s | t h e o r y

time for change

2009-07-26T10:00:00.002-04:00

I've found a new home...www.stheory.posterious.com

Hope its a much more simple and effective website.

a werewolf in paris

2009-07-23T12:36:00.004-04:00

I think I'm becoming nocturnal, if I wasn't always so. My mother fondly recalls my early years as an infant. Not really. I had somehow decided that I functioned in Eastern Standard Time rather than the China time I was born in. This meant that I slept like a dead log through the day and stayed up crying from dusk until dawn. I went through five nannies. I guess I am a creature of the night.

This is the fifth night I am up late doing at least 8 or 9 different things. I got into this bad cycle after Bangkok, where I found out aside from the Royal Palace, Pat"Pong" night market, and Muay Thai boxing, which I did in one of our five days there, there wasn't much else I felt like except loitering in shiny shopping malls. I were templed-out, monumented-out, night market-ed out, and after a crap experience at Bangkok's most esteemed thai-food institution, even Thai food-ed out. With all of nothing to lure me out of bed in the mornings, I slept until all ungodly hours of the day, yelling at cleaning ladies to ignore my sheets as I was happy in my undisturbed filth, ending up in a competition with myself to see how late I can stay up.

I won with 5 am two nights ago at the Shenzhen airport. I seem to be eternally condemned to catching shit flights that arrive past midnight and connect at six am the next day. I am then so lazy to find a hotel for four hours that I just sit on a filthy bench and wait it out. But I really love the night. Nobody engages me in useless conversations that I cannot wait to get out of, the sun doesn't beckon me into the outdoors, which I love, really, and even the spam in my inbox shuffles in at less frequent intervals. And since I'm one of those people who obsessively check my email for any flicker of movement, that means less distractions.

There. I just completed the daunting task of 'editing' my Facebook "Connections" list. I like how Facebook named it that rather than "Authentic Lifelong Friends", apparently they know what they're dealing with. My connections were getting out of hand, so I just whittled it down by about 700. Besides, I think FB is phasing out, we're going in the direction of multi-platform communication. I have no idea what that means, but it sounds about right. Twitter's the way of the world, and by that declaration I'm not a citizen of the world because China's banned it as of now. Google wave is the way of the future, and it's probably a good thing Microsoft didn't spend a gazillion dollars buying FB out.

Speaking of gazillion, I am overwhelmed with all the activities I have on my plate. Good overwhelmed, not the other kind. I am developing a food tour in Shanghai, so am reading up all I can on the city's back alleys, see-and-be-seen venues, hidden gems, long-standing institutions, traditions and trends. Adlyn has created a monster spreadsheet of tasks for me to complete this month. I said I wanted to work on everything she could hand me, but even for me this is a challenge.

Hias Gourmet work is only a part of the personal goals I want to accomplish this month. I already have an eternally growing pile of books beside my bed that I WILL read by this month. I am on a lounge/mood music binge, so that means I just spent 3 hours ripping 20 cds onto my ipod, listening to them from morning until night. I go to sleep with sweet dreams of Stephane Pompougnac and I in the infamous Hotel Costes. In addition to the vast food literature I'm tackling, I re-caught the lit bug after reading Steinbeck's East of Eden. I need more greats! Give me major Fitzgerald, none of that minor stuff!

I am still working on all my vacay photos. I have set myself realistic goals however, of one city a day, in the order that they occur, and have labelled and organized all my photos in detail for this express purpose. I have just finished sorting through the last week in Beijing. Why the f couldn't god have made the days 50 hours long? That way I may have a chance at completing a respectable fraction of my tasks.

Anywhoo. I think I'm going to enter a photo competition. The grand prize is a ten day trip for one through the safaris of Tanzania. It is my personal goal to win this prize. Maybe if I write it out on the internet for the world to see, I'd feel completely committed, and it will help me in my endeavor. Godspeed to myself.

I have just gone brain dead. It is 4 am. I have to go to sleep now before the light of dawn turns me into a werewolf.

Friedens -the pseudo german term my friend has coined for peace

total eclipse of the heart

2009-07-22T11:46:00.004-04:00

I left south east asia today for Beijing. It was a bittersweet ending, the mark of another chapter in my life, closed. I have another month in China, where I'll be doing a lot of miscellaneous work for Hias Gourmet in Beijing and Shanghai, and then it's off to real life back at home.

There were storm clouds all over China this morning, it was impossible to see the longest solar eclipse of the century from the ground. Lucky for me, I was soaring 50,000 meters above the ground at around 10 am when the skies became pitch black for 5 long minutes.

the real laos

2009-07-15T22:33:00.011-04:00

Searching for the "real Laos" brought me to a small village 85 km from Vientiane. I went there by myself yesterday as my friend stayed in the city waiting for his Thai visa to be issued.

The village of Ban Na, also known as "Elephant Village" is home to just over 100 families. The villagers experienced a mishap a few years ago when their sugar cane crops were demolished by sweet-toothed elephants wandering in the region. They could not control the elephants, but instead came up with a way to subsidize the income they lost in the sugar canes through sustainable tourism. Ban Na is also located at the base of a large conservation area called Phu Khau Khuay, so treks in the region are also usually launched from there.

For these reasons, I expected transportation to the area to be frequent and easy. Was I ever wrong. I walked early in the morning to the station where Lonely Planet said buses left from, and realized I wasn't in Kansas anymore. This was local territory. No one spoke more than one word of English, and I had considerable difficulty telling many people, mostly in sign language, that I wanted to go to a village with elephants. I pieced together that the bus I wanted was not there, but at another station 9 km away. So I took an hour-long journey on a minibus there, cramped in a seat with Lao old and young alike, teenagers and market vendors toting all their trinkets.

Upon arrival at the 'actual' station, I find out, naturally, that there are no buses to my destination. I had to take a 'tuk-tuk', basically a trailer with some seats attached to a smoking motorcycle. These are probably the third surest way to death after land mines and speed boats in South East Asia, and three jaw-clenching hours later, during which I managed to brave headaches and pot-holes to read 400 pages of 'East of Eden', I finally arrived in Ban Na.

This is when it started to pour. At the entrance to the village there was a small house with a storefront where I found refuge from the rain. No one spoke English, but I managed to tell the fifty year old owner of the house that I needed to sit under his roof for a while until it stopped raining. I was getting more and more dejected at this point because it was already three in the afternoon and considering the three hour journey home it was already about time I got back.

But in a way the rain was a blessing. Although the village was not its lively self in the gloomy weather, I sat in the midst of one villager's bustling family life, enjoying a silent sort of interaction with them all. There were no less than three generations sitting on that porch,underneath a covered tarp, the most prominent the group of children, seven or eight of them, chasing each other through the yard and shrieking with delight at each splattering of raindrops on their cheeks. I had a lot of fun taking pictures of them, and they found the photos on my camera absolutely delicious.

When the rain did not let up, I cut my losses and braved the rain and mud into the deserted village. It was such a peaceful walk, past rice fields, durian trees, lush vegetation, a couple of water buffalos, and then a hut on a hill with six little children underneath. They hollered at me from their place of hiding, "What's your name!" Children in Laos speak the best English because their parents instill that it is the surest way to employment. I yelled back and forth with them for a while, answering their questions and asking them questions they did not understand, making them giggle uncontrollably as a result.

Then I asked if I could join them, and they nodded, showing me the hidden route to their place of solace. They were weaving bamboo baskets, a specialty craft in this village. These bamboo baskets were sold around the country as containers for the Lao staple sticky rice. I asked their names, they were Bop,Pop,Kop,Jop,... swear to god. Aged between 9 and 13. One showed me how to weave the bamboo pieces interchangeably to create a firm round ring, and another one how to cut the fray bamboo off with a butcher knife and effortless grace. I showed them my camera and gave them a packet of coconut cookies I had in my bag. Lame exchange, I know.

As much as I would have loved to escape to this wondrous world of basket weaving with these charming kids, I was brought down to earth by the fact that I was dripping wet, smelled like water buffalo, and was getting closer minute by minute to nightfall. I had to leave them, sitting under the hut, joking and chattering, to go back to the village. As I turned the bend in the mud road, I heard them sing in unison a long "Thank youuuuuu!" and their giggles fading into the rain.

before I forget

2009-07-11T10:03:00.002-04:00

The power cut out in my guesthouse last night before I finished my post. I had wanted to describe the utter magnificence of Lao's beauty. The slow boat did not bother me despite the delay in our travel plans because of the unspoilt scenery we saw along the way. There are literally no words to describe the strong beauty of the Mekong river as it slowly winds past the lush topiary of the Lao countryside. Brilliant greens layering on top of each other in the most perfect pastures, tall banana trees, rolling hills, and swaying grass. The Mekong river is not the cleanest I've ever seen. In fact it is downright opaque, picking up bankside mud as it rushes past our boat in a shade akin to orange clay. But I love the intensity of the colours. The sky is blue and the clouds white. Every direction I look is a new postcard ready to be sent home, luring people to this completely underrated and overlooked paradise.

If you thought that sounded like a song, don't even get me started on Luang Prabang. I have never seen a more idyllic town. The French colonial architecture fits beautifully onto the backdrop of glistening stupas and temples. The buddhist culture in Laos is as prominent as ever, with hundreds of temples, some dating back to the 1500's scattered on every block in Luang Prabang. Monks can be seen roaming the streets at all times of day, dressed in billowing robes of vibrant orange. By the dormitories inside each temple, orange robes hang on clothes lines drying under the sun. Every morning, the monks form a procession down the main street in an alms giving ceremony where locals give offerings to them of sticky rice and other food items. I will see this take place tomorrow morning if I wake up at 6 am as planned!

shit happens

2009-07-10T12:45:00.002-04:00

The perfect slogan for the country of Laos. This is a place where time doesn't exist, everything breaks down- all the time, and the locals just sit back and chill out with a bottle of Beerlao, the national beverage, while they wait.

I am now in Luang Prabang, the beautiful former royal capital, a quiet idyllic town along the banks of the Mekong river. I could write a novel about the arduous journey here from Chiang Mai, Thailand, in which any other time I would have ripped my eyeballs out in frustration, but in this country can only shake my head and grin, because shit happens.

There are three ways to get to Luang Prabang from Chiang Mai. Lao airlines, which costs a fortune and has a terrible safety record, slow boat, which floats its way down the Mekong in two days, or a speed boat which takes half the time as the slow boat, for almost double its price. Because we are a bit time-strapped, we thought the optimal choice was the speed boat. After purchasing the ticket and arriving at the Laos border, I casually glance over my Lonely Planet and see a boxed warning against taking all speed boat travels in Laos as they are "dangerously fast" and about the most perilous thing you can do in Laos after walking through a field of land mines. This reassurance attained, we embarked our boat, literally a canoe with a greasy motor attached to the rear. Six people to a boat and absolutely no room to budge. Things were looking better and better. Our motor stopped working about ten minutes into the trip and our driver who spoke no english, managed to fix it with a wooden twig and a pocket knife. This ad hoc maintenance lasted us another couple of hours until it started drizzling. It then turned into a pour and then a torrent of waters from the sky, drenching us and all of our baggage on the uncovered boat. I didn't mind the wetness, but the motor had failed us again. And this time we sat on the river, tied to a tree branch, none of us talking as we could not communicate with the driver and found ourselves in that strange state of forlorn defeat in which we could do nor complain about nothing.

There we sat for an hour until another speed boat appeared. The driver whizzed off with the other guy back to the last town and returned with jumper cables that managed to fix the boat, but warned us that we may not make it to Luang Prabang by nightfall,and we should just stay overnight in the town. Lo and behold, it was the same town that the slow boats stop off for the night. Can you imagine the embarassment of running into the same people we smugly glanced at this morning? It was such a classic story of the turtoise and the hare.

The town was cute albeit completely subsistent on tourist boats, and that is where we woke up this morning. We were then told that plans had changed again! That slow boats were probably more reliable and safe for us because what if the motor breaks down again and we are to return back to this town for yet another night? At that point I was ready to take the risk take it anyways, but I suppose the other people on the speed boat were not down. Lame. So we ended up on a slow boat that was delayed for over an hour because the boat was filled to overcapacity with excess people waiting to board, and communication barriers between boat operators and passengers ensured that we just stalled with no progress for a very very long time.

Only at 5 pm did we arrrive in Luang Prabang, but just the evening wandering around town has already sold me on the place. The night market was the most unstressful shopping ordeal I had been through so far in Asia and the street food is amazing and cheap! I had an amazing Laos sandwhich (kind of like the viet subs with all kinds of things on a baguette) for about 60 cents, and they even have oreo/nutella milkshakes on the street!

I havn't posted in ages, mostly because I've been travelling around with little internet access. Apparently I hadn't emailed my parents in 6 days and I didn't even realize. Since I last posted from a private island off Phuket, I have been to Ko Phi Phi and Chiang Mai. I cannot wait to share the pictures, but those will have to wait. Bed time now.

Until next time!
x

A Good Year

2009-07-03T21:29:00.002-04:00

This is where I am right now. A beautiful place to end a beautiful year and look forward to endless adventures ahead. Thanks for the birthday wishes!

x

Dreamland

2009-07-01T22:34:00.004-04:00

My first day in Bali was spent in search of the ever-elusive perfect beach. Expectations were high and anything less than postcard-perfect would not do. This took us to Dreamland, a dreamy cove hidden away in a luxury villa development. The beach is open to the public but there were so little people there it felt like we were in on some exclusive secret. Lonely planet wrote one line on how 'exquisite' the cove is, but really should have given budget travelers tips on how to stay in cheap guesthouses and weasel your way into the prime beach real estate of ultra-luxe hotels.

The waves at Dreamland are strong, and many pro surfers in the know make the pilgrimage to this site. Obviously the waves were too amateur for my mad surfing skills so I opted for infinity pool-side lounging in a beautiful restaurant located on a bluff overlooking the ocean. Some reading, conversations with locals, a couple bottles of Bali's finest Bintang, a breathtaking sunset, and delicious seafood curry brought the day to a lazy close.

beds and bugs

2009-06-27T13:04:00.010-04:00

Another night in Kuala Lumpur, another night of insect extermination before bed.

Budget travel can really bug me sometimes. Harhar. Was woken up at 3 am yesterday by creepy crawlers and was given a new room along with an industrial sized can of insect repellent. I did not know that bed bugs were real until this point. Didn't parents just make them up to scare toddlers? There were two kinds on my bed, one about 2mm in length that looked like a beetle, and the other so small I couldn't make out its shape. I have become paranoid, to the point that I believe I am being bitten even when my bed is parasite free, and jolt violently at the sensation of my legs being scathed by giant beetle fangs of my imagination.

We've spent the last two days in an air-conditioned mall, seeking refuge in the clean toilets of the Petronas towers as consequence to overzealous eating and drinking. I got too excited about the prospect of drinking delicious sweet milk tea served in a plastic baggie and forgot that ice cubes on the street are usually made with less than filtered tap water. It got so bad that our day trip yesterday to Melaka- the food capital of Malaysia- had to be forgone at the thought of a 2 hour bus ride towards a street food haven. Very disappointing, as the most 'authentic' culinary experience I've had since coming here was a curry laksa from Papa Rich, the Malay version of Manchu Wok. It was delicious though.

I won't bore you any longer with the invigorating details of my last few days indoors, over toilets, and in hysterics on the hostel bed.

I realize I never said goodbye to Beijing, I was in such a rush with my last exam, hosting Megan on her visit, packing and flying to KL, that I didn't have a chance to post any of my amazing photos and experiences from the last week. And oh, there were some great memories. I'll try to do so intermittently throughout the next month, while attempting to post somewhat in real time about my time in SE Asia. Enjoy the pics.

Mutianyu

2009-06-21T12:15:00.004-04:00

The Great Wall

Mutianyu Village is located in a ravine at the base of the Yanshan Mountains, approximately 70 kilometers to the northeast of Beijing. Two facts of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) history made this location particularly auspicious. The first was Ming enthusiasm for wall building, motivated in large part by a persistent fear that the Mongolians, whom the Ming had defeated in order to become the next ruling dynasty of China, remained a formidable threat to their grip on power. The physical space buffering the divide between the Han Chinese and Mongolian civilizations thus became prime building ground for defensive walls to keep the Mongols out.

The second fact was that in 1402, the Yongle Emperor usurped the Ming throne and subsequently returned the capital city from Nanjin in the south back to Beijing, This development elevated the strategic importance of Great Wall sites closest to the capital as a last line of defense against a Mongol invasion.

The Village

Leaving the Great Wall site, the view of the village is framed on both sides by mountains and hillsides that are sprinkled on both sides by mountains and hillsides that are sprinkled with ancient pines and sliced into bits of terrace just wide enough to accommodate a pair of apricot or chestnut trees. The main road that serves as the primary vein of village life snakes its way down into the ravine, as if someone started drawing an 's' and forgot to stop.

To the east of the main road, smaller dirt roads spread like fingers with houses at the end of their tips. To the west, the much flatter terrain permits a horizontal clustering of homes arranged in maze-like fashion. Some of the homes are coated with a thin layer of whitewash with bits of bare brick showing through in spots, and their facades are adorned with small garden patches fronted by doorways lined with long red strips of glossy paper whose bulbous gold-coloured "Good Fortune" characters become distorted as the corners start to peel away.

Mutianyu: Off the Great Wall- E. Williams

The School House

Sancha

to be continued...

The Big Dong

2009-06-18T13:41:00.006-04:00

Last Thursday when my T. Dot fellow foodie Tudor came to town for a visit, I arranged for a meal at Beijing's revered modern duck institution, Da Dong. Of course, I asked Adlyn to accompany us on this holy grail of Peking duck journeys, enlightening us to the ways of imperial duck dining and of course, showing us the keys to the VIP by way of a visit to the famous back kitchen...

Da Dong has an impressive facade, a grand hall used as a waiting area with a bar and stools looking into the glass-encased kitchen. As most patrons have to wait for a table- yes, even us- the bar is a great idea because they can work on getting their guests slightly tipsy which makes ordering from the elaborate menus that much more interesting later... Another great idea is the free flow of house wine and juice to speed up the process of inebriation. Alriiiight.

The General Manager came out to greet us after a short wait and brought us to meet the Master Chef and the army of sous chefs standing in military rows in the kitchen. There were three large ovens in which ducks are hung exactly 1 meter away from the flame to ensure optimal succulence and crispiness. In the middle of the wall hung a large blackboard displaying in handwritten chalk the number of ducks on order that night. The kitchen was about 300 hundred degrees and my face melted in the heat of the flames.

We talked to the Chef and found out all his secrets, which I will now package up into a little ball of espionage and bring back to Toronto, where duck lovers are seriously missing out.

Here are some sous chefs at work, the Master chef giving us a lesson in Da Donging, and a happy family portrait.

The food was a feat of artistic gastronomy that I'm sure is the first to hit the Peking duck scene. The traditional components of duck are all there; the sesame rolls, the paper-thin pancakes, scallions, cucumbers, sweet sauce and minced garlic, but everything was just that much more haute because of the delicate presentation and showy setting. Duck is the focus, but the offerings do not end there, with page after shiny page of accompanying dishes from braised sea cucumber to mango-wrapped scallops. Some dishes are decidedly sexier with the markings of a well-traveled chef who understands the appeal of molecular gastronomy on the senses and palate. We ordered dishes like mushroom with beer foam, hoisin-glazed cod in a pumpkin, minced duck meat served in a "bird nest", and lotus root, although my less than inspiring descriptions do the menu no justice. Seriously, the mushroom with beer foam had a much more appealing name, which I forget... My favorite was the cod. What miso? Hoisin is the new it-glaze! I could sit there and eat 5 of those everyday for the rest of my life.

The highlight of my dinner though, was naturally the duck. That was when I realized the reason for the army of sous chefs in the kitchen. They are on call to roll each duck by trolley out to the hundreds of tables and perform the art of slicing the finest meat off the bones. Apparently, the marking of a top-tiered duck chef is the ability to cut the duck into 100 slices. No easy feat believe me, despite cheers and encouragement from our table, I think our chef was only able to slice it into 60. Booooo. A+ for effort though!

A tasty trick from the imperial kitchen, which Da Dong practices but I have not seen in other duck kitchens, is to dip a crispy-thin layer of melt-in-your-mouth duck skin into sugar and placing it on your tongue. Holy mother of duck it was divine. I didn't even need to have the meat after that it was so good. I won't entertain you with the other details of the meal, you are either familiar with the components of a Peking duck dinner or you should read Fuchsia Dunlop's comprehensive foray into Da Dong for a better understanding. Without further ado, here are le fotos.

A sweet ending.

i spoke too soon

2009-06-15T22:21:00.003-04:00

1. I love how a rainy day just puts everything on hold. Hutong tour, what tour? No more filming either. I guess my new Nikon lens can wait too. The mega camera mall will still be there tomorrow. Rainy days should just as well be called 'Shirk from your responsibility' days.

2. So I'm shirking from my responsibility to study, and will blog instead.

3. My diet in the last two days, in that particular order: pizza, fries, heavenly mozza sticks, mcnuggets, ice cream, pizza, powder soup, pizza, instant coffee, cookies, salted almonds, instant coffee, vitamin pills, calcium pills.

4. My obesity has reached a next level. Stop judging me with your eyes!!

5. Heavy D, you're gonna kill me. Or at least make me eat a tub of Greens+ in Thailand.

6. Does anyone else think the lyrics to Beyonce's Diva are a bit ridiculous?

7. The Momofuku sommelier, Christina Turley, is beyond sick. In fact the entire staff in the Momofukuverse is next levz, from David Chang himself (who has yet to find out he's my future husband) to Peter Serpico, the genius chef at Ko. But 24 year old Turley is a true diva, you know, the female version of a Hust-laaa. I'm immensely jealous of her job, but it was kind of written in the cards for her as well, having grown up playing in the grape vines of Frog's Leap Vineyard in Napa- incidentally owned by her dad. Full Stop. It's really true what Gladwell discusses in Outliers. 50% of one's success is based on circumstance, birth right, serendipity, whatever you call it. The 10,000 hours of practice, well you can't exactly practice sniffing new world wines growing up in the suburbs of Toronto can you? So I'm jealous. But just have to find my own way to be featured on the NYT Moment Blog.

I've come out of hiding

2009-06-15T21:29:00.002-04:00

I have not left my apartment since 4 am Sunday.

I've been feeling under the weather last couple of days, which explains my going into hibernation and drowning myself in Joni Mitchell, emancipator and Justin Nozuka?? FTW? Now that I'm finally exposing my lifeless face to daylight, the gods decide to welcome me with thunder and rain. Oh and I have to do a 3 hour walking tour, and get filmed doing a night market tour for the Hias website tonight. If you go online and coil back in horror at a ragged face with bloodshot eyes jabbing a deep-fried scorpion in your face, trust me I've had better days.

The farthest I've gone since Sunday was to the front door this morning to pay the delivery guy for my opera ticket. Yea! I'm seeing Rigoletto on Saturday with my lovely Megzican, who is actually on a transatlantic flight right now over from Toronto! She comes bearing gifts of 1 unit of Diva Cup (if u don't know, now u know), 1 package Twix ( I need my fix!), and 1 jar Dulce de Leche (which I need to finish before I leave Beijing next Thursday).

O yea, I leave Beijing next Thursday??? This is way too effing weird. I still don't feel like I got my fix of this city. Now I still have a final exam looming in the near distance and I hate that it's distracting me from enjoying my last days in the city.

This is what I feel like today. A bit of sugar and some spice.

mad men

2009-06-15T02:05:00.004-04:00

"Then I dressed and off we flew to New York to meet some girls. As we rode in the bus in the weird phosphorescent void of the Lincoln Tunnel we leaned on each other with fingers waving and yelled and talked excitedly, and I was beginning to get the bug like Dean. He was simply a youth tremendously excited with life, and though he was a con-man, he was only conning because he wanted so much to live and to get involved with people who would otherwise pay no attention to him. He was conning me and I knew it (for room and board and 'how-to-write', etc), and he knew I knew (this has been the basis of our relationship), but I didn't care and we got along fine- no pestering, no catering, we tiptoed around each other like heartbreaking new friends...And his criminality was not something that sulked and sneered; it was a wild yea-saying overburst of American joy; it was Western, the west wind, an ode from the Plains, something new, long prophesied, long a-coming (he only stole cars for joy rides). Besides, all my New York friends were in the negative, nightmare position of putting down society and giving their tired bookish or political or psychoanalytical reasons, but Dean just raced in society, eager for bread and love; he didn't care one way or the other, 'so long's I can get that lil ole gal with that lil sumpin down there tween her legs, boy', and 'so long's we can eat, son, y'ear me? I'm hungry, I'm starving, let's eat right now!' - and off we'd rush to eat, whereof, as saith Ecclesiastes, 'It is your portion under the sun.' A western kinsman of the sun, Dean...Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me. " - Jack Kerouac, On the Road

How many people have tasted this 'ragged and ecstatic joy of pure being'? We glorify this paean to bohemian hedonism or the beat generation, and yet few would stray from mainstream values to embrace something else. A spontaneity without conventions. I close my eyes and swing to the rhythm of Sal Paradise's underground America; the fast jazz, the heightened sensation amongst inebriated revelry, and cannot tell if my burning desire is for a life on the road or merely observing others at it. There's safety in watching the first snow through the glass.

Sometimes I would think I was born in the wrong generation. I saw Ai Weiwei's introspective at his Three Shadows Photography Centre a couple of months ago. It was titled New York Photographs 1983-1993, a deluge of prints chosen from over 10,000 that he took in that decade. "At that time, I didn't really have anything to do. I was just hanging out, whiling away my time everyday by taking pictures of the people I met, places I went, my neighborhood, the street and city." I liked him instantly. He was broke, he was aimless, he was revolutionary, he was a fucking genius. And no one saw it except the friends who rolled through his East Village apartment. People like Chen Kaige, an icon in his own right, just another face in the day, immortalized in frozen frame.

It's like the air was electric then. You could disappear to the big city, be faceless and nameless, sit in a studio apartment discussing Joyce and Eliot for hours, sleep at dawn and spend all your time chasing the intensity of an unforgettable exuberance. I found myself wishing I weren't bound by my circumstance of birth that restrains me from hitchhiking across America, picking up beatniks along the way. Even the words of Allen Ginsberg, friend to both Ai Weiwei and Kerouac, and inspiration behind Carlo Marx in On the Road, romanticizes the Beat generation to a certain degree.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at
dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient
heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the
machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high
sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz

It was not until I read parts of Kerouac's biography, that my fascination with the madness started wearing off, when I realized Kerouac's grand aspirations of one-upping Ulysses consistently produced work after work of drunken revelries at some next party, and the pubescent desire to destruct the safety of the known. Another member, George Corso, did a great job of summing up the glory and absurdity of the Beat generation. In his poem 'Marriage', he explores in his mind all the rebellions he would perform against a life of routine and suburbia, summing up all my fears as I sit here now, but playfully mocking the Beatniks for never growing up. I realize there are realities in which I live, but indulging in the poetics of Kerouac's life on the road may just be the next best thing.

How long has this been going on- Carmen McRae

2009-06-15T01:47:00.000-04:00

	Carmen McRae - How Long Has This Been Going On

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

A wednesday afternoon

2009-06-10T04:32:00.003-04:00

I woke up this morning with grand dreams of studying, exercising and other chore completion. It is now 5 in the afternoon, my grand dreams now scant, and I haven't done much of anything.

Lamenting the fact that my peers in Canada are done school and I'm still hanging on with one final exam, one that I cannot focus on because the text book is written by a chimpanzee. What do Chimpanzees know about macroeconomics? They can't even trade effectively.

I've done a few food tours this week, including a cool Shanlitun urbaneats one that explores the more upmarket offerings of Yunan and Sichuan cuisine. This weekend I'm heading up to the Wall at Mutianyu to do a gourmet picnic tour with a couple of clients in town. One of whom is an Ivey grad I hear and a managing director in a Canadian bank...small world indeed.

So I was taking a family of four around the hutongs of Houhai yesterday when the mother told me she found out about Hias Gourmet through tripadvisor, which had the Hutong Eats tour ranked on the 3rd of 179 activities to do in Beijing! Jiggawhaat? I couldn't believe it so I googled it myself, and lo and behold it really is.
Now all the reviews have me worried, because I don't think I'm nearly as charming and fun as Adlyn, and am probably giving the hard-earned fruits of her labour a bad name!

I found some incredible pictures of Nanluoguxiang, a gentrified hutong that I walk through during my food tour and wanted to share them with you.

Photos courtesy of ym32 on flickr

The neighbourhood is the perfect place to observe the juxtaposition of new and ancient that is Beijing, with some of the courtyards more than 800 years old. With the eradication of hutongs over the past fifty years, the government has forced multiple families to move in together in what used to be single-family compounds. Today, walking through any alley, you can count the number of electric meters outside to discover how many families live in the cramped space. I've gotten to as many as fifty. This is a must-see when you visit Beijing, and no wonder the culinary/cultural tour is No. 3 on Tripadvisor. No thanks to me. No, seriously.

In other news, I need a new camera. My Nikon has failed me for reasons undisclosable, yes that's a word. I wantnoneed the Canon 50D with wide-angle lens. I would also like a Leica. Lika-leica, get it?? The Holga with which I shot the SH/HZ pics is a dream, but sadly, remains borrowed. I want a vintage twin lens reflex from the antique market also. But alas, my problem remains a rather stubby cashflow, and it doesn't seem to be growing anytime soon. fml.

An essay on creativity block

2009-06-10T04:08:00.010-04:00

If I could have one track to sit back to every night

2009-06-08T14:08:00.001-04:00

I saw

2009-06-08T13:41:00.003-04:00

a dead baby bird on the ground the other day. Its body was tiny, the size of a half pinky, raw and blue. Five feet away was its nest, shattered from impact when it broke off from the roof of my highrise.
I hope its mother never knew.

One in 8 million

2009-06-06T03:56:00.002-04:00

Another reason why the NYTimes is rad.

One in 8 Million is their latest effort to find and touch humanity in the concrete jungle known as Manhattan.

New York is a city of characters. On the subway and in its streets, from the intensity of Midtown to the intimacy of neighbourhood blocks, is a 305-square-mile parade of people wiith something to say. This is a collection of a few of their passions and problems, relationships and routines, vocations and obsessions. A new story will be added daily.

umami

2009-06-05T23:58:00.013-04:00

As promised, here are the photos from my culinary adventures in Chengdu two weeks ago. We arrived on a Thursday night, right on time for dinner at famed Baguobuyi, a traditional Sichuan restaurant. Since we hold the keys to the vip, we watched the chefs prepare our food in the back kitchen. What a kitchen. The largest work stations I've ever seen, with few equipment but high utility from each one. Every dish except soup is cooked in one large wok, and complicated utensils are whittled down to one multi-purpose soup ladle with which they stir, separate, and fry. Each station also has a constant-flowing tap that speeds up the cooking process. What marvel!

Notice the silver tins of seasoning on the side. There are only 6 or so because that's all there is to Sichuan cooking. Salt, Sugar, MSG, cumin, chili powder, pepercorns. This is incredible considering how many varieties of flavours can be achieved just with different combinations of those! A delicious dish called Huiguorou. Twice cooked pork that is thinly sliced fatty meat cooked in chilli paste and sometimes eaten in between guokui, small baked buns.
Dry-cooked green beans. Deliciously fiery beans fried without any water to preserve flavour
A traditional Sichuan face-changing show after dinner. They just nod their head and the mask changes in a flash to new colours!
Our table getting some face-changing love.
The next day, visiting the Sichuan Culinary Institute, one of the foremost cooking schools in China, where we took a tour and had a master class in four staple Sichuan dishes by one of the most sought-after chefs in the country!
Here the students are hard at work rolling dough for dumpling wrappers.

How come all the boys are rolling the dough and the girls are wrapping the dumplings? Inequality if you ask me.

The ingredients set up for our master class.
Teacher cooking a batch of ground pork as a condiment for our Dandan noodle dish later.
Deep frying a batch of eggplant coated in cornstarch to make it soft on the inside.
The final product. This is called Fish-fragrant eggplant. There's no fish in it, but the sauce used is a little sweet and sour from a combination of sugar, vinegar, chilli paste and garlic. I suppose a lot of sweet and sour fish dishes have a similar flavour, hence the name.
One of the most famous products out of Sichuan, the green peppercorn. It is more sharp and pungent than the red version, but has less lingering flavour. The two are used in combination sometime to add a more multi-dimensional ma (numb) to the la (spicy).
No dish is complete without a dash of ground peppercorn powder.
Preparing for our Hot Pot Fish dish.
Instructing us not to try this at home.
Admirable knife skills! Clearly I'm still transfixed!
And still...
Fish is thrown in to simmer in a pot full of chili oil, water, dried chili peppers, and peppercorns
The finished product!
Our dandan noodles!
In each bowl, we place some preserved vegetables called "yacai", some of the fat from the fried pork earlier, a bit of the minced meat itself, and adjust to taste.
Cooking the noodles is an art.
Said "yacai". This brand called "Yibing" is the most famous so watch out for it at the grocery store! It makes a great condiment to any stirfry; with mushrooms, greens, and meat.
Topping up our noodles.
The finished product. How cute in their little bowls!!!
Trying our own hand at the four dishes. Check out how pro I look. Teehee
My precise knifework that unpeeled an entire eggplant. Naw, that was the instructor. Look at those veins popping!
Slicing to make a decorative flower!
Glorious tofu.
Cooking Mapo Tofu. Anyone who knows an inkling about me knows this is my ride-or-die dish. In my memory, my mother made the best version. But I think this weekend may have topped hers! oops.
Final product. With a dash of peppercorn powder.
A visit to the Pixian Preserved Chilli Bean Paste factory. Where factory operations consist of thousands of terra cotta pots just chilling in the sun, chilli bean paste fermenting away inside.
Oh, process #2 is an old man who walks around mashing the concoction up every hour or so. Some high technology here.
ii

A lunch-time visit to the Sichuan Food Museum. Beautiful presentation but slightly lacking in taste.

A traditional tea ceremony. This is the tea master who hosted the LVMH event last weekend. She's a tiny lady who packs a feisty punch, cute and definitely knows how to pour an Oolong tea.
A delicious meal in a "fly" (hole in the wall) restaurant. So much baijiu. So much plum wine. So much delicious.
One of the most memorable trips. Hope you enjoyed the visual feast!

Harlem

2009-05-28T20:57:00.000-04:00

old bazaar

2009-05-28T20:54:00.001-04:00

time passes still

2009-05-28T20:51:00.002-04:00

100th post!

Every day is a good day

2009-05-28T20:38:00.004-04:00