Snow Day, For Reals

The view from the bus stop this morning. Seriously, how beautiful is that?



You know what was not so beautiful? My property midterm, which was probably the hardest test I've ever taken. They weren't kidding when they said that law school is hard. Go to graduate school, kids.

Snow day!

Almost December

Turkey Day and its attendant delights (the food, the company, the drunken charades) and downs (the hives, the trip to the ER) has passed, and it's now time to buckle down for finals. Ergo, my thoughts turn to Christmas gifts, especially of the knitted kind.

Some inspiration from Urban:

Beret
Slouchy beanie (one can never have too many)
Cowl-like scarf thing
Eternity scarf which would look great in a Habu yarn (maybe I'll get some for Christmas)
and
Reversible cabled scarf (so tempted to knit this for myself but there are already two projects in progress intended for that purpose, *cough*)

I just need an another extra pair of hands. One to knit and the other to brief cases.

Snapshots of food

Here are some of the dishes that Elliott has made over the past couple of weeks. My culinary output has been null (unless you count microwaving or making cookies, which I don't). And let's not even talk about my literary diet. I did get Naomi Novik's Empire of Ivory and Alex Ross's The Rest is Noise, but I'm not optimistic about starting either of them soon.

Anyway, food!


Elliott proudly stirring the absolutely fantastic chicken tikka masala, almost an exact replica of the one we loved at Pakwan in San Francisco.


Yummmmmmmmm. Maybe we'll (and by we, I mean Elliott) attempt homemade naan next time.


Absolutely amazing stuffed pork chops.


With gravy on top and bacon braised cabbage on the side. Elliott really likes to stress his German heritage sometimes.


And because that wasn't enough food, we also made an onion and leek tart, which was very simple and very tasty.

Ooof. I'm full just from looking at those pictures again. The stuffed pork chops, cabbage, and onion and leek tart recipes are all from Chow.com. The chicken tikka masala recipe was just something I googled.

Okay, back to my civil procedure casebook now. Whoo.

I'm back. Again.

Sorry for the radio silence. Law school is taking up all my time and sorta getting me down. I'm hoping that I get over it soon and refocus on the reason why I'm subjecting myself to this in the first place.

Anyway, look for food pictures soon! Elliott and I have been cooking up a storm on the weekends that we see each other.

Speaking of spam

Here's some more, specifically, on what this blog is purportedly about: books.

I read most of David Sedaris's Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim over the weekend, which is very good but definitely not my favorite book of his. As a whole, I'm not very interested in stories from or about his childhood. I feel a little squeamish reading dysfunctional accounts of someone else's childhood (the same reason that I've never read any Augusten Burroughs).

And now, a book meme.

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users (as of today). As usual, bold what you have read, italicise what you started but couldn’t finish, and strike through what you couldn’t stand. The numbers after each one are the number of LT users who used the tag of that book.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (149)
Anna Karenina (132)
Crime and Punishment (121)
Catch-22 (117)
One hundred years of solitude (115)
Wuthering Heights (110)
The Silmarillion (104)
Life of Pi : A Novel (94)
The Name of the Rose (91)
Don Quixote (91)
Moby Dick (86)
Ulysses (84)
Madame Bovary (83)
The Odyssey (83)
Pride and Prejudice (83)
Jane Eyre (80)
A tale of two cities (80)
The Brothers Karamazov (80)
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (79)
War and Peace (78)
Vanity Fair (74)
The Time Traveler’s Wife (73)
The Iliad (73)
Emma (73)
The Blind Assassin (73)
The Kite Runner (71)
Mrs. Dalloway (70)
Great Expectations (70)
American Gods (68)
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (67)
Atlas Shrugged (67)
Reading Lolita in Tehran : A Memoir in Books (66)
Memoirs of a Geisha (66)
Middlesex (66)
Quicksilver (66)
Wicked : The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (65)
The Canterbury Tales (64)
The Historian : A Novel (63)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (63)
Love in the Time of Cholera (62)
Brave New World (61)
The Fountainhead (61)
Foucault’s Pendulum (61)
Middlemarch (61)
Frankenstein (59)
The Count of Monte Cristo (59)
Dracula (59)
A Clockwork Orange (59)
Anansi Boys (58)
The Once and Future King (57)
The Grapes of Wrath (57)
The Poisonwood Bible : A Novel (57)
1984 (57)
Angels & Demons (56)
The Inferno (56)
The Satanic Verses (55)
Sense and Sensibility (55)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (55)
Mansfield Park (55)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (54)
To the Lighthouse (54)
Tess of the D’Urbervilles (54)
Oliver Twist (54)
Gulliver’s travels (53)
Les Misérables (53)
The Corrections (53)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (52)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (52)
Dune (51)
The Prince (51) [I think that reading parts of it very closely in a political theory class counts, don't you?]
The Sound and the Fury (51)
Angela’s Ashes : A Memoir (51)
The God of Small Things (51)
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-Present (51)
Cryptonomicon (50)
Neverwhere (50)
A Confederacy of Dunces (50)
A Short History of Nearly Everything (50)
Dubliners (50)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (49)
Beloved (49)
Slaughterhouse-Five (49) [Not sure if this deserved to be italicized. I mean to finish it one day!]
The Scarlet Letter (48)
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (48)
The Mists of Avalon (47)
Oryx and Crake : A Novel (47)
Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (47)
Cloud Atlas (47)
The Confusion (46)
Lolita (46)
Persuasion (46)
Northanger Abbey (46) [Optimistically bolded. I think I'll finish it this semester.]
The Catcher in the Rye (46)
On the Road (46)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (45)
Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (45)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (45)
The Aeneid (45)
Watership Down (44)
Gravity’s Rainbow (44) [There should be a style for books that intimidate the hell out of you. I think that The Satanic Verses would qualify, too.]
The Hobbit (44)
In Cold Blood : A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences (44)
White Teeth (44)
Treasure Island (44)
David Copperfield (44)
The Three Musketeers (44)

Man, that was so embarrassing. Not the number of books of I haven't read but the number of them that I've picked up and couldn't bring myself to finish. I'm not so much a devourer of books as a page-nibbler.

A new week, a new season

It's Monday again, which means that it's time for torts torts torts torts and SPAM. Fortunately, there is a lovely crispness in the air and the promise of a new Radiohead album in 9 days! And only four and a half days from a three-day weekend.

Life is all about the anticipation of the next pleasurable moment.

PS:

Some pictures from the weekend I spent in New York visiting Elliott (and Karthik and Suzannah).


The Hungarian Pastry Shop by Elliott's apartment.


Elliott in front of the Psych Department building.


Purl Soho in Soho where I bought some nummy yarn.


Lunch at Peep in Soho, where the bathrooms are definitely... surprising. :)


The boys at dinner.

Happiness

May be a warm gun, but it is definitely the end of the week. I can't believe it's already been four weeks of law school, but this week felt like it could have been an entire month in itself. I spent every spare waking moment either writing my legal memo or reading for class. Enough. I am done. I am taking a step back and taking a deep breath (even if I can't smell anything due to my cold).

The plan for this weekend:

Clean the apartment. Actually cook something by myself. Hang up some pictures on the walls. Go out drinking with some friends. Read a book outside.

These are my goals for this weekend, and hopefully, they'll make me feel better about this whole law school thing. Bah.

The end of the end

This is it. The last day of freedom before the first day of law school. Or rather, the last day of peace and ignorance before law school consumes my life. I am, however, getting more used to living here. The weather has been absolutely lovely this weekend, with the sweet anticipation of fall. Elliott came up to visit me on Saturday and was pressed into being a moving mule for me again. He's currently on the Chinatown bus heading back to New York, and I'm enjoying some peace and quiet in the law library (and checking my e-mail, the US Open scores, and updating my blog :).

Tomorrow it begins. Wish me luck.

Obernau and Now

Finally, to wrap this baby up, put Europe behind me, and look ahead to 1L (somebody hold me).


The lovely German countryside.


Elliott with the pet pot-bellied pig, Big Bertha.


The absurdly beautiful Rhine.


Me and a "round" of Koelsch.




And now I'm home (for a certain value of "home") in Las Vegas, driving on wide boulevards and shivering in the ubiquitous air conditioning. Emily Dickinson once wrote that "Pain has an element of blank." I think that travel is much the same. Without the thousand or so pictures that I took on this trip, I doubt that I could have remembered half of the places we'd seen and things we'd done. I wish that I could say that our trip was a life-changing experience, but for the most part, it was just spending some good times (and not-so-good times) with Elliott in some of the most beautiful places in the world. And that? Is really all that I wanted.

The End of the Road

Berlin was lovely, barring burning myself. It was a chance to catch up with Nicole and to see a foreign city through a (near) native's eyes. But we also took in the usual tourist attractions: Museum Island, the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag. After Berlin, we spent a little over a week with Elliott's relatives in Obernau, in the Windeck region of Germany. It is absolutely gorgeous countryside, the German equivalent of the Lake District in England. And Elliott's family was really fantastic, as well as their pets, from the shaggy-haired black dog to the Maine Coon cat (the most awesome cat ever, omg) to the half-bald, pot-bellied pig. Our time in Obernau was very relaxing and uh, filling, as we were fed absurd amounts of food and with alarming frequency. And then it was Obernau to Frankfurt to Chicago to San Francisco to Mountain View.

Hearing American English regularly took some getting used to at first; it's almost like deciphering a foreign language. It's hard to believe that we spent the last six weeks in Europe, in four different countries, moving from hotel to hostel to sobe, always on a plane or a fast train. I wish that I could stop for a long, long while, but tomorrow morning, we're driving down to Las Vegas to see my parents. Maybe I'll take a breather when I start law school, eh? :)

Here are some pictures from Turkey and Berlin.


Whirling dervish by the Blue Mosque.


Pride Parade down Istiklal Caddesi.


Our Bosphorous cruise, on which we saw dolphins/porpoises!


Elliott and Sun at Ethnicon in the Grand Bazaar, where Elliott bought a lovely teppich.


Nicole und ich at a cafe in Berlin.


Wet and rainy in front of the Brandenburg Gate.


Mmmmmm... wine warms me up.


Inside the glass dome of the Reichstag.


Walking on the Shalechet exhibit at the Jewish Museum.

Turkey Hates Me - Misadventures in Turkey and Germany

I think that I must have done something to offend Kemal Mustafa in a past life. You know how some people get the Revenge of Montezuma when they travel? Well, I got the Revenge of Atatürk when I was in Turkey, for like, two weeks, reducing me to pre-packaged food and Starbucks. Yum. As my friend Nicole put it, 'You like Turkish food, but Turkish food doesn't like you.' Not only did I have, um, tummy problems, but I was also shat on by a bird in Tophane. And two days ago, on Friday the 13th, I was dealt the coup de grace. While enjoying a nice smoke at shisa bar in Kreuzberg, I managed to knock over the pipe and dump a good portion of the coal onto my chest, which resulted in burns from my breasts down to my stomach. After spending pretty much the entire day at the hospital yesterday, it was determined that I have second and third degree burns on my left breast. A third degree burn (don't Google, the pictures are pretty disgusting) is a burn that goes through all layers of skin, down to the muscle or bone, and it doesn't hurt because you lose all the nerve cells there. In German, die Sensitivität ist nicht intakt. Luckily, mine is only half an inch wide, but it will probably take 2 to 3 weeks to heal. So no more nude beaches for me, at least for a while.

You win, Mustafa. You win.

Book Update

Stolen from Elliott, started and finished in Istanbul: Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

A quick pop science read. Nothing groundbreaking. Although it's fun that Elliott knows some of the researchers mentioned in the book.


Started in Istanbul, finished in Istanbul: Queen of Babble, Size 12 Is Not Fat, Size 14 Is Not Fat Either, all by Meg Cabot

These were really fun, fast reads, and the last two books are actually about more than retail therapy and finding a boyfriend/husband.


Currently reading: A collection of short stories called Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules, compiled by David Sedaris

The David Sedaris totally sold me on the book, and it's given me an opportunity to read some authors that I've been meaning to get around for a while, like Alice Munro and Joyce Carol Oates, a.k.a., depressing Canadians.


Completely abandoned and finally sold to a used bookstore in Berlin: Pamuk's The Black Book.

Photo Catchup - Croatia and Istanbul

Zagreb really showed off during the day and a half that we were there.


Sunlight church after the clouds parted.



And a rainbow.

Some pictures of Istanbul from our first couple of days in Sultanahmet.

One of the Medusa heads in the Basilica Cistern.



Your standard picture of the Blue Mosque.



Beautiful inside, but a distinct odor of feet.



The view of the Sea of Marmara from Topkapi Palace.

Ich bin ein Berliner. Nicht.

It's nearing the end of our third day in Berlin, and we've already done so much. Nicole has been wonderful in taking us around both the touristy sites (walking along Unter den Linden, the Brandenburg Gate, etc.) and watering and feeding us at really cool bars in Prenzlauer Berg. Last night, we went to a place called the Weinarie (I think), where you can get unlimited glasses of wine and food (we had chili) and then just pay however much you want as you leave. It's the most brilliant thing ever.

Today was more of a touristy day, as we went to Museum Island, and hit three museums in a row. Other than the National Gallery (where the paternalist, fascist security personnel made us so unwelcome that we left after only 15 minutes), they were all pretty good. Nothing so overwhelming as the Archaelogical Museum in Istanbul had been, and Nefertiti is really quite lovely. The only thing is that I kept thinking as I was looking the statues that the Germans 'rescued' from Egypt and Greece and the Middle East, that it's all just so much glorified grave-robbing. And the thing is, unlike say the Met in New York or even the British Museum in London, the Germans seem to have no shame at all about this fact. The Gate of Ishtar that they're so proud of? I had seen those same glazed lions in Turkey, without knowing that the Germans had apparently taken the more spectacular pieces.

Anyway, we're going to end our supremely touristy day by watching the new Harry Potter at the Sony Center at Potsdamer Platz.

Will try to upload pictures later. Tschüss.

Another day, another Turkish breakfast

I feel much better today, much less belligerent. After being woken up from my nap yesterday afternoon, I was ready to start picking fights on Istiklal Caddesi, which would probably wind up with Elliott getting beat up.

Anyhow, today's plan was to visit the Istanbul Modern, but since that's closed, we've decided to lounge around in cafes all day and write you all postcards.

While you wait with bated breath (I'm sure) for my missives from Turkey, here are some of our pictures from Croatia:


Dubrovnik, Croatia


View from the city walls, taken by Elliott, after I quit the exhaustive climb halfway through.


Renaissance faire in Croatia!


The clear waters off of Hvar.

İstanbul

In İstanbul at the moment. A little tired and sweaty, but otherwise okay. We moved from our hotel in Sultanahmet to a hostel in Beyoğlu today, I´m still recovering from the lack of towels and a working faucet thing. So pictures later, when I feel better.

Highlight of the day - A small gay pride gathering that marched up İstikal Caddesi. That was pretty cool.

Hvar, Hvar, Hvar

Lovely Hvar, with your lovely pebbly beaches and your wonderfully clear water and your lack of roving elderly tourist groups. Hvala!

But it's also time for us to leave Croatia and move onto Istanbul. I can't wait.

An update on books read:

Finished in Dubrovnik: Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

I liked it, and I should probably read it again once I've read his other books. That's the trouble with starting with the last novel that he wrote.

Started in Dubrovnik and finished in Dubrovnik: Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut

I probably shouldn't have chased Vonnegut with Vonnegut, but Elliott wasn't done with Blade Runner yet, and I didn't feel like reading Pamuk. I didn't like this one very much. There was just no point, which was perhaps the point. But I had no connection with any of the characters, and active loathing for Rumfoord, and the ending just left me with a sense of "That was it?"

Started in Dubrovnik and finished on the sweltering bus to Split: Blade Runner by Philip K. Dick

Fun book. Now I really want to see the movie.

Dinnertime. Muesli and vodka. Yum.

PS: A Tally of Books Read

Bought, started, and finished in Rome: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

Utterly delightful and addictive. I read it in about two days over 5 or 6 hours. Will probably get the next book(s) in the series as soon as I see them in an English bookstore.

Re-started on the train to Lecce, finished in Lecce: The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis

I always forget how much of an utter bastard Amis can be, or rather, his characters. In this case, though, the hyper-intellectual, self-loathing, pater-hating Charles Highway is a fairly transparent alter ego. No wonder Kingsley was pissed at him for writing this. Still, exquisitely odious prose (like a posher version of Irvine Welsh). Adolescence really is a disgusting period of life.

Bought today, started, but will probably put down for the time being: The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk

Currently reading: Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

My first Vonnegut, and he's much more accessible than I thought he'd be. Also, more sincere and much funnier.

End of Italy, Beginning of Croatia

We finally escaped from Italy. I say "escaped" because we departed from Porto di Bari (not, I'd like to note, Porta di Bari, which is a door, ahem), and Bari, while situated on the coast, is a pretty soulless place. The concrete, 90 degree angled streets were especially jarring after all the charm of Lecce. A comparison: In a little over a day, we had three great meals in Lecce, including yummy cocktails at perhaps the only modern Brazilian bar in Lecce. In our seven hour layover in Bari, we had some greasy pizza and saw some teenage boys fondle themselves in their bathing suits.

Anyway, now we are in Croatia. In the walled town of Dubrovnik, which is every bit as beautiful as advertised. Though infinitely hotter than I ever thought possible. To stave off heatstroke, we went to a hole in the wall bar/concrete beach this afternoon, where we took a couple of dips in the Adriatic, drank some beer, and read a little. Pure heaven. Just wait 'til you see the pictures.

We just finished having a delicious seafood meal, and will go later to the Troubadour, a jazz club apparently founded by a member of an ex-Eurovision band. How awesome is that?

Ciao for now.

Lecce - where the entire town goes on siesta

We're in the small town of Lecce right now, where it was deserted only a few hours ago. All the shops were abandoned for naps in some underground sanctuary. Or something. It's a nice counterpoint to Rome, or culinarily, a digestiv after Rome's five-course meal. Here are some highlights from the past five (!) days:


At the Palatine.



Dinner the first night at Cul-de-Sac, an extraordinary wine bar with around 1,400 bottles of wine.



EUR is for lovers.



Asian nuns at the Vatican.



Renzo Piano's Parco della Mùsica outside the city center.


The plan now is to find a place that serves alcohol and maybe some food. All the bars (including an Irish pub called James Joyce) are closed at the moment. My suspicion is that all the people who work in the shops then work in the bars, so the hours can't overlap. Anyhow, wish us luck. We only have until tomorrow noon here, then it's back on the train to Bari, and then an overnight ferry to Dubrovnik and the Dalmatian coast.

In Roma

I'm already worn out, and we've only been here for a day and a half. However, in that time, we've managed to cover a good 1/3 of the city. No wonder my feet hurt so much. I love it here so far, except for 2 things: the humidity and the tourist hawkers. Pictures to follow once I've found an Internet place where I can upload them.

For now, ciao, darlings.

Las Vegas = Sahara

At least it does tonight. The wolf is at the door, and it's bringing all the accumulated sand and dirt in the world with it.

I've been somewhat productive while I've been at home these last couple of days. Granted, nothing related to say, trip-planning, but there has been knitting. Lots of knitting. Here is a small glimpse of what I accomplished in four days.





It's the Ene Scarf from Scarf Style, and hopefully, it will keep my head warm in Boston.

Well, that didn't last very long, did it?

I've been packing and panicking for the last couple of days. We've also been trying to fit more quintessential San Francisco experiences in.

On Sunday afternoon, we had tea at Samovar. I had a really strong black tea with a matcha brownie.


Mmmmmm....

Elliott had the full on English tea service with a lemon tart, a scone, and a salmon crumpet. And contrary to the picture, he enjoyed it very much.



Except for when I snuck a bite of the lemon tart.

Day Eight - Penultimate* Day at Work

I cleared out most of my desk, had yummy Thai food with a co-worker, then yummy cake at a birthday celebration, re-read Neil Gaiman's Stardust (which, by the way, they've made into a movie!) and finished the second sock for my dad. It almost makes me sad to leave work tomorrow.


*Penultimate meaning second to last, not last, as we all learned from Danny and Casey on Sports Night.

Tag Sieben - Book recommendations?

Getting back to the other half of what this blog is purportedly about: books. I never travel without a book (or several) to read. I took Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting to Mexico, Persuasion to England, and The Remains of the Day to Wales and Paris. But I'm at a loss as to what to pack for this trip. For one thing, it's my first long vacation. Seven weeks without internet access and a steady supply of socks to knit (though I will take a small project with me) makes for a very restless Yao. I don't want to take anything from my current fiction stack, so it'll have to be a new book or something that I haven't read before. So, any recommendations? I'd like something in paperback and preferably modern but not necessarily.

PS: Elliott would like me to report that he's taking one Vonnegut book, Nabokov's The Gift, possibly one non-fiction book, one of the few Murakami books that he hasn't read, and possibly a book by Orhan Pamuk (though it'd be a little cliche to read it in Istanbul, especially if we try to stalk him in Nisantasi).

PPS: I think that Elliott really should update his own blog.

Day (Late) Six - Links Galore

Er, can we all pretend that it's still May 15th?

Here's what I meant to post had I not conked out early on Tylenol Cold.

New York Times review of Hitchens's new book that makes me actually want to pick it up

Murakami has a new book out

Ooooh, shiny collider

Gacked from a knitting blog that I read: Arcade Fire in concert, from NPR

Stupid YouTube video

Day Five - Last Monday at Work!

Because I was so excited about this week being my last at work, the universe decided to punish me by having me work for 5 hours straight this morning. Ooof.

Now I'm relaxing with a nice cuppa tea and the socks that I'm knitting for my dad for Father's Day. So, as promised, sock pictures.

These are the ones that I knit for Elliott's grandma, Betty.



(Ignore how weird my calves look.)

And what I'm knitting now:



Makes you want a pair of hand-knit socks, eh?

Day Four - Sundays are for Miscellany

Our dinner party went pretty well last night, especially the fireworks interlude (provided by the local radio station KFOG) between the main course and dessert. Good timing, guys.

I know that I promised pictures of the food we made, but as always happens, I forgot. However, here is a picture of the resident dessert chef making an apple puff pastry tart.



And the table.



The official menu was:

Spring mix salad with mango and avocado with guava vinaigrette
Stuffed bell peppers (with turkey sausage and just plain veggie) with cous cous
Apple puff pastry tarts with honey
Blackberry pie (that Thomas brought)
A selection of ice creams from Bombay Ice Creamery

And now we're off to take over the city, as we do every Sunday. Ciao.

Day Three - Catching Up

Last month, Elliott and I went on a mini-holiday to California's Central Valley for some wine-tasting and buying. We stayed at a small town in Paso Robles, and drove out to the nearby wineries.

They looked like this.



We toured a cave filled with barrels of wine.



We drank a lot of wine, and "stomped some grapes."



And smelled some flowers.



All in all, it was a fantastically relaxing trip. We drove back up on the 1 and saw Big Sur.



Or rather, Elliott did. I was too busy trying not to puke into a plastic bag.

The end.