House Arrest

I used to believe in a kind of predestination. I didn't believe that grand forces had determined what our lives would be, or that free will was an illusion, but I had come to the subconscious conclusion that everyone was born as a "type" of person with an unalterable set of strengths and weakness.
I believed that because of my type, I was predestined to be good at science, creative, slightly loopy, and to have strong ankles.
In reality all I was really doing was taking traits of my relatives that I found interesting and assuming I would have them.
Once during high school a friend and I were walking down the stairs to morning worship (along with everyone else) and talking about stupid things we were capable of doing without damaging ourselves. The conversation covered stupid things involving machines, stupid things involving nature, and stupid things that we managed to do all on our own.
To demonstrate a skill of mine in the last category, I showed how strong my ankles were. I jumped the last two steps and landed with both ankles crooked. It certainly won me points in the "stupid things" category, but unfortunately my ankles had about had it. I heard one of my ankles give a loud "pop". There was no pain, but as I sat through worship I could feel it coming. My ankle quickly swelled to an impressive size, and I spent the next several weeks on crutches.
Since then both of my ankles have been "loose" so to speak. Hitting them at the wrong angle causes instant pain and swelling.

So much for the superman complex.

A little over a week ago when we went sledding I hit one of my ankles at the "wrong angle". I didn't notice it at first, but over the course of the day it became more and more sore. When I finally took weight off of it that night I found I could hardly walk. This combined with a shoulder injury I might have mentioned (my shoulder is still popping) to make me quite miserable.

The next day I came down with the flu, which I believe I have also mentioned.

So for the past week I've been sitting on the computer all day listening to books on tape. When I got over the flu I tried to go skating, but my ankle couldn't take it. The rest of the country is engaged in a string of holidays, and the school is pretty much empty. It's still below zero all the time, so it's no fun to be outside if you aren't doing something active. There's absolutely nothing to do.

Nothing, that is, except for argue with my shower.

Ulaanbaatar gets it's hot water from a central coal-burning power plant which contributes an abundance of smoke to the already choking valley. This plant is about four miles away from the school, so you would think that by the time the water got to us it would have made up it's mind about what temperature it wanted to be. Unfortunately, Mongolian water is very indecisive.

When I go into the bathroom in the morning I turn on the shower and wait. I wait for the cold water sitting in the plumbing of the building to run through, so that the promised blessing of hot water might shower itself upon me. After about five minutes the hot water (usually) shows up. I get into the shower.
This is where the argument begins. The hot water remains hot for a few minutes, then without warning it becomes scalding hot. I jump back, holding as much of my body as possible out of the boiling steam, and try to reach around the water to turn the handle more in the direction of "not lethal". I am a firm believer in non lethal showers.
After another minute or so the shower goes back to cold. This may not seem odd at first, but think of this: the heat source for this water is several miles away. The massive boiler the size of an apartment complex goes at a (fairly) constant rate. Somehow, despite this, my shower manages to go from cold, to hot, to very hot, to cold. The climb towards "very hot" makes sense, the abrupt fall back down does not.
I turn the shower back to warm, and enjoy a minute or so of bliss. After that the shower decides that bliss is boring, and changes the water back to boiling hot. I jump back, slip, bash my head into the tiled wall, slide helplessly into the scalding cataracts of death, and desperately turn the handle to cold.

No dice.

Going against all known laws of nature, my cold water has become hot! To make matters worse, the hot water is still hot, which is not what one would expect for some reason. My shower is a demented freak of nature. No matter what kind of water I demand, it gives me scalding hot water.

I have taken to running the shower into the tub. Interestingly, if all the water is allowed to mix the insane extremes cancel each other out and the result is perfectly comfortable.

Going back to the original topic of predestination, I have recently drifted more towards nurture in the "nature vs. nurture" argument. This drift is the result of "Your Brain on Music" and "The Brain That Changes Itself", two books that have shown (among other things) that the brain is a much more flexible organ than people have previously believed. Instead of "you are what your genes say you are" or "you are what you make yourself", it seems much more accurate to say that "you make your genes determine what you are", if that makes any sense at all. I would recommend The Brain That Changes Itself as the better of the two books if anyone is interested. A prior interest in music is a good reason to avoid Your Brain on Music. A review had said that it wasn't for musicians, and I had bought it thinking "That's me!". Apparently "musician" means anyone who has ever payed any attention to anything relating to music or the physics of sound. Ever. The first half of the book is mind numbingly dull.

Anywho, back to the doldrums. I'm currently restricted to the school building by another circumstance: the fact that this is interviews week and I have to stick around in case any new students show up so that I can recommend a starting level for them. So far a grand total of three people have shown up. Yay. (heavy sarcasm).