Summer and Europe

Summer always makes me yearn for Europe, even though I've never been to Europe in the summer. It is because everyone else seems to go to Europe in summer, and so I come across numerous travel articles and television shows about European destinations.

Indeed, every travel magazine, section of the newspaper, and television network, will re-do Paris a dozen ways or more every summer. In the New York Times not only does their travel section contain a "Europe for Every Budget" slideshow feature and a "Frugal Paris" article/slideshow among other travel section gems, but the summer Paris fever has bled into their art and movie sections as well. There are at least three recent articles or columns on Julia Child and the new movie "Julie & Julia," and a featured column in the art section on the viewing habits of today's museum-goers, focusing on the columnist's recent experience at the Louvre.

I haven't been to Paris in six years, but I feel the tug every summer, knowing full well that summer is the worst time to go. But they sure make it seem inviting, don't they?

Mid-year check-in

I can't believe it's already July. As expected, I haven't been 100% diligent with my "resolutions."

First, my goal was to read a book a week, but between hanging out with family, vacations and keeping up the house, I could only squeeze in less than half that many:

How To Be Good by Nick Hornby
The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi
Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
Japan A Traveler's Literary Companion edited by Jeffrey Angles and J. Thomas Rimer
Literary Trips edited by Victoria Brooks
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
American Wife by Curtis Shettenfeld
French Milk by Lucy Knisley
American Born Chinese by Gene Yang
What Should I Do With My Life by Po Bronson
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence

There may have been a couple more I'm not remembering (I can't remember if I read Paris to the Moon or You'll Be Okay or On the Road last year or this year), and this of course doesn't count the numerous children's books I've read to Conner, Max, Sophie, Tommy and Ashley.

I've been much better in the food department. I hadn't really "resolved" to eat better, but after reading Animal Vegetable Miracle, I completely changed my grocery shopping and eating habits. Whereas formerly only ~5% of my groceries were organic, pesticide free, free range, cage free, and I paid no attention whatsoever to whether or not it was local so I can't say how much was or was not, now 95% of my produce and meat are organic, pesticide free, free range, cage free, and I buy local products (within ~100 miles of my home) whenever possible. I also buy fresh foods from local farmers' markets, local grocers and Whole Foods, to cook at home much more now, rather than buying prepared foods or eating out, which has led to even more good habits, such as eating breakfast on weekdays, which I never used to do. Of course there's always room for improvement (i.e. making an effort to buy from small coops or family farms, remembering to bring reusable bags to the grocery store more often than we do), but all-in-all it's been a pretty dramatic change, and I'm proud of the fact that we've kept it up for a half year now. I've even planted basil in my backyard and (re)planted rosemary in my front yard. I'm going to try and keep a few herbs alive first before I get into the vegetables.

As for blogging and exercise, I've been remiss. I have nearly a dozen travel blogs started and unfinished, and CJ's Spot is getting updated only once or twice a month now. And while I was on the Wii fit for an hour 3-4 times per week for the first 3 months, it fell to the wayside once the weather got better and I started running and hiking. This sounds like a good thing, except that I was only running or hiking twice a week in April, and then after an extreme hay fever attack, it gradually slowed to nearly no exercise at all. Just last week I realized this and ran for half an hour three times last week. I felt really good about it, so hopefully I'll keep it up.

I'm still enjoying being a housewife, even the quiet during the weekdays. I'm at a point where I can get excited about a job if it came my way, but I could probably do this housewife thing at least another six months.

Good Saturday

Today was going to be a pretty uneventful, even boring, Saturday. Sure, I'd meet up with some friends at the Sunnyvale Farmers' Market, in the morning, but other than that and a few errands (dry cleaning, rest of the grocery shopping) I had little else to do. Usually, on such a free day, Mark and I would come up with a crazy scheme to go to the city (SF) or even Napa, on a whim. At least we would play catch and watch a movie. But not today, since Mark has work to do. In fact, when Mark first announced he had to work quite a bit this weekend, I was disappointed, because he knew I was going to be out of town during the week leaving him free to stay late at the office and/or work late at home without feeling as if he was neglecting me. But his deadlines are not always within his control, and Chicago wanted to launch on Monday, so he's working over the weekend.

Still wondering what to do with my afternoon, I recalled my weekends when I was at Fenwick, and the awful feeling of spending all of a beautiful Saturday cooped up in my office with only the free Starbucks coffee to help me block out the sound of carefree sun-filled fun outside. I recalled the feeling of returning to the office at 9am on a Saturday after having left the office only eight hours earlier, and spending the entire Saturday pulling together exhibits, making sure boxes and boxes of 3-inch binders contained the appropriate documents in the appropriate order for someone else's deposition or depo prep. And suddenly I was relieved and happy that I had spent a morning outside sampling fresh, local produce, enjoying my friends, and was now home with Mark, even if he's going to be at his computer most of the afternoon.

Old Song New

Ever hear an old song as if you're hearing it for the first time? It just happened to me with John Mayer's "Why Georgia." I had my iPod going on random, and it came up. The music was just for background, as I was doing other things, but all of a sudden, the lyrics came to the forefront of my consciousness and it hit me clearer than ever what the song was about. I always understood the lyrics before, but now I understand the people for and about whom those lyrics were written.

For the past six months, I've been playing at figuring out what to do with the rest of my life. I had fooled myself into thinking I had figured out my options, and just had to choose. I rationalized the time off as some much-needed, possibly even deserved, time to reconnect with friends, spend precious time with family and help out those close to me in need of help. I also pretended to know what I wanted to do next - I would either go in-house or "start over" in patent prosecution, with my pipe dreams of teaching or getting my Ph.D. in English Lit in tact as pipe dreams. God forbid I have no idea of what to do next!

I realized this week that it has taken me six months just to get ready to really think about the question. In that time, I applied to four job openings, only because they were the best of what was available in the legal field, but not really because I wanted any of them. Only one of those companies called me, and in talking to them, I realized I only knew what I didn't want, and not what I did want. Also in that time, I picked up Po Bronson's "What Should I Do With My Life" three times without getting past the introduction.

I've been waiting for an epiphany, or for fate to intervene and push me in one direction or another. Nothing so far. As I've learned from Bronson's book, this is common. I suppose it is appropriate that traumatic events leave you only with shell shock, recoil, an instinctive knowledge of what you don't want. They don't inform on what you do want. I always thought if you could figure out what you didn't want, by process of elimination you could figure out what you did want. I'll admit the latter question is much more difficult and real than I've previously given it credit for.

For someone who has always known what the next ten steps were, I've been surprisingly adrift. I wouldn't say I'm lost. I know where I am in life, what my priorities are, and I've figured out the important part of my life - the personal/social, family/friends part. I'm happy. In fact, having a stable and full personal life delays my need to find my next (true?) professional purpose, because it's almost enough. In fact, I thought for a brief while that I could do nothing (professionally) for the rest of my life. But all my friends and family know, and now I do, too, that I can't go on doing nothing, even if it is financially possible, for the same reason(s) that I stuck out two years of bioengineering even though I had no desire to be an engineer; that even after figuring out I wasn't cut out for engineering, I wouldn't graduate college without a science degree; and that I wouldn't go into any ordinary field of law - it had to be one where you had the added technical layer. I don't consciously know what all those reasons are, but I know one is that I am haunted by my potential. It nags me to make the most of it.

Figuring out how best to make the most of my potential was easier in high school. It's harder now that I've gone through what seems an entire cycle of "What Should I Do With My Life," and am trying to figure out the next volume, "What Should I Do Next With My Life." Last weekend, I found I was finally ready to read Bronson's book, a collection of stories about people, including himself, that have asked themselves the same question. If his book has shown me anything, it's that everyone finds their way differently. Although he tries valiantly to categorize the stories somehow (he says he's always been good at math, so I imagine his left brain just wouldn't let him put these stories down in random order), his organization seems a little forced to me. As he admits, most of the stories fit in many, if not all, of the chapters.

And then I hear, "Am I living it right? ... It might be a quarter life crisis or just the stirring in my soul ... Either way, I wonder sometimes about the outcome of a still verdictless life ... Don't believe me when I say I've got it down," and I get it, I get the song. I used to dismiss such musings as belonging to lazy, unmotivated, spoiled people wanting an excuse to delay work or thinking they deserved better than what is out there for them. Now I'm one of them. It's uncomfortable, hence the rationalizations and false plans described above. But now that I know, I can get down to trying things out and seeing if they stick.

Vacation Alice

I always seem to possess superhuman strength starting the day before a vacation until a day or two before the end of the vacation. On Monday night, I stayed up until 5am packing, tightening up my itinerary for our trip to England, printing maps to match my itinerary, printing our boarding passes, etc. It didn't help that our desktop computer is really slow.

The maid arrived at 8:30am, and while I could have slept in a little more since our bedroom is always the last room she cleans, I needed to finish our packing before she got to our room so that she wouldn't have to navigate suitcases splayed open on the floor and piles of things that still need to go in the suitcase. So I got up.

I was completely finished packing by 10:30am, more than 8 hours before the flight, and I'm sure a record time for me. I'm usually a last minute girl. I could have taken a nap after the maid left, but I didn't. Instead, I proceeded to tidy up the clothes and knick-knacks that didn't make it into the suitcases, clear and charge the camera, clean up my TiVo line-up (this included watching some of my TiVo'd programming while I ate lunch so that I could delete it), toss food that wasn't going to make it through the week, pick up dry cleaning so that Mark would have pants to wear when we returned, turn off alarms, and otherwise get the house ready for our return.

Next thing I knew, I was off to the airport, we were on the plane, and I had gone 36 hours with only 3 hours of sleep. The flight wasn't the most comfortable (see Travel with Alice blog), and I only slept a few hours of the 11-hour flight. Luckily, the rest of the way to Bath was smooth. When we got to our B&B, it was 9am Wednesday morning in California, and I had slept less than 7 hours in 2 days. It seems hunger is more powerful than sleep, though, so after unpacking a bit, we ate, and I finally crashed a few hours later. It was 10pm Bath time (2pm back home).

You would think I would then sleep for at least 8 hours before waking up bright-eyed, but I found myself fully awake at 4am. I tried unsuccessfully for half an hour to go back to sleep, so I got online and wrote this blog. It's now 6:50am, and I've updated FB and both my blogs.

I can't wait for breakfast at 8am!

A good breakfast

I was naturally awake before 8am today, for the first time in weeks. I've been staying up late with Mark - him working, me reading and watching TV shows he'd rather not watch (i.e., Castle, Jamie At Home, Poker After Dark, etc.), and waking up late as a consequence (the luxury of not having kids or jobs to force me awake unnaturally, and generally living life a la Hodgkinson's "How to Be Idle"). I'm hoping it's due to a few days of exercise and good eating. So I was feeling good this morning just about that alone.

While I watched the morning news, though, I heard my stomach rumble and started to fret about what I had left in the house that was gluten-free for breakfast. Yes, I've survived two gluten-free days, including a couple of meals at Sandy's house (thanks, Sand, for supporting my hippy whims). In my hunger-induced irrational panic, I Googled "gluten free breakfast" for ideas, and was happy to find a list of gluten free breakfast suggestions. I'm not interested in buying artificially gluten-free foods to sustain this diet, so I dismissed all the suggestions that involved gluten-free bread, flour or cereal. The list did remind me, however, that I have eggs, fruit, and veggies already in my fridge.

I started with the idea of scrambled eggs and grapefruit, which then turned into something much more luxurious upon opening the fridge. Next thing I knew, I had put together a beautiful breakfast comprising a fluffy egg and asparagus scramble, grapefruit segments and raspberries tossed with brown sugar, and coffee to wash it all down. Needless to say I am very happy with my impromptu gluten-free, organic and local breakfast (except the brown sugar, not sure where it came from or if it's organic), and looking forward to a good day.

Gluten free?

I watched The View this morning, where Elisabeth Hasselbeck was promoting her new book "The G-Free Diet," and talking about Celiac Disease, and it reminded me of my brief and unpleasant encounter with gluten-free pasta. I remember vaguely a flash of media fervor about the health benefits of a gluten-free diet, or more accurately, how awful gluten was for your health. I didn't have lots of time then to explore the facts, and so I impulsively bought some gluten-free pasta to try and see if I could even stand eating it. It was inedible, so I tossed the rest of the package, and the idea of going gluten-free along with it.

Well, this morning's discussion on The View peaked my interest again, and this time, I spent some time looking at what a gluten-free diet actually might include (rather than exclude). Surprisingly, maybe because my eating habits have improved in the past couple of years, at least 70% of what I eat is gluten-free already. Since I'm already incorporating more fresh, organic/pesticide-free, local produce and free-range, cage-free, organic-feed meat into my diet, I figure going gluten-free can't be that much of a stretch. So I'll try it out for a week, and see what happens. It will help a great deal that rice, fruit, meat, vegetables, vegetable/olive oil, and nuts (even honey-roasted!) are all gluten-free.

Balance despite my disorganized living

I don't know if my friends and family can tell, but I lead a very disorganized life. I value organization, and when it's important to be, I can be organized (people have seen my travel itineraries, and as an attorney in a law firm, needless to say it was necessary and always my greatest compliment from my colleagues). But I'm just not cut out to operate on a daily schedule (waking up, sleeping, working out, blogging, etc. at the same time or order everyday), everything in my house in place, bed made, laundry folded and dishes washed and dried. I figure every day out as I go along, sometimes not washing and putting away dishes and clothes, even when I have the time and energy (poor Mark). It both suits me and bothers me at the same time.

Today is a perfect case in point. I spent all morning in bed with the laptop in front of me and the TV on, trying to remember my dream from last night, learning about how Tyra Banks became the big star she is today, updating my Netflix queue, and thinking about all the things I need to do today. I've been up since mid-morning, it's nearly mid-afternoon, and I still haven't eaten or done anything else productive.

But to make up for this egregiously lazy first half of the day, I have a jam-packed afternoon. After I eat some food, I'll put together my clothes drying rack so that I can finally try out my Laundress cashmere and wool shampoo, which will be one more environment-friendly habit I'm attempting to adopt (no more dry cleaning my sweaters, and more drying clothes in the sun in general). Exercise and tidying up (dishes and more laundry) are also goals for today, and with Mark attending a work happy hour today, I might just get it all done.

I always thought I was doomed to never find balance, because I associated balance with organization (having an hour a day to exercise, an hour a day to read, eating 3 square meals a day at times that make sense, taking a vacation or two every year, getting 7-8 hours of sleep every night), but I guess this is my own version of balance. It's not for everyone, but I suppose it suits me.

This Side of Skepticism

For those who haven't read it yet, This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a semi-autobiographical novel about the coming of age and loss of innocence of a wealthy boy named Amory Blaine. It was the first novel that Fitzgerald published. He was fresh out of Princeton.

I started reading This Side of Paradise as a skeptic. Fitzgerald is generally known for his "lyrical" prose, which I thought from reading his more famous novel, The Great Gatsby, was more pretentious and weightless than lyrical - weightless as in lacking the seriousness and depth of someone that has truly struggled or suffered, just as you would expect from an author that grew up with Fitzgerald's privileged background. I recall with The Great Gatsby that I found it difficult to get past his "style" to find any substance in it, such that even after finishing the novel, I was hard pressed to find a good topic for a paper. Yes, I know, commentary/exploration of the American aristocracy, American dream, new money and old money, blah blah - to me it was just a rich person writing about what he knew, which was other rich people.

Not having been entirely impressed with The Great Gatsby, I hadn't read anything by Fitzgerald in over a decade, so I had very few expectations for This Side of Paradise other than some light reading in pretty prose about a wealthy young boy growing up. My impressions from Gatsby of pretentiousness and weightlessness came flooding back as I started to read This Side of Paradise, where I found the same flowery prose (this time sans the sinister undertones of adultery and murder) and worried I'd get annoyed and never finish; but unlike with The Great Gatsby, by the end of This Side of Paradise, I understood and felt its gravitas.

I started out enjoying it as a story about a carefree, young boy growing up with the leisure of an excellent private education, the luxury of being consumed by young love, and the indulgence of reading, writing and reciting poetry to his heart's content. With so much leisure, luxury and indulgence in the foreground, Fitzgerald barely had room to squeeze in a few nods to the idyllic background settings, such as Princeton and Lake Geneva.

Then the usual tragedies befall the hero - love lost, school boys part ways, death in the family, a slight implication that his family's fortune, which had never been the greatest among his peers, has begun to dwindle - and you start to feel sorry for him, but not too much. The beginnings of his disillusionment are still somehow shallow, immature and overly dramatic. You can still see him finding his way to success, marrying his second or third love, and regaining the sheen and confidence he had in his youth.

Suddenly, there's war, which comes and goes quickly in the book, but signals a dramatic shift in Amory's development. There is also the loss of a job, a deeper love, good friends to both death and circumstance, and even more money, until finally his misfortunes have stripped him of all of his ego, the youthful, unsubstantiated confidence of his youth. I was impressed with Fitzgerald's willingness to break down his hero (presumably a version of himself) to that extent.

I also found Fitzgerald's emphasis on the loss of love, both romantic and platonic, rather than the tragedy of war, to be refreshing and brave. He allows that the war changes Amory and contributes to his loss of innocence, but it is Amory's relationships that define him more than his circumstances, a notion that I agree with.

Don't get me wrong, Fitzgerald's writing is still flowery and overly dramatic all the way through to the end, and I'm still put off by his devotion to poetry, but I found plenty to love about the choices Fitzgerald made in the story, and wish I had read it first as a teenager so that I could compare my impressions then and now.

Live in a bubble or die

Today is one of those days that brings into sharp relief the simple fact that I do not get along with nature. My body has been trying to tell me to live in a bubble as long as I can remember. All the way back to elementary school, I remember having sneezing contests with myself - would I break a new record with the number of sneezes I'd have in a row? My record was well into the twenties. If I hadn't made it a game, I don't know how I would have coped, because my allergies have always been just plain miserable.

People suggested exercise, but I'd have a sneezing and coughing fit after every run. Swimming was supposed to be particularly helpful, but I had to be careful to not sit around in cold water too long or get cold while laying wet in the shade, since that would trigger sneezing fits. On the other hand, so would stepping into direct sunlight from the shade. Hot or cold, sun or shade, I couldn't win.

I came to describe them (to the myriad of doctors and others that were interested) as "like hay fever, except everyday and all year long, worst in the morning and late at night." I loved cats, but they triggered particularly awful symptoms. Who knew the clear liquid protecting the whites of your eyes could grow thick, puffy, and gooey. Ahhh, allergic reactions are awesome in their own special way. I didn't learn until much later that these were called "anaphylactic" allergies that would one day threaten my life.

In college, I moved to Berkeley, where the air was better (than in LA) and the moisture in the air from the more frequent rain was helpful, but I faced new enemies - most of the buildings were old and difficult to rid of mold and dust. But by then, I had learned to deal with it pretty well, for the most part (i.e., kept tissue with me at all times, drank lots of water, exercised in the early mornings when after dust and pollen had settled in the night and the air was dewy and cool). And to a certain extent, I thought, I had outgrown at least the really awful everyday allergies, and really was left with just seasonal allergies. By then, I had developed a great appreciation for breathing easy, literally. Boy did I enjoy breathing easy through my nose - still do.

Then in the summer of 2003, while still living in my Berkeley studio apartment and just a few weeks before taking the California bar exam, my allergies took an ugly turn. I had my first severe anaphylactic allergy attack, with ALL the symptoms (I won't go into the gory details). Suffice it to say, it was ugly. I was ugly, for days ... and, I'm told by the ER docs and everyone else, I could have died, although, despite the throat constriction, I never thought at any point in the entire event that I would get to a point where I couldn't breathe altogether, as is the fear with anaphylactic allergies. In fact, I've had a number of episodes since then, some just as bad with even quicker reactions, but I'm always surprisingly calm, considering the circumstances.

In any case, I finally got one of those pinprick tests after that first full-blown anaphylactic allergy attack, to see what could have caused it. Well, it turns out, I'm allergic to nearly everything they test for, in varying degrees. I'm allergic to various nuts, fruits, seafood, and numerous environmental allergens, although not enough where I would break out or die from exposure to just one thing, except maybe elm trees. Out of the more than 30 common allergens that they tested for, I am at least somewhat allergic to more than 90%. They give each reaction a rating - a combination of numbers between 0 and 4, and anywhere from one to three +'s. For instance, my reaction to elm trees was a 4+++. The reaction spread so far it melded into the other nearby bumps, making it difficult to rate a few of my other reactions. Even the control prick, the mere act of pricking my skin, caused a 1+ reaction. I could tell from the nurse's reaction that this was not normal, not even at the allergy clinic. I was special. Again, the message was that I should maybe consider living in a bubble.

Confusingly, most of it I ate or was exposed to regularly. So I didn't stop eating all of it, but I have cut out a few things that seem to have directly caused my most severe reactions (yogurt, peanut butter, old chocolates, particularly fruit-filled, anything that might have any chance of having developed mold, or turned, at all), and to be careful not to mix too many of those foods or allergens together (i.e., not eat lots of peanuts and clean a dusty closet right afterward). As for living in a bubble, that's just not an option.

Great webisodes featuring great chefs

I am fully engrossed in my research for our late March trip to Japan and Hong Kong. In and amongst reading endlessly about restaurants and transportation options, I have indulged in some Internet wandering, and somehow happened upon a couple of really great web video series: "Chewing the Fat," the ones with Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain (there appear to be other episodes in the series with Alton Brown), and "Get Toasted" with Eric Ripert.

It all started with a blogspot blog about Tokyo by Abram Plaut. Not someone I know personally, or even a friend of a friend of a friend. I can't remember how exactly I happened upon his blog, just that it had something to do with a Google search about ramen in Tokyo. Then I noticed he had an entry about Andrew Zimmern (Bizarre Foods guy) and the Tsukiji Market, which included the YouTube videos of the show where Andrew Zimmern visits Tokyo. Then, I discovered that embedded with these videos is a menu of similar or related YouTube videos. One video led to another, and I found myself watching these two minute episodes of "Chewing the Fat: Batali and Bourdain on ..." everything interesting under the moon. They're each only a couple minutes long, but they're enormously entertaining. The one on Paris Hilton has some particularly choice dialogue not to be missed.

One of the episodes revealed that Bourdain recently became a father. Nosy and bored, I wanted to find out just how recent, so I looked up more on the chef's personal life, which led me to his purported infamous guest blog entry on Michael Ruhlman's site. Again, I've never heard of this blogger until now, but he had a link to Eric Ripert's blog site.

Just by way of background on my impressions of Ripert - I could not stand him in the early season of Top Chef with his thick French accent and super-serious attitude. He seemed SO pretentious because his accent was SO French it was unreal, and his smiles were so reluctant. This year, he was more extensively involved in Top Chef, hosting the final six contestants at his acclaimed seafood restaurant, Le Bernardin. Either he's lightened up, or his reluctant smiles and stiff attitude were out of nervousness, or somehow he was more able to let his true personality shine through this miniscule bit of additional exposure in a different setting than judge's table, but I glimpsed this time a lightness in him that he never showed before, and saw him laugh in a playful, almost shy and humble, way. I also saw the food that he serves at Le Bernardin, and I was impressed. On a side note, I just have to say that the last few episodes of this season have been a travesty (the episode featuring the culinary legends and their last meals should have been the final, and Fabio should have won with his perfect chicken).

I digress. Getting back to Ripert's blog site - it didn't look that interesting at first (a bunch of stuff about hosting Top Chef contestants at Le Bernardin - did I mention what a travesty Top Chef was this season?!?), but just when I was about to close the window, the link to "Get Toasted" caught my eye, and I thought I'd just click on it and take a quick look before heading back to my Tokyo research. I naturally thought it had something to do with cocktails or wine, but it turned out to be a series of videos, each of Ripert preparing a dish in a toaster oven! I'm thinking as I browse the list that this could be great, or it could be a disaster. It turned out to be great. I'm particularly interested in trying the raspberry clafouti - he tries his own dish at the end of each episode, and he seemed to surprise even himself with how good it was. Ripert's "Get Toasted" series is a testament to what a great chef can do with a toaster oven and very little time.

P.S. Speaking of what great chefs can do with sparse equipment and little time, I'm reminded of Jamie Oliver's "Jamie at Home" episode about mushrooms, where he and Genarro cook up freshly scavenged mushrooms right there on a portable stove in the forest - a few feet from where the mushrooms were growing moments earlier, or really any episode in that series; and the portion of Gordon Ramsay's "The F Word" where he identifies some hopeless, ordinary working folk, and shows them how to cook quick, simple, delicious(-looking) dishes. "The F Word" on BBC America is my favorite new show - SO much better than Ramsay's American shows.

One more reason to love living in California

Thanks to Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, in which Barbara Kingsolver intelligently advocates for locavorism, I have new reasons to be grateful for California. I've known for a long time that we were the birthplace of the locavore trend (thanks Alice Waters!), but Kingsolver's book provided the factual underpinnings for all the vague, abstract rumblings I always heard in articles, newsletters, and ads, to drive the point home. I finally learned where the buzz words "sustainable," "organic," "grass fed," "free range" and even "local," fit in the landscape of my life.

I also learned that a greater variety of produce grows in California for more months out of the year than anywhere else in the U.S. One of her themes throughout the book is that if you live anywhere East of the Rockies or North of the Sierra Nevada (i.e., her farm in Virginia), and you see produce "out of season" (i.e. fresh greens in December), it likely came from California. Every time I came across one of her “it likely came from California” moments, I rejoiced, because I live in California!

There are many other books on similar subject matter that surely will provide this same "aha!" for people that are interested (i.e., Michael Pollan fans - it was one of his articles that whetted my appetite for the subject), but Kingsolver's book just happened to be the first I got around to reading.

Finally, I’d also like to thank Kingsolver for writing a book that kept me riveted through the last page. Without giving away the ending, let’s just say that I underestimated the drama that could come of turkey breeding. If her novels similarly keep the reader engrossed throughout, I’m bumping them to the top of my reading list. So many other novels I have read recently lacked this important trait (see earlier blog re Nick Hornby novels).

The book is, however, so very rich and compacted with information, that I recommend giving yourself time to digest after every chapter.

Update on the family

Just by way of update to the post titled "When it rains, it pours," as a testament to my family's good fortune, the cancer scare is no longer. After further examination, it appears that it was closer to not being cancer than to being Stage One. Also, the mentioned pay cut was negated. And anyone who's privy to my Facebook (or Chen Den) posts knows that Mom, Dad, Sally, Sandy, Tommy, Conner, Ashley, Trevor, and I just enjoyed a fabulous week together in LA, where the rain stopped just long enough for our memorable two-day adventure at Disneyland and our extended family from all over LA came over for a fun-filled afternoon on Valentine's Day (Derek and Mark joined us for the Valentine's Day festivities as well). We had an unprecedented nine of eleven next-gen kids altogether in one place (this usually only happens at a family member's wedding, of which we will have two this year!).

So all is good and right with the world again.

All kinds of points, none of the rewards

I am now a member of four hotel chain rewards programs and three airline rewards programs (that I can recall off the top of my head), including United Airlines Mileage Plus, Southwest Rapid Rewards, Virgin America's Elevate, Starwood Preferred Guest ("SPG," which includes St. Regis, Westin and W hotels, among others), Hyatt Gold, Leaders Club and now the Ryokan collection, thanks to my plans to stay in a Ryokan in Kyoto. This seems remarkable to me considering my minimal business travel (I fly maybe once or twice a year for business).

But it is so easy to do. Unlike the retail store credit cards (Macy's, Banana Republic, and yes, I even had a Robinsons May card at some point), which I canceled years ago, these have no impact on your credit; and now that you can register (in a matter of a minute or two) and track your points online, there just isn't any reason to not sign up, just in case the stars somehow align and you have enough points and the right opportunity. Or is there?

For one thing, apart from a few free flights from Southwest over the course of a decade, I have yet to make use of any of these rewards. The hotel/airline points are not easy to use. Granted, I don't make accumulation or use of rewards points a priority in my travel planning. Instead, for flights I look first at my preferred travel times (i.e., I like to arrive at my destination between 10am and 6pm), preferred airlines (I like British Airways, JetBlue and Southwest), and price; and for hotels, well, that's a more subtle calculation that includes consideration of historical reputation, likely comfort level of beds, location, year built/renovated, prices, cleanliness (although this one isn't so much an issue at hotels where all other criteria are met), quality of fitness facilities and spa services, and so much more. Every time, there seems to be a different airline that has the best price for the best itinerary, and a different hotel chain that comes out at the top of my list for my next vacation. For instance, we prefer, and are willing to pay for, the St. Regis (which gives us SPG points) in Rome and SF, but in Manhattan, there are so many other choices that have the same location and luxury for less. I don't even know if there's a St. Regis in or near Venice because the Hotel Monaco and Grand Canal (a Summit hotel) is ideal for us, and always has great deals. The Leaders Club provided us a great deal for the ultimate Amalfi Coast hotel, Le Sirenuse, and even got us upgraded to full sea view rooms (for those familiar with the list of top 50 hotels in the world: I know!).

Case in point, for my next trip, we won't be staying at any Starwood (W, St. Regis, or Westin) or Leader's Club (Leading Hotels of the World) hotels. No, now that we're venturing into Asia, the hotel chain du jour is the Peninsula. For instance, in Tokyo, the Peninsula is the latest/greatest luxury hotel (we'll also be staying at the Park Hyatt), and in HK, the Peninsula is the historical gold standard (why isn't it the platinum standard?). Besides which, Mark said nine years ago that if we ever went to HK, he would take me to the Peninsula HK for afternoon tea, so we're not going to visit HK without checking that off our list.

For another, it's exhausting trying to earn points at every opportunity without compromising my priorities. The worst sham in my opinion is the UA Mileage Plus programme, where the points "expire" if you go without either earning or using points for a certain amount of time. Luckily, I discovered that UA has so many partners, both airlines and hotels, that I can usually find some part of my trip that will earn me some points. But it's work nonetheless. Also, after three years as a member, I'm finally on the verge of getting a free night at a 5- or 6-star Starwood resort. I need one more stay to push me over the edge, but since I have no plans to go to Europe or the Maldives in 2009, I probably won't earn that free night anytime soon.

I used to concern myself with this stuff, but not anymore. It just isn't worth the time and mental energy. I'll sign up for programmes, because it's easy, but I've completely cut out any consideration of rewards points out of my vacation planning process. Someday, that free night at the W Retreat and Spa in the Maldives, the St. Regis Grand or the Westin Excelsior in Rome, or maybe even the St. Regis New York, will come to me worry free. In the meantime, I haven't seen any rewards programme tied to the Peninsula, so at least I won't be adding yet another rewards programme to my roster.

The making of an Asian Anglophile-Europhile

I'm known for being an avid traveler, although I've often scolded myself for focusing only on England, Europe and the U.S., and failing to include Asia in my travels at all thus far (apart from a few return trips to Southern Taiwan, where I was born and still have family). I suppose even those that fancy themselves passionate about traveling can be allowed their favorite destinations, but being from Asia, I've always considered it a bit of a failing. Now that I am getting around to planning a visit to Japan and Hong Kong, I can put that all behind me.

Why is it that my interests have gone this way? I have two theories:

First, my Anglophile-Europhile tendencies in travel are due to the fact that they are "exotic" to me in the way that Asia is exotic to the Western world. I have a perceived familiarity with Asia because I was born there and my family is Asian. The cultural elements (food, language, faces, landscape) of Asia emphasized in novels, movies, television shows, etc., are fundamentally familiar to me. Thus the Asian cultural scene, while widely varying among the different Asian cultures and exotic to Westerners, has always been fundamentally un-exotic to me. British and European histories/cultures, on the other hand, fascinate me to no end.

Second, having spent most of my life living in the U.S., I know less about the history, geography and politics of Asian countries than I do England and Europe. I certainly learned less about it in school, and so am less familiar with Asia in the academic sense. So in fact it is a learned familiarity and knowledge of England and Europe that has bred my desire to spend more time there.

There you have it: a gloss on how the life of a Taiwanese-American immigrant has unconsciously shaped her travels (and probably also why I majored in English literature and have a very special spot for Henry James). I am sure there are deeper issues here that would make for great Asian-Am thesis material. More importantly to me, I am finally going to travel to Asia for something other than seeing extended family, and I am unbelievably excited (as I am before every big trip) to add these destinations to my roster of experiences.

I am what I read

However much I love reading, I'm not an indiscriminate reader. I learned to love reading pretty much from the moment I learned to read. I thought as a child that I would love to read anything, although I allowed that I would find certain types of texts generally more enjoyable than others. For instance, as a child I preferred novels over newspapers because fiction was more "fun" (a bookworm's rebellion against parents that thought NY Times articles more worthy of reading than Judy Bloom novels).

What I have become more aware of, as I grow older and the stages of my life begin to take shape, is that such a general view of what I enjoy reading doesn't hold - I have become quite enamored with the NY Times, particularly certain political columnists and travel series, and have been known to find other non-fiction quite engaging as well. Instead, what I choose to read, and actually enjoy, is a symptom of my mental state at that given time. It is tied to my mental capacity, maturity level and preoccupation at a particular time in my life. This is why I have discarded books after a few pages only to devour them years later, and also why I re-read certain favorites (the ones that resonate deeply with my soul) at various stages of my life, each time gleaning new meaning and renewed pleasure (don't we all?). As such, my life's reading list is my life's soundtrack, the tone and subject matter providing a fitting accompaniment to my life and thoughts as I live and think.

It has been said and written many times before: "you are what you read." I always knew this to mean that you are shaped by what you read, which I am. I now know that it also means that I am drawn to reading what my mind and soul crave.

Good movies from bad fiction: a case study

I've enjoyed all of the movies made based on Nick Hornby novels, and so I set out to read the novels that have not yet been made into movies. I've finished two - the award winners A Long Way Down and How To Be Good - and I'm not motivated to continue with the rest. While there are innumerable reasons why people deem novels to be great, I cannot reason on my own why critics have found these two novels worthy of awards. The motif that stood out to me immediately in both books is his juxtaposition of the ridiculous with the everyday, and more precisely, the placement of people that we might normally know - single mothers, wannabe rock stars, struggling small business owners, columnist for a local paper and married doctor with two children - in ridiculous situations. I grant that these things could happen to ordinary people - anything is possible - but they're so unlikely I would categorize them as "too silly to dream up."

I'll use examples from How To Be Good since they are most fresh in my mind: It is ridiculous that a columnist for a local paper who prides himself as the most cynical person in England, or at least in his "postal code," would visit a spiritual healer just to spite his wife, and then become an immediate and total convert. It is ridiculous that his wife, however guilty she felt about having an affair, would agree to allow said homeless spiritual healer to live with them (and their two children) in their home. It is ridiculous that his wife's lover, who wasn't particularly interested in her real feelings and clearly made it a habit to philander with married women, would show up at her house to confront her husband in an attempt to convince her to leave with him. It is ridiculous and superfluous to include a conversation where a slow, suspicious patient asks a doctor, in all earnestness, whether he can assist her with her surgeries, of which she has none to perform. The list goes on.

While I find Hornby's casual writing style unchallenging and easy to digest, his novels are not particularly engaging or fulfilling. The novels I've read, and now that I reflect on it, the movies as well, lack cleverly-constructed plots or deeply nuanced characters, two attributes I usually associate with good fiction. The ridiculous situations aren't constructed into a plot with a climax and a resolution (not really). You just end up somewhere in the lives of the characters chronologically later than where you began. And the characters never end up far (morally or emotionally) from where they started. It's as if he wants to point out how ordinary people in real life don't really change, at least not much, even when forced to experience ridiculous (aka dramatic) situations. Maybe some who praised these novels thought this was worth saying, and maybe my narrow intellect lacks a fine-tuned appreciation for the ridiculous. Nonetheless, I finished each book thinking he could have done so much more with the subject matters he took on, and wondering what he was trying to accomplish with the preceding 300+ pages.

I might still be entertained and somewhat fulfilled if he offered obscure information (which always fascinates me and from which I could learn something), but he doesn't.

And yet, as I mentioned at the outset, I find all of the films based on his novels entertaining, if not really all that fulfilling, and am sure I would find films based on these novels just as entertaining. Query why I can separate entertainment value from the story's merit in movies, but not in novels (a topic for another day).

Season's Ending

Every year after the new year begins, I look for the end to the holiday season. Is it January 2 or later? Maybe the Monday after? I feel strange displaying holiday lights after New Year's Day, so even if we haven't taken everything down (you know how it is, sometimes those lights stay up weeks or months into the new year), I stop turning the lights on in the evening . But every year, I see others do it. It seems the more extravagant the light display, the longer it stays up. I appreciate having the beautiful lights to look at on the way home, but not as much as I did up through December 31. It just doesn't feel a bit stale, as folks start back at work and hunker down for the post-holiday winter quarter.

Speaking of the post-holiday winter quarter, since I have a few months of freedom, I've been looking for something to punctuate my days. So I started a regime on my new Wii Fit, one of the holiday gifts I received this season. Today was my first day, and considering I've never kept to a New Year's Resolution for more than two straight months and my fitness goal requires a 3-month long commitment, I'm hoping to make this new habit last a bit longer.

I'm also committed to finishing at least a book a week. I somehow whiled away December without finishing a second book (easy to do when your sister needs babysitting 3 afternoons a week, you commit to throwing 3 parties in that many weeks, and you take a 3-night vacation in Las Vegas). I've also indulged in a bit of reading ADD - allowing myself to jump back and forth between books - so I'll have to be more disciplined. As an English Lit graduate of Cal, I'm ashamed to admit it, and so hopefully motivated enough to exceed my (relatively conservative, unless my list includes Finnegan's Wake or Paradise Lost) goal.

Even though I won't have work to distract me from these goals, it won't be easy to do. Like with any good sabbatical, I'm making travel plans. Los Angeles in February, Japan and Hong Kong in March, and more if I can help it (New York in May?). Just listing off the cities is getting me excited.

I best go and help my husband take down the Christmas tree now.

Inner Voice

CJ's Inner Voice might be an alternative name for this blog, and so I thought it an appropriate topic for the blog's first entry. I always thought that if I started to write again, it would be in a journal (private) or it would be a novel (private until you've finished the volume and convinced someone to publish it, and then out-of-your-control public). However, having been granted a few months of leisure, I'm becoming acutely aware of my inner voice, and its need of an outlet. And so I am resorting to this - a blog (immediately public, but really only as public as you want it to be).

I have rarely found a reason to read someone else's blog, and when referred to one, almost always wonder why someone would go through the trouble of publishing those thoughts at all. So you can imagine my skepticism about starting one. Who would want to read what I have to say?

I have clearly gotten past that skepticism out of necessity. I am grateful for my newfound leisure time, but one by-product is that my inner voice runs rampant with no place to go, and thus no rest. When I was wasting almost all of my mental energy on solving other people's problems using too many words in overly-formal written instruments, I had little to no energy left to remark on anything else. I certainly had no time or energy to express any of the meager remarks that did come to mind, save briefly at lunch to a co-worker (I would have let some loose at dinner, too, but found most of those thoughts unworthy of dinner conversation). I now have much better material for dinner conversation, but dinner lasts only so long. So I'm putting my thoughts here.

I'm still skeptical about whether any of it will be worth reading, but I'm beginning to realize that isn't the point of blogging, or at least not all blogs. I just want to send these thoughts into the void. Good day, dear void.