Cash or Card: travel finances & documents

One of the major necessities of travel is money management. As it turns out, this can be quite tricky: I was assured by various sources that nearly everyone in China prefers online payments through a thing called wiipay… that no one wants cash.  This turned out not to be quite true. 

Our hotel only accepted, according to their site, payment by a specific card which is very difficult to set up here in the US if you don’t live in California or New York. We were lucky that they did accept Discover as the same, as the companies are linked. But many restaurants and merchants only wanted cash.

The credit/debit card we used automatically gave us the current conversion rate, charged no additional cash advance fees, and also refunded the atm fees. You can find out what your card offers in this vein when you contact your card issuer to let them know you are traveling out of the country–important to do if you don’t want to suddenly find they’ve stopped your card because you are no longer in Omaha where they know you live. You might have to activate specific international usage on your card.

The thing to watch out for is that there is a daily limit on withdrawals, and whatever card you may be using, find out before you go if your card has such a restriction, and carry a back-up card if you can. And never store them in the same place. I wore a lightweight money belt and also carried a purse, dividing the goods between them, never left cash or cards in the hotel. 

Another note of mistaken advice was regarding passports. What we were advised was to make copies of the passport’s main page and the visa page, and carry that, leaving the passports in the hotel safe.  But in China, at least, you must carry the passport with you at all times. You need it to purchase tickets, for instance, for the major sites if you are a senior, and need to prove it. That got me into the zoo for free, and discounts at a couple of the others. I kept mine in the money belt.

In other countries, hotels may require that you leave it with them until you check out. This is sometimes inconvenient–there was a time I checked out of the hotel forgetting to collect it, and had to go back for it. 

Some countries also require you to carry documentation of your current  immunizations, at least when entering the country. Related to this, if you carry prescribed meds, you should keep them in their original, unaltered, labeled containers. China didn’t actually care about that, but Canada does, so tells me my friend in Niagara, Ontario who works with Canada Immigration. 

SUMMER THUNDER

Heat comes
after the cool of morning
down out of a clear blue sky
that reaches upwards
towards
forever.

Land bakes under
oven-air that parches
grass and flower,
sears the soul
and wearies hearts and limbs.

Over the mountains
building towering
darkening clouds confound
the sunbright heat
lift winds
fling lightning bolts
and grumble
and deluge at last
to bludgeon flowers
into the sudden mud
but the grass
likes it.

Passing,
on their own wind driven,
clouds sail on
towards the next horizon
and clear bright heat
returns
takes back the wet
and the relief
until it chooses to relent
declining in the sky
descending
behind the mountains
where the clouds began.

2011

Recipe File: Harvest Soups

Summer harvest soup: veg broth, yellow and zucchini squashes, corn, onion, spiral-cut butternut squash, and some beans been in the freezer too long, and at the end, some bok choi… goodly splash of Yoshida sauce… And added some firm tofu, too, and a dash of salt–not enough to overwhelm the fresh flavor of the veggies, just enough to ‘warm’ the flavor.

A key thing is not to over-cook the soft vegies. If I’ve misunderestimated the timing, I will take out the soft stuff so it doesn’t go mushy, and add it back in at serving time.

Sometimes I will toss in some frozen shu-mai, or pot-stickers and some ginger powder for a more asian flavor, and some bok choi gives it a flash of green, and tastes pretty good, too–a little more interesting than ordinary green cabbage which I might add if I had any today. Except I do have the bok-choi. (It was pretty wilty a couple of days home from the store, so last night I put it in a pot of cold water and this morning it appears much encouraged.) 

When I do an autumn harvest soup, when the days are chilly, I’ll add a can of Progresso’s butternut squash soup and spice it up with some cinnamon and nutmeg and a bit of real maple syrup instead of the teriyaki sauce. It might also have some chunks of yellow sweet potato, but that cooks faster than you might think and can get mushy if added too early.

note: vegetable broth is just as tasty as chicken, and so much better for the chicken.

A winter harvest soup might begin with a cream of something base, and have chunks of root vegetables and hard yellow squash, and corn. I like the Yukon Gold potatoes, but the yellow sweet ones are good, too. 

Into any of these, if I’m in the mood, I will drop in an egg and let it poach gently, or whip up the egg with a bit of water to help break it up, and dribble it in for an egg-drop effect. 

This works very well for one of my most favorite soups: Greek Egg and Lemon soup: 

The quick way is to use a can of chicken/rice soup, but for vegetarian, you can always start with some veg broth and some pre-cooked rice, (like leftover rice from a Chinese dinner, or a pouch of that 90-second microwave rice).

To the basic can of soup, squeeze in the juice of a whole lemon, then, when the soup boils, slowly drop in the whipped egg, while stirring. Season with salt and whatever else you like, to taste. (For me, I love the Campbell’s chicken/rice base, but it has too much refined white rice for a diabetic, and it is cooked to delicious softness that is such a nice comfort food, but turns to sugar in the blood way too fast.)   (And, of course, there are the chickens to consider.)

California Summer

Summer heat–
sweet relief
in darkened hall
beneath the fan,
the rumbling wind,
the storm
that blew the cool
all through the house…
I’d catch a chill and die,
they claimed.

Disbelieving,
driven out to play,
I’d wait
another chance…

Summer feet–
freed from socks and keds
not always
sufficiently aware
of bees among the clovers
growing green in golden lawn…
Dancing barefoot over
dark macadam streets
all afternoon
but in the dusk
relishing
warm sidewalks
against my soles
before I had to go to bed
the sky still blue…

Summer treat–
popsicles
sweet and cold,
bright and sticky–
one stick, or two
if pleading good behavior
won the prize
and we didn’t have to share…
Eagerly
we waited
dimes in hand,
for merry music dancing
on the summer evening air…


2006

Journal: Home Garden Report

I harvested all the ripe tomatoes today and had them with my breakfast. Cherry tomatoes… 3!  And there are a couple of bell peppers growing nicely, which are green now, but will, I think, go red later on. The squash flower on prolifically, but I am not seeing much in the way of actually squash fruits. But there are  two nice little eggplants that I should probably cook with soon. The potatoes are leafing wildly, but I restrain any impulse to yank anything up just to see how they are doing below ground.

Resident on the deck garden are the latest brood of dovelings–saw a wee one over the edge of the nest just yesterday!  That makes three this summer, and this the third summer they have nested on my deck. From what I know of Eurasian Collared Doves, they have no particular breeding season, and quite often just when the fledglings have flown, I begin to hear that throaty ‘come hither’ cooing in the near vicinity.

This would be a good time to carry water to the front deck plants, the ones that get little benefit from almost daily showers. They get some splash from the real humdinger downpours, but we haven’t seen one of those the past few days. There is a volunteer from splashed birdseed, a sunflower about to bloom in a windowbox at the edge outside the railing. They are my favorite ones, all brilliant yellow blossoms!

In my kitchen there is a little tub into which I toss eggshells, pepper seeds and squash seeds that appear when I am preparing veggies to cook. It is nearly full, and the plan is to carelessly toss them into one of the raised beds by the back fence, and see what happens. My gardening technique one might call ‘prehistoric.’

Out there, the wild bird garden is near fruiting with millet seeds which may, in turn, bloom with various wild birds. You do plant wild bird seed to get wild birds.

4-Hour Night

Morning creeps in,
My head is not ready for it.
It glows against the mountain
against the quiet clouds
tinging all things golden
as they brighten to full day…

I am not ready
wanting the landscapes still
of dreams
of downy comforter and bed
pillowing my head
in sleep, dayless,
consciousless…

Slowly, 
relentlessly
day pushes out
the shadows of the house;
world sounds,
the silence 
of the head and house…

Body nags 
its various needs
like the cat demanding
that I rise right now
and admit the day
and make a start
though it wholly goes
against my heart.

2019

Growing Up Civilized

I watch documentaries. I used to watch tv and movies, and read to escape more than to be informed. That was when I was younger, and believed in romance. I devoured fantasy and science fiction because they were colorful and fed my inner life with the stuff of dreams, and required nothing from me. But now I am older, and have a different hunger.

I devour history now, and watch quality documentaries. I pursue knowing rather than feeling.

The American Experience episodes about the Triangle Fire, about the American relief effort during the Russian famine of the early days of Bolshevik power… Prohibition… The history of the conquest of the West… Ken Burns’ documentary series, The Civil War, and the later ones about the conquest of the American West, The Freedom Riders… Such a wealth of clarification, of context and knowledge!

I am simply astounded at how much is not taught, is glossed over, is ignored in the American public classroom. I want to encourage people everywhere, every age, to sit down and discover what we have missed, what we should have been told about, should have been moved by, so that now we would have some actual comprehension of where we came from, of how we got where we are now, of the heroics and the abominations of our government policies, to really get it, that these times are set in a context that led straight here. We have to understand that there have always in human history and society been the takers and the givers: the greedy for personal power, and the ones who strive to make the world better than they found it. This dichotomy is part of the human experience, our options, our opportunities to choose every day what kind of effect we will have in the world. We can’t not have an effect. So we must choose with care, with consciousness, what that will be.

Without knowledge, we are naive, we are vulnerable, we are set up to be, or feel powerless in the face of great political machines and monsters, of progress for the sake of change rather than improvement. Without knowledge, we cannot choose with consciousness, with intelligence or integrity.

It seems to be an assumption that control and power, that advanced technologies make us great and define our civilization. But these things are not the foundation of civilization. They may be a product of it, but if they are not accompanied by the mindset of civilized people, then they miss the mark, and we remain simply very clever barbarians.

Civilization is defined by how we regard the suffering of other living things. It is the quality of welcome we offer strangers, it is tolerance of difference, appreciation of diversity. It is choosing to be conscious, to accept responsibility for our personal effect. It is looking beyond ourselves to the needs of others, of the larger community, with the understanding that we all thrive together, or not at all. It is about considering long term causes and effects, rather than short term gratifications.

When it comes down to it, civilization is about growing up.

Homestead

It was spring  
and everything was new–
Life and love and everything,
and everything we planted grew!
The door you’d made was open wide,
the scent of new wood on the air
that brought the warmth of spring inside
and stirred your soft and tawny hair…

Summer came  
and baby’s laughter rang
through the vine-thick upper frame,
and all the lullabies I sang
while lower, latch secure,
kept little wandering feet within.
Oh, summers then were sweet and pure…
So many summers there have been!

Autumn gusts
and leaves all scattered:
reds and yellows, browns and rusts,
and harvesting was all that mattered;
That door seemed always on the swing,
and the floor was never swept!
The light in your eyes made me sing…
The nights were cool, but warm, we slept…

Winter closed    
that Dutch door tight
and by the woodstove, we supposed
that snow would come, most every night.
We had each other all those years–
the kids, the cats, the dogs, the bird–
We laughed, and loved, and had no fears!
The storms outside, we hardly heard…

Seasons rolled,    
as they are wont to do
and sometime, somehow, we grew old,
your fine wood door, no longer new…
I went last week, and looked again:
It still holds firm, below, above–
and “now” has not forgotten “then,
when it was built with youth and love!

2006

Mystic Whispers:The Wreck of the Faery Galleon


A sailor stands on a quiet deck
in the still of a peaceful night–
He suddenly sees, like a cobweb-dream,
a galleon of faery-light,
riggings of gossamer, translucent and pale,
looming up high to port.
Silently sailing, as if quite alone,
as if no more solid than thought–
wonder and marvel,
afloat on a sea as smooth and slick as glass.

Onward, in silence, broadside to his own,
there’s no way the ships can pass….
He watches it coming, the phantom ship,
with it’s wondrous faery crew–
Naught can be done,
there is only the hope
that this ghost of a ship will pass through–
But the delicate lines and fragile truths
of the gossamer hull are too real:
They shatter and buckle and slide beneath
the rusty old iron and steel…

Not a sound marks the moment,
not a crack, not a cry,
as the faery ship goes down.
Not a ripple disturbs the smooth waters at all,
as the faery crew struggle and drown…
Only the sailor, standing alone,
ever witnessed the terrible sight
of the ruin and wreck of the faery galleon
that still and peaceful night.

2005

Apricots Growing Wild

Sweet, sweet, wild fruit
in the first heat of the day
in the desert…
Cool and sweet,
unlooked-for treat
in the desert morning,
an oasis…
Nectar, glowing, sweet as light,
and chill, from the night.

Cool and sweet delight
heralded by wasps
drunk with pleasure…
They do not sting,
I do not kill–
Sweet truce
in the first heat
of the day in the desert.

~1983