THE LAST TIME WE...

On Facebook, many people post a lot of useless stuff.  However, someone recently posted something that I got very emotional thinking about it.  It was a quote that goes like, "One time you had fun with your friends but did not know that it would be the last time you would be together."  I am not much of a party animal but I suppose the scenario can apply to any gathering.  Maybe just a simple dinner with loved ones.  More recently, on Mac Geek Gab podcast I heard about an iOS app called Last Time.  Supposedly you make an entry in the app and it keeps a running count of whatever that you just entered.  Looking at the app some time later, you would learn that you have a certain pair of shoes for so many months, you last had dinner at some place so many weeks, and so on.  In my emotional state, I am not sure I want to install the app but I think eventually I will.

This week I learned of the sudden death of an elderly friend.  He is older than me by some twenty years.  He was a young medic during the Vietnam War while I was still a toddler.  Vietnam is a big country and we never met there but some forty years later in Brooklyn, NY we did, through a run club.  He took up long-distance running late in his life but he was good.  I am not fast to begin with but he was indeed faster than me.  I used to think that when I get to his age I would be happy to still be able to run like him.  One time he paced me at a Summer Series 5K and it was one of my best times.  I was in much pain, since on my own I usually don't run that hard, but I was very happy too.  He was a good friend and a good coach.  A very nice guy overall.

For me, his sudden death left two unfinished businesses.  I am not 100% sure, but I think he once mentioned he had this letter he found on a wounded enemy combatant.  Recall that he was a medic in the Vietnam War.  He wanted me to translate the letter, just out of curiosity.  He never got that letter to me.

The other unfinished business is that at one time I wanted to make a route-art, StravaArt if you will, for him.  Since he was in the armed force, I thought it would be appropriate to use his last name.  At the end of his name, I would add a red cross, to signify his role in the war as a medic.  Maybe I thought that I better run the idea by him first, but never got around to it, nothing ever came out of my StravaArt idea.  I may still be able to do that one of these days.  I do plan to resume running regularly so it's a good possibility.

WHEN DOVES CRY

It all started with a birdhouse my brother-in-law made for my son.  I believe it was made from broken boards saved from tae-kwon-do practice.  It was so many years ago.

At one time, my home-office had a window A/C unit.  It was a pain to install so to be safe a cage was added.  When the window A/C was replaced by a wall unit, the cage became disused so one day I put the birdhouse there in hope some small birds would move in.  Instead, a pair of turtle doves started building a nest next to it.  The next few weeks I learned a lot more about turtle doves.

Both male and female turtle doves share hatching duty so it was not easy to tell which one is which.

Most of the time a bird would be atop the nest but one time I happened to be near the window and witnessed the changing of the hatching guard.

Close-up of a parent dove hatching the eggs.

One of the rare moments I witnessed a parent bird arriving to relieve the other.

About fifteen days after the first egg was laid, a chick came out.  I saw a parent bird open its beak for the new bird to poke inside to eat the regurgitated food.

A final happy moment of my bird-watching adventure.  This winter does not want to go away and one cold windy evening none of the parent birds were around.  Although my son told me he saw two chicks a day or two earlier, I saw only one and it was not sitting upright like when I first saw it.  Next day, the weather was even worse and the parent birds were absent again, a baby bird laid dead to the right of the birdhouse.  Such is life.  I took nothing but photos and did not try to interfere.  From what I was told, the birds will try to raise a family a few more times during the upcoming warm months.

Facebook Death

I recently found out a Facebook friend of mine died. I used to play Wordscraper with him. It was probably Scrabulous, which was the forerunner of Wordscraper before the Agarwalla brothers got sued by Hasbro. Not that it really matters to this story.

One reason I remember "Mr. B" well is that most Wordscraper players, in my own experience, are Canadian women. He was one of the few non-Canadian male players. Together we wasted some time playing the word games, chatted from time to time about the game at hand or other topics that happened to come up. I now recall that he had a pizzeria business and had an iBook. The last remark he made was when I played the word REBAR. He joked that he did not know that I was in the construction business.

Oddly enough, for some reason I thought he unfriended me, since he no longer appeared on my friends list. Maybe I forgot what his last name was and could not find him in my friends list. No harm, I myself unfriended people from time to time, whether for lack of activity or some offending status update by the person. Recently I decided to visit his profile and saw that someone had written "Rest in peace" on his Wall. Probably someone who knew him outside of Facebook. That explained the lack of activity. I think I started some games with him only to delete them because he would not play his turn. Re-visiting his profile, I found a few keywords that allowed me to Google for more info about him. It turned out he passed away a little more than a year ago. Time flies and Life is fragile. Rest in peace, indeed, Mr. B, though I hardly knew you.