Summer favorites

I fell off the bandwagon of these favorites posts over the summer, so I'm just going to do one post for the whole summer, which was a little blurred together anyway because of spending so much time on the one project of my dissertation. Which is now over, so I have time to blog again :)

Favorite music:

I needed plenty of good study music to keep me going through the end of my dissertation, and I really fell in love with a few artists. I knew of Kimbra from her collaboration with Gotye on 'Somebody That I Used to Know,' but I recently discovered her independent album, which is fantastic. Unfortunately, she only has one album out as of now.

I also rediscovered Emily Wells, who's a one-woman music magician, playing and mixing all the instruments and vocals herself. I saw her live at my college a couple of years ago and never got around to listening to her albums. The lyrics to her songs are almost onomatopoetic at times, which is interesting and very pleasing to listen to.

Favorite food:

Milkshakes. The ultimate summer treat. The best, most indulgent reward after finishing a big project or putting a grueling day of writing. I actually only discovered the joys of milkshakes a few years ago, so I'm making up for lost time! There were a couple of great places in England that put any kind of cookie or candybar into a milkshake form, a magical and delicious transformation. But I also experimented with making them at home with fresh fruit. Even better!

Favorite book:

This was a summer devoted to the oeuvre of David Mitchell. I love and worship all his writing, but my favorites are probably number9dream and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. They're also some of my favorite books of all time. Seriously, do not get me started on David Mitchell unless you want to be suddenly overwhelmed by a towering wave of admiration and specialized knowledge.

Favorite movie:

Definitely From up on Poppy Hill, the newest movie from Studio Ghibli. I am, in general, an adorer of Ghibli productions. I have many more to watch, much to my shame, but also secret delight because how delicious is it to know there are movies out there that you haven't seen yet but know you'll love? From up on Poppy Hill was wonderful. I loved the main character and her subtle evolution from selfless responsibility to falling in love and letting go both of her day-to-day tasks and her clinging to the past. The visuals, of course, were stunning, especially the interior of the old clubhouse that's at the center of the story. The best part: I got to see it in original Japanese with subtitles, which I love.

Favorite fashion:

To be honest, this was not a summer for being fashionable. I spent most of it sitting in bed or at my desk in my pyjamas, which is my go-to writing outfit. When you have to sit all day, all you care about is being comfy. I stopped wearing jewelry, just threw on jeans and a t-shirt whenever I went out to dinner with my friends, and generally lived in the same clothes for three months. What's strange is, I kind of loved it. Now I've been reunited with my full closet, I'm very excited to get back into creative fashion combinations, but I'm also a lot more stressed about clothes. As someone who has trouble with decisions and wants to get her clothes just right every time, I found the simplicity of a small closet incredibly freeing. So right now I'm trying to figure out a balance between satisfying my love of clothes and self-expression-through-clothes and my need not to obsess over clothes for an hour every morning.

Favorite experience:

The best thing about this summer is that, when I finally turned in my dissertation and left England, I was satisfied. I'm proud both of the work I put in and the final product I turned in. It may not earn a high mark, but I know that this project took me way beyond my previous academic work, in terms of thinking and writing. So I walked away from this year feeling good about it and satisfied as I move on to whatever my next projects will be.

Recipe: Yogurt cake with strawberry-nectarine compote

 Got a cup's worth of yogurt in the fridge? I did yesterday, and after a few hours of editing the first chapter of my dissertation, I definitely needed to bake a cake. The obvious solution is this yogurt cake recipe, which I got from the Whole Foods website. The only thing I adjusted is adding a few drops of milk at the end, because the batter looked alarmingly thick and sticky. I figured it might be because I used very thick greek yogurt, so I added the milk to lighten it up. I have no idea if that was the actual cause or if the milk had the desired effect. Anyway, it turned out deliciously.

After I popped it in my inconsistent and uneven student-housing oven, I cut up some overripe fruit I had and improvised a little compote. Half a lemon squeezed over the fruit, 1/8 cup water, a tsp of sugar. Boil until thick and delicious.

I've actually gotten a lot bolder with improvising in the kitchen this year. Possibly because I'm the only person eating it, so if I mess up, no one else will suffer. Possibly because, when sorting which food blog to use for a given recipe, I end up actually paying attention to what ingredients differentiate scones from bread and pancakes from crepes. Possibly because I've had to substitute quite a few ingredients that I couldn't easily find in this part of the world. In any case, I've learned a lot about cooking as well as literature this year.

Ta-da! The cake rose A LOT, so much that I had to rearrange the racks in the over to accommodate it. It stayed nice a fluffy when I took it out, too.

The end product was delicioso. Not too sweet, because (as I forgot to mention earlier) I only had half the amount of sugar they called for. The compote could have been sweeter, too, if I'd added more than a tsp of sugar, but actually it made a lovely tea-time snack. The best thing about this cake is that it tastes gooey and dense without being buttery or fatty-feeling. It's sort of like eating a bowl of yogurt and fresh fruit, except also a cake :)

Review: The Bling Ring

I wanted to see this movie for a few reasons. First, to see what Emma Watson's up to. Second, to finally see a Sophia Coppola movie. Third, for the chance to spend 90 minutes in the southern California sun.

And I definitely enjoyed it. There were some really interesting shots, great performances, and obviously, given the subject matter, killer costuming. I was especially happy to finally see Coppola's style - and it really is a style, which is wonderful. I love watching director's movies. Even when the directorial touches are light, like her use of obvious, jarring music or her choice of a few unconventional framings for key scenes in the movie, they give the film shape and a kind of consciousness - or maybe conscientiousness is a better word. It makes the film feel crafted.

This shot, for example, takes the point of view of one among many cameras directed at the characters' lives - news cameras, security cameras, phone cameras. It's not so much to make you feel alienated from the story, but enough to make you briefly remember your position as a viewer and briefly consider the angle from which the story is being told.

That angle is for the most part slanted toward Marc, the one guy in the group of five teens who decide to start stealing from celebrities. Except only one of them really decides. After Rebecca leads a puppy-dog Marc along on a few preliminary break-ins, the rest of the girls fall in without, it seems, a second thought. This is a bit difficult to believe, but then what these teens did in real life is also difficult to believe. I kind of expected Coppola to explore the motives behind the craziness, and she does to an extent.
Very subtly, she suggests the parallels between the teens and their famous victims - such as the way the victims carelessly leave the keys to their mansions under their doormats while the teens carelessly boast about their conquests to the friends who eventually turn them in. But I left the film with a lot of lingering questions about what was going on behind those beautifully made-up faces.

Again, very subtly, Coppola does convey the effect of the crime on the main characters. It comes through in the shift from lazy beach hangouts at the beginning of the film to a frantic cocaine montage near the end. It comes through in the different ways they break down upon arrest. Watson in particular did such a good job that I almost felt sorry for her, until I remembered how she'd wound up in that cop car.

The film doesn't excuse or explain what happens in it, which I liked. I just wish Coppola had trained her impartial and keen gaze a bit longer and looked a bit deeper at the characters. There was one scene I especially loved: Rebecca and Marc are driving in the dark, and the camera sits just behind them, in the middle of the back seat, so we can't really see their faces, just the partially-lit road ahead. Marc asks Rebecca if she would ever rob him if they weren't friends. Rebecca says something like, "I would never do that to you." And yet by the end, she betrays him. That one scene takes the characters fathoms deeper without even showing their faces and opens up new questions about the meaning of robbery, wealth, friendship - all the themes of the movie. I wanted more of that.

Recipe: Summer Quesadillas

This is just a quick recipe for some DELICIOUS quesadillas I made the other day and wanted to share. They're made especially summery by the zucchini and the corn and are a very filling and satisfying alternative to chicken quesadillas if, like me, you find summer makes you want to be a little lighter on your body and get a little vegetarian (at least until it's time to barbeque).
*Apologies for the terrible lighting in my kitchen. 

First I picked out some yummy fresh summer veggies - sweet mini peppers, zucchini, corn, and onion (not pictured, but essential in a lot of what I cook).

I sauteed up the onion, zucchini, and pepper, adding in that order and making sure the zucchini had enough time to soften and get a little browned.

Meanwhile, I dunked the corn in boiling water for a minute or so, then shaved off the kernels, which is always fun.

Added the corn...

...and some cayenne, to give it more warmth and flavor.

CHEESE. Plenty of cheese to melt it all together. 

I used about half my veggies for one tortilla and spread the cheese on both sides so it'll stick together. Then I let the tortilla get crispy (the filling was already hot).

Finally, some fresh avocado to top it off.

And voila! I gotta say, these were some of the best quesadillas I've ever made, or eaten. They were also super easy to make, as you basically just chop up each ingredient while the previous one is cooking away in the pan. Let me know if you try it how it turns out, and also what your favorite quesadilla filling is!

This is Summer

Pancakes with strawberries for breakfast. Pasta salad for lunch. Fresh apricots in the afternoon. Burgers for dinner (left-over from the 4^th of July).

Jeans cuffed. New tan lines every day. The perfect feeling of pulling on a hoodie as a warm day turns into a cold evening. Dirt scuffing over the edge of your sandals, dusts your toes with cool earth. 

Dogs racing through long grass in the park. Fat bumble bees slamming the window three times before they decide it’s solid. The warm belly fur of the little black cat you meet on the sidewalk. Two swans on the lake in the morning, ruffling their glowing white wings.

Review: Cosmopolis

Another read for my dissertation, picked because it's about cities and modernity. I got through this book in a couple of long days of reading, and it does have a way of sucking you in. The whole book (with a few exceptions) is set inside of a limo driving around NYC and, more specifically, inside the mind of Eric Packer, its bajillionaire passenger. This is not the nicest space to be in for 200 pages. Eric is, quite frankly, a strange guy, with very weird relationships to the people in his life who climb in and out of his limo. These include his wife, his body guards, his doctor, and his various assistants and employees. Actually there's no one likable or easy to relate to in this book. The fascination it holds is more the fascination of peering in at some weird subculture than the fascination of learning something about humanity or yourself (although maybe DeLillo would say that we can learn about humanity and ourselves from getting a glimpse of Eric's life).

The style of the book isn't very friendly either. The characters talk in some kind of strange mixture of philosophy professor and New York slang. Maybe that's how multi-billionaires in NYC actually talk, but for me it just felt like another thing distancing me from the characters, making them sound like the mouthpieces of DeLillo's abstract ideas about modern life.

What I found effective about this book was actually precisely what I'm complaining about - that it makes the city strange, as if by putting us inside this limo, DeLillo has plucked us from earth and put us in an alien spaceship so that we can see our lives from a totally new perspective. Eric does in some sense live above the world. However, his perspective doesn't offer much insight. Maybe the space ship is just too high up (excuse me while I beat this metaphor to death), so that the view becomes too simplified.

This was my first DeLillo novel, and I don't think I'll be reading any more of his writing. It was just too rarefied, too fascinated with messed-up people in a messed-up world, too stylistically stilted for me. But I'm glad I read it, as part of my goal to become better-versed in contemporary literature. Now if someone brings up DeLillo at a dinner party, I'll have something to say.

May Things

Favorite food:

Summer fruit and vegetables! I've been stubbornly eating mediocre, early berries for months now, but just this week the blueberries acquired that shocking sweet kick that means summer is actually here. It feels so great to be eating more things raw, more cucumbers, fruit, bell peppers, lettuce. I even discovered a new kind of lettuce that I'd never had before (me, a Californian!) - lamb's lettuce, a really delicate little baby green.


Favorite book(s):

This month I've been re-reading all of David Mitchell's books and also discovering contemporary novels that are part of the same orbit. Books with multiple storylines, global awareness, and certain recurring themes, including Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis and Michael Cunningham's Specimen Days. Both were very interesting, although not some of my favorite novels. Most interesting has been to really dive into a pocket of contemporary literature and see novelists overlapping so much. You really can see that they're writing about the same world, breathing in the same air, as it were, but producing different words on the outbreath. The sense of cities as places where people and events collide like molecules (or is it atoms? I'm forgetting my science), the idea of non-corporeal life forms floating around us, the exploration of where our current, globalized, mechanized, capitalized world might take us in the future - all keep emerging from these different novels, so much that they're starting to blur in my mind. Suddenly reading novels seems less like an escape from the world and more like another, slant way into it.


Favorite movie:

 I actually haven't been watching much of anything, which is unusual for me. I've been so busy seeing shows at the local arts festival and so often arriving home just in time to collapse into bed, that I haven't even finished re-watching Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which I got half-way through about two weeks ago...
I did see Gatsby, which I may write a review of. We'll see. I enjoyed it, but it doesn't qualify as a favorite.


Favorite fashion:

I've tentatively decided to grow out my hair again, and I've been experimenting with braids as a way to keep slightly awkward-length hair out of my face. And I'm looking forward to the day when I can do fancy stuff with braids, like wrapping them around my head. It's nice to play with hair now that it's not tucked under a hat or scarf most of the time, although I have been thinking about making or finding a light, crocheted maybe, summery, slouchy hat. That would mean mastering the art of knitting hats.


Favorite music:

I discovered two new bands, who played a show during the festival I've been going to. They are Emily Portman, who plays traditional and original songs based on fairy tale and myth, and Sam Lee & Friends, who play traditional songs from the British Isles, but with very unique and exciting arrangements for an international assortment of instruments. They both played fantastic concerts in an beautiful old church, and their music just glowed (if that's the right word). It was such a treat to hear an old Scottish ballad, for example, sung to the accompaniment of a tabla, a violin, a cello, and a horn - who would've thunk? And the best part about it was seeing how old treasures like these songs or the myths Portman's songs are based on, can be turned to such new and wonderful forms without losing any of their original power.


Favorite experience:

The past two weeks have brought their fair share of memorable, magical experiences with all the circus and music shows I've seen. Impossible to put down in words, of course, but wonderful nonetheless. Great live performance can really transport you, and I love that. I'm grateful that festivals like this one make it possible to experience so much transportation and inspiration without traveling far or spending much. This definitely inspires me to pursue the idea of working for arts festivals, making them happen. They're such great experiences.

Review: Specimen Days

I read this as background/margin reading for my dissertation, so I was mostly reading for content that related to my main topic. However, I thought I'd write up a few thoughts on the book itself.

Cunningham tells three different stories, which are in some senses the same stories. They cover what some people call the three industrial revolutions - the mechanization of labor in factories in the 1800s, the advent of computers and other telecommunications in the present day, and the future of biotechnology, in this case spreading to artificial human life. Each story has three main characters, Luke, Catherine, and Simon,whose names and general characteristics stay the same across the whole novel, but who also change to fit each story.

This conceit worked pretty well for me, and I found the moments of time well-chosen. For my dissertation, I've been reading a lot of books that use multiple narratives or multiple times and places, or that imagine a near future, or that use reincarnation as a motif. Although it's a very literary novel, it was also a bit of a page-turner. Each story felt like it was heading inevitably toward something that would probably be terrible, but that I couldn't wait to discover (oh, the suffering we put ourselves through in reading!). I suppose I'd say the best thing about this book is the plotting, both in the normal sense of suspense and pacing and meaningfulness of events in the book, and in the larger sense of how Cunningham constructs his three strands and their overlaps.

What was missing for me was a sense of connection to the characters. I did find them pretty interesting, especially the narrators of sections one and three, but the writing felt a bit distanced. The artifice of the entire structure and the concept made it hard to believe in the characters as people, rather than as literary symbols. As they started to repeat, in variations, over the three stories, each previous incarnation of Luke, Catherine, or Simon began feeling less real. I couldn't help imagining Cunningham sitting at his desk inventing these characters and manipulating them so that they would fit equally well into each story - with the result that they don't fit snugly or perfectly into any story.

The other major element of this book is Cunningham's use of Walt Whitman's poetry - in each story, the narrator has a very special relationship with Whitman, and his verses keep popping up throughout the narration. I haven't read him at all, and I caught myself skipping over the longer excerpts because they were a bit opaque. But nevertheless, the repeated lines of verse made a kind of background rhythm for the whole book even as the individual narrator's voices changed - a kind of fourth voice that spanned the whole.

I wouldn't recommend this book to the idle reader who just wants a good book. It wasn't hard to get into, but it was very easy to get out of. The imagery stayed with me more than the voices or the emotions. A worthwhile experience, but not an entirely satisfying one.

It's been a while...

Wow, this month has gone by fast. I launched pretty much straight from my last semester of school into a summer of dissertation. Well, it hasn't really felt much like summer yet, or even spring. With the exception of a few days of lovely sun, we've had nothing but grey and cold. Still, I've been getting out of the house a lot more than I was over the winter - maybe I'm sort of willing myself into a summery mood despite the weather and the workload.

One thing that's drawn me out of my pile of library books has been an arts festival that's come to town for about two weeks. Although it's a bit overwhelming trying to focus exclusively on work during the day and then go to shows at night, it's also energizing to be seeing great performances and inventive ideas brought to life onstage. In particular, I've seen a lot of circus/dance/theater-type things that inspire me to make more time for both creativity and taking care of my body.

For the latter, I've been striving to get on a great health kick, eating more fresh and raw veggies, making smoothies, going to classes at the gym and doing push-ups at home, etc. It's hard to keep up those habits when the weather makes it feel like its February (California February, that is), but I'm trying. I'm still getting my veg-and-fruit box every week, which forces me to be both creative and healthy with cooking and eating.

It's nice eating salads, because you can throw them together at the last minute, when you're in the middle of studying but need food fast to feed your brain. You don't have to plan ahead for several days, imagining what kind of left-overs you'll feel like eating tomorrow or the next day, because you can just make one portion at a time.

I particularly love couscous because it's so easy and tastes lighter than pasta. And recently I've gotten a little obsessed with tortilla wraps. I eat them with chicken, hummus, feta, and veggies for lunch, and with scrambled eggs for breakfast. Yum.

There's only so much time I can spend cooking and eating, though, because the dissertation really is upon me, even if summer isn't. I'm enjoying the work so far. Somewhere at the back of my mind (or maybe lodged at the back of my stomach, against my backbone) is some nervousness about the eventual deadline and the scope of the project. Just enough to keep me working and moving forward.

Right now my life is about enoughs: reading enough, writing enough, eating enough, sleeping enough, getting out enough, finding enough inspiration, exercising enough, having enough fun, doing enough work. Balancing things out and moving forward. And not forgetting desert, like this delicious apple/pear tart I made the other day :)

April Things

N.B. I was watching a video by WonderlandWardrobe, who has a pretty cool channel with DIY fashion projects, and I noticed that she has a slightly different way of doing her monthly updates. So this is me being inspired to change things up a little.

Favorite food in April: Breaking news: did you know you can make grilled cheese with olive oil instead of butter?! I made the ultimate grilled cheese today with fresh monzarella, pesto, and sun-dried tomatoes, and instead of butter, I just spread a little of the oil from the tomato jar on the outside of the sandwich before I put it in the pan. Delicious flavor, perfectly even crispness, no burning. A revelation.
Am I the first person to discover this? Probably not. Did I remember to take a picture before I ate the whole thing? Definitely not.

Favorite fashion item or idea: Definitely the shift from my big winter coat (although I LOVE my cozy winter coat) to a lighter jacket. It's so freeing to shed the weight and bulk of a coat. I'm still wearing sweaters and scarves and even half-mittens, but the change feels amazing.


Favorite movie or show: This month I'm re-watching the Harry Potter movies, starting from the beginning. I haven't seen the early films in years and years, but there's nothing better than a trip down memory lane to get you through finals week. Of course I'm thinking all the usual things, mostly how they were all so young! But it's actually really fun to go back and notice the beginnings of Harry's snarkiness and his compulsive heroism - what an amazing experience it's been to grow up with these characters and really see them develop naturally along with us.

Favorite book: I suppose this would be Lolita, sort of by process of elimination because I'm writing a paper on it and haven't had time to read anything else. But this year has truly been a revelation for me vis-à-vis Nabokov. I re-read Pnin and read Lolita and Pale Fire for the first time last semester, and this is my second paper on Nabokov. I was nervous to tackle such a famous and famously tricky novelist, but it has been so rewarding to dive deep into these books. My discovery of Nabokov this year is one of those things that makes me incredibly grateful that I get to pursue my education at this level.

Favorite experience: Finishing my second semester (and the last taught portion) of grad school and realizing how much I've learned and, better still, that I have the energy to keep getting the most out of this degree over the summer. Dissertation, bring it on. I'm excited to tackle you.

Happy Earth Day

In honor of Earth Day, I thought I'd jump back on the blogging wagon after a long absence (travel, final papers) and writing a little post about what it's like today living on the other side of the earth from my home.

Well, spring has sprung. This is mostly proven by the fact that I was invited to a barbeque today. A barbeque? In April? In England? Indeed. Spring fever has caught on and people are getting wild and crazy.

Not that winter's chills have completely let go, but the down jackets have been put away and the sun has come out. It's chilly and bright, perfect weather for the beginning of spring (never mind that it should have begun about a month ago).

The best thing is the sudden profusion of flowers. First there were crocuses - yellow and purple so bright and rich, and so unexpected after a grey winter, that the color seemed like it was vibrating. Then the daffodils. I've never seen so many daffodils in my life - in flower beds, lawns, meadows, cemeteries, median strips. Not to mention the daisies and other little buds dotting every green patch in sight. It's all utterly pretty.

I must say I haven't felt particularly in touch with the earth over here. I live in a very suburban atmosphere without the easy access to vast national parks or to the Pacific ocean that I have back home. I spent a few weeks at home over spring break and the contrast was amazing. I was in awe of how much open space we still have, even on an overpopulated planet.

And it's not only the calm of staring out at a big landscape, or not being able to see any man-made thing at all for miles that I miss. It's also feeling and moving with the rhythms of nature. I went hiking a lot in the desert when I was home, and in desert you just have to pay attention to the rising heat, the moment of sunrise and sunset, the movement of rain clouds, in order to stay alive.

It's scary sometimes, especially for me because I scare easy, but not nearly as scary as guns or bombs or any of the awful things that happened this week all over the world. The violence of humans inspires anger and sadness and reaction. The violence of nature inspires respect and adaptation.

As the weather becomes more hospitable over here, I'm going to make a lot of effort to get outside and see this portion of the world. The landscape is actually one of my favorite things about England, part of the reason I wanted to come here. I got to explore it a little last summer and the hiking was absolutely stunning. This summer I'll be doing more of that, trying to make the most of my time here and to keep myself sane as I write my master's dissertation. And right now I'm just appreciating the sun and beginning to emerge from the cocoon of my wintertime coziness - starting with that barbeque.

March Things

Food: Hazelnut Butter

It's not the best thing since sliced bread, but it's the best thing on sliced bread....hehe... Well, the point is, this stuff is so, so delicious. I found it at the corner store (an unlikely place to stock exotic treats like this), and have been putting it in everything ever since. PB&Js, oatmeal, pancakes, you name it. I absolutely love anything with hazelnuts, so obviously I love this, but if you're just looking for something to mix up a routine of peanut butter or even almond butter, this is just the thing. Plus, the one I found is that nice, just ground, crunchy style of nut butter, which is the best.

Entertainment: Three Colors Trilogy by Kieslowski

This is a loosely associated trilogy of films by a polish director who wanted to make a kind of homage to France, his adopted country. The first film is Bleu (blue), the second Blanc (white), and the third Rouge (red), and they each tell a completely different story, but with a few subtle links. The stories, as you may have guessed, touch, in turn, on the ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity, the trifecta of values which I believe sort of correspond to the three colors in the French flag.

I'd seen Bleu and Rouge about five years ago, but when they all three popped up again on Mubi, I decided to complete the trilogy. Blanc was good, too, kind of a black comedy about a Polish guy who takes a complicated kind of revenge on his ex-wife. Then, because Blanc reminded me how great Kieslowski is, I re-watched Rouge, which is a very bittersweet story about a young, idealistic Swiss model who meets a cynical retired judge. This film plays a lot of the interconnectedness of different lives - there's a secondary storyline which intersects with the main one, without either of the main players being aware of the other characters whose lives they pass so close by - a concept which I love. And of course, the visuals are stunning, especially in the use of the thematic color.

How I miss home

Happy first day of spring! I counted up today, and I'm almost 8 months into my 13-month year of living abroad. I spent today packing for a couple of weeks at home and, of course, thinking about all the things I'm looking forward to over the break. And that got me thinking about what I actually miss when I miss home. This year, when I've felt homesick, it's actually usually been a good feeling, because it reminds me of all the things and people I love back home. I'm hoping that when I get back there next year, I'll be able to appreciate those things even more than I did before I left. Of course, things always look rosy from afar, though, so I'm afraid that as soon as I get home, I'll come up with all sorts of stuff that was better over in England! So, I'm making a list here of a few things that I really want to appreciate fully when I get them back in my life.

1. Community.

Family of course is the thing I miss most. I'm very close to my family, and last year (my senior year of college), I was very close to my friends, too (when you live with people for four years, you share a lot!). But this year, I've found myself doing a lot of things alone. I eat my meals alone most of the time, do my work alone, walk to and from school alone, go grocery shopping alone, travel on trains alone. This of course makes it really sweet when I happen to have someone around to do stuff with - when one of my housemates is in the kitchen cooking dinner at the same time as me, or when I run into one of my new friends on campus and sit down to do some studying at the same table. But it's rare, and I not only miss the company I've had from my friends over the past four years and my family for my whole life. I also miss those specific people. Thank god for skype.

It's funny, because I've always thought of myself as an introvert, and I do need plenty of time alone to focus on my work or daydream or just be quiet. Too much time with too many people drains my energy and I have to recharge. But I've discovered this year that too much time without people also drains my energy. I guess the middle path is best.

2. Food.

Not just dishes at my favorite restaurants or special family recipes. No, I miss the food of all the Bay Area, because I'm beginning to realize it's pretty unique. I've complained on here before about much trouble I have finding good veggies around here, and I cannot wait to get back to my local farmer's market. I also just find that people here are less into fresh and healthy eating than me.

Back home last year, a lot of my friends were going vegetarian and even vegan. I'm still an omnivore and probably always will be, but I eat meat maybe once or twice a week, tops, because I love cooking with vegetables. Here, though, people eat so much meat, so many frozen vegetables, so many cans of beans, so much cheap take-out Chinese food. It's not that I abstain from any of those completely (except the beans, gross), but it's weird to be around people who don't know any other kind of food. I was told the other day that I was 'adventurous' for ordering dishes with eggplant and spinach at a restaurant. What?

What I feel is more than just food snobbism. It's profound gratitude that I was raised on truly fresh, local, and delicious food that's good for me and good for the planet. I feel lucky to be able to taste so many amazing things that farmer's have coaxed out of the ground, rather than eating stuff that comes out of some commercial processing plant. Finally, I'm so happy that when I'm at home, I get to buy most of my food from the people who grow it or people who are just passionate about food, to talk with them about it and maybe get a recipe tip or something, instead of grabbing my food off a supermarket shelf.

3. Weather.

Well, obviously. I've talked about this plenty on this blog. But how lucky am I to come from a place without sub-zero temperatures? Not to mention the beautiful ocean that makes the climate so temperate around San Francisco. I will be taking every opportunity to get outside and enjoy that sun when I'm back home.

Pancake weather

I've been experimenting a lot more with my cooking and baking this year and been wanting to share the results on this blog. And what better to start off with than breakfast? And did I mention it's raining? So obviously we need pancakes.

So here are some apple-cinnamon pancakes I made to start off the day yesterday and today. I got the idea to put shredded apple in the batter off the internet, but I used my own recipe for the batter. Well, when I say recipe, I mean the casual, estimated-proportions, busy-before-school recipe that I've come up with this year. It starts with one egg and a cup of milk (or milk mixed with yoghurt, which gives a fluffier pancake, I think), and then I add a little bit of baking soda and baking powder, salt, and as much flour (or oats, or cornmeal) as I need to get it to batter-like consistency. It never turns out quite as good as following some of my favorite recipes for pancakes, but sometimes I don't have the right ingredients or am too lazy to do proper proportions. Or, like in this case, I want to try something new.

I must warn you, these are pretty gooey, no matter how long I let them cook, but I'm OK with gooey. The apples (which I shredded with a cheese grater) give them great texture. I added a bunch of shakes of cinnamon but would recommend even more, because I couldn't really taste it too well. I added nutmeg, too, but not sure I could taste it as such.

Finally, these photos are from day 2, so as you can see, the batter keeps well overnight in the fridge. Yummy and ready in no time. I do enjoy putting together the batter in the morning, though. So often, I think, we rush through our mornings, trying to get somewhere or harness our energy to work before it wanes later in the day. But sometimes it's nice to put that energy into something restorative, like standing in the quiet kitchen stirring oatmeal and doing a little gentle yoga while it bubbles away. I find that if I do something like that first thing in the morning, I end up feeling more productive and accomplished than if I had plunged straight into work.

So, give these pancakes a try, and let me know how it turns out. Or do you have a favorite variant on the basic batter recipe?

Spring/Transitions

This weekend, the weather has been bizarre. Woke up to bright sun - an hour later, it was blizzarding outside my window - the clouds cleared and it sunny again - I glanced back at the window and saw snow - currently we're back to blue sky. I guess the only constant is that it's cold.

Even the temperature, though, has been swinging back and forth over the last week. After endless snowy, cold, grey weather, the sun came out, and I walked to school without a coat on for the first time in months. Everyone rushed outside to eat their lunch, and sitting inside at our computers felt ridiculous when it was so nice outside (p.s. the high was only 54 degrees, but it felt like 70 to me).

Alas, it was not to last. Now it's snowing again. In March.

That taste of spring, though, reminded me that the semester is almost over. Once again, after winter hibernation, I'm moving into a period of transitions. I'm not particularly good at transitions - I'm a creature of habits and comforts - but I also feel a great attraction to them. I love to look forward to things, whether it's a new book, an upcoming trip, or just breakfast tomorrow morning. The thing is, of course, things usually don't turn out exactly how you imagine them, and whether the reality is better or worse than anticipated, it always takes a bit of adjustment. You go to sleep, already savoring the taste of pancakes, only to wake up and find your milk has gone sour. Maybe you dissolve in a heap of tears, or maybe you end up eating some scrambled eggs that taste just as good. Or maybe someone surprises you with some fresh croissants they just brought back from the bakery, and you decide to postpone pancakes until tomorrow. There's just always that moment of recalibration that's sometimes joyful and sometimes hard.

There's a lot of patience involved in transitions. I've been listening to music on Spotify recently, which is great because I was really missing Pandora. On the radio function, you never know what song is coming next, and in the moment that the last song ends, I always start conjecturing about the next one, and it's usually not what I expect (except that this morning, I was hoping they would play something by A Fine Frenzy, and they miraculously did). Sometimes it'll be one of my favorite bands, and sometimes I'll reach immediately to click the thumbs down button. But sometimes I just don't know if I like the song yet or not, so I just sit there and listen and wait to see how I feel about it. And since the best thing about this radio function is discovering new favorite bands, that minute or two of patience and listening can really pay off.

So here I go transitioning from my last semester of classes into my first summer of truly independent writing work. Yes, I'm writing to a deadline, but the restrictions on the what, how, and why of my dissertation are pretty minimal. For someone who wants to write books, this will be good training in making my way through a big writing project without much outside structure.

I'm not saying that writing a dissertation is like listening to music or eating pancakes, but the fact is that I'll be doing a lot of those latter two things while attempting to do the former, and I like the way the micro mirrors the macro sometimes (often). I will also be living for about 5 more months in a country where the weather changes all the time. Then I'll move back across an ocean and a continent and start looking for a job. So my life will be full of transitions. I guess I better just keep listening and get ready to recalibrate.

Review: Number9Dream

And once again my love for David Mitchell is renewed. Kind of like with Virginia Woolf, I forget how great he is, and then I pick up another of his books and it overwhelms me all over again. Initially (having read Cloud Atlas and Black Swan Green), I admired him for his versatility and how well he handled such diverse stories, settings, characters, genres. Now (having added The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and Number9Dream), I'm starting to get really interested in the recurrences in his writing rather than the divergences. Anyway, there's plenty to like in each individual book, too, and this one is no exception. Number9Dream is Mitchell's second of five novels, and I'll be reading his first, Ghostwritten, next, but for now, I'm going to try to explain my reaction to this crazy, crazy, charming book.

At its core, this is a very simple quest story about how 20-year-old Eiji Miyake goes to Tokyo to find his father. He's been brought up on a rural island, estranged from his mother and without ever knowing his father, so he sets out to discover this mysterious man. The only problem is, he doesn't even know his father's name, and Tokyo is a big place.

Actually, as Eiji pursues various schemes to find his father, it doesn't seem like such a big place after all. Almost everyone he meets seems to be connected in some way or another, and false trails lead him in an intricate but tightly woven network of people and organizations. One great thing about this book is how it portrays the city and the daily realities of city living - the extraordinary chance encounters, the deep sense of alienation, the changing rhythms, the peculiar mix of anonymity and total lack of privacy. By taking Eiji back to the same places throughout the book, Mitchell helps you really visualize Tokyo (even if, like me, you've never even been to Japan), and you really feel you're accompanying Eiji in discovering the place's secrets.

Some of these secrets are very nasty and quite incredible. But the entire book lingers on the edge between the mundane and the absurd - sort of like in a dream. The book opens with Eiji indulging in daydreams about reuniting with his father and ends with a thoroughly dreamy sequence where all of his experiences blend and transform themselves whenever he closes his eyes. Each of the eight long chapters, in fact, has a theme and a particular structure, and Mitchell is brilliant at weaving different sorts of narration, different times, different versions of reality together.

But - and this is what I love about Mitchell's novels - stringing all the dreamy, literary tricks together is a real, strong, human story. At one point in the book, when Eiji following up one of the many trails that seem to lead toward his father, I noticed that my heart was literally pounding, I was so caught up in his quest. Eiji tells his story in first-person, with a lot of honesty and charm, so that I completely identified with him from the first chapter to the last. He's like the best kind of hero in young adult novels (although I wouldn't categorize this as one, because it gets incredibly and disturbingly violent in a few places), who struggles with very human, ordinary problems like an inaccessible crush and the annoyances of a boring job between bouts of tracking down mysterious persons and escaping death. A bit like a non-spider-powered Peter Parker, Eiji alternates between normal life and crazy adventures and does it with both the flair we wish we had and the real emotional and physical vulnerability that we all do have.

This book makes you feel and think in equal measure, and, best of all, the two feel totally integrated. The literary experiments don't feel tacked on to the story at all. Mitchell is, as usual, completely in control of everything he does, knowing just how much your nerves can stretch, just how much you need to hear of a certain conversation, or just how much you need to jog your memory of a plot point from five chapters ago. It's a bit of a crazy ride, but he's got it under just the right amount of control. I had so much fun reading this book, and it's a definite five star recommendation.

February

Entertainment:

This month, one of my favorite things to chill out after a long day of schoolwork was the BBC miniseries Dancing on the Edge. If you're in the UK, you can probably still catch it on iPlayer, and I definitely recommend it! It's about a black jazz band that rises to fame in 1920s London and the various people - patrons, journalists, etc. - who help and hinder them along the way. So it has 1) great music, 2) a good ensemble cast, and 3) an interesting perspective on society at the time. As a bonus, there is also a murder mystery and several romantic plots, of course. All the relationships and characters feel very realistic and multi-layered, and the whole thing was very smart and satisfying.

 Fashion:

The most exciting fashion moment for me this past month was the Oscars, which I didn't even get to watch because of the time difference. But I checked out the dresses the day after and saw a lot of beautiful fabric floating around the red carpet. I really liked Jennifer Lawrence's dress, and especially her backwards pearl necklace - really interesting - and was happy to see such a down-to-earth star who picks such interesting movies win for a film I really liked. I also loved Nicole Kidman's dress, very snazzy. Anyway, I'm looking forward to next year, when I can watch the whole ceremony and indulge in proper gown envy.

Games:

When it's cold and dreary outside, I obviously tend to stay inside as much as possible, but there's only so much time you can spend reading, watching movies, and eating comfort food. I found one great option for something more active than reading but not requiring going outside is games. Pool, scrabble, cards, and crossword puzzles are all such good ways of getting together with friends to do more than eat and drink and chat. Plus they exercise your brain in ways that counterbalance the monotony of intellectual work nicely.

Miscellaneous Stuff:

Staying healthy! February seemed kinda lousy at times this year, with a combination of grey weather and intense schoolwork. The absolute best thing to combat the end-of-winter blues for me is making my body happy - doing some gentle yoga as a study break, going for a walk in the park as soon as I caught a glimpse of blue sky, and eating right. With the latter in mind, I signed up for a fresh veggie box to be delivered every week, and I'm hoping it'll be filled with lots of yummy seasonal goodies that expand my diet from the minimal fruits and vegetables that I can find at the local shops (I had to go to 4 different stores yesterday just to find a bag of spinach!!!).

Review: An Instance of the Fingerpost

Drumroll please.....it's my 100th post on this blog! And in honor of that, I'm going to do something totally ordinary and write you a review of what I've been reading. Sorry, I really couldn't think of anything exciting this early in the morning. However, this is a really good book, so I guess that makes up for it.

Let me qualify: this is a great book for people who are both patient and curious. The former because it's 700 pages long and written in a the long-winded style of the 17th century. The latter because it's a murder mystery that not only reveals who did it, but also an amazing wealth of information about life and thought in Oxford in the 1660s.

This is a truly dynamic setting, because the place was crawling with now-famous scientists and philosophers - although, as Iain Pears shows brilliantly, the two were one-and-the-same back then. The characters who are interested in experimenting in science are also wedded to religious doctrine and manage to mix the two in really astounding ways. Instead of just telling us what people ate or how they dressed, Pears reveals how they thought, and how different their assumptions were to ours. There is one scene in particular of a chemistry experiment which shows how rudimentary the scientific method was and how exciting it was for people steeped in both Christian and ancient Greek dogma to discover these new ways of thinking.

The theme of scientific inquiry and truth (which fits so nicely into a mystery novel) intersects with a political strain. The book is set just a few years after the end of the Cromwellian era in England, a time when religious and political tensions were running very very high. Pears gives us four different first-person narrators, whose perspectives highlight different aspects of the era: Marco da Cola, a gentleman physician from Italy, Jack Prescott, a young man trying to prove his father was not a traitor to the newly restored king, Dr. Wallis, a very paranoid cryptographer who's enmeshed in both the old and the new regime, and Anthony Wood, an antiquary and historian who claims to be impartial in his writing of the events of the books.

As it turns out, none of them are totally impartial, and they all have different reasons for writing their versions of the murder and its solution. As I said, it takes a lot of patience to get through the same narrative four times and have the answer to the who-done-it question delayed for about 600 pages. But it's really such a rewarding read, because the four stories turn out to be very different versions, and Pears does a masterful job layering perspectives and timing revelations so that you are always on the brink of finding out another crucial bit of information.

The writing is old-fashioned, of course because it's written in first-person, but once you let yourself sink into it, it's very easy to read. I recommend this for a long week in winter with many cups of tea. Reading it in one weekend was like running a long-distance race (luckily one I've been training for the last six months), but I still appreciated this book immensely for what it taught me about the era, for giving me another amazing example of historical fiction, and for telling a good story that left me really satisfied.

Books for the semester

I'm about half-way through the semester now, and I finally have all the books I need for my spring classes. So I thought I'd do another little book photoshoot, because I love my books.

Well, not all of these books. I've already explained why Sacred Hearts disappointed me, and Sharpe's Tiger was so lame that I'm not even going to review it. Everything else has been great so far, though. I'm currently 200 pages into the 700-page An Instance of the Fingerpost....many, many pages, and, so far, an awful lot of history and plot to keep track of (it's a historical murder mystery), but it promises to get better and better. While you're waiting for my review of it, here are some pretty book covers.

In which cold and hot are opposites and going to the movies solves everything

Since I've been in England, I think about the weather a lot, check the forecast a lot, complain, predict, stare out the window, calculate the relative merits of different keep-warm outfits. And today I was thinking about how differently people respond to different climates. It's not just that the weather changes your mood or your habits. It also changes your attitude toward weather itself - or at least this seems to be true for me.

For the last four years, I lived in a very hot place, basically the desert. Now I live in a very cold place. Both kinds of climate can be really unpleasant of course, but in really different ways. There's something about cold weather that makes people complain about it. Even when I'm happy that it's raining or snowing, I kind of feel the need to gripe. I also fill a lot of conversations with speculations about the chance of precipitation tomorrow, the next day, over the weekend, next week....The international student handbooks weren't kidding when they said that the English love to talk about the weather.

What's ironic is that no matter how much you check the forecast or exchange predictions, it will always surprise you. The forecast changes daily. A rainy day will clear up unexpectedly, leaving you looking silly in your rain boots. And a dry day turns out to have such a thick mist that it's practically raining.

And then there's the actual cold. I really don't mind rain, but I do mind the freezing cold air that blows that rain into my face and makes my lips numb on the walk to school. Who decided it would be a good idea to settle on this island in the first place? Couldn't we just leave it to some other animals who are better adapted to the cold? And why do so many English people insist on wearing the lightest of jackets, or even no jacket at all, when it's below freezing? And then complain about how cold it is!

So that's the dynamic around cold, wet, grey weather - you talk about it endlessly, you try to predict it, you gripe and gripe, but in the end it eludes your predictions and you never do anything to make it better, never try to find the silver linings, like the fresh smell of rain or the fact that your country doesn't have a drought problem, or the fun of cozying up when it's snowing outside and drinking hot chocolate.

Hot weather is a totally different thing. I just don't remember talking about the heat so much when I was living in southern California. I suffered in it, definitely. There were days when wearing any clothes at all seemed unbearable, when working was out of the question. But when the sun is beating down, people seem to expect to feel happy, to revel in the heat - the opposite of the assumption that cold weather is always miserable and we must complain about it. Hot weather isn't an excuse to complain, it's an excuse to put on your bikini and sun bathe or buy yourself a refreshing drink.

I think part of this is that, when it is truly and really hot, silence and stillness are your best friends. Heat melts your energy away, and no one wants to waste the precious energy they have left by talking about how low-energy they are. Better to summon up some last strength and drift through the heat waves toward an air-conditioned place or a glass of cold water.

There is one constant in both extremes of climates. Going to the movies is always good. In cold places, it's a warm place to curl up for a few hours. In hot places, it's a haven of cool darkness. So yesterday I went to see a remastered print of Roman Holiday and accompanied Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck to beautiful, summery Rome, where people roll up their sleeves and eat gelato. That's the other thing about weather - it always makes you wish for its opposite - and I was really jealous of Audrey and Gregory as I stood waiting for the bus after the movie, freezing my face off.

But jealousy aside, it was a great way to spend a Sunday evening. It's such an adorable movie, with jokes that don't get old and great side characters - little sketches perfectly realized in a few moments as the journalist and the princess zoom through Rome on their Vespa. No matter what you're needing an escape from - the heat or the cold or school work or work work - it's great to watch Audrey Hepburn's princess escape her duties and responsibilities and jaunt around a beautiful city, basking in the heat, beautifully captured in the cool tones of classic black-and-white film.