This Time, Years Ago

This time, one year ago, I was biking through Golden Gate Park at 2am, when everything is still. I'm riding home from Karyn's place. My heart aches a little, and I'm smiling on the inside. The lighting from the street lamps makes everything look flat, almost black and white. The air is cool and I feel prickly as I start to sweat. I stand on my cranks and pedal hard to get a running start at the last bit of hill. I have to wake up at 7am for work tomorrow.

This time, two years ago, I was eating a pile of breaded, deep-fried something with a scoop of mac salad on the side. The diversity of Honolulu makes me feel at ease. I like that people wear Hawaiian shirts without any irony. After having malasadas for breakfast, I feel a bit disgusted with myself.

This time, three years ago, I was having tea. The teahouse is tucked into the mountains above Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies. Everybody's a tourist and the squirrels sneak off with bits of scone when no one is looking.

This time, four years ago, I was looking at the stars. I'm shivering in the cold at 12,000 feet, but that doesn't matter because I can see the Milky Way. Everywhere it is dark except for the light of distant stars. Laying down on my bed of granite, I feel like I am made of stone. My legs are stiff from hiking, and I'm too excited/uncomfortable to fall asleep. I will wake up at dawn tomorrow and hike to the top of Mount Whitney.

Day One

(Interior, afternoon, a windowless high school classroom)
Me: What day is today?
Mister Shimmon: Today's the first day of the rest of your life!

So yesterday I turned twenty. Not quite a monumental occasion in our culture, but it's still a nice, round number. Aesthetics aside, I spent the day quietly, picnicking with the family (my parents, my sisters, and their longterm boyfriends) out at the Berkeley Marina. These are my sisters:

From doctorpon

Hats! Yes, hats are all the rage! If my sisters look a little bit dour, it's because one of them is eating a chocolate (or a chocolate-covered coconut macadamia nut) and the other has something in her teeth. So they tell me. Can you correctly identify which sister belongs to which excuse? For the sake of anonymity, let's refer to them as Sister 2 and Sister 1, going from left to right.

Anyway, it's been some time since I've had "family time," and I'd forgotten how many worlds apart it is from all other social interaction I've gotten used to. I can't believe that that's the social universe I used to live in; it definitely reminds me of all the reasons why I was no good at navigating that social landscape, which as I recall, quite strikingly resembled the surface of Mars.

Sister 2: Happy birthday David!
Longterm boyfriend 2: Happy birthday!
(I extend my hand towards LTBF 2, Sister 2 accepts it, shaking my hand)
LTBF 2: I think that one was for me.
Sister 2: Oh.
(Sister 2 and I quickly hug)

...later...

Mom: I brought bottles of San Francisco tap water for everyone! Here Sister 1, you can use this one. (Mom indicates a Nalgene bottle with a Hello Kitty! sticker on it)
Sister 1: Oh, I brought my own bottle of water. (Sister 1 indicates her aluminum Sigg water bottle)
Mom: Well then LTBF 1 can have this bottle then.
Sister 1: We can share my bottle of water.
Mom: No, no, he can have his own bottle of water, you don't have to share.
Sister 1: No, we can just share.
Mom: Are you sure?
Sister 1: Yes.
Me: I think she's trying to say that she would prefer that they share her bottle of water.
Mom: Okay then.

...later still...

Sister 2: So did I tell you that LTBF 2 and I almost died during our vacation in Oahu?
Mom: Oh my God... (look of unmitigated horror)
Sister 2: We were using the Inside Guide to Oahu and it had this hike "for locals only."
Me: (snicker)
Sister 2: Anyway, for the first part, we basically had to hack through the jungle
Mom: oh my God...
LTBF 2: A machete would have been useful.
Mom: oh my God...
Sister 2: There was 2,500 feet of climb in the first two miles
Me: (snicker)
Mom: oh my God...
Sister 2: Anyway, we get to this jackknife ridge, since the guidebook says to follow the ridge...
Mom: oh my God...
Sister 2: And there's this drop-off on either side of probably a thousand feet
Mom: Oh my God!
Me: Sweet.
Sister 2: You probably would have enjoyed it though, we were right in the clouds. I guess that guidebook had a disclaimer for a reason.

Every family looks bizarre from the outside. They all operate on their own internal logic. Too bad I still have absolutely no clue what the hell is going on.

Post-script: By popular demand, here is a digitally-enhanced photograph of beets. If you haven't had the pleasure of eating beets, they make everything turn red. Everything.

From doctorpon

Crispbread

There's almost nothing I enjoy more than a good crispbread.

There are a multitude of factors that contribute to the ideal crispbread experience:
1) Brand -- I've tried only a handful of brands, but I must say that I'm a loyal consumer of Wasa Light Rye. If the mood strikes me, Ak Mak will do as well.
2) Topping -- Arguably more important than the crispbread itself is what goes on top. One of the wonderful things about crispbreads is that the delicious serving suggestion picture on the box is often very much obtainable in reality. Reach for the stars! Buy smoked salmon and alfalfa sprouts and hothouse tomatoes and avacados! Stack them on your crispbread with wild abandon! Feel like you're a rich person who's socializing with other rich people by eating rich-people foods at a rich-people social event. Or, if the mood strikes you, a can of sardines will do just fine.
3) Ambience -- Arguably more important than both the crispbread and its toppings is where you are. Because let's be honest here, you know that crispbread tastes like cardboard and that you can only afford a can of bottomshelf sardines for a dollar. What's much more important than any of those things is the environment you're in and the company you're with. A golden, summer day at the beach or crisp, mountaintop air in the Sierras are probably going to be the greatest factors contributing to your overall enjoyment of a crispbread. And always remember to share the joy! Bring a bestfriend, or two, or three!

I think I can vaguely recollect a time when eating tasteless, fiber-rich crispbreads was a chore, something like eating pipe cleaners and foam packaging peanuts rolled into a single package. My friend Gus introduced them to me on a backpacking trip. I was unimpressed. Since then, I've come to associate the eating of crispbreads with some of my fondest outdoor/travel memories. It's a beautiful thing when something that seems bland and unappealing to so many people can bring me instantaneous joy.

Davis, CA

I spent the last two nights in Davis at Ramon's place. It was a nice way to end the year. I rode the train up, and the pacing of train travel helped calm me down after what has been a somewhat hectic academic year, a year that left me practically carving tally marks into my bedroom wall (instead, I wrote blog posts).

Anyway, it just so happened that I showed up in Davis the same day as the Tour of California. Pictured above is Lance Armstrong (!).

After the start of the Davis stage of the tour, Ramon and I ate at Fuji's, an all-you-can-eat sushi boat restaurant. The lunch special cost twelve bucks each and the Asian inside of me made it a personal vendetta to get my money's worth, even at the price of physical discomfort (because what feels better than a good deal?). Pictured above are our stacks of dishes. Mine is the one on the right (!). Ramon is thinly suppressing a look of utter pain. We were getting looks from the other patrons sitting at the counter every time I tried to entice Ramon into eating "just one more" plate of sushi.

(The sushi boat rounds the corner. The tail of a tempura shrimp sticks out from the end of a small roll of sushi, topped with roe and what appears to be coleslaw.)
Both: Oh my God...
Me: Do you believe in love at first sight? Because I do. (Grabs the plate from the sushi boat.)
Ramon: I don't know, you can have this one...
Me: No man, we saw it at the same time.
Ramon: [Sigh.] (Picks up a piece with his chopsticks and barely fits it into his mouth.)
Me: Yeah? Is it good?
(Ramon looks queasy.)
Me: Keep chewing, hang in there. You're more than halfway; you only need to eat six more plates.
Ramon: (With a mouthful of food.) No!
Me: Dude, it'll be easy. Watch this. (Shoves the endpiece into his mouth. The tail of the tempura shrimp barely makes it in.)
Me: (With a mouthful of food.) Holy crap this is decadent. This is why the terrorists hate us.
Ramon: I can't do this.
Me: That's defeatist bullshit, man. (Gesturing with chopsticks.) Now get in there and eat some sushi.

All told, we made pretty good account of ourselves. Between the two of us, we ate twenty plates of sushi, two dishes of fried red bean balls, two dishes of cake, and a dish of oranges.

The bike ride back to Ramon's house was not a pleasant one.

Day 121

Here's the dichotomy between my roommate and myself expressed in its most naked form: he eats slightly green bananas with creamy peanut butter, I eat freckled bananas with chunky peanut butter.

April 2010 in Food
Groceries: $288.76
Restaurants: $20.59
Pounds of split peas: 2
Eggplants: 3
Pounds of bread: 6
Burritos: 1
Kiwi: 7
Boxes of cereal: 4
Tofu steaks: 4
Chocolate chip cookies: 20
Free meals: 3
Quarts of yogurt: 4
Half gallons of soymilk: 5
Portabellas: 3
Avocados: 10
Pounds of dried fruit: 5
Cabbages: 3

Day 106

As of late, I've been rather negligent in the upkeep of my body. I never imagined that it might be a drag to keep myself adequately fed, bathed, and clothed. I suppose it's a sign that there isn't a lot tying me down in the world when my mortal human body is the most valuable worldly possession I have to worry about. And even then I can't take care of it.

Anyway, there was a point when it got so bad, when my standards had slipped so far, that I couldn't keep to my schedule of alternate showering days. I remember going running in the rain a few weeks ago, and ultimately deciding not to shower. I mean, why waste resources when perfectly good water falls out of the sky? That sounds like a blessing from the gods if ever I saw one. Not only that, but I had to apply the sniff test every morning to not just my socks but every article of clothing I put on, and I started to eat cans of corn as meals in their own right.

Well, before the pellagra could set in, I finally got around to food shopping today after class. I loaded up the bicycle with my cargo buckets and headed on out to Trader Joe's in Oakland. Walking amongst the aisles of vacuum-sealed goat cheeses and individual heads of cauliflower in plastic wrap I suddenly realized that I was out of place. I think I've backslid on the socioeconomic scale, because honestly, that place just felt way too bourgie (excuse my French) for me. Well, at least now I have something to aspire to, a day when I can afford $4 wine.

Waiting in the checkout line (I got caught in the 5 o'clock rush), I got a real kick out of pretending to be a CIA spook by looking at everyone else's shopping carts and making inferences about their lives. For some reason or the other, I was having a conversation today and the topic of job interviews came up. I mentioned that I heard somewhere that this one interview for some CIA position involved looking at the contents of a refrigerator for a set amount of time, and then extrapolating as much information as possible (what does the brand, positioning, and relative depletion of the pickle jar say about its owner? age? gender? income?).

I went for the low-hanging fruit. Here are some of my field observations of people and the contents of their shopping carts:

• Hipster college girls - two buck chuck, bottom shelf liquor, fruit juice, salad mix. More calories in liquid than solid form. Conclusion: It's Friday! Whoo! And we're watching our weight, too.
• Berkeley family; both parents, two children - about 6 boxes of different types of breakfast cereals, a pile of fruit leathers, other family-friendly foodstuffs. Conclusion: Someone's watching a whole crapload of cartoons tomorrow morning and eating a whole lotta Peanut Butter Panda Puffs too.
• Single Asian woman, mid-twenties - frozen pizza, other frozen/instant foods. Blackberry strapped to her waist. Wearing a tucked-in expedition shirt from REI and big, black leather boots. Conclusion: Really busy executive/mountaineer? An alpine lawyer?
• Me - Tub of plain yogurt, various canned beans (kidney, garbanzo, black, cuban), tortillas, organic unsweetened soymilk, goat gouda, almonds. Conclusion: Hippie with his parents' credit card.

Dinner last night. I felt healthier from just looking at my bowl of lentils, cabbage, and yam.

Day 102

I'm not a vegetarian by any stretch of the imagination; I'm definitely someone who sees the coagulated sausage grease in the frying pan as an opportunity to enhance my tofu-eggplant stirfry. But I've cut back my meat consumption considerably in the past week. A lot of it has to do with how I shop. Ironically, the bell peppers at Berkeley Bowl (my local purveyor of self-righteous fodder) are more expensive than the chicken at Safeway on a per-pound basis. On a per-calorie basis, veggies are definitely more expensive. It sounds a bit absurd, but I need to find a source of fat in my diet.

Anyway, here's a quick rundown of the relative pros/cons of reduced meat consumption that I've experienced.

Pros:

• sustainability
• freshness
• all the entertaining people at Berkeley Bowl
• the taste of self-righteousness
• greater appreciation for meat when I do have it
• bowel movements that could win the Indie 500

Cons:

• constant hunger
• more frequent shopping

As far as cons go, I think the two that I've listed are interlinked. I just haven't gotten a feel yet for the sheer volume of food that I have to consume. As such, I can make a pile of cucumbers and tomatoes disappear for a midnight snack and still feel oddly unsatiated. I think I'm still adjusting to what foods I need to buy in place of meats. I'm burning through bags of bulk dried fruit with alarming rapidity. I probably should have gotten more nuts. Aw nuts!

I have to admit though, that the spicy tofu-eggplant that I whipped up for lunch today was pretty bitchin'. I put in cilantro and lime juice, which were nice touches, though it was the diced jalapeno that really made the dish. It brought so many delicious tears of pain to my eyes. Definitely something I'll try to recreate in the days to come.

Day 99

Potlucks are a metadish of sorts. They can't succeed without good ingredients: good friends and good food. Tonight I went to two potlucks. Potluck one: fistfuls of bread and eco-hipsters. Potluck two: homemade pizzas, three styles of eggplant, salad with four kinds of bell peppers, and people for whom environmentalism is more than a fashion accessory.

Success rate: 50%

Day 51

There are some things about my job that make it really special.

I work in Tilden Park in Berkeley, and it's Today I was working with these kids that come in on a weekly basis for the Junior Ranger program (ages 9 to 13). They were having a meeting in their clubhouse, which is the park's old, original visitor center. It has the feeling of a ski lodge, with a cast iron stove for warmth at one end of the small, rectangular room. Chris and Colin sat next to each other in their small wooden folding chairs. Colin opened a tupperware full of saltine crackers and offered one to Chris.

Day 47

Day 35

Just got back from the Forestry Club Bean Feed, that most sacred of monthly rituals. The high priestesses and priests of Forestry descend from on high, bearing pots of chili and bottles of honeydew, that the peasantry might rejoice in the passage of another month, and herald the beginning of another. The hot beans and a cold brew were a welcome change from the nightly marathon homework sessions.

Last night I made my way through the first hundred pages of John Steinbeck's East of Eden, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I like the wandering passages that aren't in a hurry to go anywhere in particular.

Day 31

It's time for the spring thaw. The image of a browning holiday wreath in the trash is somewhat of a contrived, though convenient metaphor.


My army of terra cotta beer bottles. They will accompany me into the afterlife. I just filled and capped all of them, and they should be ready in time for my birthday/Kyle's birthday/end of school/moving out of my apartment bash. Maybe I should refer to my birthday as my brisday. That is a much more vivid image, though a birth is pretty gory too, when you think about it. I don't really know why my parents opted for the extra incision. I guess the people at the hospital figured that if they already snipped the umbilical cord, they might as well lop off the foreskin while they were at it. Maybe they did it at no additional charge as some sort of promotional deal: "Free circumcision with every birth." I guess if that's the case, I can't really blame them, my parents. I mean, who wouldn't take a deal like that?

Old man Salinger is dead now. He died just the other day. Just in case you were too much of a moron to know.


Tonight is curry night! Yang makes a mean curry.

Day 30

• It's not dumpster diving if it's your own trash, food items included.
• It's not breaking the speed limit (or any other traffic law) if you're riding a bicycle.
• Of my eight co-workers, I'd say two qualify as stranded-on-a-desert-island material, on the basis of survival and conversational skills.
• I'm not Filipino, though it might be fun to pretend to be.
• The self-aware haunted house is kitsch performance art in its highest form.
• Never try to capture a heathen's likeness inside the confines of your devil box; no good can come of any such thing.
• The 50% Off shelf at Safeway is a friend to be trusted.

Day 4 (Non-Sequential)

Pork waiting to be unloaded at Sunset Super, Vicente and Sunset Boulevard, San Francisco.

RECOGNIZING the suffering of domesticated animals bred for human consumption; FURTHER RECOGNIZING the energy inefficiency of fossil fuel-dependent, and therefore unsustainable, farming practices; ADDITIONALLY RECOGNIZING the tenfold loss of food calories during the conversion of feed into meat; BE IT RESOLVED that David consume less meat.

Today's Expenditure: ~$20
Currently Reading: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Miles Ran: 0

Clear, sunny day. Ran with Yang in the morning to the Claremont Hotel. Went food shopping. Bulk oats at $0.99/lb; whole chicken at $0.77/lb; string beans at $2.49/lb; tofu for $1.50 per package. Also purchased 3 oz. of cinnamon sticks for $14. I plan on spicing up my apple cider.