinge, and one button on the chest was ready to fall off. It also looked one or two sizes too small, with its top button open and the collar crooked. The tie, with its strange pattern of ill-formed ectoplasm, looked as if it had been left in place since the days of the Osmond Brothers. Anyone looking at him would have seen immediately that this was a man who paid absolutely no attention to the phenomenon of clothing. He wore what he wore strictly because he had no choice but to put something on when dealing with other people, as if he were hostile to the idea of wearing clothes at all. He might have been planning to wear these things the same way every day until they fell apart – like a highland farmer driving his donkey from morning to night until he kills it.

Credit is also due to Jay Rubin for an impressive translation of Murakami’s Japanese. In preparing to write this post, I learned that he was forced to abridge his translation, due to a word limit imposed by the American publisher (I guess they think Americans are afraid of large books). An Amazon reviewer who read the unabridged Russian version says that 15%-20% of the book has been cut from the English translation, with entire chapters missing. I’m dying to know what I missed!

• "Fear is always the enabling force of authoritarianism" http://bit.ly/4FaPCN http://bit.ly/72kCn4 #
• Nice article on Fukagawa, one of my favorite Tokyo neighborhoods: http://bit.ly/6N6v6P – almost as good as mine http://toppa.com/2csq #

Check out the price tag – $408, 692 – that’s for one men’s room and one women’s room

Check out the price tag – $408, 692 – that’s for one men’s room and one women’s room22-Dec-2009 20:19SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.025 sec, ISO 200

The sign pictured here went up last month at 69th St Station. Check out the price tag: $408,692 to remodel the men’s room and the women’s room. My nice large house in a good neighborhood isn’t worth that kind of money. The station’s men’s room is a modest size – two toilets, two urinals, two sinks. Presumably the women’s room is similar, so we’re not talking about large facilities. And the sign says “refurbishing and renewal of existing public restrooms,” which doesn’t make it sound like major demolition or expansion is involved.

Usually when you see a sign like this for a public project, its for something like a bridge, and most of us don’t have the kind of experience needed to readily understand all the expenses involved. But most homeowners can relate to the cost of remodeling a bathroom. So I’ve been trying to imagine where all that money is going. Trying to be generous and fair, here’s my best guess at what the cost should be:

1. Let’s start with the price of remodeling a non-luxury residential bathroom. About.com puts the average remodel price at $16,000 to $17,500. Let’s round that up to $20,000.
2. Double that for 2 bathrooms: $40,000.
3. These are public restrooms that require heavy duty fixtures. In the old men’s room, the sinks, toilets, and urinals were stainless steel. The toilets were designed without seats (as the designers assumed – probably correctly – that some jerk would just tear them off) and the mirrors were reflective metal instead of glass. The sinks are probably designed to handle drunken idiots dancing on the counters. There’s also two of every fixture in each bathroom (two sinks, etc., but minus the showers and tubs in a typical residential bathroom). So given the need for heavy duty fixtures and two of each kind, let’s double the cost again: $80,000.
4. Now let’s add in the premium for union labor and the cost of compliance with regulations such as the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act). That’s harder to guess at, but I think doubling the cost again is generous: $160,000.

So that doesn’t even get us halfway to the actual price being paid with public funds. What is the rest for?

UPDATE: The SEPTA Watch Blog has picked up this post, and has reached out to SEPTA for more information.

UPDATE 2: septawatch.com got an answer: it turns out the cost is for renovating 4 bathrooms, not just the 2 implied by the sign. So if you take my generous $160K ballpark estimate and double it again (for going from 2 to 4 bathrooms), that’s $320K. That’s still almost $100K shy of the actual $408K cost, but if you read the septawatch.com post, it sounds like they’re actually doing more than just “refurbishing.”

Maria owes her sanity to Prague’s great playgrounds. She was in Prague with the boys for a month before I arrived, and, for the most part, the city’s multitude of historical attractions and architectural wonders are not especially interesting to young boys. So almost every day she needed a place to take them for a while so they could run around and not go stir crazy in the apartment. The KidsInPrague.com guide to Prague’s playgrounds has a wealth of information, and Maria visited at least half the parks listed there.

By the time I arrived, the boys had picked their favorite spots, so I joined them on repeat visits to the best parks Prague has to offer, at least according to them .

Letna Park

This was the only park we visited that’s not mentioned in the KidsInPrague.com guide. Its a beautiful place, with more to offer than just a playground:

Part of Letna was designed by the one of Prague’s most famous head gardeners Frantisek Thomayer, around a Neo-Renaissance chateau that today houses a popular in- and outdoor restaurant where its advisable to get a cold beer on a day such as this one. You’ll also feel just as if you were entering the past when walking through the park’s western entrance where you will notice a gorgeous gem of a building, the Hanavsky Pavilion, a cast-iron structure built in 1891 in Neo-Baroque style for the Jubilee World Fair. It was later taken apart and reassembled at its present location…

But the park’s most recognizable feature is the giant metronome, located on the site of a former massive statue to Stalin, which has also become a popular skateboarding spot.

A giant metronome sculpture at the site of an old Stalin statue in Letna Park09-Jul-2009 18:39SONY DSC-W55, 7.1, 6.3mm, 0.0010 sec, ISO 100

Kai enjoying the zip line at Letna Park09-Jul-2009 19:07SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.0020 sec, ISO 100

A hippo for kids to crawl through, at Letna Park09-Jul-2009 18:58SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.0025 sec, ISO 100

Areal Gutova

Without a doubt, this was the best playground we visited. It has a large play area with a variety of contraptions for moving and manipulating water, a racing area for electric cars, a skateboarding park, sand volleyball courts, a playground, and a big rock climbing wall.

KidsInPrague.com – more information and directions.

Eidan enjoying the Areal Gutova playground03-Aug-2009 00:07SONY DSC-W55, 3.5, 9.4mm, 0.01666666 sec, ISO 100	The rock climbing wall at Areal Gutova20-Jul-2009 21:23SONY DSC-W55, 5.2, 18.9mm, 0.003125 sec, ISO 100	Mike with the boys at the Areal Gutova playground02-Aug-2009 23:53SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.0050 sec, ISO 100
Video: the waterworks at Areal Gutova playground21-Jul-2009 01:00	Video: more waterworks at the Areal Gutova playground21-Jul-2009 01:21	Video: Eidan and Kai racing electric cars at the Areal Gutova playground21-Jul-2009 00:47

Charles Bridge Playground

This little playground is located at the foot of the Charles Bridge, on the Mala Strana side. It doesn’t offer anything especially spectacular, but it’s location is what makes it special – it’s a oasis for children near the heart of Prague’s tourist center. So if you’re just in Prague for a short time and don’t have time for playground hunting, it’s easy to find.

KidsInPrague.com – more information and directions.

The Charles Bridge04-Aug-2009 18:56SONY DSC-W55, 11.0, 14.3mm, 0.01 sec, ISO 100	Playground at the foot of the Charles Bridge04-Aug-2009 18:40SONY DSC-W55, 7.1, 6.3mm, 0.0125 sec, ISO 100	Eidan at the Charles Bridge Park04-Aug-2009 18:43SONY DSC-W55, 4.5, 14.3mm, 0.003125 sec, ISO 100
Kai at the Charles Bridge Park06-Jul-2009 22:56SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.0080 sec, ISO 100	Eidan at the Charles Bridge Park in Prague04-Aug-2009 18:36SONY DSC-W55, 7.1, 6.3mm, 0.0125 sec, ISO 100

Vysehrad Castle

I already wrote about Vysehrad Castle – here are some more pictures of its great playground. Sorry the kids kept getting in the shots

KidsInPrague.com – more information and directions.

Eidan at the Vysehrad playground12-Jul-2009 18:53SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.0025 sec, ISO 100	Eidan at the Vysehrad playground12-Jul-2009 18:43SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.0025 sec, ISO 100	Kai at the Vysehrad playground12-Jul-2009 18:42SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.00625 sec, ISO 100
Kai at Vysehrad12-Jul-2009 19:09SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.0050 sec, ISO 100	The boys at the Vysehrad playground12-Jul-2009 18:44SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.01 sec, ISO 640	Eidan at the Vysehrad Castle playground12-Jul-2009 18:40SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.0025 sec, ISO 100

Hlavni Nadrazi playground and Folimanka playground

Hlavni Nadrazi playground is located right next to Prague’s main train station. I distinctly remember desperately trying to not fall asleep on its warm grass, on the sunny afternoon I arrived in Prague after about 20 hours of air and train travel. Like the Charles Bridge playground, its in a convenient location and appeared to be popular with tourists and locals.

Folimanka is not far from Vysehrad. It’s in a working class neighborhood, with more wide open space for running around than most of Prague’s parks.

Hlavni Nadrazi page at KidsInPrague.com – more information and directions

Folimanka page at KidsInPrague.com – more information and directions

The boys at the Folimanka playground07-Aug-2009 22:47SONY DSC-W55, 7.1, 6.3mm, 0.0080 sec, ISO 100	The boys at the Folimanka playground07-Aug-2009 22:53SONY DSC-W55, 7.1, 6.3mm, 0.00625 sec, ISO 100
Kai at the Hlavni Nadrazi playground19-Jul-2009 18:47SONY DSC-W55, 5.2, 18.9mm, 0.0020 sec, ISO 100	Eidan at the Hlavni Nadrazi playground19-Jul-2009 18:46SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.0015625 sec, ISO 100

• 3 1/2 days in Newport, 1 million relatives visited, 2 million presents for the boys, now all crammed in the car, and we're on the road home #
• This will sound boring, but it's actually fascinating: the connections between Japanese culture and rice http://bit.ly/5LKBHK #
• @apgwoz Let me know if you want any tips for your Tokyo trip. We're going again in June, so we'll miss you by a couple months. #
• Someone is saying nice things about me http://bit.ly/7rJ4Qx #