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still cooking

By anders pearson 08 Jan 2002

i’ve been pretty good so far. a few more trips to the grocery store and my kitchen is actually starting to fill up. my fridge actually has more in it than just a six-pack and butter.

<p>i&#8217;ve actually even been cooking stuff for dinner. on saturday i made Mapo tofu from a recipe on the back of a flavor packet that i bought at an asian food store. Mapo tofu was my favorite dish in china and, happily, the version i cooked myself was probably the closest to authentic that i&#8217;ve had yet in the US (except for the time that my friend Cho-nan cooked it for me); every time i order it in restaurants they refuse to make it as hot as they do in Sichuan.</p>

<p>the biggest problem with cooking i&#8217;ve found so far is figuring out what to make every night. i think most of the menu determination process is driven by the question &#8220;what do i have in my fridge that might go bad if i don&#8217;t eat it really soon?&#8221;.   so for the last two nights i&#8217;ve had sandwiches and salad because i have bread and lettuce that might not last too long.</p>

cookery

By anders pearson 03 Jan 2002

i got a bunch of cooking stuff for christmas: cookbooks, pots + pans, measuring devices, even a george foreman grill (i’m a vegetarian but i figure i can still grill vege’s on it; for that matter, i intend to grill anything i can damn well fit on it, whether it was intended to be grilled or not).

<p>so i&#8217;ve decided to try to just not resist the not-so-subtle hints from my family and try to get into cooking. my previous experience at cooking is pretty small; i had to help my mom occasionally growing up (my mom is a fabulous cook. the people in my office who are around when i open the occasional package of cookies from home can attest to this) and i had to get creative during periods where i was too poor to eat out (i know a thousand different things that you can make by combining in various permutations mac+cheese, ramen, eggs, tuna, rice, bread, and spices).</p>

<p>with that in mind i went grocery shopping today. since i have to carry everything i buy back to my apartment i only got a couple bags worth, but it was much different stuff than usual for me (beer, bread, mac+cheese, tuna, and cookies is a pretty typical shopping list for me). i felt really strange actually going into the produce section of the grocery store; a whole new world. anyway, this is what i got tonight:</p>
  • bread
  • flour
  • tortillas
  • lettuce
  • portabello mushrooms
  • garlic cloves
  • tofu
  • provolone cheese
  • soy mozzarella (i was curious if it would be any good)
  • beer (still one of the essential food groups)
  • parmesan
  • lentils
  • frozen peas
<p>probably a perfectly normal shopping list for anyone else but a whole new adventure for me.</p>

<p>of course it didn&#8217;t stop me from having mac+cheese with tuna for dinner when i got home (my cookbooks haven&#8217;t arrived yet)</p>

thanks, jere

By anders pearson 03 Jan 2002

once again, a fabulous new year’s party at jere’s.

<p>in attendance: jere (of course), ramon, myself, heather, matti, matt, nigel, teri, venice, kara, lani, jesse, erica, jeremy, and emile. </p>

<p>good food. good drink. good company.</p>

<p>so once again, thanks for having us, jere.</p>

<p>(and i expect people to post pictures this time)</p>

vacation

By anders pearson 03 Jan 2002

back in nyc after another fine vacation.

<p>saw my family in maine for christmas and got a lot of rest.  saw my friends in mass and got a lot of drunk. </p>

<p>now i have to clean my apartment (things got a little messy in the rush to pack and catch a train before i left), do some laundry and buy groceries.</p>

IA-1

By anders pearson 20 Dec 2001

got my IA-1 internet appliance in the mail today. it runs WinCE and shackles you to MSN by default but i intend to put linux on it instead and turn it into a nice little X terminal. even if i fail and end up breaking it, it should still be a fun project and at the very least, i’ve got a nice 10” 800×600 lcd screen that i can reuse for other projects.

<p>i&#8217;ve got an <a href="http://www.ideo.com/studies/ergo.htm">ergo audrey</a> too but since it can&#8217;t quite be hacked to run linux, i&#8217;m going to pass it along to my sister so she can email me more easily. i actually haven&#8217;t even taken the audrey out of the box yet. it&#8217;s been sitting on my living room floor for weeks waiting for me to remember to haul it to the post office.</p>

<p>the IA-1 isn&#8217;t quite as cute or slick as the audrey. the screen is bigger and the keyboard is nicer but it doesn&#8217;t have a touchscreen so you&#8217;re stuck with the cheesy little mouse thingy on the keyboard unless you get an extra <span class="caps">USB</span> mouse.</p>

what do you know, Deutschland?

By anders pearson 20 Dec 2001

so lani and i finally made it to berlin this past weekend. after a few minor mishaps, we even made it back.

<p>on friday we got off to a somewhat <a href="node.pl?nid=2814">late start</a>. happily though, the airline gave us dinner and a $140 credit each on future flights with them (this becomes important later in the story) as compensation for the 6 hour delay. at our stopover in milan, we noticed that it was a little chilly out. berlin was absolutely freezing. cold, rainy (well, rainy and snowy and freezing-rainy), and dark for most of the time we were there. most people would have been disappointed with the weather. i think i would have been disappointed if it hadn&#8217;t been miserable; the cold and wet atmosphere is closer to how i&#8217;d always imagined berlin.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.miromi.org/">mimi</a> met us at the airport and led us back to her apartment to drop off our stuff. the public transportation in berlin is wonderful. the trains are clean and fast and everything works on the honor system. that&#8217;s good since berlin covers a pretty large area so you have to travel a long way to get anywhere. mimi&#8217;s apartment is in a bohemian part of east berlin. having spent time in china, i felt right at home with the old, distinctly communist architecture. it&#8217;s apparently a &#8220;cool&#8221; place for young people to live now and a wide variety of ethnic restaurants, bars and clubs have sprung up along with makeshift squats in the abandoned buildings. </p>

<p>we went to a star trek themed bar down the street for some dinner and drinks with mimi&#8217;s friend whose name i&#8217;ve forgotten but who was a forestry phd student at the university of toronto and who was very nice. after some pizza and a couple pints of hefeweizen, we were ready to go out on the town. first we figured we&#8217;d get the tourist stuff out of the way and went to check out the Reichstag but discovered that we&#8217;d gotten there 5 minutes too late to go in. then we went to Potsdamer Platz and got our fill of fancy modern (or is that postmodern?) architecture. finally we went to a drum n bass club called &#8220;icon&#8221;. it seemed to have been built out of someone&#8217;s basement. very dungeon-like. the music was pretty good and they had a projector showing little video clips that had me fascinated for hours.</p>

<p>the next morning, because i had forgotten to fully work out the &#8220;lani is allergic to cats&#8221; + &#8220;mimi has cats in her apartment&#8221; equation, lani got up really early and went outside so she could breathe and take some pictures of graffiti. the city is pretty much covered in graffiti. very refreshing after living in new york which <em>should</em> have lots of it but has been helpfully &#8220;cleaned up&#8221; and sterilized by the boring people who are in power. when she got back, we went out some breakfast and then wandered the city some more. we went to the Pargamon museum and looked at old babylonian and roman temples, saw tons more cool graffiti and went to the Neue Synagogue, where security is apparently tight and i was more thoroughly metal-detected, frisked, and searched than i&#8217;ve ever been at any airport or government facility. </p>

<p>finally, we made it back to the Reichstag and, after waiting in line for a while, actually got to go inside. it&#8217;s very cool. they put a huge glass and metal dome over the hall where the government meets and people can go up in it and look down on their representatives. i figure they should have just gone the whole way and converted the government to &#8220;thunder dome&#8221; style. when a bill is introduced: two congressmen enter, one congressman leaves. pretty soon people would just start electing professional wrestlers [as lani points out: &#8220;oh wait, we&#8217;ve already started doing that&#8221;]</p>

<p>then off to a Biergarten for some real german cuisine (and more beer of course). i had some kind of mashed potato and egg concoction with a wonderful mustard sauce. tasty and filling. then tea and gl&uuml;hwein, a hot wine + rum + fruit + spices christmas drink that warms you up like nothing else. the swedish have a similar drink that uses large quantities of vodka instead of rum but is otherwise the same.</p>

<p>after dinner, we went to &#8212; tucker, are you paying attention? &#8212; a <a href="http://www.paules-metal-eck.de/">metal bar</a> for drinks. it totally rocked. demons, scary crucifixes and battle-axes on the wall. death metal on the stereo and a wide selection of tasty malted beverages. i was in heaven.</p>

<p>the next morning, we get up at 4am so we can catch our 6:55 flight out of Tegel. as the taxi was waiting downstairs, lani realized that her passport was missing. minor panic set in. we spend the next couple hours trying to get a photocopy of her passport faxed to mimi&#8217;s office.  eventually we realize there isn&#8217;t much we can do until the american embassy opens that afternoon so we go back to sleep (i&#8217;ve found that while some people get panicky and others very focused and efficient during stressful situations, my natural inclination is to go take a nap. if we still lived on the plains of africa, i&#8217;d probably have been eaten by a cheetah long ago).</p>

<p>we&#8217;re woken that afternoon by a call back from the airport. apparently lani had been lucky enough to have lost her passport on a plane or in the airport and it had been found and turned in to the police. so, while we&#8217;d missed our original flight, we at least would be able to get home after all. since mimi was at work, lani and i made the trek across the city by ourselves to pick up her passport at the airport. while we were wandering around figuring out the subways, i realized that i&#8217;d picked up a nice cold. </p>

<p>we went back to mimi&#8217;s place and basked in the heat of the coal stove for a while while lani fought with the airlines over getting our tickets fixed (we bought them on priceline for cheap so they weren&#8217;t really refundable or changeable) and ate bread and cheese with mimi&#8217;s roommates and my cold made me progressively less lucid. </p>

<p>up at 4am again the next morning to catch that day&#8217;s flight. we hadn&#8217;t had any success with getting our tickets changed but we decided we&#8217;d just go to the airport and try to look pitiful (suprisingly easy on about 2 hours of sleep and a bad cold) and hope they&#8217;d let us fly standby. our scheme more or less worked. they couldn&#8217;t change our tickets but those $140 vouchers we&#8217;d gotten perfectly covered the cost of new return tickets.</p>

<p>overall, i really liked berlin. the people weren&#8217;t very outgoing but they were definately friendly. despite having a bad reputation as being the dirtiest city in germany, berlin was cleaner than anywhere i&#8217;ve been in the US. i really want to go back sometime for longer. preferably in the summer, which everyone assured us is heavenly in berlin and preferably after i&#8217;ve learned a little more german so i don&#8217;t feel quite as helpless on my own.</p>

review: king crimson

By anders pearson 19 Dec 2001

last thursday, gordie and i went to a king crimson concert.

john paul jones (led zeppelin’s old bassist) opened for them. i’ve never been much of a zeppelin fan so i was less thrilled than most of the people there. he’s obviously a talented musician, just doesn’t really play a style that i’m very interested in. he stuck with a pretty unsurprising mix of rock and blues type songs, playing one of a half dozen or so instruments on each (guitar, bass, mandolin, pedal steel, etc). since crimson’s music is so much about pushing stylistic boundaries, i was surprised to see such a traditional rock act opening. the multiple led zeppelin covers in his set were pretty disappointing to me, but then, i’m not much of a fan anyway. i do have to give him credit for being the first person i’ve ever seen play a pedal steel guitar without it sounding even remotely like country music.

i’ve been a big king crimson fan for a while and in particular a robert fripp fan. so after patiently waiting through the opening act, i was elated when crimson finally took the stage. they’ve trimmed the band back down to just four people (fripp, belew, gunn, and mastelotto) from their previous “dualing power trios” lineup. they still sound absolutely huge though. they played mostly new stuff, including songs off their upcoming album, with “elephant talk” during the encore being the one concession to their older music.

it’s impossible to fully describe the music of king crimson. every member is a complete prodigy on their instrument. robert fripp does things on the guitar that no one else would ever dare to. trey gunn was phenomenal. the band as a whole sounds like nothing else on this earth. no one has ever even come close to copying them. their carefully written, planned out material sounds improvisational and their improvisational material sounds like it was carefully crafted and painstakingly fine-tuned ahead of time.

the only disappointment i had with KC’s part of the show was that Fripp, being the eccentric that he is, removed himself visually from the rest of the band. he spent the whole time off to the side next to his guitar equipment, completely out of the spotlight. you could tell he was there and could make out a dim outline of him but that was all. i have no idea, why.

return

By anders pearson 19 Dec 2001

lani and i got back from berlin yesterday. later than planned. i’ll explain later. got a cold while i was there.

<p>congestion + airplanes = trouble. my ears never quite finished decompressing from the last flight. i&#8217;m still partially deaf. just waiting for my head to clear up enough that the pressure can equalize. really weird.</p>

<p>after we got back, i went to a midnight showing of Lord of the Rings with a bunch of people from work. wonderful. might write about that later, in the meantime, <a href="http://writing.multo.com/lotr.htm">multo has a review</a>.</p>