Huge in Asia

City of snow and ice

2012-01-19T20:21:00.006+08:00

Last weekend we took an overnight train to Harbin for their famed ice and snow festival. James had wanted to see this for a while, but to me it just sounded COLD. Like, really cold. And while I think it was probably the coldest weather I'd ever experienced (well, there wasn't much wind--Boston could really get you with the wind), we survived, and the ice festival was oddly magical.

I'll post photos, because I have them, but really photos in no way capture what the festival is like. It makes you feel like a little kid again, remembering winter's giddy and childlike joys. I mean, seriously, this huge conglomeration of structures, many of them multi-story, all made from ice, that will melt and will have to be totally reconstructed the next year--amazing.

Here I am. I look cold:

Harbin had some other charms--the Russian-style architecture through the main street and the lovely old church (which is not in such good shape anymore), a lively street life, and if nothing else, the hot tub at the Shangri-La--but definitely go during the ice festival. We also saw the Siberian tiger park--it was not my favorite, though they are majestic animals, but I didn't have a great feeling about how the animals were being treated.

I did love how just about every older person in the city seemed to have been conscripted into some sort of performing arts troupe--we saw a choir in the old Russian church, stilt-walkers, elaborately costumed dancers--but something about these older ladies doing their fan dance, full of pride, really touched me:

And did I mention our hotel had an ice bar?? That is all you really needed to know, wasn't it? We in fact ate dinner in the adjoining ice restaurant--the entire structure was made of ice. We had hot pot, and the steam from our pots of hot broth created such a cloud that we couldn't see people across the room. Plus, who doesn't love hot pot?

A really fun trip. And tomorrow night we fly off to Kenya for some transcontinental adventuring!

Destination: Hong Kong

2012-01-11T22:34:00.004+08:00

Okay, folks... whoever is out there still reading after my lame hiatus(es). It is time to talk Hong Kong.

I went to Hong Kong four months ago. Wow. It is crazy to say it that way. Can we have a side note on how time in Beijing is just FLYING? Like, hurtling by at lightning speed. I can't handle the madness of that. I JUST KNOW that it will feel like maybe two weeks from now when we're packing out and getting ready to leave.

But anyway, once upon a time I went to Hong Kong, and it was amazing, and I immediately started plotting how to move there (though not quite as aggressively as I did when I first saw Sydney).

Hong Kong is a great city for just hanging out, absorbing, observing, being. There are not too many tourist must-dos--we rode the Star Ferry (several times, in fact, since it was actually a fairly useful way to get around in addition to being a tourist favorite--it was cheap, normal public transportation cost, and definitely in use by locals as well), took the tram up to the Peak and took the obligatory photos:

But before James arrived for the weekend (I went for a work trip, specifically to get a new visa, and then James joined me for the weekend), I mostly shopped (iPad! Clothing that didn't top out at a US size 4! Jewelry from funky boutiques around Hollywood Road!) and ate. And once James arrived, we continued the eating (but cut the shopping). Dim sum. That is all I need to say. (Must say, on a side note, L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon was slightly disappointing; not as disappointing as Maison Boulud in Beijing, but not nearly at the level of Jean Georges in Shanghai, which I think may take the prize of best Western restaurant in China).

I was fortunate to get lots of tips from college chum Hana, who edits/writes for several cool, out-and-about type magazines and knew lots of great hidden places. She also took us on a really fun day trip to Lamma Island, which required a ferry ride to be transported to pretty much a completely different world from Hong Kong Island, filled with hippies, hiking trails, fishing boats, and tasty seafood restaurants.

Hong Kongers are also shockingly friendly, especially after Beijing, and I found the politeness and friendliness when asked directions to be really lovely. As I said, plotting my someday moves... :)

Reasons why Shanghai is awesome

2012-01-09T22:36:00.004+08:00

1. It's walkable! There are lots of areas within walking distance of each other, and lots to see on foot. I enjoyed long strolls, even if it was a bit chilly at Christmas.

2. Jean Georges. I could stop the list right here and everyone would be like, yes, Shanghai is awesome. Me looking happy as a clam at Christmas brunch:

3. Shanghai has a pirate bar. For realz! Unshockingly, we were the only ones there on Christmas. Whatever. It said "Christmas spirit" to me.

4. People are marginally more laid-back and less likely to shove you into traffic to nab your bit of sidewalk. But only marginally so. They're still living in China, after all, and if you don't shove a little, you don't get anywhere.

5. Lots of gorgeous architecture on the Bund and the surrounding area--much preferred it to some of the monstrosities in Pudong.

6. Plenty of good opportunities for transporting oneself into the movie Lust, Caution.

7. Soup dumplings! We were sent to an amazing hole-in-the-wall dumpling place steps from out hotel door, and it did not disappoint. We went twice in a 2.5-day trip--and each time ordered what seemed like an impossible number, only to finish them all. Mmmm:

(With a touch of James's argyle.)

8. It's linked to Beijing by an incredibly efficient and fairly comfortable high-speed train, which leaves from the sleek, new, airport-like Beijing South Station--a HUGE upgrade (almost infinite, really) from the chaos and filth of that blight upon the train-riding public, the Beijing West Station (which we used when going to Xi'an). So the crazy lady doesn't even have to fly! Add that to the fact that hotels were shockingly cheap over Christmas, and it's a perfect getaway.

Next up--I really, really need to catch up on Hong Kong.

Book update

2011-12-31T17:47:00.002+08:00

While I still haven't finished A Suitable Boy (and who could blame me? 1400 pages what what?), I did start and finish (all in one sitting, in fact) The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes. Thoughtful and oh-so-haunting--after I read it I spent the next day randomly talking about it and thinking through various parts aloud (to James, who hadn't read it)--it got so bad that I finally just made him read it on the train back from Shanghai so we could talk about it.

Also massively excited to read Haruki Murakami's reputed masterpiece, 1Q84, which my mother kindly gifted me for Christmas.

Happy New Year!

2011-12-31T17:37:00.004+08:00

2011 had its ups and downs, but in the end, I am sorry to see it go.

We are having a productive New Years Eve thus far--woke up (relatively) early, got our yellow fever vaccines (remind me never to return to a Chinese clinic that isn't Beijing United or International SOS--no choice for this one as the government restricts who can give it) in preparation for our trip to KENYA!!! next month (where we'll hang out with this lovely lady), ate a delicious dim sum lunch at the Hong Kong import Cuisine Cuisine, shopped for ingredients at Jenny Lou's, hung out reading the internet for a bit, and are now getting ready for New Years Eve festivities.

May your 2012 be filled with glorious adventure; reasons to remember why you are still globetrotting (or if you're not, perhaps why you should be?); love, in all its forms; and beautiful things, people, and vistas.

This vs. that

2011-12-18T21:49:00.003+08:00

So... it's been a while. Hey guys. Sorry about that. The problem is, you see, I live in a city with STUFF TO DO. Blogging was, in fact, quite easy when living in Dhaka, where there was no stuff to do.

For example, here there is a Pizza Hut around the corner from my house. I am not sure to what depths of boredom and lack of imagination I would have to fall to consider eating there. In Dhaka, on the other hand, a major highlight was gathering friends and partaking in Pizza Hut's annual all-you-can-eat pizza iftar special, when Bangladeshis would camp out at tables hours before sunset awaiting the moment they could devour some cheesy goodness.

You see, life is different now.

The other night, I was at a colleague's birthday dinner in the fabulously appointed new restaurant, Temple, eating foie gras, sipping wine, and listening to another colleague tell stories of a former posting in Istanbul. And I thought to myself, wow, I've really been a sucker, haven't I?

Because all along there were these people in THIS Foreign Service, and I was over in THAT one, where alcohol was illegal, the hand-size spiders lived in my house, and THERE WAS NOTHING TO DO.

So I have to apologize for my lack of blog posts--I still owe one about Hong Kong, which would be good to write before we jet off to Shanghai this weekend. Because darlings, I am in THIS Foreign Service now.

At least until the State Department decides I am going to Afghanistan.

Of fancy balls and meatballs, whines and wine.

2011-11-13T22:18:00.005+08:00

Once again, time has gotten away from me, and I am a mediocre blogger, at best. This weekend was the weekend of the Marine Ball (which I had forgotten when I thought about going away). The Marine Ball was a lot of fun, so much fun that I didn't take pictures. And maybe a little too much fun, since it appears I left my shoes (I had changed into flats on the way out) in a cab on the way home. Oops.

Friday we celebrated Veterans Day with a trip to our favorite Swedish house of fun, Ikea. We had wanted to go on an American holiday since we heard it is mobbed on weekends. It was still pretty crowded on a Friday, but not so bad that we couldn't move around, so I guess that's a win.

We came away with much-needed items large and small, from bookshelves to an armchair to read in to a wok to a soap dish. Plus lots of excellent items from the Swedish food store: ginger cookies, smoked salmon, lemon-and-elderberry vodka, salmon paste in a tube (hey, don't judge. James thinks it's gross, but that is his problem). And did I mention that in China they'll deliver and assemble the furniture for $25? Yessssssssss. Follow that all up with some Swedish meatballs in the restaurant, and you can call it a successful day.

I wore an air cast to hobble about Ikea--my sprained ankle is improving slowly. Very slowly. Same with my skin--some parts of me look normal, other parts are still covered in fading hives. My skin, which never used to be sensitive, now reacts to the slightest things--something touching my skin for too long (an air cast, for instance?). My eyes have been red and itchy and dry and covered in a perpetual rash for weeks. Basically, I am mostly better, but I feel like my body is ready to turn on me at any moment. I am pretty sick of this feeling.

So there I am, living in moderate low-level skin rash crankiness, and still not really succeeding in getting out to see Beijing, between the Ikea trip, the waiting for the Ikea furniture to be delivered/Marine Ball-ing, and then today's post-Marine-Ball recovery.

But lest you think I did nothing today, I did make pumpkin chili and halfway organize our bookshelves. Not all the way, though. That would have been too productive.

Tales of woe

2011-10-31T20:37:00.004+08:00

So where did we leave off? I believe last I checked in, I was covered in hives and still hobbling on a sprained ankle. Since then, I have mostly recovered from the hives, started to somewhat recover from the ankle, then just when I thought I was recovered, I woke up itching and covered with a new round of hives and misery. Sweet. So now I am on recovery round two, determined NEVER to take ibuprofen again (apparently, that is the latest theory for what triggered my allergic reaction). And still sort of hobbling (it was a bad sprain!). I have missed more work due to illness in the last month than I ever have before--a whopping 6.5 days (I am usually more a 1-3 sick days per year kind of person).

This has involved a lot of lying in bed and moaning (or passing out due to Benadryl) and not a lot of unpacking of the HHE. So we are still living amidst boxes and piles. Someday, someday I will feel up to putting our lives in order.

All this not-feeling-up-to-things involves some uncharacteristic lifestyle moments; for instance, today I couldn't handle cooking or going out (and we've had every delivery options about a million times since this all started), so dinner tonight was... toast and scrambled eggs (extremely runny, of course). A shining moment in the kitchen, clearly. (Sometime in the quasi-recovery stage, I made this banana bread, and it was amazingly yummy.)

Updated sickbed entertainment round-up: finished He Knew He Was Right and also watched the BBC miniseries of it (pretty good but not perfect); started Vikram Seth's 1400-page behemoth, A Suitable Boy; finally conquered my aversion to turning on the TV and found the Filipino channel that airs all the American reality shows (clearly, America's Next Top Model was just what the doctor ordered).

So we only realized today that next weekend is a three-day weekend, so we are torn between staying in Beijing and finally catching up on life, or trying to take advantage of it and take a short trip, maybe to Pingyao, a walled city. Plus, we are still busily making plans for our holiday in January over Chinese New Year. Decisions, decisions...

The HHE is here

2011-10-14T15:15:00.003+08:00

Every time this day comes around, I vow to give away all my possessions and live the ascetic life. Then when the day to repack it all comes around, I painfully come to terms with my utter failure to do so.

Catching up - Xi'an

2011-10-14T13:31:00.007+08:00

Before I fell into the pit of despair and stopped leaving the house, we did a couple of out of town trips. First, over Labor Day weekend, we went to Xi'an.

Xi'an is an interesting place and home to the Terracotta Warriors, one of the most famous sites in China. Perhaps more importantly to us, it is also known for its food, which is heavily influenced by the city's Muslim community. This was the trip when we discovered we are really not cut out for group travel--it felt tiring and not nearly enough focus was placed on eating everything in sight.

However, Xi'an is well worth seeing. I loved seeing some of the warriors up close--they all have unique and expressive faces:

Plus, there are other cool places to walk around--the mosque was really cool, and we also enjoyed walking around the old city walls (though sadly in the rain) and the evocatively named Small Wild Goose Pagoda:

Taking the overnight train was also an experience--overall, not bad, but the Western Station in Beijing is kind of its own circle of hell (I have heard the one that the trains to Shanghai leave from is much better). The bathrooms on the train do get a bit gross by morning, but in the soft sleeper car, it's manageable (I have zero interest in downgrading to other classes of travel in the future).

Notes from the hermit

2011-10-13T11:26:00.003+08:00

So, while there was talk of medevacing me to Singapore, today I am somewhat on the mend and so that likely won't be necessary. If it was, I would probably be setting the record for number of government-funded trips to nice places for crappy reasons in one month.

Can I just say it? This sucks. I have never been one of those people with tons of allergies and I'd never had hives before. The issue is, many people DO get hives quite frequently, the normal kind that go away quickly after they stop being exposed to the allergen. I, on the other hand, have been covered in hives for FIVE DAYS. I itch everywhere. I look like a plague victim. The only times I go out into public are for my daily doctor's visit, and people give me looks. I don't blame them, they lived through SARS here, the last thing they need is the plague. But still.

They have me on really high doses of steroids to calm down my immune system. I was worried that this would mean I would sprout chest hair and start talking like a dude. But apparently, that is the other kind of steroid--the one I am on is the opposite, which apparently over the long term actually degrades your muscles. Sweet. My muscles really didn't need any help degrading.

Not that nothing good has come of this week. I have read three books in full and started two more, plus countless magazines and New York Times articles. I finally had time to learn how to use my new iPad. Showing what an oddball I am, since this misery started, I have not turned on the TV once (I did watch one True Blood episode on my computer, if you count that). Instead, I have started a 700-page Trollope novel (if anyone is curious, it's He Knew He Was Right, the last of Trollope's major novels I haven't read. Is it sad that that makes me sad? Where do I go next??), reread Pride and Prejudice, started rereading 18th-century novelist Fanny Burney's Evelina (not as good as I thought the first time around), read a (pretty interesting) biography of Pearl S. Buck... point is, I don't think this is normal.

I can do pop culture! One of the three books read in full was Tina Fey's Bossypants! (It had some laugh-out-loud moments, but I am going to admit I found it a tad overrated.) I also continue to listen to Adele's "Someone Like You" on loop.

So that is where we are right about now. Not in a good place, in short, but perhaps more culturally enlightened.

In pre-misery reading news, I finished Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore. I am going to put forth an unpopular opinion and say it may be my favorite of his books. I know everyone is obsessed with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but let's just say I'm not. I could get behind Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, but this one was better. My two cents.

Blargh

2011-10-08T20:03:00.004+08:00

Great post from my friend over at Meandering Memos on the difficulties that come in maintaining a blog, especially a Foreign Service blog (not that I exactly set out to write A Foreign Service Blog, exactly, but I suppose that is what it has become). I too am not sure what direction to head next.

And my fund of great stories is pretty depleted this week, given that since the great sprained ankle incident of Tuesday, I haven't been very mobile. Contributing to my overall (let's just say it) misery this week was the fact that I woke up this morning covered head to toe in hives. I have no idea why, and this has never happened to me before.

The situation hasn't changed since then. I am still itchy and miserable and unwilling to participate in human society. The plus side of this is lots of at-home pastimes have been caught up on. Watching four-hour miniseries of Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South? Check. (SO GOOD, by the way.) Working my way through the new biography of Pearl S. Buck, whose books I have never read and never want to read but whose life in China was quite interesting? Check. Starting to re-read Pride and Prejudice on my iPad since my physical copy is still en route? Check.

I have no idea when I will cease to be covered in hives, but I hope soon. I still dream of going to Ikea on Monday, and that is supposed to be an experience. And I guess I should remember that overall I am very lucky and not covered in hives and having great experiences and China is cool:

At the Mutianyu Great Wall, where I thankfully DID NOT fall and sprain my ankle.

After the fall

2011-10-05T17:16:00.006+08:00

Yesterday James went on a hike on the Great Wall, in the Gubeikou section. It was insanely beautiful--the unrenovated portions of the Wall, great light, hills and guard towers stretching out to the horizon:

Idyllic, right? Soon after, however, disaster struck, in the form of a few loose stones that caused me to lose my balance and twist my ankle. No big deal, happens to people all the time. But as soon as I realized I couldn't walk, reality set in. Once you are on the Great Wall, pretty high up, you quickly realize that, if you are deprived of your ability to walk, it will be really, really hard to get down again.

The tour guide (who was great and very level-headed, in contrast to my being uneven-headed) had me support myself with a person on each side and hop on one foot. Considering I had probably a kilometer to go back to the bus, I felt like this was not going to work. I was able to hop about ten feet each time I tried before resting. So when she was all like, keep hopping!, I was feeling like our visions of reality were not matching up or something.

Finally, they called the park staff, who sent up a stretcher. This seemed like a more feasible solution. But I quickly realized that being carried on super narrow paths with nothing below but a long fall down a rocky hill was going to be terrifying, especially since the local stretcher had nothing to strap me in with. (James also helpfully later informed me that the stretcher "looked like ten people had died of bubonic plague on it spewing bodily fluids"--I had been too out of it to notice but told him it would have been better had he kept those details to himself.)

Here is some photo documentation of me on the stretcher as we get ready to move:

Do not be fooled by the person with the tough-looking hiking backpack--that is the American guide. The locals appeared to be pulled off an area construction site for this misadventure, something that made me a bit less confident in their depth of experience in carrying people down the sides of mountains.

I was pretty sure I was going to die, but I didn't, so now I can tell you all the story! At the end, I asked them for a receipt for the stretcher-carrying to give my insurance company and then got screamed at for a long period of time about what a crazy request this was. Oh well, it was $90 well spent.

After a long ride back to Beijing, I also had the adventure of checking out a hospital here, and it was really nice, actually. Happy ending to the story, I guess, though today was spent in bed, occasionally hobbling to the bathroom on my crutches. Clearly, work tomorrow will be a picnic.

Apologies

2011-09-24T15:52:00.002+08:00

I have fallen off the face of blogging planet. Sorry about that.

In Bangladesh, I was somewhat under-entertained, so it was easy to write a lot and have detailed posts about various events of aspects of life there, or life in general. But in China, when I have plenty to do and don't write for a month, suddenly there is a LOT to catch up on, which feels intimidating and daunting and all-around impossible.

However, an even more daunting task is looming: a return to the gym. And so, suddenly, blogging seemed manageable.

The most notable things I've done have been weekend adventures: a trip to Xi'an to see the terracotta warriors, a day on the Great Wall at Mutianyu, and a (government-funded) trip to Hong Kong to get a new visa.

They were all lovely in their own way, though I think we learned in Xi'an that we are not cut out for tour group travel, which ends up feeling more like work than fun.

Hong Kong, on the other hand, was apparently supposed to be work (I had the travel orders to prove it!) but ended up feeling more like fun. A lot more like fun. I was blown away by Beijing after Bangladesh, but a good way to become disillusioned with Beijing is to go to Hong Kong. Sure, it doesn't have Beijing's history, but it does have great food, amazing shopping, gloriously functional public transportation, and polite people (which even extends into the realm of taxi drivers!).

My wanderlust is reawakening after a not-unhappy year hunkered down in the greater Washington, DC metro area. I am considering carefully what should be my 35th foreign country. It looks like we're taking a couple days off to make it an even week off for Chinese New Year in January, so we'll see where we're off to. I've heard it's best to get out of China and maybe even out of Asia given the massive numbers of Chinese travelers who all have the exact same days off. Which means who knows where we'll turn up... stay tuned!

And hopefully at some point I'll get my act together for some photos and details about our adventures thus far.

Settling in

2011-08-28T14:44:00.004+08:00

Yesterday was an excellent Beijing day.

9:20am: alarm goes off.

10:30am: eventually rousted myself out of bed and to the gym. Lots of hurricane coverage on CNN. Things are getting crrrrrrrrrazy on the East Coast.

12:30pm: after a shower, off to dim sum with my neighbors. All you can eat for $10. I was full until 9pm.

3pm: decide to test if Netflix instant watch works over the VPN. It does! Not great quality, but we only had two short interruptions that added no more than 10-15 mins to the total viewing time. Watched a lovely French-Chinese film, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress.

5pm: decided to be useful and went to Sanlitun for fitting for the custom-made suits we ordered. They looked fabulous--great fit, nice stitching. Am now hatching plans for an entire work wardrobe for both of us. Afterwards had some tea in a very odd dessert place in Sanlitun Village and went back home (but not until after a quick stop in Uniqlo, where I decided I need to buy their entire line of thermal underwear before Beijing's winter).

9pm: suddenly went from sickeningly full to ravenously hungry. Decided to try a Hong Kong-style restaurant that we arrive at by walking through a weird service driveway across from our building. It was worth the sketchy walk for milk tea and noodle soup.

10:30pm: head back to Sanlitun to meet some friends-of-friends at Q Bar. Vodka martinis yessssssss.

just before 1am-ish: discover that locals living in a neighboring building are pelting pieces of frozen cucumber at the (granted, noisy) rooftop bar below. Am terrified for my life and somewhat disturbed by the pre-meditation of violence implied by the pre-frozen cucumber pieces. Move behind a wall.

2am: home, having never quite recovered from the Great Frozen Cucumber Scare but having quite enjoyed my evening.

Today, we sort through the UAB that arrived on Tuesday but that we've made little progress toward organizing. Thankfully, the ayi got a head start in that regard by unpacking random Christmas ornaments and arranging them on various surfaces throughout the apartment.

Doing what I do

2011-08-21T19:22:00.004+08:00

So, this weekend.

(First of all, sorry for my silence of late. Maybe living in a city where there is actually a lot to do--and I don't include Washington, DC in those ranks--has something to do with it.)

Yesterday morning there was an Embassy meet and greet with Vice-President Biden, who was in town. I wasn't feeling great, so James went without me. After he came back with a nice photo (see below), I got all jealous, but then I thought, oh Katie, you really needed the sleep.

And then I thought about how I have definitely been in this job too long already if I prioritized a few hours of sleep over meeting the VICE-PRESIDENT. OF AMERICA. ALL OF IT.

Anyway, grab and grip:

Today we went on a hike. James insisted that this would not be a real hike, just an "old-people walk through the countryside." James was wrong. I am going to be SORE. For realz. We went with the Beijing Hikers, and I would highly recommend them. But they don't mess around with what they call a level three (out of five) hike.

The views were beautiful, though, and it was so worth it. At the end we had lunch with a view of the Great Wall, though we didn't climb up it because we were half-dead from the hike. Photos forthcoming. The countryside and villages were much cleaner than in Bangladesh, and while I didn't relish the local toilets, I definitely felt that I had moved up in the world.

Welcome kit woes

2011-08-14T15:22:00.004+08:00

My running list:

In addition to needing the measuring implements (as mentioned earlier), we desperately need a cheese grater.

Those are the absolute needs to cook just about anything; a nice-to-have would be a laundry basket or something to keep dirty clothes in so they don't just pile on the floor.

Good thing our HHE arrives soon. Oh wait...

I mean, we are lucky to have anything at all, but if the point is to tide us over until our stuff arrives, this has kind of been a fail.

An update, perhaps?

2011-08-13T17:38:00.004+08:00

So how is China?

Beijing is an interesting city. It seems so modern and developed, but there are still things to figure out and overcome. Just in small, manageable ways.

Many expats will tell you that China is a crazy place and insanely overwhelming. Those people have not lived in Bangladesh.

Like today, I wandered around the gym in the hotel adjoining my apartment building. After several rooms of lockers, hot tub, pool, lounge, I still had not found any exercise machines. But eventually I found them, well hidden. Whew.

So far, the most terrifying experience in Beijing has been a visit to Carrefour. Carrefour may sound rarefied and French, but it is not. That is a sham. In fact, it is filled with every person in Beijing (it feels like), and nothing is in English, even on American brands. It took me twenty minutes to figure out what was shampoo and what was conditioner, and only because Herbal Essences helpfully puts shampoos in clear bottles and conditioner in opaque ones. I have vowed never to return.

But by and large, it is sort of like living in New York City, except with better Chinese food and less ability to communicate with those around me.

I am told the rest of China is very different. But you know what? I am okay in Beijing for now.

Plus, I can't travel yet because it is entirely unclear when I will get my diplomatic ID card that would allow me to check into hotels/take flights. Apparently my application got messed up and I may have to leave the country to fix it. Sweet.

You know what else can't happen until we get the card? Getting our stuff. But that's okay, our household effects never got ordered from the storage facility in Belgium, so they won't be here for a loooooooooooong while anyway.

Maybe when I have to leave the country to fix my visa application, I can go to Belgium and find them!

This morning I made terrible pancakes because the welcome kit that is supposed to tide us over until our things arrive does not have any measuring cups, dry measures, or measuring spoons. Thus, too little sugar and salt--the proportions were off.

But when it finally comes down to the time we may be getting settled, there is one joy on the horizon, one great shining Mecca of home furnishing that will help us fill in the gaps: yes, that's right, my friends, Beijing has Ikea.

I'm not in Dhaka anymore.

Choosing and wanting and living with it.

2011-08-08T22:23:00.004+08:00

A reminder as I live out my choices, taking the good with the bad:

In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

And maybe another I saw on Pinterest the other day... not much for unattributed inspirational quotations (or in this case, slightly gloomy quotations?), but I can't seem to shake this one:

Never regret anything, because at one time it was exactly what you wanted.

Beijing huanying ni

2011-08-03T21:43:00.003+08:00

Just a note that we are at post and marginally settled.

Marginally.

Which means: no ID card that allows us to travel anywhere outside Beijing, no HHE (household effects) shipment until October, almost no actually-useful kitchen utensils in our welcome kit.

But we're getting there. Slowly.

However, I am steadily moving toward my goal of eating my weight in dumplings each week. So that's something.

So far, I just can't stop marveling at how developed the city is after Dhaka--there are malls and Starbucks and Coldstone Creameries and the metro is clean and efficient (though crowded) and not only are mango-jitos legal, you can drink them on a roof with a view of the city skyline...

Quotes from the UAB fog

2011-07-19T10:34:00.002+08:00

James: You know, if you don't feel like sorting your clothes, you could probably fit all your clothes in the UAB and not go overweight.

Me: But, um, what do we wear then?

James: Oh... I mixed it up.

Adieu, Washington

2011-07-19T09:55:00.003+08:00

Final weekend in DC (with Mom):

1. French Festival at Hillwood. I think they may have missed the whole revolutionary aspect of Bastille Day, given they appeared to be celebrating pre-revolutionary France, down to using the old flag (no tri-colors here!). But it was fun, we got to hear some eighteenth-century French opera, and in totally non-Bastille-Day-related news, my mother loved the museum's Russian collection--between her and James, I was the only one there without a degree in something Russian-related.

2. Dinner at Proof. Mmmmmmmm. They really do get it right.

3. Brunch at Vermilion and shopping in Old Town Alexandria. New favorite shop there: Chinoiserie, which sells great modern tableware and other knickknacks. Kind of CB2-esque, but more independent-shop-that-you-want-to-support-y.

4. Definitely not getting ready for the move. And have you noticed the uptick in blog posts today? Procrastination is a beautiful thing.

All in all, a success!

A month late

2011-07-19T08:57:00.002+08:00

From maybe my favorite novel of all time:

In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June.

-Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

This is the feeling I miss in DC: the feeling of being in the center of the world, in a place with energy, where the bustle adds up to something greater than the sum of its parts. Perhaps Beijing will feel that way...

Poetic Sundays: Notes

2011-07-19T08:43:00.002+08:00

Because sorting things for the movers tomorrow is driving me nuts. Because I need a moment outside my own brain. Because it's beautiful.

An excerpt from Czeslaw Milosz's "Notes":

ON THE NEED TO DRAW BOUNDARIES

Wretched and dishonest was the sea.

SUPPLICATION

From galactic silence protect us.

HYPOTHESIS

If, she said, you wrote in Polish to punish yourself for your sins, you will be saved.

PORTRAIT

He locked himself in a tower, read ancient authors, fed birds on the terrace.

For only in this way could he forget about having to know himself.

CONSOLATION

Calm down. Both your sins and your good deeds will be lost in oblivion.

THE PERFECT REPUBLIC

Right from early morning--the sun has barely made it through the dense maples--they walk contemplating the holy word: Is.

HARMONY

Deprived. And why shouldn't you be deprived?

Those better than you were deprived.

STRONG OR WEAK POINT

You were always ready to fall to your knees!

Yes, I was always ready to fall to my knees.

A GOD-FEARING MAN

So God heard my request after all, and allowed me to sin in his praise.

AIM IN LIFE

Oh to cover my shame with regal attire!

MEDICINE

If not for the revulsion at the smell of his skin,

I could think I was a good man.

LONGING

Not that I want to be a god or a hero.

Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.

IN REVERSE

On the ruins of their homes grows a young forest. Wolves are returning and a bear sleeps secure in a raspberry thicket.

MORNING

We awoke from a sleep of I don't know how many thousand years. An eagle flew in the sun again but it didn't mean the same.

Holding it together

2011-07-15T09:55:00.003+08:00

Pre-moving crazy lady blogging fail. Sorry, guys, but you probably don't want to be along for this ride. You can catch me again in a few weeks, when the cheery grinning photos on the Great Wall start, when I inevitably photograph every dumpling in China and post it here, when things are lively and exciting and fun.

These weeks are not always those things. Oh, of course there is some fun--I had a great time last night with many friends at a happy hour I planned (with a final trip to Ray's Hellburger afterwards), we went to Restaurant Eve in Alexandria for my birthday (amazing special occasion restaurant--the food was tremendous), saw a sweetly amateurish play at the Capital Fringe Festival ("Between Takeoff and Landing"), ate incredible spaghetti and meatballs at Potenza (a favorite Italian restaurant near our apartment), tried Shake Shack for the first time (in DC! Heresy, I know. Also, you may notice there is a little too much burger action going on lately.), and celebrated America's birthday with hot dogs and fireworks.

But somehow, these weeks are much more defined by the constant calculations (how many bottles of contact solution to put in my air shipment? How many boxes of Ziploc bags? How many Ziploc bags should I first remove from said boxes to put my toiletries I'm traveling with in? Why am I thinking so much about Ziploc bags? Who am I? What is the purpose of my life? etc.), the worries, the feeling of being behind in pretty much everything.

Add on top of that my eventual realization that I don't really like being in training. Oh, sure, the Foreign Service Institute has a pretty campus; the cafeteria recently added sushi as a lunch option; the things we learn are mostly useful and occasionally interesting; but somehow a long stint in training makes me grouchy. I am ready to be off and doing something, to actually feel gainfully employed.

(At my college reunion recently, someone I was talking to was complaining about having to go back to work and see her unpleasant boss after the weekend was over. And I said something like, "Yeah, it's weird, I don't really have a boss now." And she gave me this look of sympathy that I assumed meant she thought I was unemployed. So I start rambling about how, actually, I do have a job, really, I just don't really have a boss for this year, I mean, I don't really answer to anyone exactly. And then she just shot me a look of hatred.)

So really, it's better I blog less now. You'll enjoy Great-Wall-climbing, dumpling-eating, Beijing-exploring Katie, I swear. She's great! Ziploc-bag-counting Katie is not really the one you want to hang out with.

Party party

2011-07-02T06:28:00.002+08:00

Wow, pictures from a Pool Party in Beijing recently.

Toto, I don't think we're in the Muslim world anymore...

And, while I don't think I'll be breaking out a bikini at a rooftop party anytime soon, I am REALLY excited to go live in a place where I can wear a tank top and not single-handedly scandalize a few thousand passersby.

That is a sandwich!

2011-06-30T11:15:00.004+08:00

Quick post amidst the pre-moving stress (forget China... did I mention we are moving to a new apartment this Saturday? That we'll only be in three weeks? Yeah, long story.): we made a quick outing to the glorious, glorious Eden Center in Falls Church last night. Nhu Lan's banh mi made my heart go pitter-patter. Add to that some bubble tea and an order of grilled pork to have for lunch today, and it was like being in heaven, or Saigon.

A meander through the last two weeks

2011-06-26T07:52:00.003+08:00

My my, where have we been...

Last weekend it was back to New York for my dear FSO friend Trishita's colorful and lively Bengali-American wedding. She looked absolutely stunning, and was actually carried into the room on a palanquin, which was crazy awesome. When reading accounts of 18th-century Dhaka in Linda Colley's fantastic book, The Ordeal of Elizabeth March, I was pretty sure I needed to find one, along with some bearers to carry me, but I never got around to it. So mad props to Trishita on figuring that one out.

The night before, we stayed in our old neighborhood of Murray Hill, wandering into a neighborhood Moroccan restaurant we were once fond of. It still had that authentically Moroccan, European-meets-Orientalist-fantasy atmosphere, and when we got there at 11:30pm, it was the only place on the block still bustling. Just the right time for a half-bottle of Moet & Chandon, a baguette aux tomates, and aches of nostalgia that threatened to really hurt.

The next night, we'd made an odyssey on two sets of commuter rail from Long Island (where the wedding was held) to New Jersey, where we hung out with my parents drinking both German and Brooklynese beer. The next day was Fathers Day, an appropriate time to go see my dear grandfather and take in a meal at my father's favorite restaurant, the ever-overwhelming Forno's of Spain in Newark (conveniently within sight of Newark Penn Station and our Amtrak train back to DC).

The week before did contain one slightly life-changing experience, which was seeing Elvis Costello in concert. I love his music but didn't get my hopes up for the concert--however, it, in a word, rocked. Definitely see him on this tour if you are at all a fan. Despite the slightly questionable decision to sing "Pump It Up" at ballad speed, it was a fabulous performance and definitely played to the fans.

What else? This week I've sort of been out of commission with a cold, but we did have a tasty Chinese dinner with some soon-departing friends at Mark's Duckhouse, as well as sneaking in a date night at Cashion's Eat Place in Adams Morgan, which we both enjoyed.

Now I have officially been putting off cleaning out my closet since I woke up at 9:30am this morning. I think it's time to clean ALL the things.

New York, New York (and Greece)

2011-06-15T10:58:00.004+08:00

Weekend in NYC.

One play. The Normal Heart was moving, challenging--it practically sputtered with rage--tremendously well-acted, insanely depressing. Definitely a good return to Broadway for me, considering much of the schlock out there now (though I still really want to see Book of Mormon).

One dinner with friends. Lovely friends. Plus, we always enjoy Kefi. I will never stop having a soft spot for Greek food. By the way, I randomly just found this photo from our honeymoon in Greece, and I love it, so here it is:

Two brunches. One a surprise for a friend's half-birthday (we appropriately ate half a cake), another a chance to catch up with a delightful friend. In fact, let's call it 2.5 brunches, because I also sat with Carolyn while she had brunch and I got bellini-ed up.

There is rarely time to relax these days when we're in New York, and while sometimes I miss leisurely bagel breakfasts and long walks, it definitely is wonderful to see old friends.

Some culture, some food

2011-06-06T10:44:00.005+08:00

Recently, I noticed a plaque noting a historic site had been erected in my decidedly unhistoric-looking neighborhood. It's more concrete canyon than charming cobblestone, so I was curious what exactly qualified as history.

So... apparently they pretty much, like, invented the internet one block from my apartment. No joke. So it makes it all the more ironic that the internet in our building is sometimes slower than what we had in Bangladesh. I feel like we are shaming the glorious history of Rosslyn.

Okay, and now that I look at the Wikipedia article on Arpanet, there is no link to Arlington mentioned, so now I am wondering if this is a fictional historic plaque, as in, hey, we thought it might be nice to give the neighborhood some character.

In other news--last night we made our first trip our to Wolf Trap, a national park dedicated to the performing arts, to see Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore. It's a pretty place and we enjoyed ourselves, perhaps James more than me, as he is the Gilbert and Sullivan fan.

And lastly, forgot to mention a couple things on Boston, and of course, they are about food. Given the descriptions of dining hall chicken, this clearly wasn't a food-focused trip, but have to give a shout-out to Felipe's, the still-astoundingly-good burrito place, and The Independent, a fantastic gastropub in Somerville that Alex introduced me to--the trout was all kinds of fabulous.

Traveling, doing

2011-06-05T01:01:00.003+08:00

A loooooong break was taken, I see. I'm sorry. I had a less traumatic--indeed, positively fun--visit to Boston--or more specifically, Cambrige--last weekend, which kept me busy.

In fact, I went to my college reunion, and it was amazing. No one looked any different, and it felt like I had run into all these people at the dining hall last week (and we did re-enter the dining hall to eat the famed broccoli and cheese chicken, a Sunday brunch staple also affectionately called "Hangover Chicken." It looks like it is made of chemicals).

I loved college. Adored it. Lurved it. But I don't talk about where I went to school too often because it has a certain baggage. We all spent freshman year answering questions of where we go to school with a vague "In Boston," hoping to avoid further probing (just FYI, not answering a question is usually a bad way to avoid further probing). And I certainly don't bring it up now (though our FSNs in Dhaka often could not be stopped--they liked getting a reaction out of the schoolchildren I'd go talk to about the U.S. political system).

Feeling like the scion of a rich family who cannot escape the burden of the family name and the expectations that go with it, I was embarrassed by Harvard; it was inconvenient. But keeping this analogy going a bit, it sure was nice to go back to the family mansion and bask in its comforts. Even if the comforts included a twin extra-long bed in a cinder-block cell of Mather House (just kidding, I LOVE Mather House!), a communal bathroom, and dining hall hash browns. (Yeah, I think we all collectively decided that for the ten-year, it's time to splurge for a hotel room.)

We had a ridiculously great time, and the school kept up their end of the bargain with open bars at every event, from brunch to field day to multiple prom-like tented-dance-floor parties. Sadly, James couldn't make it (especially sad since we met in college and we both belong to the same class) due to his brother's college graduation (though, you know, that's important too :)).

But I got back to FSI and realized, oh good gracious, where has the time gone? It feels like departure is imminent--in 2.5 weeks that I know will FLY BY, it will be one month away. (I have a count-down the count-down.) How crazy is THAT???

A very looooooooong weekend

2011-05-24T10:20:00.004+08:00

At least this week has definitively proven that extreme levels of stress will not kill you.

My final Chinese test was last Thursday. Obviously a stressing experience. And it went well, and I got the score I needed (plus a bit extra on reading), and that should be a happy thing, and it is, but let me just say, the test was really just as unpleasant as I could have imagined. I sort of perversely ENJOYED the language tests I took during A-100, but nothing was on the line then. This one just left me rushing through the final paragraphs of the articles I was reading trying to make the whole ordeal end sooner.

And then, of course, there was the 45-MINUTE wait for my score. Goody.

But finally it was over, and Thursday night we saw Bridesmaids (which rocked! I kind of want to recount the entire movie to you all, but maybe you should just go see it yourselves) before meeting up with George and Annalise for beer and dessert at Fireworks, which continues to have obscenely good desserts.

And the next day continued well with delicious sandwiches at Earl's with Lady Andrea and Sir Jack. But then that evening it took a turn for the worse, in that I had to fly.

My aversion (illogical) has been documented here before (ad nauseum). We won't go back into it, but suffice to say it didn't brighten my day. Nor did the fact that our flight was 1.5 hours delayed due to weather. Nor did the fact that when we got to Boston, so did, like, a gazillion other people whose flights had also been delayed due to storms right outside Boston.

But finally, just before midnight, we were on our way in our rental car. There was rain and fog but little traffic, and we had almost made it to our hotel in Lexington, MA (near my brother's graduation), when I got into a tangle with some wildlife.

I.e. I hit a deer, my first accident ever, and it was pretty traumatic, though I was proud of myself for staying pretty calm (a husband who shall not be named, on the other hand, was screaming bloody murder). We were literally less than half a mile from our hotel at that point. Curses.

So between phone calls and mental trauma and jitters and a terribly, terribly uncomfortable mattress (Aloft Hotels, I'm looking at you), we really got almost no sleep that night.

My brother's graduation was great nonetheless--I enjoyed seeing him pass this milestone, and his school seemed like a very nice place. And then we zipped over to another part of Massachusetts for Lizz and Giselle's insanely beautiful wedding. Just lovely.

So that day, despite some nagging exhaustion issues, was pretty successful.

But the next day we spent ages looking for parking in Cambridge, got terribly lost trying to find the airport/car rental place, and discovered James had left his messenger bag with all his Chinese books he needs to study in advance of his test on Friday in my mom's car, which was, by that point, back in New Jersey. At this rate, we figured, the plane was probably going to crash.

Thankfully, it didn't. But Jetblue did lose our luggage. Another win! Plus we got the only two seats on the plane with broken TV sets.

Today, all is looking up. Our suitcase was delivered to us safe and sound, after a jolly foray to San Jose (do you know the way to San Jose? A place I have never been, but now my luggage has). I am at peace.

Let's hope we can say the same for the deer.

Friday the 13th

2011-05-15T02:46:00.003+08:00

Yesterday was kind of a roller coaster of a day.

9:40am: wake up wayyyyyyyy too late, get ready really fast, quickly check email and see a note from the GSO in Beijing saying: "Congratulations! Your re-assignment was approved at a recent Housing Board meeting." My re-assignment? Congratulations? This left me concerned and anxious but no time to investigate further before class.

1:30pm: go on the intranet at lunch. Discover that the new place is the BEST PLACE EVER and I am thrilled to have been re-assigned. Feeling all sorts of on-two-metro-lines-and-attached-to-a-luxury-shopping-mall glee. Quickly proceed to become attached, ensuring that, in the event of any future re-assignments, I will be totally crushed.

5:41pm: miss the last shuttle from FSI after my class runs late. Proceed into meltdown territory after weeks of Chinese-related tension building up.

6:13pm: the cab we called finally comes. Cheer myself up thinking that this will be over in less than a week. Unless I fail the test. Proceed to dinner and a bar to try to recover from Chinese-induced unhappiness. (Yes, I am incapable of long-term focused attention. So even though I am about to test, I still haven't trained myself to study in any usefully consistent way.)

11:30pm: after coming home, I look at my credit card statement and see two charges from Saks Fifth Avenue from two days earlier, totaling around $700. Had zero memory of shopping at Saks. Walked myself through what I had done that day, and it definitely did not involve Saks or department stores of any kind. Even checked the Saks website to make sure I didn't have a pending order that I'd purchased in my sleep or something. Nothing. This has never happened to me before, and I call the credit card company in a panic. Thankfully, it's USAA, so I am confident it's getting resolved.

The end. Today it's after 3pm and I really need to try to learn every word in the Chinese language. I am so behind.

NOTE: things I was doing when I should have been studying: Follies is, in my opinion, Sondheim's masterpiece, and the production at the Kennedy Center right now was lovely. Bernadette Peters and Elaine Page sharing the same stage? My diva-meter was going up to 11.

Extraordinary ordinariness

2011-05-09T07:03:00.004+08:00

This weekend we had a new adventure, one that most people would consider quite ordinary: driving around, running errands.

There were some things we needed to take care of and wanted wheels, so we rented a car for the weekend, and while I am still a public transportation devotee (though much more so in New York!), I must say it was very nice.

Except, perhaps, for the time when we had no GPS or map and James forgot to get directions from Chevy Chase back home in Rosslyn. If we had just stayed on Connecticut Ave., it would have been easy, though slow and terribly indirect. So I had the great idea that I wanted to cut over toward the west to go some more direct way. This was a terrible idea and left us going in circles in a number of small residential areas somewhere vaguely near Woodley Park before giving up and finally just going back on Connecticut all the way past Dupont Circle.

You can tell me are not drivers. Or navigators.

But we did do some fun and useful things, like raid the Tyson's Galleria mall (okay, this was only fun or useful for me, not for James--J.Crew was having a huge sale!), load up on favorite Trader Joe's products, and eat some Guatemalan fast food chicken (an improvised stop at Pollo Campero since we were right around the corner shopping. I am pretty sure the negative reviews on Yelp have a lot to do with people wanting to avoid chain restaurants--the grilled chicken, beans, and plantains were all really tasty).

On the cultural/sightseeing side, we finally (at James's request) visited the Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center, which is basically a giant hangar out by Dulles Airport packed with historic airplanes, plus a space shuttle. James loved it; I thought it had some cool stuff, but my eyes glazed over about 40 planes in, and I just reminded myself that James had put up with the mall the day before.

And for our ballin'-suburbanites-out-in-NoVA-with-car date night, we hit Peking Gourmet Inn for some tasty Peking duck to get us into the mood for Beijing. Their other food was pretty bad, but the duck was really tasty, and plus, the place is a trip--it makes me think of a Chinese place in the '60s in Hollywood or something: a huge place with high ceilings, all red carpets, gilt, white tablecloths, pictures of celebrities on the walls, huge plates of spareribs and wontons being dished out, and a giant full bar. It was packed and bizarrely festive.

There you go, folks: our thrilling adventures doing what most Americans do every weekend.

P.S. Pre-car, we also spent Friday night with friends listening to bluegrass at Tiffany Tavern in Alexandria. Homey, divey, delightful. Highly recommended.

Culinary activity report

2011-05-06T11:05:00.003+08:00

And another note:

Bayou Bakery was really, really tasty. I heartily approve of their muffaletta, and also their beignets, except for the fact that James managed to burn himself on hot oil squirting out of them. The next day we also enjoyed Lyon Hall brunch; while I always enjoy Lyon Hall meals, this was my first time at brunch, and let me tell you, donuts + shortrib frankfurter = joy.

I continue to cook with gusto. This week:

Sunday: dinner chez Micheal and Stephanie. We brought potato salad.
Monday: Sea bass Cuban style; rice and garlic bread
Tuesday: James met me at Lebanese Taverna in Pentagon Row. I end up eating there every time I go to the mall based on the strength of their lebneh alone.
Wednesday: Bean burritos; watermelon and feta salad.
Thursday: Pork tenderloin with red and yellow peppers; more watermelon and feta salad; garlic bread. (BTW-- Cooking Light has been on a roll lately. We haven't made a single one of their recent recipes that hasn't been perfect.)

Consumerist exercise

2011-05-06T10:54:00.003+08:00

Notes from my shopping trip:

1. Wide-leg jeans only work if you don't already have actually wide legs.

2. Me buying heels always puts me in mind of Oscar Wilde's comment on second marriages: "the triumph of hope over experience." Seriously, how many pairs have collected dust in my closet waiting for me to be ready for to suffer pain in order to wear them? Nonetheless, I got a cute and surprisingly comfortable pair, so we shall see how that goes.

3. The Gap seriously needs to hire a few more cashiers.

4. Why is no one selling the clothes I've designed in my mind?

5. If you take a school group to Washington, DC, I can guarantee there are about 50 billion more culturally enriching places to take them than the Pentagon City mall.

6. While shopping for shoes, a disembodied voice shrieked through my mind, "真的好看吗？" This no joke seriously freaked me out. I became convinced that Chinese was making me lose my mind. But no, there were just a couple of Chinese ladies further down the sandal aisle.

7. It is SO CRAZY that I can just understand Chinese being spoken around me! There were Chinese tourists on the metro too. I don't even have to struggle to figure out what they're talking about (nothing revolutionary: directions, who should take the one available seat, etc.). It blows my mind.

8. Eight bullet points from a trip to the mall: can you tell I need to get out more? My test is two weeks from today, and I am so ready to be done.

Saturday blues

2011-05-01T03:15:00.003+08:00

So, not that I want to use this blog to air my own crankiness, but I am having Saturday afternoon rage issues. I went down to the gym to use the (ONE AND ONLY) elliptical machine. Only one other person there, a guy holding some weights. I get to the machine and realize at the same time that said guy has also approached the machine. He informs me that he was going to use it and I can come back in 35 minutes. So I left.

But I came back to my apartment and was FURIOUS. Why hadn't I just started using it? Seriously, he was holding weights when I entered the room. I really wished I had told him off, but then I thought about how I'm at Oakwood, and the older white man in the gym is probably going to be my next DCM or something, so probably better not to. But still.

Anyway, on to happier thoughts. The Royal Wedding came and went, and now I have all sorts of useful vocabulary in Chinese that I plan to use daily (monarchy, queen, prince, duke, royal, etc.). Less embedded in my mind are the actually important words that I sure could use for my test (I love the sinking feeling I get sometimes when it's clear that everyone in the class but me know a word and I just nod and smile and act like I'm going with the program). Test is now in less than three weeks, so I guess we're coming to go-time.

That wasn't that happy a thought. Maybe I can come up with some others. Thursday night I convinced a good group to go to the piano bar at Morrison House in Alexandria. It was a quiet night, but I think the people who were going to be into it got into it. We also had tasty fish and chips at Eamonn's Dublin Chipper (owned by the same people who run the storied Restaurant Eve). The cod was perfect.

Tonight we have going-away drinks for my friend who is moving to Warsaw. I think now I will work on compiling a list of Warsaw favorites for her. I am so jealous! I think we'll also stop by Bayou Bakery in Courthouse, which we've been meaning to try for a while, for a bite to eat.

Apparently, I don't have a life.

2011-05-01T03:05:00.002+08:00

"Blogs are for people who don't have a life. I have enough to do w/o writing for the benefit of perfect strangers [sic]"

-My mother, encouraging my endeavors since I was a small child and told her I wanted to be an artist and she told me that actually, only doctors, lawyers and investment bankers led nice lives.

This website is making me laugh way too hard.

2011-04-28T08:34:00.000+08:00

Kate Middleton for the Win.

In which we avoid writing a Chinese mini-talk

2011-04-28T07:04:00.004+08:00

Today was a hypochondria special up in here; I've convinced myself I have at least three different diseases. Add on top of that the tornado watch out for Virginia and my commitment to going out tonight is wavering.

I have to admit, having my Chinese homework hanging over my head really tires me out too. I hated that aspect of academic life in college--there is no escaping the work, and no matter what time of day or whether it's the weekend or not, there is always work to be done.

Of course, like college, that doesn't mean I actually do it. But the thought is terrifying. Worse than a tornado.

I hope the stormy weather calms down before piano bar night tomorrow because that is the real highlight of the week. Yesssssssssssss.

Okay, perhaps it's time to get down to business. After all, my Chinese test is THREE WEEKS FROM TOMORROW. That is slightly insane. On the other hand, though, it is kind of coming together. I sort of feel like I speak Chinese. How crazy is that to say?

In other news, I got a haircut today with the fabulous Stephanie at Parlour on U St. We changed it up a little bit--not too extreme, but it's the first markedly different haircut I've gotten in ten years (when I switched from all one length to subtle layers). And since I got to the area a bit early, I finally tried Ben's Chili Bowl for lunch. Verdict: loved the half-smoke, could leave the chili. And they have the nicest staff in DC.

Is this crap for real?

2011-04-24T11:07:00.002+08:00

One of the most absurd NY Times Vows columns I've seen in quite some time:

IT’S fitting that Esther Jin Kim and Joseph Rosenwald Varet met because of their support of Performa, an organization in New York that promotes the work of performing artists. After all, these are two people who approach life as a kind of experiential art form.

For them, even the most mundane activity is an opportunity for artistic expression. Mr. Varet, 35, has been known to drive from farm stand to farm stand to find just the right produce for a picturesque beach picnic. And Ms. Kim, 29, stores her countless pairs of designer jeans in a glass case rather than using something as prosaic as a chest of drawers.

----------------------------------------
Mr. Varet’s interest was piqued by the fact that Ms. Kim, whose parents immigrated to Dallas from Seoul shortly before she was born, is Korean. Mr. Varet’s friends and family said that he had long had an affinity for Asian art, cuisine and culture and had traveled extensively in Asia. (NOTE: Can we just call it an Asian fetish and move on?)

----------------------------------------

Everything the two of them did together that August was studied and artful, from the particular way they ground and brewed coffee, to the beach time they spent not sunning or swimming but painting watercolors to present to each other.

They began to see the beauty in their differences.

“He’s solid where I’m like water,” Ms. Kim said. “I never caught him in a lie.”

-----------------------------------------

To top it all off, this is the guy who started the company that put the stupid TVs in New York taxis, allowing you to have the pleasure of watching the same inane clips approximately 402 times in one week. I am pretty sure he has his own circle of hell waiting for him.

Poetic Sundays: O Tell Me the Truth About Love

2011-04-24T09:36:00.004+08:00

Here is a fun one--I picked it out for my little brother to read at our wedding. Naturally, I am fond of it and find it quite entertaining. And of course, one cannot have a properly dignified occasion like a wedding without a good line about nose picking.

O Tell Me The Truth About Love
By W.H. Auden

Some say love's a little boy,
And some say it's a bird,
Some say it makes the world go around,
Some say that's absurd,
And when I asked the man next-door,
Who looked as if he knew,
His wife got very cross indeed,
And said it wouldn't do.

Does it look like a pair of pyjamas,
Or the ham in a temperance hotel?
Does its odour remind one of llamas,
Or has it a comforting smell?
Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is,
Or soft as eiderdown fluff?
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
O tell me the truth about love.

Our history books refer to it
In cryptic little notes,
It's quite a common topic on
The Transatlantic boats;
I've found the subject mentioned in
Accounts of suicides,
And even seen it scribbled on
The backs of railway guides.

Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian,
Or boom like a military band?
Could one give a first-rate imitation
On a saw or a Steinway Grand?
Is its singing at parties a riot?
Does it only like Classical stuff?
Will it stop when one wants to be quiet?
O tell me the truth about love.

I looked inside the summer-house;
It wasn't over there;
I tried the Thames at Maidenhead,
And Brighton's bracing air.
I don't know what the blackbird sang,
Or what the tulip said;
But it wasn't in the chicken-run,
Or underneath the bed.

Can it pull extraordinary faces?
Is it usually sick on a swing?
Does it spend all its time at the races,
or fiddling with pieces of string?
Has it views of its own about money?
Does it think Patriotism enough?
Are its stories vulgar but funny?
O tell me the truth about love.

When it comes, will it come without warning
Just as I'm picking my nose?
Will it knock on my door in the morning,
Or tread in the bus on my toes?
Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.

Arlington days

2011-04-24T05:22:00.002+08:00

So today we went to a bread-baking class at Northside Social, a great coffee shop/wine bar in the Clarendon section of Arlington. We came away with a massive pile of bread and some sourdough starter. I am still pretty convinced I am not a baker and not capable of making good bread at home, but James is determined to try it. If he wants to bake me delicious bread, I certainly won't object.

Northside Social is owned by the same people who own my very favorite casual restaurant in the greater Washington area, Lyon Hall, which focuses on Alsatian cuisine. It is delightful and delicious and anyone around here who hasn't tried it yet absolutely should (along with Northside Social and their first restaurant, Liberty Tavern).

As long as I am discussing my favorite Arlington businesses, let's discuss Earl's. It may be the best sandwich shop I have encountered, ever. I went there for the first time last weekend and was so happy and yet so terribly sad that I hadn't been going there every weekend since we got back to the area. It was that good. My sandwich was (no joke) thick-cut fresh turkey (like Thanksgiving turkey), gravy, and sweet potato fries (in the sandwich!) on ciabatta. Life-changing.

Of course, we also went to Ray's Hellburger last night, trying the L'il Devil--the smaller burger is way better because the big burger is so big that the middle doesn't get seasoning. And let me tell you, this was good. It hit the spot. It was super rare and juicy and wonderful. It may have been the best burger I've ever had (and part of that, no doubt, was due to how badly I wanted a burger right then. You get sent the burger you're meant to have, I think).

Misc.

2011-04-22T10:48:00.004+08:00

Ziti. Yum. Still yum after omitting over half the cheese and butter that Giada demanded. No, Giada, I defy you!

Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo excited because I am going to my first cooking class ever on Saturday--a class on bread baking at the ever-wonderful Northside Social in Clarendon. If I actually successfully learn to bake bread, that could be a delicious (though decidedly non-Atkins-friendly) pastime.

Chinese class is sort of nearing a breaking point. My test is four weeks from today. I can feel the people around me start to snap as the pressure weighs down on us. And at the end, when we've all been crushed to smithereens by our own psyches and the teachers' expectations of us, we'll all be able to observe: 我们都被压坏了。

Aaaand right now I am avoiding writing a mini-talk (a very FSI-specific term) on American sports culture. Great. My favorite.

Poetic Sundays: The River-Merchant's Wife

2011-04-18T09:48:00.003+08:00

Since last week is over and thus so is my prohibition on all things Chinese, I can now share one of my favorite poems: a rough translation of a Chinese-language poem by Li Po done by the poet Ezra Pound.

I must confess that, based solely on his work, Pound is one of my favorite poets ever. Unfortunately, he is an awkward choice--at some point he descended into madness, fascism, and anti-semitism, even being arrested for treason (before being deemed unfit to stand trial due to insanity). Certainly not a personal life to be admired, and some will argue that his work should be dismissed because of his abhorrent actions and views.

I am not sure how much I've ever bought that sort of argument. I remember reading Chinua Achebe's essay on why the racism central to Conrad's Heart of Darkness obviates the novella's artistic merit. I wasn't really sure what to think at the time, especially as I found Heart of Darkness so terribly dull that I had no intention of ever reading it again.

But I will not stop reading Pound. Because oh, his poems! I love the simple beauty of his language, mixed with startling erudition. Here is a favorite of his loose translations of Chinese poems--poignant and lovely and longing.

The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter
By Li Po; loosely translated by Ezra Pound

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?

At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-Sa.

Here comes the weekend

2011-04-17T04:31:00.004+08:00

So now that Jezebel has gotten sort of preachy and dull... I was in need of a new humorous lady-blog to give me updates from the world and the internet. Enter The Hairpin. Love.

There is a tornado watch out. In the interest of avoiding any tornadoes afoot, I have stayed inside and done very little (clearly the tornado wouldn't want me studying Chinese).

Though I've loaded my Netflix queue with Mandarin-language films, last night (still feeling not-great from a cold I've had all week) I reached my breaking point and decided we (that's the royal we) were done with Mandarin for the week. So instead I watched The September Issue, and it was stellar. James enjoyed it just as much. I am not sure what Anna Wintour's reaction was to the film, but hopefully she's not too dumb to notice she comes across as totally ridiculous in it?

Top ten

2011-04-16T07:13:00.002+08:00

I was thinking the other day about the things I most missed while out of the country. A rough top ten list:

1. This so definitely takes the top spot: avocado.

2. Instant gratification: if I need something RIGHT NOW, I can go to a store and get it. And even if I order something online, I'll receive it in a week, versus a month.

3. Oysters. Many of these are food-related.

4. Drinking tap water. No, scratch that, brushing my teeth with tap water. SO MUCH EASIER. So many minutes of going outside to the distiller saved. This probably should be higher, actually.

5. Supermarkets.

6. Taxis! Also maybe should be higher. Forgive my random order.

7. Netflix watch instantly.

8. Blue skies. The sky in Dhaka was almost always hazy and gray.

9. Usable internet. (Still sort of miss that in my current living situation.)

10. Having a reason to put a little thought into what I wear each day.

And the #1 thing I don't miss about Dhaka: hand-sized spiders.

Round-up

2011-04-15T09:42:00.002+08:00

Tonight's dinner: the most delicious spring pasta dish EVER.

The Washington Post reveals the winners of this year's Peeps diorama contest. Brilliant.

Aaaand this is why liberal arts education is better.

News from our future place of abode: the Chinese ladies want to see that deed.

Less than a month before Pinkberry hits DC!

Poetic Sundays: a poem with capital letters

2011-04-11T12:04:00.004+08:00

Here is a favorite, which I hope you all enjoy. Perhaps my enjoyment of it reflects my slight disdain toward my home state's most-lauded institution of higher learning. Friendly rivalry and all, plus a bit of "seriously? You're coming to the Jersey suburbs just at the phase of life when it's time to run screaming out of them?" mixed in.

a poem with capital letters

by jane cooper

john berryman asked me to write a poem about roosters.

elizabeth bishop, he said, once wrote a poem about roosters.

do your poems use capital letters? he asked. like god?

i said. god no, he said, like princeton! i said,

god preserve me if i ever write a poem about princeton, and i thought,

o john berryman, what has brought me into this company of poets

where the masculine thing to do is use capital letters

and even princeton struts like one of god’s betters?

Le weekend

2011-04-11T10:39:00.003+08:00

The quest to pretend I live in Paris instead of the DC suburbs continues. Today's steps included buying this dress and listening to lots of Carla Bruni.

In other music news, I heard a band called the Spring Standards play in DC on Friday. They are so Brooklyn that it is almost a little ridiculous, but this video is definitely pretty great. I just bought their album on iTunes and plan on rocking out to it.

(I will note that this was my inaugural visit to the Atlas District, aka H Street--I am not counting a trip to Ethiopic since that is still pretty close to Union Station. The weather didn't cooperate, but I'd say it was generally a success. Really liked Smith Commons, where we had a delicious dinner involving oysters, lamb chops, and truffle-oil mac and cheese.)

So bummed to be coming down with a cold today, on the last day of Miss Lexi's visit, no less. So today was pretty much me hanging out with my iTunes, my Chinese textbooks, a big pot of tomato sauce. I did take some time to watch a Chinese movie, and while I am happy to have understood more of the dialogue, that is about the only relationship the word "happy" has with any of director Zhang Yimou's films. (Today was Raise the Red Lantern.) I keep thinking that the next one won't make me want to shoot myself. NEVER AGAIN.

Also, somehow the Chinese teachers have convinced me that Gong Li is ugly. How did this happen? They say she is too ruddy and sturdy-looking to be pretty, and that she only appeals to international audiences. And somehow now I've totally bought into the Chinese view of her, and the entire movie I keep thinking, hide your children before Gong Li stomps on them! RUN!!!!!!

Blossoms and miscellany

2011-04-08T11:21:00.008+08:00

So... we (meaning the Government) may be shutting down. We're gonna party like it's senior year of college and we again have no paycheck (bring on the Franzia!).

But in the meantime, a few delightful things lately:

I hate crowds (Dhaka and Beijing what what? Yeah, I apparently am out to hurt myself.) and thus avoided the Tidal Basin like the plague this cherry blossom season. But I did feel it necessary to see at least a few of the pink buds, and so we visited Dumbarton Oaks, a museum with beautiful gardens owned by Harvard. Really pretty--and we also checked out the museum, which has collections of three (random, apparently unconnected?) things: Byzantine art, Pre-Columbian art, and a collection of antique botanical books. Frolicking:

We also took a break from studying Chinese to get in a little culture. We made it ALL THE WAY to Southwest (dude... crazy!) to the Arena Stage, which is housed in a beautiful new theater, and saw an excellent production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The acting was great. And it was so good to get away from homework for a bit.

AND before the show we visited the Maine Avenue fish market! It was crazy--this area (only a few blocks from the theater) does not look the slightest bit like it belongs in Washington, DC. We wandered into the fish market area, where most places didn't seem to be selling food suitable for dinner--it was more stinky whole fish out on ice. Finally, I approached one stall with a red-faced man who was straight out of hale-and-hearty-fishmonger central casting. He beckoned me closer, and while adjusting one of his fish and knocking cubes of fishy ice on me, he informed me Jimmy's had the best cooked fish. Around the corner, he told us.

So we were off to Jimmy's, and it was indeed awesome--the stuffed shrimp and crab cakes were fabulous, as was their mac and cheese (we didn't try their desserts, but they looked pretty amazing too). Unfortunately, there is nowhere to sit (most people were doing takeout), and so we ended up sitting on a concrete barrier with the Maine Avenue traffic whizzing by us, trying not to drip grease on ourselves. And it was delicious.

And what about Chinese? The thing that occupies the largest space in our brain right now? I can say things! Crazy! In preparation for the test, I am now in the the phase of only watching Mandarin movies off Netflix, and vaguely considering going to some meetups or something. So overall, I feel like I turned a corner recently and am feeling more confident. Of course, if we miss a significant chunk of class time when the government shuts down... yeah, that would kill my confidence pretty fast.

But for now, no thinking about that--Lexi comes to town this weekend! Yay!!!!!!!!!!!! We are partying like serious nerd-folk-loving hipsters tomorrow night.

I interrupt this blog to bring you news of deliciousness.

2011-04-04T00:43:00.004+08:00

Savory oatmeal: sooooooooooooooooooo good.

Tonight I am planning my first experiment with hominy, i.e. food we didn't eat in New Jersey. I am excited yet afraid.

Off for a long walk to Dumbarton Oaks. Hope it is not mobbed, which would defeat the purpose of going to Dumbarton Oaks instead of to the main cherry blossom insanity.

And here, we hit our whining-about-language-training low point.

2011-04-03T01:29:00.004+08:00

Scattered thundershowers and scattered post-tequila haze... to leave my apartment or not to leave my apartment?

We may have to go with not. I will try to make it productive by doing some Chinese homework, at least. And swearing to get out and do something at least vaguely productive tomorrow... maybe a museum or a stroll through Dumbarton Oaks?

Blargh blargh blargh. I started this entry so I could sprinkle it with inspirational quotations from an old file of favorite quotations I have from college. But they are all too idealistic for my mood today, which is a fog of hangover and Chinese characters.

If you're ever tempted to learn Chinese, know that the speaking really isn't that bad. The tones are annoying, but if you mess them up, people will roughly understand you from context, and you'll survive. And the grammar is brilliantly simple and logical.

But know that reading involves memorizing around 1,500 little distinct picture/symbol thingamajiggies. (And that's only to get to the 1-level on a five-point scale.) And the little pictures will not all be wonderfully different and memorable; oh no, many of them will be EXACTLY the same except for some minute little line somewhere that you will only notice after scrutinizing the two characters next to each other, trying to figure out how on earth anyone could claim they were distinct. It will hurt your eyes--my already-insane eye prescription (-7.5 and -8 in my two eyes) is heading somewhere off the charts, and I can tell I'll need to go in for an adjustment soon. But more than that, it will hurt your soul. And you will wonder why you once thought it was so awesome to go to language school for five hours a day and yearn for that desk job you once eschewed.

The end. But rest assured, the others can't be that bad. Just steer clear of Chinese and Japanese and their confounded little pictures.

On tap this week: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at Arena Stage, Brooklyn hipster bands on H Street, and next weekend with Lexi!!!

Toilet humor

2011-04-02T07:52:00.004+08:00

Aaaand heavens to Betsy it's April already. March was a poor showing, but perhaps the next few months of preparing to go to post will prove more fruitful blogging material.

I noticed at 11:32pm last night that there was a call for best (worst?) overseas bathroom stories for the Foreign Service Blog Round-up, due at midnight. Given that I was still slogging through a Chinese newspaper article about people selling fake cigarettes being sentenced to death, there was no way I'd make it, but oh, do I have stories.

Bangladesh was rife with bathroom incidents, considering that in two years in the country, the only public bathroom I encountered that was nicer than that in an average McDonald's in the U.S. was in the Westin. And it could go wayyyyyyyy down from there. It just wasn't an adventure if you weren't sharing your stall with a spider the size of the palm of your hand. Add in a few lizards and you had a veritable menagerie.

Perhaps the worst was at a high school in rural Bangladesh, outside of Comilla. The caravan of cars was about to start the two or three-hour drive back to Dhaka, but I discreetly got my female FSN to tell the driver to wait a minute so I could run to the bathroom.

Only problem is, bathroom is really just a turn of phrase here that had no relationship to the facilities available. Which was a shack divided by a thin wall that didn't go even close to all the way to the ceiling, and in each "stall" there was a hole in the ground. And from the ceiling hung down a net of spiderwebs that reached down to about the level of my head. Awesome.

So I am trying to balance in my work clothes and with my purse and not fall in the hole and not stick my head in the mass of spiderwebs, when I realize that across the flimsy wall was the Ambassador, who had also decided it was time for a pit stop. So now I was trying not to fall in, not to stick my head in the spiderwebs, and not to make any noise. Needless to say, this was both horrifying and mortifying.

So there you have it, my friends. When people claim our jobs are glamorous and our lives are filled with tuxedos and champagne and glimmering white toilet seats so clean you can see your face in them, you can now tell them about The Hole.

Things the New York Times is doing

2011-03-27T04:56:00.002+08:00

Other than making people pay.

Writing articles that are making me mad jealous.

Writing articles that make me both cackle with laughter and want to read more poetry.

New York state of mind

2011-03-22T21:34:00.004+08:00

Realized I hadn't posted in a while... just back from a whirlwind weekend in New York. Compared to some of my New York days, this time our schedule wasn't that action-packed. But I remembered how much I love walking in New York, how easy it is because you never get bored with the madness all around you.

On Sunday I took NJ Transit out to see my grandfather, who is 100 and NOT happy about it (and already, two months after his 100th birthday, he keeps informing us he is almost 101). I walked the 27.5 blocks to Penn Station, and it was glorious--quiet, being Sunday morning. I was walking down a hushed Park Avenue, the office buildings silent and dark, the few people swallowed by the majesty of Park Avenue, which almost seems like the approach to a veritable temple of business, which would of course be housed in the Helmsley Building (I am slightly obsessed with the Helmsley Building).

And I remembered something that I had also remembered at a bar the night while meeting friends of friends (and I mean this in the nicest way possible): everyone in New York seems so small compared to the city that envelops them. How can you ever matter in a city where the skyline itself mocks your minute insignificance? There are so many people, and you. Don't. Matter. And that's all right, you just go with it.

I decided that is the difference between New York and Washington. Washington and its smaller scale fool people into thinking they are Somebody, and that is why the people here are so goddamn annoying a cocktail parties. New Yorkers have a reputation for arrogance, but by and large, I think my friends in New York feel much less pressure to sell themselves. Who cares? They live in New York, after all.

The Audacity of Taupe

2011-03-13T01:13:00.004+08:00

Okay, fine, I stole that title from the Huffington Post, but it was pretty brilliant. So last night my lovely college roommate who works at the White House took us for a West Wing tour. I was trying to play it cool, but in fact I was pretty much giddy from excitement. No photos inside, so you'll have to settle for a nighttime view of the front of the building sort of glowing orange:

Hi James! Hi Mr. President inside somewhere!

The tour was really cool. Everything was smaller than I imagined, and even though it was nice, it was hard to fathom that it was really where the President goes to work every day. I thought there would be lots of antechambers and such before you get to anything real, but no, we walked in and the first door is marked "Situation Room." The art (all on loan from the Smithsonian) is fabulous.

And finally, my all-important thoughts on the Oval Office redesign: while it isn't terrible in person, the turquoise lamps are still a bit jarring. And the couches look almost too comfortable--they are more rec room than reception room. Also, I thought the whole room would be bigger, but it's almost cozy in person.

Okay, time for pancakes!

Major, serious obsessions

2011-03-11T12:02:00.004+08:00

So I love travel and exotic locales, and I love interior design. Staring at gorgeous photos that inspire daydreams is a major pastime for me. So where are these loves combined?

The New York Times Great Homes and Destinations page. Booyah. So good.

Thoughts

2011-03-09T12:34:00.003+08:00

1. Why does weather.com lie to me CONSTANTLY???

2. How is Adele SO GOOD?

3. Madama Butterfly at the Kennedy Center: I had never seen this opera before--this version was very well-sung, but a tad melodramatic. I mean, even by opera standards. Also, had to squint to read the supertitles while wearing my old (two prescriptions ago) glasses--no contacts due to pink eye :( Eye health/eyewear FAIL; culture vulture WIN.

4. If you are one of the, like, two people who enjoy my wackiness and aren't just scouring this blog for the secret to getting called to A-100 (and that is, in case you were wondering: 57. Northeast. 39 degrees Fahrenheit. Puggle.), then you'd probably also enjoy the blog of my blog-goddess, one Jamie Meares, who writes mainly about interior design but also about life and awesomeness here. And her online store of wonders.

Good weekends may or may not include the following:

2011-03-07T12:10:00.004+08:00

1. Dim sum at China Garden. Never gets old.

2. Sushi (at Sushi Ko in Glover Park).

3. Hot Pumpkin'd Rum (at Bourbon in Glover Park).

4. A long and satisfying walk (to Glover Park and back--4.2 miles), complete with beautiful homes' windows' to peer through.

5. A home-cooked meal (Greek turkey meatballs, very cucumber-ful tzatziki, roasted red potatoes).

6. Plenty of good music (right now, Belle & Sebastian, "Like Dylan in the Movies") while chilling out and doing Chinese homework.

7. Weather that just might start to make you think of this: [Editor's Note: sadly, Blogger is not maintaining the line spacing correctly. Better version here.]

[in Just-]

by E. E. Cummings

in Just-

spring when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it's

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer

old balloonman whistles

far and wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's

spring

and

the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles

far

and

wee

Laziness and daydreaming

2011-03-06T00:29:00.002+08:00

Things I am obsessed with right now: this lovely blog about a super-cool, vaguely hipstery Ukrainian couple who took a year off after getting married to travel the world and take achingly beautiful and cool photos of it all. Definitely making me want to invest in a better camera and learn to take photos that make people jealous of my life.

Whether or not there's anything there that is very special at all. I am a firm believer in reality mattering less than the photos you get to put on facebook afterward. That is why I put way more energy into finding the right photographer than I did with anything else for my wedding.

I am being soooooooooo lazy today. I woke up not feeling great before 8am, and now I feel fine but am deciding how long I can milk the excuse and avoid doing anything useful. I did just finish Revolutionary Road, which was a very well-done book, with great use of language, though possessed of a slightly trite plot. Or who knows, maybe it's just so good that it feels universal and makes me think I've seen (read?) it all before. This is indeed a possibility.

Planning to go to Sushi Ko tonight--nothing I enjoy more than a sushi high :) Seriously, it makes me gleeful. Glee!

Things, places

2011-02-24T12:11:00.007+08:00

(Side note to myself: Things that need to stop: stressing myself out about stupid stuff. Or about nothing at all. Vague, unplaced feelings of stress = not productive. Also, answer people's emails because not doing so is mean.)

There now, where were we? James planned a lovely weekend for us in Charlottesville. He wins! I shall now provide a comprehensive report on the historical sites in the greater Charlottesville area.

Before we even got into town, we stopped along the way at the battlefield at Manassas, which was really interesting, even though the windiest day of the year was maybe not the best time to visit (funny enough, battlefields are often large, treeless hilltop areas, which means you might blow away). Of course, I was slightly amazed that there was no open exhibition on the second battle of Manassas because the exhibition building was insufficiently insulated to be opened up on a 55-degree day (?). But we heard about the first battle and how everyone thought it would be jolly good fun until everyone died. Here witness James in the spot where Stonewall Jackson captured the Union canons (I instructed him to get in character, but I must say his performance was weak):

Later that day, we took the historical tour at UVA, and the next day was more Jefferson-mania at Monticello, which was just as good as you've heard it is, so hop in your car (but not before pre-booking tickets) and get on your way.

Hey, TJ!

I must say I was always partial to James Madison (such an underrated founding father, despite also being a proponent of pernicious agrarianism!), due to my fifth-grade report on his life. Therefore I was saddened to find that his house was not so interesting. But hey, I did get to pal around with Jimmy Boy and D-Dawg (Dolley) in the not-quite-flesh:

Plus, I quite liked the anachronistic walled gardens installed by the subsequent owners, the richer-than-God Dupont family:

All in all, a lovely time. And in case you wondered if we ate (do you need to wonder?), the C&O Restaurant in downtown Charlottesville is all kinds of amazing and pulls out marvelous flavor combinations and has lovely and charming vaguely-hipstery waitresses to boot.

Comments on things I do

2011-02-23T10:46:00.005+08:00

This morning I managed to get honey up my nose. Don't ask how. Sometimes it's amazing that the American people don't demand a return to a monarchical system of government so they can crown me queen. Because I outclass QEII by a factor of ten. So classy we spell it with a K. Klassy.

Speaking of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we spent this weekend in Charlottesville, which is a city that is designed around the worship of Thomas Jefferson (or since he seems to have designed all the historic sites of note, designed for him by him?). More pictures and details to come on that.

In my defense, I was eating ciabatta with ricotta cheese, raspberries, and honey for breakfast this morning. Can't some snarfing be justified?

This bounty was due to a stop at Wegman's on the way back into town yesterday. Loath to waste an opportunity to load a whole lot of crap into our rental car, we pulled into the lot with visions of bounty in our heads. Never mind the pouring rain--we were not to be deterred.

So everyone talks about Wegman's like it's the promised land, and maybe it is, except we badly need to add St. Peter at the automatic doors to keep some people out, because the place was a mob scene. And it's huge--but people were seriously pouring out of every nook and cranny. I half expected to open the refrigerator cases and have someone pop out at me.

Since there is nothing I enjoy more than being wrong (oh wait, that must be the other Katie), I will say that this disproved my theory that it's only the metro-accessible supermarkets in the greater Washington area that are insane. Apparently the suburbs are also full of irritable people ready to shiv you for half a pound of roast beef and a dozen organic eggs. They just tend to be older, causing you to believe erroneously (bonus points to Chinese for having a verb that means "to believe erroneously") that they know better.

Museum bliss

2011-02-13T09:18:00.003+08:00

Today James and I visited an AWESOME museum. Seriously. I find my favorite museums tend to be "collector" museums--places like the Isabella Stewart Gardner in Boston or the Frick in New York that are basically just rich people's mansions housing their amazingly fabulous collections of stuff.

Hillwood in Washington, DC is no exception. But James and I enjoyed it even more because it houses the largest collection of Russian art outside of Russia. Marjorie Merriweather Post, the Post cereal heiress, married four times, and one of her (many) husbands was the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union in the 30s. Since the Soviet government decided right about then to get rid of all the remnants of Imperial Russia, the country was pretty much the most amazing flea market ever, if flea markets contained priceless treasures belonging to royalty.

Marriage crown of Alexandra, Nicholas II's wife? Imperial Faberge eggs? Catherine the Great's china? Check, check, and check. It's pretty amazing stuff.

Plus, right now they are having a fun exhibition of photographs of the Soviet Union taken by Mrs. Post's step-daughter, the Ambassador's daughter. Great fun and definitely hearkens back to an earlier era of diplomacy.

Highly recommended, my friends.

And the next adventure...

2011-02-13T08:04:00.006+08:00

So in the last week we learned that this city is looking to be our future home:

Kyiv, Ukraine!

This has caused great confusion amongst friends and family, who are all like, wait a sec, aren't you going to Beijing? Haven't you been slogging through Mandarin training toward that end?

Yes, we are still going to Beijing. Because James got preference in the Foreign Service hiring process for knowing Russian, he's obligated to serve somewhere Russian speaking for one of his first two assignments. And he has to bid on jobs every cycle until he's assigned to something (which in his case, didn't take long--he got an assignment the first time he bid).

And what about me, you may ask? I am not assigned to anything. But the hope is that I will also find a position in Kyiv (though I don't bid for another year-and-a-half!). The State Department tries to keep tandem couples together (if that is the couple's priority, and it is for us), and so there is still a chance James's assignment could possibly change if I can't find anything in the same place.

But I sure hope it doesn't, because Kyiv is EXACTLY where we want to be next tour. James and I are both huge Slav-ophiles, so the whole region gets us excited. Ukraine is right next door to Poland, so I can finally go back! And the whole border area is steeped with family history--my Polish grandmother's birthplace is actually now over the border in Ukraine. Plus, Kyiv is still relatively inexpensive (in contrast with another contender, Moscow), with a significant hardship differential to boot. And having direct flights to Paris, London, and Rome never hurts...

So here's hoping to Kyiv 2014!

Round-up

2011-02-06T02:14:00.004+08:00

Rainy, rainy Saturday... trying to decide if I can get myself relatively dryly into the metro to go to the mall (on the other end, you can get straight into the mall from the metro). Meanwhile, am digesting the chocolate hazelnut pancakes and mustering the energy to shower (much needed as I actually went to the gym this morning--no, would not have happened if the gym were not in my building).

The other day my friends were asking me about neighborhoods in Warsaw before filling out their housing survey, and it made me so nostalgic. Now I am sitting here staring at the map of Warsaw, retracing routes I used to take, and clicking on the random overly-music-laden websites of restaurants and bars I used to go to. The most famous lines of all Polish poetry are about yearning for the fatherland--though unfortunately, the lines are addressed to Lithuania:

Litwo! Ojczyzno moja! ty jesteś jak zdrowie.
Ile cię trzeba cenić, ten tylko się dowie,
Kto cię stracił. Dziś piękność twą w całej ozdobie
Widzę i opisuję, bo tęsknię po tobie.

(Lithuania! My fatherland! You are like health.
Only he who has lost you knows
your true value. Your beauty in all its adornments
I see and describe, because I long for you.)

Anyway, as long as we're on the literary front, I gave myself permission to take a short break from The Ambassadors, see some other people, yada yada. Therefore I have also started Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road, which is much less painful.

Otherwise, I finally saw Inception (fun, until I got sort of bored toward the end), and Animal Kingdom (Australian, violence and evil people). And watched the pilots of Parks and Recreation (like The Office all over again with a female Michael Scott) and 30 Rock (yessssssssssssssss).

You can tell from all the reading and watching that I've had a quiet week--did try American Ice Company, the new bar near U Street, and was a massive fan of the beer in mason jars and BBQ concept. Of course, a week may have been necessary to recover from James's birthday last weekend at Russia House--we were not short on vodka and Baltika. My favorite photo of the night:

It was fun to gather a group of FOJs (Friends of James!)--good times.

Food for thought

2011-01-30T03:37:00.004+08:00

Staying at home perfection: last night I made bacon chicken and dumplings (fulfilling my destiny after a long and difficult journey through treacherous lands filled with our enemies, only buoyed by the thought of bacony dumplings mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm), we finally finished our first batch of ice cream (strawberry mint!) in the new ice cream maker (for which, I now remember, a thank you note to Aunt Anna is long overdue), and then we watched Goodfellas.

So sometimes I find mob movies kind of traumatizing because every single character reminds me of a relative, and I just have to hope that I'm not being naive to think that they can have the culture without actually killing people, right? You know how if you grew up with an accent but it's diminished in your everyday speech, but it comes out more when you're drunk or excited? Yeah. For my dad, when he gets worked up, he talks exactly like Joe Pesci in that movie.

Sometimes I think I should have embraced the Italian-American heritage a bit more (i.e. not changing my name to something distressingly neutral-sounding, that people could actually pronounce and didn't remind people of Jersey Shore or the Sopranos). Also, my sort of ridiculous fascination with dying accents makes me appreciate growing up in a house where I got to hear some iconic ones every day.

Anyway, gangster-movie-inspired soul searching aside, this morning I made breakfast for James since it's his birthday (happy birthday to youuuuuuuuuuuuuuu). It was also good: cornmeal and pine nut pancakes with honey, blueberries, and a wee bit of bacon. Yum.

Icky day

2011-01-27T04:30:00.003+08:00

As I watch the snow pour down from the heavens (snow day tomorrow, pretty please OPM??), things I can't get enough of: this lovely song.

Favorite movie of the moment: Lust, Caution. It's shot so incredibly beautifully, I love the 1940s-era costumes and hair, it deals with a fascinating period in modern Chinese history, and it's good Mandarin practice. Who can argue with that? Also on the cinematic front, I really enjoyed The King's Speech. And not just because I am still totally shamelessly obsessed with Colin Firth.

I have been a lackluster reader, bogged down in late Henry James that seems determined to defeat me. I think I've taken my reading time and invested it into cooking: poached halibut with a lemon-herb sauce, a beef and butternut squash tagine (lovely, but can feed an army, which meant we were eating it for an entire week), the other night a delicious (slightly less decadent and more spinach-laden) version of spaghetti carbonara. I would like some instruction in the world of chard; there are recipes I want to make with it, but I still have some latent chard fears. 很可怕!

I'm also participating in the Foreign Service Swap graciously organized by Crafty Foreign Service and have been happily corresponding with Lauren in Oslo and thinking of what to put in the box!

Okay, time to go finally watch Inception and try to salvage this crappy weather admin day.

Big round numbers

2011-01-27T03:05:00.004+08:00

Goodness, it has been a while since I posted. Consider me officially tortured with guilt. (Fun language class story: I attempted to explain in Chinese that while Chinese mothers prefer to use force to make children succeed, American parents use guilt and psychological warfare. Turns out, I don't know how to say "psychological warfare" in Chinese.)

Momentous occurrences since my last post: my grandfather turned 100, my little brother turned 22, James will imminently turn 27. (One of these numbers is not like the others.)

The weekend before last included a quick trip to New Jersey to celebrate with champagne and cake. My grandfather even got up and gave two little speeches to the family members assembled. Here is a picture of him, still looking pretty goshdarn good for his age (in the sweater I got him for Christmas):

You can also catch a glimpse of his total time capsule of a house, which is pretty amazing.

Otherwise, it is Chinese, Chinese, Chinese all the time. The words keep creeping into my thoughts. We all have good weeks and bad weeks, and I think this is a bad week... one when all I can focus on is how little we can really say and how far we still have to go.

The weather today doesn't help my mood either! Though I will officially be more upbeat if it means we get a snow day tomorrow. Weather Gods? Are you there? It's me, Katie.

Foooooooooood

2011-01-10T04:23:00.004+08:00

Not much to report lately... today is finally the day of reckoning for the short ribs of Arlington County. It took three stops to find them, but James valiantly trooped onwards, finally buying some at a butcher shop in Clarendon. We didn't even know there was a butcher shop in Clarendon. Oh, the things we learn....

Mmm... it smells good in here. Yum. Someday we'll have to try a Chinese rib dish, though so far Mapo Doufu is all we've mastered of our future posting's cuisine.

UPDATE: The short ribs were SO worth the trouble. By the way, we ended up buying them at El Chaparral in Clarendon. Mmmmmmmmm...

Photo blast

2011-01-03T03:37:00.005+08:00

And thanks to enforced picture taking for my Chinese class assignment, here is a little holiday photo love with James and the little brother:

And my grandfather in his recliner, as always--now it's T-17 days to his 100th birthday:

Chugging from the cup of kindness

2011-01-03T03:29:00.003+08:00

Happy new year, friends! Have yourself a little auld lang syne. I am finally finished with my elaborate powerpoint presentation for the triumphant return to Chinese class tomorrow, so I thought I would take a little blog break, not that I have much to report.

Reading: still the Henry James novel that will never end.

Cooking: slightly trashy and embarrassing casserole-like situations involving boxes of Stovetop stuffing mix. Had visions of braising short ribs for hours today like Martha Stewart's slightly more zealous younger sister, but those evaporated once I saw the rain that is steadily pouring down upon the greater Washington area.

Watching: a not-so-great adaptation of Emma (the Kate Beckinsale one) last night, curious about the Chinese film I plan to watch tonight, mainly because I want to know why it's rated NC-17.

Stuff I forgot happened

2010-12-30T12:18:00.003+08:00

Some jerk ran over my suitcase!

Yes, I was crossing ONE street to get from the bus stop into Penn Station to take NJ Transit, and some ginormously fat out-of-towners in a huge SUV RAN OVER MY WHEELED SUITCASE. Like, I am wheeling it behind me, and the next second it's under someone's tire.

Let's just say this was not the highlight of my holiday. However, James said the culprits looked suitably terrified when I cursed them out, so I guess that was a small win mixed in with all the lose. Thankfully, my bag was almost all clothing, which survived their squashing none the worse for it.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-26T11:56:00.004+08:00

And a happy 500th blog post to meeeeeeeee...

Merry Christmas to all of you. I am home in New Jersey, where the pace is a bit slower, hence my being on the internet Christmas night (there is not much else to do except bond with my Netflix subscription, though granted I did bring a rather dull book with me--Henry James's The Ambassadors, which is more of a good idea in theory).

Single best and most unexpected Christmas gift: an ice cream maker! Which we have no idea how to get back to DC. I think my dad is shipping it to us.

The weeks before Christmas were quite lively, though I guess that's to be expected--A-100 happy hours, a weekend in New York to see my long-lost (well, not lost so much as moved to the West Coast) friend Claudia, my first professional sporting event ever (a Capitals game--hockey, for those as clueless as I am)... we also saw The Black Swan the other night. Um, creepy.

But Natalie Portman was great. I am so proud of my once-upon-a-time sitting-on-the-same-airplane-and-attending-the-same-university-mate.

New York notes: Hearth was great. Xi'an Famous Foods was even better. Of course, my heart was in the bagels and whitefish salad. The Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art is super nice and well done and stinks of rich people's care for its fate.

I actually documented the holiday in photos for once (an assignment for Chinese class) so maybe we'll get a taste of that someday.

Some books and some eateries

2010-12-15T12:32:00.004+08:00

I have been reading like a fiend lately. Once The Return of the Native picked up, it really picked up (as is the way with all of Hardy's novels, I think). I thought this was the weakest of the three of his I've read though. I can't believe Holden would steer me wrong!

Then I read a very short but very fun and then very sad book, Penelope Fitzgerald's The Bookshop. I think if I had not just read the less-witty Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner, I would have appreciated it even more, but that slightly precious English lady voice gets a bit cloying. However, Fitzgerald is also a razor wit and a great champion of economy of language.

Now I've just started Xiaolu Guo's Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth. This is part of the China blitz (you should see my Netflix queue! In other news, words I find really difficult to spell: queue). The novel was originally written in Chinese (and translated into English) before the author, who splits her time between London and Beijing, decided to rewrite the whole thing in English herself. It's a quick read so far and gives you some feel for modern-day Beijing--though it is not a novel where the city itself is the star, the author being much more content to let youthful angst take center-stage.

Not sure where this blitz of reading energy came from. I've certainly been doing plenty else. Mostly eating. (However, by way of not eating, the Library of Congress is totally interesting to visit--good exhibits--and has a pretty, yet uncrowded tree perfect for holiday photo opps.)

Okay, and as long as we're here, our weekend in food:

-Friday night at Kushi Izakaya, which was a bit of a disappointment. The charcoal grilled food was INCREDIBLE, and the sushi was very strong, despite it explicitly not being their focus. But the things off the robata (wood grill) were uniformly terrible. And the whole place was trying to be really stylish and of-the-moment, trying to be all things to all people, and I just didn't feel like it succeeded as much as I hoped (and expected, given the reviews).

I guess it's CRITICISM day. Sorry, restaurant.

-Burgers at Good Stuff Eatery. Those were some solid burgers and fries. Would I go all the way to Capitol Hill just for that? No. But after you work up energy feeling smart at the Library of Congress, it works.

-Dim sum at China Garden--the closest to home right in Rosslyn, and the most satisfying restaurant meal of the weekend. Yum. If you don't hold me back, I may be there every weekend. Nothing like those porky buns...

There we go, my thoughts on everything. You're welcome.

P.S. Your reward: SOOOOO GOOD.

Mapo doufu magic

2010-12-15T12:19:00.005+08:00

My bloggery has been sub-par lately. I deeply apologize.

But not that much, because I do basically the same thing every day, and you don't need to be subjected to that.

But a couple weeks ago I did something out of the ordinary, and that was cook Chinese food, for realz. We had a class immersion trip to a Chinese grocery store (the seriously major Great Wall in Falls Church), which is fantastic and filled with all sorts of mysterious ingredients (plus great deals on random things like imported Italian cookies that cost three times as much at normal supermarkets).

I bought my fair share of mystery ingredients--I think the fermented black beans were the most off-putting:

But in the end, our mapo doufu (a spicy Sichuan dish with tofu and ground pork) turned out really well. I mean, I'm just going to put it out there: it was awesome. (Let's just be honest.) Soooo good. And really not hard, once you have the proper ingredients, which of course requires a trip to the Chinese grocery store. So not going to happen every day... especially with no car.

Here is the recipe we followed, from a really wonderful-sounding cookbook by Fuchsia Dunlop. And the finished product, though a bit brown to appear attractive in photos, still excellent:

Food update, part 1

2010-12-06T12:15:00.003+08:00

The less exciting part--tune in next time for our adventures with Chinese cooking at home.

For now, pasta with proscuitto, breadcrumbs, cherry tomatoes, and basil. Molto bene!

Hello from somewhere off the face of the earth

2010-12-04T23:03:00.002+08:00

Oh goodness, I have been a terrible blogger. December has been crazy. I feel like every minute of every day is scheduled, which is pretty tough to do when you only have to be somewhere five hours a day (did I mention I love being a language student?).

Lately we have been:

-in Jersey for Thanksgiving and New York after. New York! Visiting is more depressing than anything--it reminds you how much it's just not as fun as living there. And how Washington is like a dumpster. Or a junkyard. Okay, not that bad, but I get pretty down on it during a visit to New York. But we did get to spend time with family in both places and take in the Yoshitomo Nara exhibit at the Asia Society--fun, a lot like the Nara exhibit I saw in Taipei.

-reading again! Well, not we, just me (James is mostly not reading because he made the terrible, terrible mistake of not heeding my advice and going down the path of Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy--however, unlike me, I doubt he'll ever get through all three, or even just this first one). Victorian British literature--my bread and butter--to boot. I finally started Hardy's Return of the Native 12 years after Holden Caulfield recommended it to me (and I thought he was really really cool once). So far, so good. I always find reading a novel by Hardy to follow the same pattern: about three unreadably dull chapters describing the heath at the beginning; finally the plot picks up and it's a roller-coaster; then at the end you're thrown off, left broken and sobbing on the ground at the horror of the ending. Or is that just me? I cried for an entire weekend after reading Tess of the D'Urbervilles in high school.

-seeing another play--a sort of modern dance/physical theater interpretation of The Master and Margarita... hmm. Certainly different.

-and of course, studying Chinese, which yesterday meant an immersion trip to a restaurant and grocery store. I am supposed to cook a Chinese dish this weekend and document in photos, so I'll have to post about that here too.

Best fall lunch EVER

2010-11-22T06:49:00.002+08:00

Today, James and I each feasted upon: one roasted sweet potato, half a Bartlett pear, a few candied pecans, and half an Italian roll toasted with gorgonzola dolce and topped with a slice of prosciutto. Yum.

Today: gnocchi from the seller of fresh pasta at Eastern Market tossed with sauteed spinach, onion, and smoked chicken sausage. Yessssssssssssssss.

Autumn abundance

2010-11-21T03:59:00.002+08:00

OMG I could move in tomorrow. So fun.

I am especially missing New York now... we had a couple delightful friends from our NYC days over last night (now also stranded in DC). And despite our location being squarely in the greater DC area, it felt like a very New York night. Maybe because I associate New York with finishing off two bottles of wine and an entire (previously unopened) bottle of Madeira between four people. Life is good.

Now we are eating off the fruits of the dinner's leftover ingredients, which means deliciousness for several days to come. And deliciousness later today when we try Potenza with friends.

Overall, fall is DC is quite lovely--my apartment is at treetop level, and seeing all the lovely orange and red leaves outside is so nice. And I seriously freak out every time squirrels frolic through piles of colorful leaves. Look at me, getting frickin' poetic here. But seriously, those squirrels.

Oh, shout-out--we saw Mary Stuart at Artisphere in Rosslyn (put on by the Washington Shakespeare Company). The strong Washington Post review helped us put aside our fears of 18th-century German drama, and I must say, we are glad we did--it was excellent, very well-acted (and the translation was excellent--modern but not gratingly so). Definitely worth a night out, and those in VA have no excuses!

Ride, eat, eat, read

2010-11-15T09:49:00.004+08:00

Another weekend in DC... last night I met a friend for dinner. Rosslyn is delightfully convenient for getting most places, but the metro itself has its perils. One stop after I get on, we stop at Foggy Bottom, and 50 bajillion girls in miniskirts get on the train.

The ones sitting right in front of me (one on the laps of the other two, because heaven forfend she sit across the aisle from her bffs) conference: "We're going to Gallery, right?" one demands. Clearly, they were too much in a rush to even say the entire name of the stop--impressive in their hurry. "I think we transfer at Metro," another added, waiting for the third, apparently the sole holder of all information about the Washington Metro, to acquiesce.

Somehow I dodged all the marauding GWU students (they're like Visigoths, I tell you) to successfully alight at Oyamel for some nouveau (nuevo?) Mexican. Pretty tasty, but the most notable aspect of the evening was my first venture into the eating of insects (grasshopper, to be exact).

Better: Marvin, right off U Street. I swear the only reason they didn't end up much higher in the Washingtonian's list of the 100 top restaurants in DC is because it seems like too much of a sceney U St. bar. The scallops make you want to be a mermaid or something (you know, so you can befriend all the sea creatures and lull them into a false sense of security before easily slaughtering them for their tasty flesh).

Since I swear I do other things than just eat (did I mention the lovely tomato sauce I made tonight? Best comfort food meal EVER), I finished Toni Morrison's A Mercy. I liked it quite a bit. I thought it was very well-done. Yes. Okay, fine, I admit I never quite get as swept away by Morrison's work as I would like to, but it was more accessible than some of her other work (shorter, to start) and definitely worth the time.

"I want Lanvin, not flowers."

2010-11-13T07:19:00.002+08:00

Crazy but delightful video for the Lanvin H&M collection.

I firmly believe life is more interesting when you're wearing a dress...

Via my delightful friend Carolyn of The Daily Obsession.

As George Michael says, "You gotta have faith."

2010-11-12T12:08:00.005+08:00

Happy Veteran's Day! I like the day off and the chance to ponder my favorite veteran, my beloved grandfather. Thanks for fighting the Nazis, Dziadziu! (One of my favorite signs from the Rally to Restore Sanity: an older gentleman carried one that said "I fought the Nazis, and they didn't look like Barack Obama.")

I have finally gotten all set up on my new computer with iTunes and was contemplating putting my Chinese recordings on my iPod. I feel like my iPod is kind of a graveyard of the languages I've attempted to learn, filled with Russian podcasts and Survival Bengali tapes--and how much of those languages can I speak now?

I suppose I have no choice but attain greater proficiency in Mandarin, since there is the teensy-weensy matter of the test looming in the distance. This week was definitely one for shooting my confidence balloon--just when I think I can say all sorts of things, I try to say them but no one can understand me, or else, no, wait, there are ten ways to say "to pay" or "to wear" or "to meet" and in that context you have to use a different one.

But at the same time, I know we've learned so much already, and we're less than a third of the way through. I trust in the system that has been designed to get us to the right place. Gotta have faith.

Workin' for the weekend

2010-11-08T04:57:00.002+08:00

It's the weekend. I love the weekend. Woohoo.

It's been quite a pleasant weekend, in fact. Friday night we hit up the Westover Beer Garden in Falls Church. I did not know there was any sort of beer garden in Falls Church, and it was great fun, except now my coat smells like a firepit.

Yesterday we took a long walk to Trader Joe's--it was madness, sheer madness. The line to check out wrapped around the entire store. Oh, the things I do for snappea crisps and whole-wheat pizza dough. Also, note to self: never again attempt to walk on a sidewalk anywhere in Georgetown on a Saturday. Apparently the people there have never learned to walk on sidewalks, and thus it is far too dangerous a proposition.

Then we were all set to go to DC for dinner when I realized I hadn't gotten any confirmation email from OpenTable. I checked, and, oops, I accidentally made the reservation for next week. Sheer brilliance. So we decided to walk to Courthouse and try Ray's the Steaks, which worked out swimmingly--only waited 15 minutes for a table, and at what kind of steakhouse do you come out with a bill in the mere double digits for two people? Of course, we can never eat there again. I just filled my one-steak-per-year quota.

Today I met friends for brunch and a visit to Eastern Market--bought more of the fabulous nuts (more this time--so addictive), chatted with the Turkish lady whose jewelry I will someday break down and buy, and stocked up on delicious honeycrisps. Mmm.

Do I REALLY have to do Chinese homework now???

Lessons learned

2010-11-04T03:34:00.003+08:00

Update on the last post: I vote no on the spicy quinoa salad. James likes it fine, but I think it's just way too much red onion for me. Come to think of it, I pretty much hate raw onion.

I had an incredible accomplishment today, which is that I finally went through the end of my UAB and got it all off our couch! Amazing!

Lessons learned from this experience: when you are at post and tempted to buy 15,000 scarves, think first about which ones will still appear attractive and wearable in your post-at-post life. Refrain from buying many of the rags that rickshaw pullers use to wipe stuff with, despite the assurances of your very stylish friend that they are HUGE with hipsters in Belgium. Remember that you cannot pull off said rickshaw-wiping-rags as scarves or as anything else except, perhaps, as rags, because you are (tragically) not a Belgian hipster.

End of public service announcement.

The things I do to use up a bunch of cilantro

2010-11-03T07:26:00.003+08:00

Make fish tacos, of course. Amazingly delicious recipe. Worth harassing the Whole Foods fish man into measuring out for me a mere eight ounces of tilapia while he was trying to clean up and close down for the evening. Little known fact: I am very mean to fishmongers.

Tonight, we continue our battle against the fearsome herb with a spicy quinoa salad; we shall see. This is my first venture into quinoa territory; I'm going in with guns a-ready. Maybe a bayonet too.

In other news, life goes on. The cardboard coyotes at FSI continue to droop; the Canadian geese have returned to their old haunts, giving us non-chalant looks that say, "Who me? Afraid of that stupid cardboard coyote? Hah. As if. I TOTALLY was not buying it. I mean, when I stayed away... I mean, I was just busy. NOT afraid of the coyotes. Who are not real. FO REAL."

James started Chinese yesterday. I am trying to talk him down from tonal language fears. Apparently the only area of my life in which I approach any level of zen-ness is language learning.

Tiring (but sane) day

2010-10-31T11:20:00.006+08:00

Halloween (or in this case, the day before it) is the day when I officially prove I am no fun. I have zero inclination to plan a costume, and even if I do throw something together and go out, I usually find the madness around the day a bit disconcerting. At least you only have to throw on a green shirt to drink in extraordinarily crowded watering holes on St. Patrick's Day--this is all the inconvenience with much more effort.

And plus, today I am tired and Washington's transit system has fallen to pieces. The reason for both is, of course, the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.

Did you watch it on tv? If so, you saw a lot more than I did several blocks away from where you could even see a jumbotron. This was taken from my oh-so-excellent vantage point:

At rare moments, the volume would be turned up just enough so that we could hear a few jokes (and Cat Stevens and Ozzy Osbourne sharing the stage was pretty special). But at some point we got bored of standing in the middle of huge crowd and not seeing or hearing anything. And that was the point where we fought our way onto the metro, returned to Home Sweet Rosslyn, and ate us some Baja Fresh (and this evening, saw some delightful Dhaka friends). The end.

This sign cracked me up though:

Bloody Thursday

2010-10-29T10:41:00.003+08:00

Any day that starts out without breakfast in a doctor's office getting stabbed probably isn't going to go well.

Of course, I have a special aversion to getting my blood drawn because I have, given the reaction from every nurse or technician I deal with, pretty much the deepest veins of all time. This followed the usual routine--first I get the B team, they poke around my arm for a while (thankfully, no practice stabs this time), then they call in reinforcements.

So the A team comes in, a quiet woman with a clear sense of purpose. She is poking my arm with her fingers for about 10 minutes, and I am losing hope. But then it's go-time, and she sticks me with the needle.

I wait for her to tell me if she successfully got the vein when suddenly she bursts out with, "Trust in God and He will deliver." I nod politely. Again: "Trust in God and He will deliver!... I thought you would be my challenge today, but the Holy Spirit is here in this room. God is great!"

Um, check please?

And for all that, the day wasn't half bad. Things are really starting to come together in Chinese--today was one of those great optimistic language-learning days when I really got the feeling that I am going to conquer this language. And then we had a fun language class outing to get dinner at Ceiba downtown--yum. Made up for the ten hours of fasting before the doctor's office this morning :)

Yay, James put photos on this computer

2010-10-25T05:07:00.006+08:00

So we get our three-year nostalgia photo after all.

And here is five minutes ago, on our balcony, commemorating another year's last warm October weekend:

Look, James sort of smiled! An accomplishment!

This is the last week he'll be smiling, considering he starts 7:40am Chinese class on November 1st...

Elbows and endives

2010-10-24T09:13:00.005+08:00

Today I roused myself for a trip to Whole Foods. Let me tell you, I am not sold on Whole Foods. I am sold on Trader Joe's and will happily elbow the crowds to get what I want. But Whole Foods just feels like expensive chaos.

Not that there's nothing good to be gained from it--and we are certainly going to enjoy our Tuscan loaf and smoked trout spread. But I almost got killed by an old lady who tried to jump right in front of me from the next line over as I entered the line, because at Whole Foods, your current line is never good enough and a shorter line is always worth warfare.

Whole Foods is not worth risking your life, people. Listen to me.

I put together a baked french toast that we'll pop in the oven tomorrow before going to a friend's for brunch (but I used strawberries, not blueberries). Now I think it's time for some Bleak House watched instantly on Netflix. And maybe a frozen chocolate-covered banana that, I maintain, was not worth risking my life for.

Love, curry, and other things

2010-10-22T07:38:00.003+08:00

Tonight we are making chicken in Trader Joe's masala simmer sauce.

This may not seem like much for news, but it's a big step for me. It's the first time I've eaten something vaguely South Asian since my return from Dhaka. I think we can say I've officially entered the recovery period.

In more ways than one. I was home sick with a really nasty cold today (have American cold viruses gotten crazy strong in the two years I was away? This hit me like a ton of bricks), and after napping for about three hours--three sweet hours of wallowing--I am finally getting some energy back.

Otherwise, life is good. Chinese is getting harder and more intense as we get beyond "Hello. What is your honorable surname? Mine is Hao. I am called Hao Kexin" (which I am, in Chinese class). To the point where I feel somewhat overwhelmed by homework every night.

This week was also our third (Third! Where did the time go???) wedding anniversary. Insert cute wedding photos, except I still haven't transferred them to this computer and am too lazy to do so now. Plus, by the third anniversary, you've probably all seen the cute ones already.

To celebrate we went to Sushi Taro for the omakase counter. And this, my friends, is the most important part of this post. If you like Japanese food at all, this is an absolute must. The food was incredible--the sashimi was excellent (I dream of the scallop, sweet shrimp, pike mackerel, and chu-toro), but so were the other things--a delightful appetizer of tofu, sea urchin, and fresh wasabi (which is nothing like the powdered kind you usually get!), a brick that opened up to reveal sea cucumber egg and squid bathed in ink, a plate of little appetizers that included a fish ball stuffed with chestnuts and covered in stiff green tea noodles so that the entire thing resembled a sea urchin... and yet tasted great. That and basically having your own personal chef guiding you through it all (who was friendly and young and unintimidating and very helpful)--plus a couple of carafes of sake to round out the night--made it an amazing night.

Of course, our first two anniversaries were spent in Dhaka, so it doesn't take much to up the ante. With all the amazing trips we took during those two years, somehow we never got away on our anniversary (though both years we had just come back from a jaunt somewhere).

The thing all three years have had in common? The good company! It's that which keeps me "worldwide available," in State Department speak--I couldn't do it alone, and I am so glad I don't have to.

Daydreams of Europe, part ii

2010-10-16T09:33:00.002+08:00

Don't you ever just want to be French? Why do my clothes from H&M not look like that???

Maybe because they are not paired with Gucci shoes. Le sigh.

James's swearing-in was nice... brief. Very brief. Better than being too long, I suppose.

Listening to right now: amazing lectures on the Civil War. Fascinating stuff. Almost (but not quite) makes me want to go back to college.

People who are messing with me

2010-10-15T11:30:00.002+08:00

That would be Kate Spade. Curse her and her marketing. But I found this little card tucked into the clutch I bought at the Woodbury Commons outlets, and in spite of myself I was charmed:

occasionally she dreams of italy.
she dreams of cheese shops, persnickety fiats,
and very fine leather goods.

I dream! Me me me! When do I get to go to Italy????

I AM THE WORST BLOGGER EVER.

2010-10-15T11:21:00.004+08:00

But to be fair, I am not just abandoning my blog. I am also the worst unpacker of UAB ever, the worst organizer of new apartment ever, the worst doer of laundry ever... etc.

On the flip side, I feel like I'm doing plenty else! I went to Memphis for a friend's wedding this weekend, and this is all you need to know about that:

Ohhh yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

Of course, the wedding was lovely, the bride was beautiful, BBQ I LOVE YOU.

Tonight I attempted to be cultural and visited the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria to see some artists' studios and galleries. At Scope Gallery I bought a lovely ceramic box by the potter Martin Karcher. Can I say I love ceramics? So pretty.

And, um, somewhere in there I am learning Chinese, or something. It's going pretty well... when you think about how six weeks ago I knew nothing, and now I know things--things that are in Chinese, no less!--well, that's pretty astounding.

A weekend in short

2010-10-03T06:52:00.003+08:00

Somehow all my weekend plans fell through. And I am pretty pleased.

Not that I don't love to see friends. But it was time for me and the UAB to hash things out, just the two of us. Plus, a little trip to Bed Bath and Beyond was most definitely in order. I know there are people who live happy, fulfilled lives without a collapsible laundry drying rack, but they aren't my kind of people.

I am going to a wedding next weekend (very excited!) but realized I packed exactly zero dresses in my UAB. I vaguely remember now my thought process--I figured that, if I actually had cause to wear a nice dress during this year, wouldn't it be fun, once back in America, to go shopping? Yay for shopping!!!??!

Um, I didn't really envision this week. Or remember that weddings (the most likely event requiring a dress) are often in other cities, cities one gets to by airplanes and travel and stress. So yeah, tomorrow afternoon may require a mall expedition. Sorry, Chinese homework, you lose.

Well, I mean, I always do my homework. But somehow that great big block of time and focused energy I keep thinking is just around the corner never comes. To paraphrase the old saying, learning Chinese is what happens when you're busy dashing off workbook exercises and not making flashcards.

UAB blues

2010-09-30T04:40:00.003+08:00

There are moments in life when you fear you may actually be crazy. For me, that moment comes upon the arrival of my UAB. For those not down with the lingo, that would be Unaccompanied Air Baggage, or basically the small amount of stuff that is supposed to get to us quickly and contain key items that we couldn't fit in a suitcase but need/want right away. And in my case, it's all I get for this year.

Frankly, it is more than I need. Every time our crap gets delivered in a new place, I wonder why I have so much crap; make fervent plans to give/throw away said crap; remember that I am too lazy to fulfill these plans; eventually get used to the crap; and then, when it comes time to move again, pack it all up for delivery to a new place where I'll likely want it even less.

Let us review some of the odder contents of my UAB: some of my massive supply of Q-tips; assorted spices, meaning that my entire shipment now smells of garlic powder; a book called Essential Everyday Bengali that will no doubt be extremely useful in the greater Washington metro area; dozens of sweaters that I haven't worn since the last time I had a winter (read: three years ago) and which are now causing me an existential crisis (who am I? Do these sweaters express who I am, or who I was three years ago? Do they even fit, since there was somewhat less of my self and being three years ago? Why am I not napping right now?); about 50 tubes of mascara I will never, ever consume, not even if I diligently paint my lashes an unnatural shade of black every day for the next decade; Balinese sea salt; Thai tiger balm; Scotch tape; a yoga mat; and plenty of good old Bangladeshi grime coating it all.

WHO AM I??? Why did I pack garlic powder? WHY DO I HAVE SUCH BAD FENG SHUI????

Mysteries, all.

On the plus side, I am going to see Chess tonight. I really can't express the joy I'm feeling right now. Also, it's 2.5 hours before curtain and I am still not really sure how we're getting to this theater somewhere off the metro's beaten path...

Books books books

2010-09-27T00:00:00.003+08:00

Favorite moment at yesterday's talk with Orhan Pamuk at the National Book Festival: when asked to read from his Nobel lecture, he came across a line he liked and said, "Oh yes, I agree, I wrote that." Generally, he was a riot--far from the morose introvert I imagined from his books.

And then we ate Turkish food with Dhaka friends, part of the Turkish Festival going on now ($25 four-course dinners). So somehow it turned out to be a theme day. And I love a good theme.

Overall, the National Book Festival was great, and I regret not waking up earlier to take in more. But too much fun the night before...

DC days

2010-09-19T07:41:00.006+08:00

So here I am, back a week later, knowing slightly more Chinese. I can ask your name, your profession, and how many people you have in your family--but since we haven't yet learned the numbers, I can't actually answer my own question. Good lord, that really is all we can say. It felt like we were learning so much all week...

But nothing I did this week was very exciting compared to James starting A-100! I am so giddy to finally be doing this together. Now it's his turn to handle some of the paperwork and bureaucracy on our behalf :)

Of course, meeting lots of new officers means I have to constantly resist the old "Well, when I was in Dhaka..." routine. Though there is a job in Dhaka on their bid list, so I suppose I will allow myself to dole out Dhaka info as it relates to actually bidding on Dhaka.

I am also having a fantastic--way better than expected--time in DC. I surprisingly don't care about living in a dull area; it's great for my commute and really accessible by metro. Today we spent the day in Old Town Alexandria, which is so frickin' adorable that you want to pinch its cheeks. We toured the Lee-Fendall Home (Lee as in the family of Robert E. Lee, who actually grew up across the street--perfect for our Civil War summer, I guess), which is great if you like your old homes to really smell like old homes.

Otherwise, we hit the opera, the Dhaka crew (partially) reunited, we're catching up on our True Blood, I continue to read the same issue of Bon Appetit I was reading a month ago (though I did just order a 1500-page novel on Amazon against my better judgment), and the process of eating so many avocados that I eventually turn into one marches forward.

Poetic Sundays: Still not on Sunday

2010-09-11T06:47:00.001+08:00

Okay, it's now become less Poetic Sundays and more Poetic Whenever I Feel Like It.

But this was drawn to my attention today, and I remembered, oh yes, it's fabulous.

Riding the Elevator Into the Sky
By Anne Sexton (1975)

As the fireman said:
Don't book a room over the fifth floor
in any hotel in New York.
They have ladders that will reach further
but no one will climb them.
As the New York Times said:
The elevator always seeks out
the floor of the fire
and automatically opens
and won't shut.
These are the warnings
that you must forget
if you're climbing out of yourself.
If you're going to smash into the sky.

Many times I've gone past
the fifth floor,
cranking upward,
but only once
have I gone all the way up.
Sixtieth floor:
small plants and swans bending
into their grave.
Floor two hundred:
mountains with the patience of a cat,
silence wearing its sneakers.
Floor five hundred:
messages and letters centuries old,
birds to drink,
a kitchen of clouds.
Floor six thousand:
the stars,
skeletons on fire,
their arms singing.
And a key,
a very large key,
that opens something —
some useful door —
somewhere —
up there.

Back.

2010-09-11T06:29:00.002+08:00

I'm climbing in your computer screens, I'm snatchin' your people up...

(No? Read this.)

Back after a lazy end to vacation and a 0-60 start to Mandarin training. Seriously, they don't mess around. We are flying through the basics, and I must say... I LOVE it. I was worried I would get bored by so much FSI time (and perhaps that point will come), but I think I had forgotten how much I really, really enjoy language classes.

Of course, I am not sure why I would forget that, since I used to take language classes as a leisure activity in New York. Note this does not extend to classes of any other sort--life as a professional student made me perpetually cranky--but I get SO excited about a new language that I find it pretty hard to contain myself.

This enthusiasm doesn't really extend to studying, so that's less fun. I have long been aware that I'm not a particularly self-motivated person. Classrooms are fun! They have people in them! Yay! (Can you tell I turn out to be an extrovert in those Myers-Briggs assessments?) My desk at home, however, is a solitary, lonely place (well, James is around, I guess). Boo.

Otherwise, I haven't done much since getting to DC. I got to see some lovely friends from Dhaka (also back this summer) and am super excited to meet up with the Washington-based set of my college friends tonight. Opera tomorrow! No studying tonight! Woot.