HOURS WELL-SPENT

Young adulthood was not a particularly good period. Life has gotten better. And my choices, while more limited by age, are often more sensible and balanced than then. Especially as regards aesthetics, oh lordy yes. When it comes to clothing it's no longer Sears Roebucks finest, and there is a complete absence of tie-dye, bellbottoms, and corduroy. Books? More mature tastes than then. Some authors whom back then I thought were the cat's pajamas, are not in my shelves in any great number now, and some not at all.

Should have kept all my science textbooks, though.
And bought more art books. Definitely.

One thing to which really wish I still had access is the multi-volume hard sciences and engineering encyclopedia my father kept in the small room behind the upstairs living room.
I had hours of fun with that. He probably acquired it when he was still in college, and had probably had hours of fun with it too.

A term which came unbidden into my head early this morning, seemingly at random, no discernible reason whatsoever, was paramecium. Paramecia are single celled organisms often found in still waters, which are microscopically covered with fuzz. Related terms, historically, are the words cillia (the fuzzy bits), animalcule (microscopic beastie), pellicle (a thin membrane or cell-lining), and Dutch scientist from the Golden Age (roughly 1588 to 1672) Christiaan Huyghens (1629 to 1695), Lord of Zeelhem (Haelen), which is approximately forty five miles southwest of where I grew up.

Minor boasting: We Dutch discovered tiny fuzzy bits!

Yay, fuzzy bits!

Of course I'm still unclear why or how an aeronautical engineer from Southern California ended up working for Philips Electronics. It's quite a mystery. Where they developing something there we just don't know about?

Most of his department were mushmouthed Englishmen and Scots, Dutch angineers who were convinced that an American could neither speak nor write decent English, and several graduates of the Technische Hoogeschool in Bandoeng (now named the 'Institut Teknologi Bandung'; Bandung Institute of Technology). Who as semi-native speakers of Sundanese, Colonial era Malay and Indonesian, Dutch, German, and English, had no opinion on the matter of language. Tak apa apa semua mungkin punya.


Also the cookbooks too. I really miss those cookbooks.
I've always been kind of a food slut.
Crêpes Suzette!
Mmm.



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