andamu

The seasons were observed more on the calendar than in nature where I grew up; in summer it was green with some rain, in winter all the grass went yellow and it was chilly. Most of the trees were evergreen, so few were bare in winter, which also meant that there were few who got tender new leaves in spring. Sure, there were a a few blossoms around in spring, and there were a few bright leaves in autumn, but nothing too remarkable. And I had never seen snow where I lived.

And then I came to the US and fell in love with the seasons. For the first few years I was mostly in the midwest with the large swings; very hot and humid in the summers, foot upon foot of snow in the winter, stark bare trees that suddenly get a green fuzz at the first hint of spring to explode in a pastel dream of blossoms everywhere, and autumns where entire streets look aflame in hues of red and rust, orange and gold, yellow and blush.

We lived in the Bay area for a year, and found the weather too even, with very little to mark the passing of the seasons.

Now we are living in the Pacific Northwest, where the change of seasons is a little milder than the midwest; the heat is not as high in the summer, the cold is not as severe in winter, and we get a little snow once in a way, but we still have the brightly blossoming spring and the riotous colors of fall. In other words, the perfect combination!

And even though Washington is called the Evergreen state, there are plenty of deciduous trees
around to provide for spectacular autumns.

First off: to all of you in areas that are affected by the Southern Californian wildfires: our hearts go out to you, and we hope that you and those dear to you are safe.

The company I work for has a huge presence in the San Diego area, right in the middle of the worst hit county there. While the company buildings are fine, the site has been closed all week to allow employees to take care of their needs: a large percentage of them have been evacuated, and several have lost their houses.

We were watching the news with the scary flames, and Angel Face was sitting with eyes getting bigger and bigger. When they showed the maps, she asked where that was, and we told her.

Now, back in March I took Nini and Angel Face to Southern California when I had a business trip to San Diego. We left the weekend before, and went to Disneyland (all of our first times), and then at the end of the weekend, they flew back home, and I went down to San Diego for a couple of days of meetings.

I had planned the whole thing as a huge surprise: I only told maa chellelu three days in advance that we are going to California - and then only because she needed to pack for Angel Face and herself. When we got to the airport, Angel Face still thought that she was only there to see me off. Now luckily she doesn't know that only passengers are allowed past security, so she checked happily through security, and they came "with me" to the departure gate. It was only when the flight was called that she realized that they are coming to California with me - she was so excited she almost cried.

I had told neither of them that Disneyland was on the itinerary, so early on Saturday morning I just told them to get ready because we're going to go out and do some fun stuff. They only realized where we were going when they started seeing the flags. And then I couldn't get the little one to stop talking; she kept running through a litany of the things and people she might see and do.

Her day was utterly exhausting; by the time it was time for us to leave, she was limp, and still she wanted to stay - you know what I mean, don't you?

And since then, every writing assignment she has at school she wants to write about Disneyland.

To get back to the original story: when we told her where the fires were, she said "That's where Disneyland is!" We had to explain nicely that it was in that area, but that it was not Disneyland itself that was burning.

Now, every time the fires come on the news, she looks very sad and scared. Last night she was asking "Is it the castle that is burning? All the towers will make a big fire." At least we can tell her that in among the many sad and scary stories, a little bit of magic has stayed intact.

Appetizer platter from MilestonesFirst, a word of apology for the quality of the pictures for this entry - both were taken on my cell phone in trying lighting conditions inside restaurants at night.

At the end of August, my husband and I cashed in some frequent flyer miles, and took advantage of a great hotel deal to spend a week up in Vancouver, BC.

We stayed right downtown, surrounded by restaurants; while they were predominantly East Asian, there were some general North American restaurants too, as well as some dedicated to other ethnic cuisines.

We tended to lunch lightly, and then to look for something more substantial - and slightly upmarket - for dinner. The situation for vegetarians in BC seems to be pretty much the same as here: there are a couple of items on most menus that would fit the bill, but generally nothing that really justifies the cost on par with the meat-based items.

The evening of our first full day we ventured out a little later than we would usually look for dinner; we had returned to the hotel after our sight-seeing expedition earlier, and had taken a relaxing siesta. We wandered down Robson street, reading menus in windows or stands, until finally our feet and our tummies started complaining, so we turned into a place called Milestones. Our entreés were nice enough, but it is the appetizer platter we shared that deserved a special mention, from the lovely presentation to the adventurous combination of flavors and textures.

Their menu described it as "BAKED GOAT CHEESE & SLOW-ROASTED GARLIC: Warm garlic flatbread, spiced cranberry relish, roasted corn and onion salsa, fresh papaya and roasted red pepper salsa" The goat cheese had been rolled in black poppy seeds, lending a crunch under your teeth in contrast to the rich, creamy cheese; its mild flavor was contrasted in turn by the smoke of the fire-roasted corn, the tart bite of the cranberries, and the rich, slightly sweetness of the papaya salsa. The whole house of garlic - though clearly roasted until soft and sweet - was left untouched by us; not our favorite taste.

Mosaic's Chocolate Cake dessertNow fast forward to our final evening in Vancouver. We had been saving up a chocolate experience for a last treat. We had a coupon to a place called Death by Chocolate or we could go to the Chocoholic Buffet at the Sutton Place hotel.

After some deliberation, we decided on Death by Chocolate, because I thought there was no way I could do justice to a $24.00 chocolate buffet, and my husband (who is only an occasional chocolate eater - a rank amateur) even less so. So, off we set, only to find that it is no longer at that address (part of the building was under construction). Desperately disappointed, we wandered around a little listlessly until we decided to return and try our hotel's restaurant.

"Nice, but vastly over-priced" would just about sum up our entreés there; determined to have at least some chocolate that evening, I ordered their chocolate cake dessert. I did notice the unusual pricing: "$7.00, but $15.00 if dessert only or take out."

And then it came to the table. Oh. My. Goodness! I could just mumble "No, no, no" while the waiter set down the huge cake in front of me. I thought he had brought the wrong thing; I very earnestly explained that I had meant to order the $7 and not the $15 thing. He told me that it is the same thing, but you have to eat dinner in the restaurant to get it at $7.00. The (very loud American) people at the next table piped up: "Are you gonna eat all that?!"

Now, take out your rulers or measuring tape (that's what we did): The cake was 6"x6" and 9" tall. Yes, not a typo; check the (horribly poor quality) picture. It consisted of dense, moist chocolate cake layered with ganache, and covered in melted chocolate shell.

We shared a slice perhaps an inch thick, and couldn't quite finish it. The restaurant was clearly used to people needing to carry this out, though, because they had a perfect box for it. So, home we carried it, on a lap in the 'plane (it was one of those little prop planes) and presented the rest of the family at home with something they appreciated far more than the souvenirs we brought.

And the cake? The whole family had dessert for three days!

Note: This entry cross-posted from my new food blog, ruchi chūchu which means "to taste, to test the taste."

The Guardians: A Novel

by Ana Castillo

As is unavoidable when situating a novel thusly, many issues facing this community are raised: poverty; undocumented workers - good and bad; illegal border crossings varying from those who want to permanently emigrate to the US, through those looking for seasonal work, to those engaged in drug trafficking, gun running and smuggling immigrants; vigilantism; gangs and crime; poor sanitation and infrastructure in the predominantly Spanish neighborhoods; domestic violence; drug and alcohol abuse; corruption and violence; spiraling numbers of unwed teenage mothers and the changing role of the church and its ministers in the community.

Castillo does not pull punches in describing the situations; refreshingly, neither does she tar everyone with the same brush: there are bad cops and there are good cops; there are good people and bad people on each side of a border, and among all the communities.

A few things rankled in the novel: first, the pacing was somewhat uneven. The further the novel progressed, the larger the jumps between events, and the more the reader is left to pick up by inference. It began to seem as if there was a mad rush to finish this slim (211 pages in my copy) novel.

The second issue relates to the characters. The novel is told by four characters, each in first person. Tia Regina is a naturalized citizen (through marriage), working as a teacher's aide; Gabo is her nephew ( her brother's son) and undocumented, who lives with her to finish his education; Miguel is a school teacher at Regina's school, with a complicated history that includes an excellent education; Grandpa Milton is Miguel's grandfather.

The problem is that initially all the voices sound alike; the undertone, the timbre. Regina's voice is the first to become distinct, followed by that of el Abuelo Milton. Gabo's - whose is mostly heard in the long letters he writes to St. Francis - does not quite ring true; frequently the phrasing slips incongruously into that of an academic, which is unlikely even for this very precocious and well-read sixteen year-old. With Miguel - who had been on the verge of entering grad school before his family life interfered - the problem is the opposite; in an attempt to keep him approachable, some (equally incongruous) dumbing-down of mental dialogue seems to have occurred.

The characters themselves are almost caricatures; stereotyped in the effort not to use stereotypes. Regina is opinionated and quirky to the nth degree; everything about her, each character trait has to be quirky. Gabo is the intense teenager driven to dedicate himself to God and the Church, praying fervently for stigmata and communicating more with St. Francis than with the humans around him; he never slips even for a moment’s irresponsible teenage hi-jinks. El Abuelo Milton is the crusty, ornery, irascible but lovable grandfather who is almost blind in the day, and almost deaf; fiercely independent, filled with stories from the past and spouting worldly wisdom; never does he become, even for a moment, just a tired and scared old man.

Despite this, the characters come alive, and the reader shares the rollercoaster ride of events building to the climax.

But this novel is about so much more than this climax, or even the main plotline. The overwhelming feeling that one is left with after mulling over the book is that of the impotence of the characters: the observation of the ills all around - from within the community and without, from both sides of the border - and their inability to effect any lasting, meaningful change despite their best efforts. Powerless, yet not giving up.

The Map of Love

by Ahdaf Soueif

Another factor that can trigger reader aversion or fatigue is "foreign names" (think of all the complaints about the Russian patronymics), especially when there is an abundance of them. The death knell in terms of reader opinion to a book seems to be a combination of the two - an (over-) abundance of both foreign politics and foreign names.

The Map of Love happens to have both; it tells two stories, the first of a young widowed English gentlewoman who, at the dawn of the twentieth century on a trip to Egypt becomes enamoured of the country, the culture and its people; the other deals with modern relations of the earlier characters as the end of the twentieth century approaches.

The earlier story is set during the period of the British Protectorate over Egypt, and soon the political situation is seen from the perspective of the educated middle and upper class Egyptians, their aspirations and the British response to their efforts. The modern story, again told from the Egyptian perspective, considers the contemporary state of unrest in Egypt and the changes fundamentalism brought about, frequently ironically (though not overtly) contrasting the situation and its outcome to its former (perhaps naive) expectations. Interwoven is the effect of Western foreign policy on the region.

It is in this contrast, and the honest portrayal of searching people dealing with harsh realities that the strength of this novel lies; the political history Soueif presents is not difficult to follow and is imbued with a sense of urgency and intrigue that served to capture my attention. The portrayal of Egyptian culture is also engaging without descending into sentimentality.

Unfortunately the same can not be said of the love stories for which the above forms at times a backdrop before coming into prominence again. This part of the plot is decidedly sentimental and clicheéd, marring my enjoyment and appreciation of the book.

I find it decidedly ironical then to discover that most readers who disliked the book did so because there was "too much politics" in the book, and too many names and dates.

Today and Forever: Stories of China

by Pearl S. Buck

Today and Forever:
Stories of China
by Pearl S. Buck

Buck wrote this collection while in the US, basing them - she said - on stories brought to her by visitors from China.

While all the stories are engaging, the collection is fairly uneven; many, while being rollicking good fun, lack depth. A few however are rich and nuanced, especially some of those setting a dramatic tension between Western missionaries and Chinese society.

Buck demonstrates a deep empathy with the Chinese while never becoming patronizing. It is disappointing therefore when she demonizes another culture - the Japanese - lapsing in her manner due to the fact that they were the aggressors and invaders in the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945).

While the stories would have had a contemporary immediacy at the time, many of the situations come across as naive now, with hindsight; the collection was published in 1941, before the outcome of many of the situations she writes about becomes known. Particularly striking is the optimism around the Communist movement, expecting that to bring a better life to the peasant community.

Another noticeable aspect is the moral ambiguity or naiveté as one travels from story to story; in one, taking a human life is absolutely wrong, while in the next it is necessary or even glorified.

Nevertheless, this collection is well worth reading for those jewels in the basket, and even those less accomplished are readable, if dated.

That's a big reason why we are living here - along of course with a few others like family and a job...

After twenty winters in Fargo, ND and before that, seven variously in Montreal, Winnipeg and West Virginia, my precious one vowed he never wanted a snowy winter again. But I am not fond of heat, and so some places were eliminated off the possible-settling-down-spots list right away.

This seemed to be a pretty good compromise - no, that does not do it justice. This was a place where both of us could be generally happy about the climate. Until, that is, the freak storms arrive.

We had snow here last Wednesday, and again this Tuesday and a bit on Wednesday. Two inches this last time. Which prompted schools to close for 3 whole days! And threw everyone else into a tizzy. Snow is so scarce here the entire city only has seven snow plows. Which meant that few roads were plowed, many iced over, and the going was tough and treacherous.

The return of the more usual rain here today melted most of the remaining snow and ice, and schools were open for the first (and last) day this week There were still people late in to work because of "the weather" but in general things returned to some semblance of normality.

But for a little while still I will have a tough time explaining to mpo just why we choose to live here...

The blog has been dormant for quite a while - partly because I was not sure what I wanted to say.

And now the past couple of weeks it has been disappearing, and altering - a very disconcerting thing if anyone has been watching. I doubt that, though, given the dormancy.

Behind the scenes we've been scurrying trying to upgrade Movable Type and various plugins, among other things. I won't bore you with the details, beyond saying that this is the sixth installation (or maybe the seventh) on three different operating systems and two different machines.

I'm here now, though, and working slowly at getting everything fully functioning and back up again.
For those of you who are familiar with the other five blogs run from here - they will be back up again soon as well - or at least most of them will.

Until then, there might be a few more service interruptions - keep watching this space.

Monsoon Diary

by Shoba Narayan

Like many of the Desi diaspora, the biggest culture shock she experienced once she reached the US was in terms of food. Suddenly ingredients that were ubiquitous are difficult to impossible to find (not to mention ludicrously expensive) while the scarce Indian restaurants around tend to be geared toward Western palates, bearing little or no relation to the dishes for which one yearns.

Small wonder then that Shoba Narayan's memories are intricately interwoven with the flavors and fragrances of Indian food; each anecdote includes a meal, a treat or a festive occasion, and culminates in a recipe relevant to the piece.

I have tried a few and they are "housewife" recipes: they work and produce a reliable result. Of course, for some of the items we prefer our own recipes, but then again we are not Tamilians, and our own yearning is for subtly different spice combinations.

This is a news story that developed over the past few weeks. Let me know if you want links to the full story - here I am just relating the broad approximate outline.

One morning we woke to a rather unusual story: an Emergency Room nurse in her fifties arrived home late at night after her shift ended, when she was allegedly attacked by an alleged burglar surprised in her house (I don't know the legal requirements, so I will just liberally season the story with "allegations").

She then strangled the alleged intruder in alleged self-defense. Afterward she walked over to the neighbor's house to call the police.

So far so good - a rather surprising story, but one that we can just about process.

A few days later, we woke to the follow-up story. Police had arrested the nurse's estranged husband. The alleged burglar was employed by him at his place of business, and had allegedly been hired for some extra-curricular activity namely murdering the estranged wife, allegedly going so far as letting the alleged hitman into the house by disarming the alarms and opening the doors.

Next time I find the plot of a mystery or thriller a little far-fetched, I will have to remind myself of stories like this.