that's me away

Shey

2009-09-06T11:28:00.000-07:00

Men's Celebration in Charasa

2009-08-10T06:00:00.000-07:00

Before the recitals

2009-08-09T06:09:00.000-07:00

Traditional Women's Dance

2009-08-08T10:09:00.002-07:00

Lamayuru Festival

2009-07-25T12:10:00.001-07:00

Big sky, small water

2009-07-12T07:30:00.002-07:00

Tashi Dolkar and her oldest daughter

2009-07-10T20:50:00.000-07:00

Monastery

2009-07-07T22:39:00.000-07:00

Blue Bonnet

2009-07-05T07:25:00.000-07:00

Girl at Khai Tri Orphanage

2009-07-04T08:31:00.001-07:00

The Ungodly Hours

2009-06-28T08:39:00.007-07:00

Tumbling out of bed at an ungodly hour becomes less ungodly and rather lovely, once you get used to it. In my neighborhood, the streets, wide and empty like open mouths, are quiet and inviting. I spy on my neighbors and see whose lights are on, and wonder what they're doing up so early or late. This morning, I remembered getting up early last spring with Emma and Asia, to catch the light for a photography project. We failed, ultimately, in catching the light, and I didn't take very interesting photos, despite the surreal junkyard scene. Still, at an ungodly hour, there is promise in the day. Thoughts about the futility of it all - of all the obstacles that we face, alone and together, that are caused by us and undo us so that we are our own undoings - are swept politely under a threadbare rug. Thoughts like that are welcome, barely, and only, during the godly hours.

Laughing Fisherwoman

2009-06-27T07:28:00.000-07:00

Girl from Phnom Chhnork

2009-06-20T13:03:00.003-07:00

majestic panda ninja technique for preservation of sanity and slash or ebbing of supreme irritation

2009-04-29T15:09:00.005-07:00

In Teremiski, we always ate our meals together and in Polish, despite how hard I pushed for meal time to be English-time. A.k.a. don't-flippin'-leave-me-bored-and-resentful-time. It really sucks to be the only one at a table of twenty who doesn't understand what's going on.

I can see what you're thinking. It's my fault, right? I lived in Poland; perhaps I should've been fluent. In my defense: really? Another pun? (Also - really? Fluency?) Here's the play by play:

Polish fluent: woh woh woh woh woh woh (I'm sorry - how do you spell Charlie Brown's teacher speak?)
Me: Muh? [whilst moving my head from side to side like I'm watching a tennis ball tournament]
Polish fluent: hahahahahARHAHARHAARHAHARgaspSNORT!
Me: Hey, translation please? [gritted teeth]
Pawel: Well, you know.......it was word play.

Man I hated meal-time. I thought it would get better with Emma there, but it still remained suckish.

Now that I am back in America, I realize that this tennis tournament-smiling like an imbecile-nodding along-zombie act was merely batting practice for the big game. Of social life. In America. Just because I speak the language and understand the local humor doesn't mean I'm in the game. Oh yeah, babe. Recently, I've been standing awkwardly around with people I don't know - seder, birthday shindigs. I'm pretty damn socially inept but this disagreeable trait tends to be heightened when I'm surrounded by people who only want to talk about their hometown. Even though half the people at the table - the quiet people - are not from said hometown. That's all they want to talk about.

Even though.
Talk.
Though.

Yeah.

Still. I didn't become a majestic panda ninja because I am popular, or cool, or smart, or from some extremely oblivious conversation dominating girl's hometown. Oh no sista,

exactly the opposite!

sea glass

2009-04-03T16:56:00.002-07:00

for em & shoko

I kind of get aspic.

2009-04-02T14:44:00.005-07:00

Aspic is more or less meat jello, which sounds disgusting, yeah? But there's something magical about chicken or beef stock that has solidified in the cold and gotten all wobbly. It makes me so happy. When we're at the bottom of the chicken broth or pho pot, I like to peer into the pot several times a day to see the wobble. The wobble is an assurance of thicker, denser, more powerful soup. And it makes nary a sound! I've checked! I find this very mysterious. If someone gave me aspic I'd probably nuke it and throw some rice noodles in there. Mmmm-licious.

Aspic has nothing to do with anything, although I do have wobbly chicken broth in my fridge and I've been causing global warming by opening and closing the fridge door to check on the wobble and titter. In addition, the thought of leaving the silly entry before this as the first thing anyone would see in a long time on this bumbling blog makes me uncomfortable. The tone is quite - well, I feel like a dick when I think of it, is all. I'm a dick!

Til the end of April I'll be procrastinating from studying for the GRE, but after that I'll have plenty of time to procrastinate from editing the rest of my photos. I actually have plenty of time to study and edit photos, but I'm such an expert procrastinator that it just can't be managed. Meanwhile I am the proud owner of seven pairs of sweatpants.

Green powders bark vivaciously at the soggy blues.

2009-03-14T19:18:00.008-07:00

The best way to chase away the back-in-the-states-with-no-out-in-sight blues is a walk through the local Asian supermarket. What did I find in bustling Mei Wah today, but pandan paste and matcha! I did a jig down the aisle after the second discovery, and the middle aged Chinese guy stocking the shelves didn't even blink. Ah, San Francisco.

Ah, greeny green greenness. Pandan is the green leafy thing that colors and flavors many a cake in Southeast Asia. Yana and I first discovered it when we were traveling in Cambodia, because the private buses we took doled out little packaged cakes, along with small bottles of water and a wet napkin. It took us a while to figure out what the deliciousness and green-ness was. Which is, pandan flavoring and green food coloring, respectively. My most accurate way to describe pandan is in Mandarin: "hun shiang" (in totally incorrect pinyin) - which means something like it gives off a very fresh and flavorful smell and taste. I'm stoked to try it out on some cakes and macarons,

macarons being the reason why I bought a pound of matcha, or green tea powder. What. The store didn't carry smaller portions. I've been dwelling on green tea macarons with dark chocolate ganache since I got up the nerve to begin tinkering with les macarons, which David Lebovitz says no one outside of France should attempt. I'm inclined to agree, if only because things that you make perfectly and authentically in foreign countries don't always turn out when you bring them home. MFK realized it with her cauliflower gratin; so did the Italian lady with the pasta in Heat. But macarons remind me of Emma, and Emma is in Teremiski, and if I can't have Emma, then I may as well have macarons.

Here it is, I'm tattering along happily about baking and green powders like a bird twittering at the coming spring. But the thing about walking around Asian supermarkets - staring at shrimp paste, counting the varieties of dessert in rice gluten form, searching for a specific hot and sour rice vermicelli instant noodle soup out of a hundred - is that I feel like less of a freak. I only consciously experienced reverse culture shock for a little over a week (everything was so shiny and big and clean, and everyone spoke English!) but when I'm in places like Mei Wah, the feeling of being freakishly out of place in World America comes into sharp focus.

It's probably just the jitters, just the unease of limbo. I do feel that I should be here now, whatever the difficulties - after all, I did spend a shocking amount of time thinking about being here while I was gone. Now that I'm here, where I want to be is in Taiwan, studying Chinese.

I'm in my personally tailored Choose Your Adventure, and my life has never felt like less of an adventure. When I watch television, I wonder if peoples' lives are really like that - vibrant, buzzing. My life wasn't like that even when I was living in Poland and traveling in Asia. Although the first Polish year did resemble a rather melodramatic soap opera, as I recall.

The choices I've been fancying: culinary school to become a pastry chef. Grad school for therapy. Nursing school to make my parents happy. Going to Taiwan, which isn't actually an option due to present near-insolvency, in addition to utter lack of support from the parental units.

And in regards to nursing school, or making my parents happy, or "following my bliss" (a turn of the phrase that makes my skin crawl, due to its extreme and nauseating wooieness), I wish people would just shut the fuck up. They have no idea what it's like for me, this weight of the Taiwanese/Lao/Chinese parental units. They have no idea what the dumbass conflict of being a first generation Asian American - which I dislike bringing up - is all about. And however supportive some of my friends are, or not; however they understand, or don't; it never fucking helps, because it's all a big tank of steaming shit, is what it is. And spending time around my family - how childish can these people be - is turning me into a churlish teenager. Think Paul Dano in Little Miss Sunshine. I'm actually regressing in maturity: it's melting like the green witch in the water.

But, hey. Macarons. Green powders. Wearing sweats all the time. My bike Josephine. Spending time with Nat and Pete in their windowless apartment. Options, however limited they may be at the moment. It's not so bad. With a little perspective, and throwing away the panic that comes with understanding the precariousness of my life as I know it, it's all

gravy.

Slightly creepy but hella dy-no-MITE.

2009-03-12T21:18:00.003-07:00

Again, there is something wrong with me.

2009-03-10T20:04:00.003-07:00

Everyone was all, you can't hit Cambodia without going to Angkor Wat. I went to Angkor Wat, a'ight? And I didn't give a drooling dog's damn! Now I'm stuck editing 362 photos of Angkor and its surrounding wats, and I'm so bored that I have to stop myself from chucking them all. This might've been the only photo that I took in da Watz that I got half stoked about:

The Khmer Guide to Skinny

2009-03-06T22:20:00.002-08:00

Feeling the winter funk with extra junk in the trunk? Discover the Secret to Skinny, Khmer style.

Whatall do people do for fun in Phnom Penh? Well, badminton, sure, but this is hella more badass than badminton.

DUDE. People gather in different groups around the "Olympic Stadium" (a dinky but popular joint constructed and aptly named during the Khmer Rouge years) to aerobisize their way to fitness.

DJs, jazzercise instructors, and speakers show up. It's hotta than hot.

The birds do it, the bees do it, kindly old men do it.

Even local superheroes in training show up for the festivities.

Sweat inducing efforts are followed (or possibly preceded) by snack foods! Where's the bad? The Khmer got fitness on lock, yo.

Actually, I never got a chance to try those grilled bananas. No better reason to go back to Cambodia, I guess.

Hollandaise

2009-02-21T16:23:00.006-08:00

is made primarily of egg yolks and butter. A lot of egg yolks and a lot of butter.

I don't have a lot to look forward to these days, since the two things that I have to do are study for the GRE and look for a job. Both activities are downers, because a) when has studying for a ridiculous standardized test that neither measures my intelligence nor my capacity to learn EVER been fun, and b) I'm not getting call backs for positions that I'm perfect for, for positions that I truly want. It's gotten so that I dread looking at listings.

Some mornings, I get up and I start cooking and baking. For hours. I made hollandaise sauce today.

proof in the puddin that I was probably there

2009-02-18T15:25:00.011-08:00

Notes:

Pete got into grad school so Nat and I and him made Chinese-Russian dumplings and called them pancakes because pancakes are alliterative with Pete, which is also alliterative with puddin', which he made in the butterscotch variety. Delectable!

I haven't figured out what to do with this blog now that I'm back in the center of the universe. I haven't figured out what to do with myself, exactly, either. For now I'll stick to publishing photos as I edit them, and possibly put this thing in hibernation until the next time I get out.

Yogi sent these below to me yesterday. The boy is broker than I am, but a dem fine photographer, for which, I am not proud to say, stirs up colossal feelings of jealousy. But he did teach me a lot about photography while we were traveling together. Once I said thank you and he looked at me funny. All's I can say is I can cook his pants off any day of the week. With one hand tied behind my back and a pirate's eye patch.

Well, jealousy is my least appealing quality. Song of the moment is "Winter Song" by Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson. Puddin' of the moment is butterscotch.

With some friendly kids on the set of a Bollywood production. They were dismayed that we didn't know anything about Indian actors and politicians. It's safe to say that we still don't.

I'm fairly short, so it's ridiculous how tiny this woman looks. See that yellow book? That was my first attempt at trying to speak Ladakhi. I think the abi-le was leaning back in contempt.

That's Choswang dancing there. If it weren't disrespectful I'd call him a crazy...uh, I'd call him crazy.

These were the kind of pictures that Yogi kept trying to get me to take of him, especially on precarious bridges, and I never could quite work it out. It drove us both nuts.

I still wear those shoes and Kathryn, fashion diva, looked at them pointedly and said, "Yeah, they look like they've been around the world."

Cooked with my man Rinchen at Norlakh.

With Gurmit's family during harvest time in the village Sakti. This one room is where his grandparents live.

The desert in Hunder.

For more of Yogi's photos, check out his luminosity here.

favorite photos of yogi in asia

2009-02-16T20:12:00.006-08:00

this place looks like it needs a little color

2009-01-21T19:39:00.006-08:00

Vietnamese "cherries" with chili and sugar.

American football in Long Xuyen.

Pickles always remind me of Em.

Me and the Vietnamese homie are not so stoked about each other after two weeks.

I'll save it up for the next couple of lives

2008-12-21T19:29:00.006-08:00

Freezing in my room, pondering the next steps, hiding from my parents, listening to NPR and the constancy of an upset economy, looking at jobs that I'm unqualified for, avoiding editing my photos, I've been making a list of things I wish I could be but will have to live out in future regenerations.

1 - A professional dancer with a predilection for hip hop.
2 - A Thomas Keller-esque chef. Or at the least, a Rocco DiSpirito without the white trash drive for super stardom.
3 - A fashion designer.
4 - A doctor. So I could work with Doctors Without Borders.
5 - A novelist, a short story writer.