I'm back in Cambridge.
Despite being several hours' journey from my lady now, I find I'm glad to be
back. Sleeping in my brother's room was no fun. I hope that within a few
days I will start to find a normal rhythm again.
According to the plan, Ying is returning on Jan. 2. I'm counting down the
days.
(Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.)
The funeral was today. I'm going back to Cambridge tomorrow.
Thank you so much to everyone who has offered to help Ying and her family in some way. There isn't much to be done now. However, her mother is still moving to New Jersey later this year. I would like to organize a small crowd of people and cars in the NY metropolitan area to help move their stuff, probably sometime after march.
This week my plan is to get my apartment in order. I will unpack some boxes, build some furniture, pay all my bills and tidy up. Then I'm back to NY for a day (or less) to drop off some clothing for Ying for the rest of her stay here. Once back in MA I plan to work for a few weeks, and then return to pick up Ying in early January. After a brief "vacation" to get her settled in (and to wash off some of the darker stains that the previous month has left on our respective souls), life should return to something like "normal".
Normal never sounded so good.
Thank you so much to everyone who has offered to help Ying and her family in some way. There isn't much to be done now. However, her mother is still moving to New Jersey later this year. I would like to organize a small crowd of people and cars in the NY metropolitan area to help move their stuff, probably sometime after march.
This week my plan is to get my apartment in order. I will unpack some boxes, build some furniture, pay all my bills and tidy up. Then I'm back to NY for a day (or less) to drop off some clothing for Ying for the rest of her stay here. Once back in MA I plan to work for a few weeks, and then return to pick up Ying in early January. After a brief "vacation" to get her settled in (and to wash off some of the darker stains that the previous month has left on our respective souls), life should return to something like "normal".
Normal never sounded so good.
On Sunday, Mr. Li went into shock from his infections.
On Monday, his liver and kidneys began to fail. I had to rush out of work to pick Ying up so that she could go somewhere to cry for a while. She can't cry at home, because that would send her mother into an emotional tailspin from which she might not recover.
She cried for four hours. The whole time I've known her, Ying has maybe cried for 30 minutes in my presence, up until this point. I've never seen her so upset.
On Tuesday, since nobody in her family was in a state to drive into the city, and they needed to be there, I volunteered my services as a driver. It's the least I could do.
Although he was technically still alive (and still is, to the best of my knowledge) the prognosis was sufficiently bad that we left in the middle of the day to go procure the services of a funeral home. Also, to pick up a picture for the memorial service, which saph is graciously re-sizing to be a decent size.
At this point I gave up on getting any work done this week (and possibly next) and just took off.
Ying cried for another few hours that night.
Wednesday, today, I drove them into the city again. Mrs. Li has already given the "do not resuscitate" order, but Mr. Li is still on a respirator and a blood-pressure medication which is keeping his heart pumping and his lungs working. He's been sedated for a while, so he's hopefully not aware of the pain.
Today they're going to discontinue the medication. It is likely that he will die within a few hours of that.
The worst part of the whole medical situation is that, as I understand it, there's nothing wrong with him except he's going to die. The leukemia was actually successfully treated. The infections are starting to recede. However, in the process of the treatment his organs were so badly damaged that they're simply not functioning any more, and there's no way to treat that.
Of course, the personal angle is no better. Ying's mother has nobody - and I mean nobody - in the area to help her. Ying suspects she may have one friend, but all the family that's here right now has travelled in from far away (and mostly different "far away", so there's not even somewhere she should move). Ying and I are in boston. Apparently the church that Mr. Li belonged to did nothing but send over some people to pray for him.
I don't even know what's happening in my own family any more; I haven't had time to spend 2 hours in a row in the house since monday. When I haven't been driving the Lis around in the city, I've been talking to my friend Mark about this in diners, trying to vent enough that I can be Ying's support.
There's more to say but I don't have the energy for more. I just hope that Ying can be happy again, after this.
On Monday, his liver and kidneys began to fail. I had to rush out of work to pick Ying up so that she could go somewhere to cry for a while. She can't cry at home, because that would send her mother into an emotional tailspin from which she might not recover.
She cried for four hours. The whole time I've known her, Ying has maybe cried for 30 minutes in my presence, up until this point. I've never seen her so upset.
On Tuesday, since nobody in her family was in a state to drive into the city, and they needed to be there, I volunteered my services as a driver. It's the least I could do.
Although he was technically still alive (and still is, to the best of my knowledge) the prognosis was sufficiently bad that we left in the middle of the day to go procure the services of a funeral home. Also, to pick up a picture for the memorial service, which saph is graciously re-sizing to be a decent size.
At this point I gave up on getting any work done this week (and possibly next) and just took off.
Ying cried for another few hours that night.
Wednesday, today, I drove them into the city again. Mrs. Li has already given the "do not resuscitate" order, but Mr. Li is still on a respirator and a blood-pressure medication which is keeping his heart pumping and his lungs working. He's been sedated for a while, so he's hopefully not aware of the pain.
Today they're going to discontinue the medication. It is likely that he will die within a few hours of that.
The worst part of the whole medical situation is that, as I understand it, there's nothing wrong with him except he's going to die. The leukemia was actually successfully treated. The infections are starting to recede. However, in the process of the treatment his organs were so badly damaged that they're simply not functioning any more, and there's no way to treat that.
Of course, the personal angle is no better. Ying's mother has nobody - and I mean nobody - in the area to help her. Ying suspects she may have one friend, but all the family that's here right now has travelled in from far away (and mostly different "far away", so there's not even somewhere she should move). Ying and I are in boston. Apparently the church that Mr. Li belonged to did nothing but send over some people to pray for him.
I don't even know what's happening in my own family any more; I haven't had time to spend 2 hours in a row in the house since monday. When I haven't been driving the Lis around in the city, I've been talking to my friend Mark about this in diners, trying to vent enough that I can be Ying's support.
There's more to say but I don't have the energy for more. I just hope that Ying can be happy again, after this.
When doing something like browsing my email, what is it that I use a
non-web-based client for?
Beyond those requirements, it seems like a web browser can do almost anything required for any kind of text-mashing or abstract, logical application. There are apps like word processors which live or die based on performance of particular functions like turning fonts into pixels, but almost any communications-based application won't need to do something like that.
Will it?
- Native integration (such as drag'n'drop from a file manager, copy-paste of pictures from other applications, opening of local files)
- Responsiveness
- Keyboard Shortcuts
Beyond those requirements, it seems like a web browser can do almost anything required for any kind of text-mashing or abstract, logical application. There are apps like word processors which live or die based on performance of particular functions like turning fonts into pixels, but almost any communications-based application won't need to do something like that.
Will it?