thepancollective

clean

A freshly made bed. A white shirt, crisply ironed (either on myself or on another). A clean desk. Such things are balm to my soul. Problem is, I don't see any of them nearly often enough. Yesterday, however, with an extremely stressful week behind me and a potentially frenzied one ahead, I finally decided to tackle the desk. The pile of debris which had covered it up until yesterday still sits in a pile -- unsorted -- nearby, but at least it's now all in one place, instead of scattered all over: vertical instead of horizontal. One day I'll have the guts to tackle that too. But the desk is clear. So is my head. And when I'm not standing there, staring, marvelling at the clean, dust-free surface, I'm savouring being able simply to reach for -- rather than unearth -- the objects I need to carry out my work.

The one item on my desk that's always clean, however, is the computer. I'm a laughingstock in certain quarters on account of this quirk, but I cannot abide even the slightest bit of muck on my gadgets. My cleaning tool of choice: a feather duster.

the price of progressives

When it comes to matters of service, I can be a bit of a pest. I'm the type who walks into doctor's offices armed with my own diagnosis, which I then pit against the doctor's to see which makes more sense. Of course I'm exaggerating, but I am the sort of person who usually demands explanations for things and is assiduous about making complaints. A couple of weeks ago, however, I lapsed: I let an optometrist con me into getting progressives (also known as "no-line bifocals").

I wear glasses to read and to work at the computer. I do not need to wear glasses at any other time (even eye specialists agree with me on this). While my eyes certainly feel less strained when I'm wearing my reading glasses, I haven't yet reached the stage where they're absolutely essential. (I'm not wearing glasses now, for instance -- though that's because I'm too lazy to look for them. Where are the damn things anyway?)

As I see it, progressives are for people who need to be wearing glasses more often than not. So why did my optical people attempt to foist them on me? The argument they give is that you'll eventually have to wear them, so the sooner you start, the better. In that case, why don't I just invest in a walker and start using it right now? Or pull out a few of my perfectly good teeth and get some bridgework, since I may eventually have to deal with that as well. Hell, I'm going to go out right now and invest in some adult diapers.

What they also don't tell you is that progressive lenses cost several times the price of conventional ones (and I know it's my own damn fault for playing against type and not asking about this).

The more important point of the story is that I couldn't even see in the damn things. The area of the lens designed for reading -- the area I'll be using most often -- was about a millimetre wide, and I had to keep my neck locked at a particular angle in order to see anything clearly. Within a week I'd have been wearing a neck brace. So last week I marched back to the optical place and demanded that the progressives be replaced with conventional lenses. They ran through all the arguments again, but I stood my ground, and tomorrow I'll be collecting a pair of proper reading glasses.

While I've never met anybody who actually likes them, I suppose that progressives are right for some people. And perhaps one day I will need them, in which case I'll gladly go through the required period of adjustment. My particular problem, however, was an easy one to solve, and didn't involve invasive surgery or loss of a major organ. You hear all the time about women who have hysterectomies that they learn afterwards they didn't need, or C-section deliveries because their ob-gyn preferred to do things on his/her schedule, not the patient's. The lucky ones among us have people in our lives who look out for our best interests; but in many cases this person is likely to be you yourself.

phagwah manicures, and other benefits of multi-culturalism

These were my fingers on Sunday evening after attending the Phagwah festivities at the Aranjuez Savannah. They're almost back to their normal colour now, except for the cuticles. My hair, on the other hand, still has a magenta cast (this photo explains why). Looking at my head yesterday, a former beauty queen (clearly a non-Hindu like me) told me, "I see you had a good time at Divali."

It's hard to blame folks in this country for getting their festivals mixed up, since we celebrate so many here. On March 30, Trinidad and Tobago observes Shouter Baptist Liberation Day, which commemorates the 1951 repeal of the 1917 Shouter Prohibition Ordinance that made practising the Shouter or Spiritual Baptist faith illegal. Then on May 30 it's Indian Arrival Day, which commemorates the arrival in Trinidad of the first indentured labourers from India in 1945. Both of these are public holidays, which is one of the many benefits of living in a multi-ethnic society, but this never really means that much to a self-employed deadline-chaser like me -- though at least clients (locally-based ones, at least) don't call, nor do the people trying to reach the junior secondary school whose telephone number shares all but one digit with ours. To tell the truth, the public holiday I'd really appreciate is Wrong Number Day -- in fact, it doesn't even have to be public!