Pet peeve

So I have sort of a side interest in design/interior decorating, which I don't really bring up here because who cares? Especially as it hasn't actually translated into me making my apartment attractive.

But a pet peeve: a very popular thing with design bloggers right now is the idea of organizing book shelves by color. Like so:


AGHHH! I HATE THIS.

I get extremely irritated. Anyone who organizes their books by color cannot really love books. This is just absurd. It's treating them like decorative objects, and I get really upset by it, and frankly, I think my collection (organized by genre, then broken down by time period or subject) shows that I've actually read the books and thought about what's inside them--not just bought a show library to look pretty. Grrr. Plus, books look great as it is! I love the cheerful cluttered library look.

Sleepyhead

Nothing like a four-day weekend to turn you totally ungrateful and unable to return to normal functional life afterwards.

I did feel useful this weekend though. I packed up Christmas packages, wrote Christmas cards, did more vacation planning, and decided where to hang all my remaining stuff that hasn't been hung up. Yes, at this point I'm only here 7.5 more months, but that is 7.5 months too long to have my living room couch taken over by the set of 14 botanical prints I got framed and haven't hung yet...

I also got to eat Pizza Hut, which is the source of all my food cravings these days. And I made pasta with tuna and white-wine caper sauce. This may sound questionable, but it is not. James hates tuna but enjoyed it.

Things I have not done: finished Nabokov's Ada. Or William Dalrymple's In Xanadu, though I've not been at it as long. Somehow travel books have taken over my reading time. But that's okay, fantasizing about paradise and the developed world (Bali and Australia, respectively) is pretty fun.

Tale of two holidays

Oh, four-day weekends, how I salute and honor your greatness! How I sing your praises to the heavens, oh weekends of munificent loveliness and mercy!

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, which was very nice, as I spent it with friends and food--both excellent things. We brought the pumpkin pie, which is an absolute necessity for James on Thanksgiving.

Today we're being lazy, though I think we do need to go out at some point, because we definitely aren't leaving tomorrow--I am not ready to see the bloodshed in the streets that comes with Eid Ul-Azha. I especially don't want to witness the demise of my new friend, the neighborhood camel:


Anyway, happy Thanksgiving and Eid Mubarak to all... it's time to keep planning my vacation!

If we took a holiday...

Somehow, I feel like I'm over the hurdle. I think finishing one big speech I had to write made me feel like I was past the really tough stuff. So anyway, I think I am going to make it to Thanksgiving all in one piece, and possibly not even work during the four-day weekend! Four days, because of Thanksgiving and also Eid-ul-Azha.

Eid-ul-Azha is, I am sure, a very meaningful holiday. It is also a day on which I do not plan to leave my apartment, because that meaning is manifested through the slaughter of animals in the streets. The richer you are, the bigger the animal. So in my neighborhood, people have camels. No joke. I am going to try to take pictures of the camels before they die.

In other news, it is SO getting close to Christmas! Woohoo! It's my favorite holiday. I only hope I'm not so busy that I neglect to enjoy it. Last year this involved importing canned eggnog from Singapore in my luggage, getting my mom to send a giant faux Christmas tree that somehow made it through the pouch, and making my housekeeper go out, on the day of my holiday party, to find a tailor willing to turn around a tree skirt in an hour--which, incidentally, ended up looking exactly like the Bangladesh flag. Can't wait!

Semper Fi

Busy busy. I am a busy little bee. Buzz buzz. Anyway, survived my trip despite the fact that my hotel pretty much constituted its own circle of hell (the circle where dive-bombing attack pigeons living inside the building lurk, waiting for you to leave your room, where you can't sit still in your room without being hit by insects flying into your face, where the prevailing smells are bird poop and lentils... shall I go on?). And the usual plus of being outside of Dhaka--seeing some seriously beautiful countryside--did warm my insides a bit. Speaking of my insides, however--well, let's not go there, but suffice to say I was not at my best.

Thursday night I got home, stayed an hour, then promptly went out to Oktoberfest at the German Club, of which I regret not taking pictures. The whole beer garden atmosphere, with all the Germans running around in dirndls and lederhosen, was pretty unique for Dhaka. And hot damn, the wurst was amazing. The wurst was the best, if you will (sorry, couldn't resist).

And then last night was the Marine Ball, perhaps the biggest Embassy social event of year, at which the Marine Security Guard detachment celebrates the anniversary of the founding of the Marine Corps. There are a lot of rituals, including my personal favorite, the cutting of the cake with a giant sword. Sweet. Here's the cake being carried by our Marines:


And James and I--I had this dress made by my tailor, the ever-unpredictable Shamsuddin, and I must say it came out a bit more mother-of-the-bride than I was hoping for:


Today I meant to get work done, but I hadn't really factored in the inevitable post-Ball recovery period. Oops. I am going to have to be reeeeaaalllly efficient tomorrow...

Dinner tonight: Curried Pumpkin Soup topped with fresh cilantro, served with delicious Bulmer's cider. I love fall, even when it doesn't feel very fall-like outside.

Not so much going on.

So I discovered that while we're in Australia, the Sydney Festival will be happening. I was looking at things we could see and decided this guy is the new love of my life. Better yet, on Youtube.

But then the evil, devil website wouldn't let me buy tickets without an Australian phone number. Seriously?! And it's been a nasty week, and this just made me very, very disappointed.

I am off to the northwest of Bangladesh again tomorrow--only for one night this time, which is a damn good thing, because I am booked at the less pleasant hotel in town, and I am not sure how many nights I can live through. Good luck me!

Gosh, my life is so unexciting that I have nothing much to write down here. Work till 7, going home, eating, and surfing the net for two hours before bed just isn't really a compelling narrative. Sigh. I did hit happy hour last night. At the American Club, that bastion of excitement. Woot.

Hooray! James just managed to snag tickets to The Slutcracker by making up a fake Australian phone number. In other news, that name pretty much cracks me up.

Pictures?!? How exciting.

Realized I hadn't posted some photos I took during a trip out of Dhaka last weekend. We took our visiting artist to Dhamrai, a village an hour away where the traditional art form of lost-wax metal casting is practiced. I had been there once before, but this was the first time I was lucky enough to be there on a day when they are casting with hot metal. The molten metal turns cool colors and gives off green light and smoke (like Voldemort killing someone in Harry Potter? Is that too geeky a comparison?):


My mom thought it looked creepy, like they were making meth or something. But maybe that's how her mind works. After they're done, they break open the mold and find something like this:

Cool dude--an owl!

Plus, the Hindu artisan family doing this work lives/works in an awesome old colonial house:


Another shot, because that architecture is sittin' pretty:


After that we visited a traditional pottery village called Kagozipara. Not so many great pics of that--was I tired by then? Quite possibly. However, we did see this completely horrifying creature. It appears to be a spider with only four legs. Since that clearly can't exist in nature, I feel like it must be a minion of Satan sent to terrify the good people of this earth:


Mwahahahaha. Creepy.

Today: brunch with friends, errands, Australia research, cooking pumpkin-black bean soup and cornbread.

Wow, it's been a while

To be fair to me, I've been crazy busy. Like, barely-functioning-and-not-so-much-living-a-life-outside-of-work-busy. I wish it could say it will slow down soon, but I've pretty much got chaos on the calendar from here until we leave for vacation in late December.

Fun thing: this morning we heard a talk by William Dalrymple. I am only a couple chapters into his book In Xanadu, which I only started reading since I knew I would see him today. But it's totally hilarious so I'm happy to be reading it. Though it pales in comparison to how completely hilarious he is in person. That was definitely an unexpected delight for Dhaka.

We've had a visiting artist (who is just a total delight, by the way) in town, and I've been busy going to workshops and such that he's been doing, plus handling a lot of other Very Important Cultural Affairs Work.

Very, very tired. Time for bed. Yesssssssss.

Yucky, icky, miserable day

Ugh. Today was not a good day. Really, I am not sure "not good" is what I want to say, but there is not good word in English meaning "filled with blindingly painful headaches and overwhelming nausea." Maybe Chinese will prove more descriptive.

After a long nap and a good dinner (Pakistani minced beef with beans with raita and pita bread), I have somewhat revived. Of course, the long nap now means it's unclear when I'll go to sleep. In the good news category, though, James passed his bar exam. Not that he plans to practice law with the whole Foreign Service plan, but it's nice to know he's good at taking tests, or something.

To celebrate, I made us puff pastry filled with dark chocolate and strawberries. Mmm.

I've noticed this blog seems to only be about food lately. Sorry, I'll try to cool it. I guess I've just been hungry...

This weekend I am going outside of Dhaka on a fun field trip, though, so hopefully I'll have some photos of something happening outside my apartment.

Glorious

From the fabulous Michelle Nussbaumer, design diva:

"More is more. Less is never more - less is obviously less. Who wants less??"

Because it's true.

Food, film, art

So after my big blog vs. journal debate, I've since not done either. Instead, I've been feeling vaguely unwell and reading a lot of magazines. Tonight I cooked pasta putanesca, which always brings to mind warm childhood memories of my grandmother telling me it was named after prostitutes, since they were so busy prostituting that for dinner they would just throw together an easy dish not requiring fresh ingredients. My grandmother is a special lady.

Then I ate more once Charlotte and Andrea came over for movie night, because bean dip is amazing. We watched Vicky Christina Barcelona, which I liked more than I expected, though I am not sure it had a point.

I am also savoring a relatively less crazy week before our visiting artist arrives this weekend under the American Artists Abroad program. We have a week of really cool programming lined up, so I am very excited--workshops, visits to pottery studios, and other events. Did I mention cultural affairs is awesome?

To blog, or not to blog?

So I go back and forth. I used to be a dedicated journaler. I've never felt quite so self-satisfied and so deep as when I was writing in my journal every day, musing on things I wouldn't even consider putting in this blog--Very Serious Things my outer goofball wouldn't show off to the world, of course. But then I got addicted to blogging... because why write for no one when there is a slim chance someone might read this and think I am awesome?

However, after a year-and-a-half, my delusions of grandeur, involving fame, fortune, and a book deal, have become less supportable :) Actually, the truth is I got sad that I stopped recording my travels in great, excruciating detail as I used to do, since that probably would not be a thrilling read for, well, anyone. So I decided to go back and fill in old trips. And in the process, last night, I got hooked on the journal again.

I think I am realizing that I need both--to write for others (I at least hope I can be a resource for those interested in learning about the Foreign Service lifestyle) and for just myself. So balancing the time involved is the challenge. I think I can manage it, though--after all, navel-gazing is quite the hobby for me.