Tiger Mother?

I just finished reading Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.  It caused a furor in the States, mainly due to a Wall Street Journal headline which read Why Chinese Mothers are Superior.  The article generated over 8000 comments.  But when my Mum recommended I read it also, I realized that I was missing out on a worldwide phenomenon!  And it made me start to wonder what sort of parents Eric and I will be.

The basic premise of the book is that Western parents tend to coddle their kids, go fairly easy on them, and value creating self esteem over measurable achievements.  By contrast, Chinese parents (a term which Chua defines loosely to include all sorts of high-achieving ethnicities - often immigrants) expect nothing less than A grades, in addition to excellence in other areas, such as music, and will go to fairly drastic lengths to help their kids achieve their expectations.  A tad stereotypical, sure.  But there's more than just a grain of truth in it, too.  And Chua acknowledges that so-called Chinese parenting is not foolproof, when she relates her own comeuppance at the hands of her 13 year old daughter.

I think there may be a little of the Tiger Mother in me.  Not for nothing was I called Tolerance Torres at university (with typical British irony, my so-called tolerance was just the reverse).  And I was accepted at my first job despite being told that in one of the character tests, I had "steamrollered" over the other candidates' objections. (They also told me that my logic was good, and my ideas were strong, but that perhaps I should consider an alternative management style to get my way).

As for Eric, his primary concern is to see how young he can get the twinlets whitewater rafting.  So far, for any serious sort of river, the answer seems to be 4.  I hope his patience can hold out until then, but at least he can amuse himself in the meantime by teaching them self-sufficiency, particularly with regards to how to swim!

Of course, much will depend on the personalities of the twins themselves.  For that, barring any current empirical evidence, beyond a convincing ability to kick hard, I turned to the Chinese zodiac, which tells me that they will be born under the sign of the Rabbit.  I was delighted to learn that Rabbits are "classy, sophisticated, expressive, well-mannered and stylish, [and] enjoy leaning about cultural issues and learning about people from other countries".  Now those sound like pretty neat kids.
 
It's odd that while there are classes for most things in life (like training dogs) few parents ever take any kind of educational stab at learning what they should be doing.  Like most parents, we will probably make it up as we go along, and hope for the best.


I see only one fly in the ointment with this plan.  The zodiac helpfully talks about compatibility between signs (presumably for future romantic interests).  The problem is that Rabbits apparently don't get on with Roosters or Rats.  And, Dear Reader... I'm a Rat.

Babymoon

In January this year, I was seduced by a New York Times Travel section headline: 10 Restaurants Worth a Plane Ride.  With Singapore, Sydney and Uruguay on the list, I was not hopeful that I'd be visiting any of them soon.  But the last one on the list, the Willows Inn on Lummi Island in Washington seemed feasible...

Not a month later, while browsing through the out-of-date selection of magazines as I had a pedicure, I came upon a Sunset magazine article which mentioned Lummi.  And when the restaurant came up again in something else I was reading, I was hooked.  This was where we'd go our our Babymoon.

A babymoon, in case you are not familiar with the term, is an opportunity for expectant parents to take a mini-vacation before the pandemonium of child-rearing begins. Eric was up for the vacation, but was deeply dubious about flying 700 miles to the rainy northwest to a restaurant that we might (or might not) like.

But after persistent lobbying, and the addition of Vancouver to the itinerary, the trip was booked, and last week, we headed out, on an unusually rainy weekend for California in June to see what all the fuss was about.

From the get-go, the gods smiled on us.  We touched down to a Seattle basking in sunshine (and we know that's not normal from the thrilled car rental attendant who gushed "isn't this weather great") as we left the parking lot after knocking off $170 of unnecessary charges that Thrifty had tacked on to our rock-bottom Priceline rental.  When we drove up to the line for the once an hour car ferry to Lummi, we waited only 10 minutes before being loaded on for the 6 minute trip to the island.  And then we checked into our room for the night, which had a spectacular view of the Sound, with waves lapping gently on to the beach - Hollywood style - immediately beneath our wide open windows.

It didn't hurt that our neighbors for the evening, three ladies who had escaped their daily lives for a taste of luxury, included a food writer for Seattle magazine, who promptly gave us additional foodie recommendations for the next leg of our stay in Vancouver.

But the real treat was the restaurant experience itself.  Perhaps because I had checked the "anniversary" button when I made my online reservation (babymoon, oddly, wasn't an option), Eric and I were the first to be ushered into the restaurant, and we were seated in the prime window with a perfect view of the about-to-set sun. 

We knew that for our $85 per head, we would enjoy 5 courses of dinner.  But before we even started on those, we were treated to a series of amuse bouches - six in all - which bested anything for creativity and innovation that I have ever eaten, anywhere, in my life.

[Spoiler alert! Do not read this section if you are going to go to the Willows Inn!] 

A chef (who we later realized was the rising star Blaine Wetzel himself) arrived with a small wooden box, and let us know that it contained smoked salmon.  We smiled politely and ignored him, as we were still figuring out drinks and the view.  Then we opened it, and  - ta da - it contained smoked salmon that was still smoking on tiny embers of cedar and other aromatic woods!  O.K, so I can just see the expressions on the faces of some of my foodie friends - that's not that impressive, right?  But follow it up with a basket of leaves and "dirt" (not real dirt, roasted barley that looked like the earth hadn't been shaken off the locally foraged herbs and leaves), or the brown butter toast with edible flowers, and the kale with truffles...and you can begin to see how the experience was  both cumulative and genuinely original.  In fact, when we finally got to the first course mentioned on the menu, it would have been an anticlimax (no surprises now) - except that it, too, was delicious.

We sat happily marveling at the privilege of it all, and contemplating our future (more likely to be filled with trips to Applebee's than fancy restaurants) and felt ever so slightly smug to be "in" on a place that has become a destination restaurant despite its somewhat remote location.  So strong is its pull that the Times has anointed it again in today's piece on Seattle - even though it is about 2 hours away.

I could bore you with the walks along the beach, and the bike ride round the island - or the pretty cool meals we enjoyed in Vancouver, but I'm not sure that y'all have the appetite for that.  So I'll conclude with a picture from Lynn Canyon park, about 20 minutes outside of Canada's overpriced western hub.  Most people who travel to Vancouver visit Capilano suspension bridge, which costs an outrageous $35 per person to enjoy.  We skipped that in favor of the free, ignored-by-tourists Lynn Canyon suspension bridge.  This picture is a favorite from the trip, because of the easy analogy with our lives right now.  We're caught up in the waiting - suspended between the end of our free-wheeling, white water rafting, fancy restaurant present, and the unknowable future adventure of parenting.

Why the Republicans can't win next November

Winning Presidential elections in America is a weird science.  It's not necessarily important that you be smart, (see George W. Bush), personable (Nixon), or even desperately well qualified for the job (the present incumbent).  But it sure does help to have some measure of credibility. 

And that's why I'm pretty confident that the Republicans simply can't win next November. They have yet to field anything like a credible candidate. 

Let's take a look at a few of the declared and likely candidates, starting with Newt Gingrich.  Granted, Gingrich is a darling of the right, remembered for his hardball takeover of the House in 1994, and his relentless pursuit of Bill Clinton over the Lewinsky affair.  But these career highlights are also the self-sown seeds of his own destruction.  He's deeply susceptible to being branded a hypocrite for his own infidelity (conducted while he was after Clinton) to his second wife, with the woman who is now the third Mrs G.  The Christian right is unlikely to be able to swallow any kind of family values pitch from a guy on his third marriage.  And there are few candidates who are more likely to galvanize the Democratic base than this particular nemesis.

Mitt Romney is deeply tainted too.  The further he distances himself from his healthcare reform as Governor of Massachusetts, the less appealing he is as a centrist alternative to Obama.  Independent voters must already be wondering how many other experiments he might be willing to conduct at the expense of the American people, and then renounce a couple of years later because they hadn't worked.

I was amazed by the amount of ink and airtime was spilled on a possible Donald Trump candidacy.  Here's a guy whose businesses have declared bankruptcy not once but several times.  Is this the dude we want in charge of our extremely fragile national economy?  His persistence in pursuing the issue of Obama's birth has also sullied him in many folks' eyes.  To my delight, however, the news broke as I was writing this that he had decided against a run.

There's a raft of others, whose national name recognition is a stumbling block that will hurt them unless and until they become the GOP's nominee, including Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann and Mitch Daniels.

And then there's our pinup for this post, Ms Palin, whose personal popularity did not suffer too badly even after she had Gabrielle Gifford's district in her crosshairs, but who suffers from the fact that fully 67% of those polled at the end of last year thought that she was unqualified to be President.

Plus there are important considerations about the Republicans' opponent.   Mr Obama has all the benefits of being an incumbent, plus his own credibility received a real boost after Osama bin Laden was captured and killed on his watch.  To be sure, the rose-tinted spectacles with which many viewed his candidacy last time have been replaced for many.  But if, as is likely, the economy shows signs of improvement in the next 18 months, he looks relatively secure.

That said, I'm a lousy predictor of which way the American people will jump when it comes to elections.  I've been consistently wrong over the 10 years I have lived in the States as to who would win (even when I voted for the winner).  Let's see if, for 2012, I can be fourth time lucky.  I'm calling it early for Obama, and looking forward to collecting on a bet made shortly after the 2008 election that he would be a two-term President.  There's a whole $1 riding on it.