writing everything down in a spiral notebook...

Here's the other Zen story told as counterpoint to the abbot-being-run-through-with-a-sword one I mentioned the other day.

"A Zen master ... cried when his son died. ...

His students said, 'Didn't you tell us that death is normal and inevitable? That everything is impermanent?'

The Zen master said, 'It is, and I'm still sad.'"

Women cabbies

Doha to have woman cabbies very soon. It probably says something about my level of adaptation to life in Qatar that I had never even noticed that there aren't female cabbies.

In more self-involved news, on the way to dinner tonight we ran into a friend of Leland's from high school. Leland started to introduce us, and the friend said, "I know who you are; I read your blog."

I've had several similar interactions recently; they're always extremely disconcerting, but also pretty damn gratifying. I tend to forget that more people read this than the handful who leave comments. So thank you, Leland's friend, for making me feel like a rock star. :-D