yes, so it has been nearly five months since i last posted. completely unintentional. i wasn't busy so much as trying to stay busy, i suppose. there were bouts of busy-ness in there. maybe three or four.
kind of ruminating about whether i should start another web presence. i arrived at an idea yesterday about blogging about wedding planning, not because the world needs another wedding blog (and when has that ever stopped a girl from blogging about her wedding?) but because some people honestly don't know where to start, and some of those people i know personally, and a lot of times i am one. also, i am the wedding anti-christ and i am still going to have a wedding, which i thought might be fun to write about. (notice how i didn't say read about?)
i took down my personal work portfolio a few months ago because my dreamhost subscription ran out and i have been mildly aware that posting full stories online really just invites plagiarism. i also just wasn't into seeing how stale my work was becoming.
so why a web presence? i like to blog, first and foremost. and second, this blog is mostly a secret or a url that many people have forgotten, and i like it that way, but i do want a website i can send to potential clients or whathaveyou that won't reveal how i feel about lentils or how many times i can use the word, FUCK, in a post.
when i talk to friends or chat with former classmates online, i tend to get this sort of proxy wistfulness. like, CAROLYN, you are such a good writer, you should actually be doing shit. that essentially functions to make me feel like a lazy turd, or a failure. i haven't gotten a real job here, and therefore am a turd. AND a failure, i guess. but maybe blogging would give me a sense of purpose? i don't know. it probably won't.
what i would like to do is put out some online essays about china. one reason is because china is crazy. another reason is because i live in china and that consumes most aspects of my life. so i'm kind of considering that, as well. what makes me hesitant is that there is so much out there on china right now, and it kind of falls under either "rabid china news coverage" or "personal china experience" when i don't really want to do either, wholly.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
bad habits die hard
breakfast: coffee with milk
mid-morning meal: honey nut cheerios
lunch at 3 pm: about four tablespoons of black beans, a rice bowl of honey nut cheerios
dinner: hopefully a proper meal
being busy for the past two weeks has meant that our pantry (also known as the single shelf in our miserably small kitchen) has dwindled down to opened snack food packages that i refuse to throw away, 1.5 bags of dried pearl barley, some old rice noodles and a can of tomato soup i'm saving for a real food emergency. alright, alright, we also have a small tetra-pak of coconut cream, granulated honey, a package of japanese-style curry sauce, and about a teaspoon of oatmeal in a re-sealable that i also refuse to throw away. not sure why.
i even went grocery shopping yesterday, expanding our vittles by a 2.5-kilo bag of brown rice, a can each of sardines and anchovies, dried black beans, a bottle of sesame oil and some vegetables. oh, and a small foil pack of cheddar-cheese flavored snyder's pretzel pieces that i ate out of my bike basket while waiting for a light to change on my way home. (they were out of honey mustard.) oh, and obviously, a box of cheerios.
when grocery shopping consists of me and my two feet or my two bike pedals approaching either a local chinese supermarket whose inventory strangely appears to be composed of 35 percent snack food items, OR an extremely overpriced expat imported food market that may or may not have certain staples you saw there last time, you tend to shop light. there's also a wet market two blocks away, where i can find pretty much any chinese vegetable or fungi and an assortment of live fowl in addition to nosefuls of extreme stink and filthy puddles all dimly lit in some weird, dark concrete compound. some days i just give up and eat a fried egg over rice. sometimes i get really ambitious and hit up no less than FIVE fucking markets to find a chicken breast. it all depends on how much i want a damn chicken breast (not that much, but chicken thighs are mysteriously absent in the chinese local food economy) and what my blood sugar levels are like and how much cash i stole from t's wallet that morning. so if i find some sort of employment soon, it'll be interesting to see what kind of meals we end up eating on a daily basis.
we americans (soapbox alert) have no friggin idea how much our country is a goddamned BOUNTY of food. we have food inventory until the sun comes down. remember the last time you had to visit TWO safeways to find what you wanted? or safeway and trader joe's? remember how irritating that was? remember climbing into your car to pursue that food item?
[sidenote: if i could import one american business to china, it would be trader joe's faster than you can down a small paper cup's-worth of their latest frozen roasted-vegetable-over-quinoa entree. i miss quinoa. i miss frozen green chile and cheese tamales. i miss peanut butter without hydrogenated oil.]
ok, so i inadvertently turned this into a bitchfest, but what i really thought, initially, as i looked down at my rice bowl half-full of chinese "cheerios" that are so sugary they appear to be shellacked, was, damn. i'm so glad i bought these cheerios yesterday. i've had two servings! i feel rich!
mid-morning meal: honey nut cheerios
lunch at 3 pm: about four tablespoons of black beans, a rice bowl of honey nut cheerios
dinner: hopefully a proper meal
being busy for the past two weeks has meant that our pantry (also known as the single shelf in our miserably small kitchen) has dwindled down to opened snack food packages that i refuse to throw away, 1.5 bags of dried pearl barley, some old rice noodles and a can of tomato soup i'm saving for a real food emergency. alright, alright, we also have a small tetra-pak of coconut cream, granulated honey, a package of japanese-style curry sauce, and about a teaspoon of oatmeal in a re-sealable that i also refuse to throw away. not sure why.
i even went grocery shopping yesterday, expanding our vittles by a 2.5-kilo bag of brown rice, a can each of sardines and anchovies, dried black beans, a bottle of sesame oil and some vegetables. oh, and a small foil pack of cheddar-cheese flavored snyder's pretzel pieces that i ate out of my bike basket while waiting for a light to change on my way home. (they were out of honey mustard.) oh, and obviously, a box of cheerios.
when grocery shopping consists of me and my two feet or my two bike pedals approaching either a local chinese supermarket whose inventory strangely appears to be composed of 35 percent snack food items, OR an extremely overpriced expat imported food market that may or may not have certain staples you saw there last time, you tend to shop light. there's also a wet market two blocks away, where i can find pretty much any chinese vegetable or fungi and an assortment of live fowl in addition to nosefuls of extreme stink and filthy puddles all dimly lit in some weird, dark concrete compound. some days i just give up and eat a fried egg over rice. sometimes i get really ambitious and hit up no less than FIVE fucking markets to find a chicken breast. it all depends on how much i want a damn chicken breast (not that much, but chicken thighs are mysteriously absent in the chinese local food economy) and what my blood sugar levels are like and how much cash i stole from t's wallet that morning. so if i find some sort of employment soon, it'll be interesting to see what kind of meals we end up eating on a daily basis.
we americans (soapbox alert) have no friggin idea how much our country is a goddamned BOUNTY of food. we have food inventory until the sun comes down. remember the last time you had to visit TWO safeways to find what you wanted? or safeway and trader joe's? remember how irritating that was? remember climbing into your car to pursue that food item?
[sidenote: if i could import one american business to china, it would be trader joe's faster than you can down a small paper cup's-worth of their latest frozen roasted-vegetable-over-quinoa entree. i miss quinoa. i miss frozen green chile and cheese tamales. i miss peanut butter without hydrogenated oil.]
ok, so i inadvertently turned this into a bitchfest, but what i really thought, initially, as i looked down at my rice bowl half-full of chinese "cheerios" that are so sugary they appear to be shellacked, was, damn. i'm so glad i bought these cheerios yesterday. i've had two servings! i feel rich!
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
Thursday, April 14, 2011
a cautionary tale
a quick post before heading out to meet the girls for an extravagant meal (more on that later) - i've been catching up on my paul carr reading and can i tell you, it's always entertaining.
a bit about why i enjoy reading paul carr's effusive blathering, and it's completely self-serving: i feel like he is a male, recovering alcoholic version of me, if i were british and getting paid to write columns about absolutely nothing for such piddly news providers as tech crunch and the guardian.
i also like that he hails from the old school of journalism, meaning he's attached to things like accuracy and says that people should read the news because its important, but finds nothing wrong about writing about absolute, utter pointlessness. i like that in a person i've never met. i like reading brutally honest takes on his dating life and getting fired from every job he's ever had and probably a bit too much about his alcoholism.
that said, off i go.
a bit about why i enjoy reading paul carr's effusive blathering, and it's completely self-serving: i feel like he is a male, recovering alcoholic version of me, if i were british and getting paid to write columns about absolutely nothing for such piddly news providers as tech crunch and the guardian.
i also like that he hails from the old school of journalism, meaning he's attached to things like accuracy and says that people should read the news because its important, but finds nothing wrong about writing about absolute, utter pointlessness. i like that in a person i've never met. i like reading brutally honest takes on his dating life and getting fired from every job he's ever had and probably a bit too much about his alcoholism.
that said, off i go.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
mi casa es su casa
this fine, fine thriving garden of mold was my latest discovery, found just yesterday morning. that is our bed, that bit of laminate gorgeousness to the left. so we've been sleeping just inches away from an abundant patch of biological wondrousness. i was kind of relieved in the background of being completely freaked out, because i've been obsessed about the musty-ass smell that dominates one corner of the bedroom. i've washed the bedding repeatedly and i air out the room all day long despite rather cool temperatures outside. at one point i found scant amounts of mold under the windows in the same room, but it didn't seem to warrant such a strong stench. so now i know.
not sure if this normally happens, but when i set about cleaning this mold up, the stucco plaster that textures the wall was wiping away. kind of dissolving. so our wall, while it looks better now and seems a good deal less moldy, is sort of covered in a bizarre paste of plaster, mold and laundry detergent solution.
we are locked into this apartment until next october, but T is pretty wigged out by my mold discovery (in addition to our leaky sink, a broken toilet, and a bathroom ceiling that is determined to collapse in on us) and wants to ditch our deposit (about $900 USD) and get a new place. oh yes, and our rat visitor, who has since been murdered, can't forget him.
i'm not sure what to think. i'm feeling a little better now that i've located the nasty ass mold patch and can keep an eye on if should it choose to rebound. apartment prices are sky-high now, post-Expo, so a new place is going to cost at least $1500 USD/month. at LEAST. that's what one of our friends is paying now, after months of looking. rents in shanghai are not what they used to be. we're in a good location, just a block away from the subway line 9, which T uses to go to work. BUT, we could be doing better, as he likes to phrase it. he's worried about my lungs, as he should be, and i guess i should be concerned about that, too. and mold spores... well, they aren't any good for anyone.
Friday, March 04, 2011
change is afoot. not a foot.
i was walking around the streets last week with two friends when i realized that shanghai had subtly, nearly unnoticeably, gotten quieter.
don't get me wrong, there are still blaring horns, screeching brakes, shouting, big trucks and buses rumbling by, but the additional layer of noise that blankets the streets - blaring loudspeakers, street-sweeping trucks that blast some unsettlingly cheerful and juvenile tune, men that ride their bike-carts with loudspeakers advertising their ability to haul away household appliances - THAT had lessened considerably. it was odd. you still go deaf on the streets, that hasn't changed, but now you aren't about to assault any one person for making you deaf AND annoyed.
big difference.
i was on the subway yesterday for the first time in years, and normally the female voice that announces the upcoming station and which way the door will open and don't forget your belongings is so indescribably loud that you can feel your ear drum reverberating in your head. now? now she's just normal-loud, like on the red line on the chicago el.
i saw a water-shooting truck cleaning the street yesterday - well really, it was just wetting the street - and it was playing an annoying little jingle, but i've seen many more street-sweeping trucks lately that just kind of roar along and sweep, without the added dimension of nerve-jangling hello kitty-esque sing-songiness. so i guess my point is that the noise has lessened, not halted, but that itself is so strange for china. such a subtle shifting down a gear instead of getting jammed abruptly to a stop, the extremity of which i have come to expect from this country.
i hope more nice realizations like this are to come.
don't get me wrong, there are still blaring horns, screeching brakes, shouting, big trucks and buses rumbling by, but the additional layer of noise that blankets the streets - blaring loudspeakers, street-sweeping trucks that blast some unsettlingly cheerful and juvenile tune, men that ride their bike-carts with loudspeakers advertising their ability to haul away household appliances - THAT had lessened considerably. it was odd. you still go deaf on the streets, that hasn't changed, but now you aren't about to assault any one person for making you deaf AND annoyed.
big difference.
i was on the subway yesterday for the first time in years, and normally the female voice that announces the upcoming station and which way the door will open and don't forget your belongings is so indescribably loud that you can feel your ear drum reverberating in your head. now? now she's just normal-loud, like on the red line on the chicago el.
i saw a water-shooting truck cleaning the street yesterday - well really, it was just wetting the street - and it was playing an annoying little jingle, but i've seen many more street-sweeping trucks lately that just kind of roar along and sweep, without the added dimension of nerve-jangling hello kitty-esque sing-songiness. so i guess my point is that the noise has lessened, not halted, but that itself is so strange for china. such a subtle shifting down a gear instead of getting jammed abruptly to a stop, the extremity of which i have come to expect from this country.
i hope more nice realizations like this are to come.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
man man lai...
there are two men in my bathroom, snaking the drain. or rather, snaking the SHIT out of the drain. it's halfway to china nashville by now. the super has visited a total of three times to handle this leaky pipe, which somehow lead to the building maintenance guy coming by and now it's a regular drain party up in there.
so as of today i've been in shanghai a full week. last week was an alzheimer's-like haze of trying to remember street names and bar names and feeling very befuddled when i tried to recall my chinese, which was crappy to begin with.
my good friend is here, staying with us, and she had four friends in tow visiting from SF for a week. they've since gone, so my life is settling in to what i assume will be its regular schedule for a while - wake up with trev, make coffee, absorb as much news as possible without obsessing, study chinese for an hour or so, try to find work.
while our social lives here are definitely more lively than they were in other cities, for shanghai it's definitely scaled back. that may have to do with trevor and i being on a serious budget. two expensive graduate school educations + 1 salary = oh damn. we ain't gots no money.
i'm trying to network, but short of the point where i feel like i'm putting too much pressure on myself to "get out there," something that from me requires lots of effort, but for other people is just second nature. i'm slowly acclimating and sending out feelers. trying not to hold myself up against other people's methods and abilities, but it's hard. trev gets on me to not push myself so much, which is kind of funny ironic if you think about it.
tonight i'm having a girls' dinner at our friend marc's restaurant, fulton place, which is one of the nicer places in town. i'm very much looking forward to it. up until now, a lot of socializing has been in big, somewhat raucous groups, sometimes jameson-fueled. it's the first time i've been to his place since it opened while i was in absentia, so i'm really looking forward to seeing the space and sampling some tasty eats!
so as of today i've been in shanghai a full week. last week was an alzheimer's-like haze of trying to remember street names and bar names and feeling very befuddled when i tried to recall my chinese, which was crappy to begin with.
my good friend is here, staying with us, and she had four friends in tow visiting from SF for a week. they've since gone, so my life is settling in to what i assume will be its regular schedule for a while - wake up with trev, make coffee, absorb as much news as possible without obsessing, study chinese for an hour or so, try to find work.
while our social lives here are definitely more lively than they were in other cities, for shanghai it's definitely scaled back. that may have to do with trevor and i being on a serious budget. two expensive graduate school educations + 1 salary = oh damn. we ain't gots no money.
i'm trying to network, but short of the point where i feel like i'm putting too much pressure on myself to "get out there," something that from me requires lots of effort, but for other people is just second nature. i'm slowly acclimating and sending out feelers. trying not to hold myself up against other people's methods and abilities, but it's hard. trev gets on me to not push myself so much, which is kind of funny ironic if you think about it.
tonight i'm having a girls' dinner at our friend marc's restaurant, fulton place, which is one of the nicer places in town. i'm very much looking forward to it. up until now, a lot of socializing has been in big, somewhat raucous groups, sometimes jameson-fueled. it's the first time i've been to his place since it opened while i was in absentia, so i'm really looking forward to seeing the space and sampling some tasty eats!
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
back on the online grind
so today i got back in touch with a friend of a friend who was interested in the fact that i went to J school and more importantly that i was trained in business reporting, and asked if i had a blog since he's an avid business news consumer.
that dreaded cloak of shame dropped over my head again because, really, if i want to be a writer i really need to be relevant on the topics that i will cover, and i've taken a really long break from it. since september i haven't been a subscriber to the wall street journal, and since september i've really ignored the business news world. but reality is hitting again, and i have to gird my loins and start spending hours online every day, re-tweeting and shit. i have this hot-cold relationship with online media. i'm either all about it, all the time, or i completely ignore everything related to news for months.
so my dilemma is this: do i start blogging on my current domain, or succumb to temptation and start a tumblr blog? i fall victim to the newest thing all the time in the blog world, which is why i've paid the price so many times. it's a personality quirk that is probably why technology keeps me interested - there's always something newer and better, and i like that. i keep blogger as a secret journal that's accessible to those who can find me, but one of the reasons i think i've stayed with blogger is because i'm not subjected to the public eye, just the three or so friends who actually read it once in a while, so it can be scruffy and low-tech. i don't need to show off multimedia skills, just pour my brain into a 300-word post.
i have to dive back into the digital rabbit hole. he's right, i know it, it's time to get back into the game.
that dreaded cloak of shame dropped over my head again because, really, if i want to be a writer i really need to be relevant on the topics that i will cover, and i've taken a really long break from it. since september i haven't been a subscriber to the wall street journal, and since september i've really ignored the business news world. but reality is hitting again, and i have to gird my loins and start spending hours online every day, re-tweeting and shit. i have this hot-cold relationship with online media. i'm either all about it, all the time, or i completely ignore everything related to news for months.
so my dilemma is this: do i start blogging on my current domain, or succumb to temptation and start a tumblr blog? i fall victim to the newest thing all the time in the blog world, which is why i've paid the price so many times. it's a personality quirk that is probably why technology keeps me interested - there's always something newer and better, and i like that. i keep blogger as a secret journal that's accessible to those who can find me, but one of the reasons i think i've stayed with blogger is because i'm not subjected to the public eye, just the three or so friends who actually read it once in a while, so it can be scruffy and low-tech. i don't need to show off multimedia skills, just pour my brain into a 300-word post.
i have to dive back into the digital rabbit hole. he's right, i know it, it's time to get back into the game.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
sunsetting the parents
my time at the retirement community is coming to a close. thank god.
after the Big Move on monday, my parents' new house - which i had earlier derided as cheaply constructed and pretty gross - is looking a lot better, now that it's filled with their furniture (far too much furniture, but that's another story). it's actually borderline cosy. yes, it's not the beautiful, spanish-style home that they left behind, but i discovered a joy of new construction - this joint is as tight as a drum. it heats up quickly and you can actually sit in the house without 3 sweaters and a coat and scarf on. (that is, if your mom doesn't leave the doors and windows open when it's 40 degrees out to "air out" the smell of her cooking.) most of the boxes that should be unpacked are unpacked, and we've even cleared the boxes from the foyer and kitchen.
my parents went from a four-bedroom, three-level house with more rooms than they could use to a house that is 1000 square feet smaller. there's one thing to be said about downsizing, and that is, just stop with the junk collection already. stop now, while you're in your 30s or 20s or 40s, before you get too old to lift boxes of your own crap into the back of a truck. junk is especially junky when covered with 30 years of dust. your children will not want your collection of beer steins or russian nesting dolls. if you haven't seen that brass korean hot pot vessel in a decade, chances are that you didn't miss it and won't miss it if you throw it out. ditto your college textbooks and that hi-fi system from 1993. my dad retained a box full of VHS tapes, despite the fact that they no longer have a VCR. this is the kind of thing that makes me, who has moved no less than six times in the past two years and faces yet another international move in a month, absolutely batshit crazy. i have thrown out enough clothing, shoes, grooming items and household crap to clothe, decorate and makeover a small country and its inhabitants. please stop with the junk. you don't need another vase or box of records. if your parents try to lob shit off on your, tell them "hell-to-the-no" and offer to drop it off at salvation army.
in preparation for this move, we made three trips to salvation army and one trip to the dump. we will make at least one more trip to good 'ol salvation army and another to the dump, and i argue that they still have far too much crap. but, it's their place, and although it's stuffed to the gills with furniture and multiple dish sets and plants, i guess i can stop harping. when i own my own home, which will be so sparsely furnished with crap you won't be able to cook or bandage a wound, then i guess i can talk. being mobile has the polarizing effect of making you hate stuff and making you really want a place to call home and park your grill and cuisinart. i look forward to it with a combination of fear and anticipation.
i return to civilization early tomorrow morning, and i can't friggin wait.
after the Big Move on monday, my parents' new house - which i had earlier derided as cheaply constructed and pretty gross - is looking a lot better, now that it's filled with their furniture (far too much furniture, but that's another story). it's actually borderline cosy. yes, it's not the beautiful, spanish-style home that they left behind, but i discovered a joy of new construction - this joint is as tight as a drum. it heats up quickly and you can actually sit in the house without 3 sweaters and a coat and scarf on. (that is, if your mom doesn't leave the doors and windows open when it's 40 degrees out to "air out" the smell of her cooking.) most of the boxes that should be unpacked are unpacked, and we've even cleared the boxes from the foyer and kitchen.
my parents went from a four-bedroom, three-level house with more rooms than they could use to a house that is 1000 square feet smaller. there's one thing to be said about downsizing, and that is, just stop with the junk collection already. stop now, while you're in your 30s or 20s or 40s, before you get too old to lift boxes of your own crap into the back of a truck. junk is especially junky when covered with 30 years of dust. your children will not want your collection of beer steins or russian nesting dolls. if you haven't seen that brass korean hot pot vessel in a decade, chances are that you didn't miss it and won't miss it if you throw it out. ditto your college textbooks and that hi-fi system from 1993. my dad retained a box full of VHS tapes, despite the fact that they no longer have a VCR. this is the kind of thing that makes me, who has moved no less than six times in the past two years and faces yet another international move in a month, absolutely batshit crazy. i have thrown out enough clothing, shoes, grooming items and household crap to clothe, decorate and makeover a small country and its inhabitants. please stop with the junk. you don't need another vase or box of records. if your parents try to lob shit off on your, tell them "hell-to-the-no" and offer to drop it off at salvation army.
in preparation for this move, we made three trips to salvation army and one trip to the dump. we will make at least one more trip to good 'ol salvation army and another to the dump, and i argue that they still have far too much crap. but, it's their place, and although it's stuffed to the gills with furniture and multiple dish sets and plants, i guess i can stop harping. when i own my own home, which will be so sparsely furnished with crap you won't be able to cook or bandage a wound, then i guess i can talk. being mobile has the polarizing effect of making you hate stuff and making you really want a place to call home and park your grill and cuisinart. i look forward to it with a combination of fear and anticipation.
i return to civilization early tomorrow morning, and i can't friggin wait.
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