Life Lessons

Traveling the world, as our family is doing this summer, can be an enlightening experience. By coming into contact with new cultures, ideas, and situations, you can learn some truly profound lessons.

And sometimes you learn some not-so-profound lessons.

Lesson 1: Forgetful people should not be trusted with small, expensive electronic devices.

No, this photo is not a response to the unstated wishes of so many of our blog readers to see me with my shirt off. Or at least, it's not only that. Here's the background: I'm in Choroni, Venezuela, with a bunch of mildly inebriated mathematicians after a long hike through the jungle. I didn't know there would be a chance to swim, so I didn't bring my swimsuit. But fortunately, I wore my hiking pants with zip-off legs, so I just converted them to shorts and jumped in. In the picture, I've just gotten out after a 15-minute swim. I'm smiling because I haven't yet realized that, in one of the 423 pockets in those pants is my iPhone. My iPhone didn't enjoy the swim quite as much as I did; it drank quite a bit of water and wouldn't turn on afterward.

Lesson 2: iPhones are absolutely amazing. A few days later, my dried-out iPhone started working again.


Lesson 3: Slurping your soup can be dangerous.

In China I learned that making loud noises while you eat (chewing, slurping, etc.) isn't considered rude -- it shows that you're enjoying your food.

Don't tell my kids.

One afternoon in Beijing, I was confronted with the following dilemma:

I had ordered a bowl of that dish so fondly remembered from my childhood: ramen noodles. Except that as a child I ate them with a fork. I now looked around at other eaters, trying to figure out how to handle long, slippery noodles with chopsticks. The answer: use the chopsticks to get a bit of noodle in your mouth, and then slurp! So I went to it.

In fact, I had tried the slurping strategy as a child, and I now rediscovered an important lesson from those days: when slurped without care, ramen noodles tend to whip up and smack you in the face. Such mishaps are usually cured with nothing more than a swipe of a napkin. However, in this case I was dealing with "hot and sour" ramen noodles (note the red chile pepper in the lower right corner of the bowl). Which still was no big deal until one audacious noodle smacked me right in the left eye, filling my eye with "hot and sour" broth.

My eye burned fiercely and began watering profusely. It was too painful to open. I briefly entertained thoughts of rinsing my eye with Coke, the only liquid at hand. Thinking better of it, I approached a waitress and asked her where the bathroom was. She didn't speak English, and even if she did I don't know that I could have explained my situation. She was quite distressed to see me with one eye closed tightly and tears streaming down both cheeks. Desperate, I ran toward the nearest doorway, which by luck was the mens' bathroom. After shooing the janitor out of the way, I finally got to the sink and rinsed out my eye.

The burning subsided quickly and, after taking a few moments to compose myself, I tried to walk nonchalantly back to my table as if nothing had happened. After that, I slurped slowly, and escaped without further incident.

Lesson 4: If a friendly Chinese taxi-driver/doctor teaches you acupuncture and gives you a bunch of disposable needles, get rid of them before you go through airport security.

I don't think this one needs any explanation.