This journal has about half of the posts friends locked to keep personal info more personal. Please comment if you're interested in being added (I fail at realizing people have added me unless they speak up ^^;) - all comments about being added are screened until I reply, which is usually pretty fast. I like meeting new people, feel free to drop a line! :D

Note to the (Western) internet denizens: Do not try to get into an argument with Chinese people over Mao Zedong. Not only will someone get compared to Hitler within 3 posts, negating the whole thing, you will never change the mind of the other side.

Oh, Pittsburgh. When one hears explosions and many screams from random homes in the neighborhood, we just shrug and say "Either the Steelers / Penguins [choose the correct team] just scored or they finally won." People here take their sports seriously.

Congrats, Pens, for another Stanley Cup. If only the Pirates could get their act together, we'd have a sports trifecta this year..

My 45-year-old, ultra-Republican, hunting and military obsessed cousin just got a Facebook, and he lists among his favorite TV shows Stargate: Atlantis. I.. am definitely thinking that he is not watching the same SGA that I'm watching. XD

Oof.. we got a new kitten today, something we've been planning on doing for awhile but circumstances lead us to the animal shelter after grocery shopping, and we already had a pet carrier with us so we took an adorable 6-month-old marmalade girl kitten home with us. Kali, as expected, has seen this as war and after a long morning of attention and love prior to the new kitten has now decided we all deserve her contempt for sullying her household.



New kitten (Ziggy) played for about 2 hours nonstop and is now passed out on the floor of the office where she and I are locked up. I hope Kali comes around to her, because she really is adorable and so loving, but Kali is number one in our hearts. Ah well, fingers crossed that in a few weeks they'll be tolerating each other, at least.

First trip to the Elite Eight! :D Awesome, Pitt! <3

Edit: rant about hotel billing redacted, the hotel manager emailed me to say he reversed the charges this morning. <3 If it's true, thank you, Marriott!

Lalala.. not much happening lately. On Saturday, we went to a giant belated St. Patrick's Day corned beef dinner with 17 other people at a friend's house, and I finally got to try the cocktail recipe that looked so amazing in the January issue of Bon Appetit: Maloney's Irish Creme. I totally recommend this to anyone who likes White Russians - this is like the next stage in cocktail evolution. I realize that it involves a stove and measuring spoons and whatnot, which may be taking things too far for some people, but I assure you that the result is worth it, AND that you can taste every single ingredient.

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Maloney's Irish Creme
(View it on their site)

Ingredients

* 1/4 cup raw sugar (also called turbinado or demerara sugar)
* 2 tablespoons water
* 1/2 cup Irish whiskey (such as Powers or Knappogue Castle), divided (I used Powers because it was cheaper)
* 4 tablespoons chilled heavy whipping cream, divided
* 1/2 teaspoon Ardbeg Scotch or other peaty smoky Scotch, divided (I used McClelland's Single Malt Islay Scotch Whiskey, because it was FAR cheaper)
* 1/4 teaspoon (generous) orange-flower water,** divided
* 2 cups ice cubes, divided


**A flavoring extract; available in the liquor aisle or baking section of some supermarkets and at liquor stores and Middle Eastern markets. - I found this as Orange Blossom Water at a Middle Eastern grocery, it was super cheap.

Preparation

1) Stir sugar and 2 tablespoons water in heavy small saucepan over medium heat until sugar dissolves and syrup comes to simmer. Cool. (If you're making these for more than 2 people at a time, double or even triple this part of the recipe - it is a giant pain in the ass to have to keep making syrup.)

2) Combine 2 tablespoons raw-sugar syrup, 1/4 cup whiskey, 2 tablespoons cream, 1/4 teaspoon Scotch, and 1/8 teaspoon (generous) orange-flower water in cocktail shaker; add 1 cup ice cubes and cover tightly. Shake drink vigorously at least 30 seconds to chill and aerate. Pour drink with ice cubes into 1 tumbler. Repeat with remaining ingredients to make second drink.

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In other news, Tim and I are headed to DC in 2 weeks for the Sakura Matsuri, Japan-America Society of Washington's part of the National Cherry Blossom Festival. We're going to be working at the food booths helping the vendors, as I am slated to run an Asian food and culture festival next spring and it was decided that it would be helpful for someone involved to have experience working with food vendors, so it's become a bizarre business trip. Although to make up for the loveliness of having hotel and transport paid for by work, I have to spend 5+ hours in a Kinko's making photocopies of other schools' government grant applications so that we can analyze what the competition has been up to for the past 4 years. If you live in the eastern US and you are looking to enjoy spring, there is a lot of great Japan-related stuff happening as part of the festival - MSNBC has a schedule of events. I'm excited - I've never been to see DC in spring before, and everyone tells me it's absolutely gorgeous!

My grandmother's dog, Willy, was put to sleep this afternoon. From 4:30 AM until early afternoon, he had over 25 seizures in a row, and it finally got to be too much for the both of them.

I just found the Internet Archive cache of my very first website I ever built (although I wish I could remember my old Geocities addresses that came around the same time), and it had a bunch of links to all the websites I loved in 1993-1994. One of them still exists - The Addventurers, a kind of choose-your-own-adventure site where every time you came to a dead end, you could add the next page and series of options to choose from.

I also used to waste a lot of time at Smalltime Industries, which I'm glad to see is still a functioning website. Guess the Evil Dictator/Sit-com Character, Find the Spam, the Anonymous Message Server.. this is my equivalent of Super Mario Brothers (since my family did not own any gaming systems other than a semi-functioning Intellivision and bizarre selection of occasionally working games and a Packard Bell with Progidy (with the awesome interactive version of the "The Secret Garden" with terrible 8-bit art) and later AOL, with its glorious goldmine of filesharing, when you could download mp2s and wavs of all the theme songs a child could imagine, and teeny-tiny videos magically ripped from VHS, and recruit random strangers to join your anime mailing lists via AIM.

/geek nostalgia

Since our apartment building has been nicknamed "Melrose Place" by friends (because in a 12-apartment building, 4 apartments' worth of us work together and/or are friends from before moving in), all of us plus a Turkish couple from the building across the street decided to have a soup swapping dinner tonight. It's a pretty fun and easy dinner party replacement - everyone makes a couple gallons of soup, brings it over someone's place, and it gets served in tiny courses with bread and finger foods and then you divide the leftovers so that everyone gets to take home a bunch of different soups. Everything was so delicious - Tim made a cheddar beer soup, Freya and JP made chili, Paco and Gloria made black bean soup, the Turkish couple (whose names I can't spell) made a lentil soup with vinegar, and Todd made pumpkin soup with scallops and hazelnuts. I'm so full I just want to roll over and go to bed..

..but alas, I canceled my Japanese class last week because I was too busy (read: also lazy) to finish all the translations, but that means I have to do a ton of translating for this week instead. ;_; I know that this is the only way to force myself to keep studying kanji, but I'm rapidly realizing that I don't care all that much about improving my language skills. I'm going to start taking Korean in the fall if possible, and maybe continue with the Chinese I started last spring, but my interests have shifted over to trying to build on my work skills, and frankly I'm better off trying to keep up with movies, TV, and books for that, since having a good knowledge of pop culture and educational resources is actually a lot more practical at this point..

Not sure if anyone here has heard of this film (there have been articles in the NY Times about it, and a lot of discussion on Boingboing.net due to copyright issues that it's faced) - Sita Sings the Blues. This is an absolutely gorgeous, funny, and creative animated film that tells the story of the Ramayana from Indian mythology mixed with scenes of the filmmaker herself, who moved to India when her husband got a job there - the filmmaker has distributed it with a CC license, so you can watch it in full online. It's about an hour and 20 minutes, and well worth watching!

Woo! 78 people showed up for my film screening today, and yesterday 23 kids and 27 adults came to the Korea program we ran at the public library. <3 It's always nice to see things succeed, especially when I've been so busy lately I haven't had time to do much promotion for the events.

I screened 3 films this past week for possible inclusion in a local film festival (Iri from South Korea, which I hated, Summer Book from Turkey which I thought was adorable, and Flower in the Window from Malaysia, which was all right). Today I got two more, The Way We Are from China (which I really wanted to see anyway) and some other Chinese film.. we'll see how things go.

My parents went to North Carolina this weekend to bring my sister all of her furniture, now that she's found an apartment, and they loved it. Looks like we might be headed down to visit her in Asheville in August for our vacation. Too bad she's really far from the Outer Banks, but at least it's somewhere I've never been that sounds fun and interesting!

Question for all of you: do you have favorite music/songs to exercise to? I've been trying to think of the songs I like to listen to the most while exercising (and find more good ones!), and so far I've come up with "Jump in the Line" by Harry Bellafonte (the "shake senora" song from Beetlejuice), "The Magic Position" by Patrick Wolf, "Inertiatic ESP" by The Mars Volta, "Sly" by The Cat Empire, and "Tunak Tunak Tun" by Daler Mendhi. (I really, really need more Bollywood/Indian pop music.)

Thinking about how far behind I am at work/in class is making me depressed. ><; I made a list of the 29 events happening at work between Thursday and the end of April, and so far 21 of them are my events, 6 of which are on weekends or nights, and of the other 8 I'm supposed to be at 4. orz

Working on Japanese translations now - an interview with Jason Reitman (sp?) about his directing the film Juno. He sticks to a lot of basic things about making the movie, which is nice as it means less unknown kanji to find, but I watched Juno last week and hated it, so I kind of wish I had found articles on some other films instead. ><;

This has been an Asian movie weekend. On Friday night, we watched State of Mind, a BBC documentary about two teenage gymnasts preparing for North Korea's Mass Games; Saturday night, we watched The Taste of Tea, a Japanese film that I can only summarize as being a love letter to life in the inaka and families learning to appreciate oddities in themselves and others; and today I hosted the first film of my Asian film series at a local private school, Chronicle of My Cultural Revolution.

I really hope the director of the last film (the novelist Xu Xing) gets himself set up with a distributor, as it's too good of a film to go unnoticed - he looks at the Chinese government's view that the Cultural Revolution was painful but it's over and everyone should forget about it and go on to make money and prosper by interviewing a number of people he's met who have had unforgetable (and sometimes horrifying) experiences. I was really happy that the audience really wanted to talk about what they saw in the film and learn about Chinese politics and history - too many people in the US only know the Cultural Revolution as a sentence or two in a history book if at all. About 70 people came to the screening, which made me very happy - it's always nice to see a payoff when you put a lot of planning into an event. <3

I only have 4 more events to go outside of work hours this month and then I'm done. XD; I can't believe what an idiot I am when it comes to scheduling these things - I need to learn how to say "it's a good idea, but let's do it later" at some point.

We went on our bimonthly trip to the Strip District (read: Pittsburgh's market district, full of ethnic, specialty, and mom-and-pop grocery stores and cafes) this morning to meet 10 friends for breakfast and grocery shopping.. and right next door to Cafe Raymond (home of amazing quiche, delicious pastries, lovely sandwiches, and giant cups of coffee) there is a chocolate store that I have never gone in before. Today, the spirit moved me and I entered to check it out.. oh god. They make sea salt caramels that taste like heaven, tiramisu sugar-crusted truffles, sell all kinds of chocolate from around the world, and with 2 bites of candy I have now entered a covenant that I can't break over sweets of all things, which normally I'm just as happy to ignore. Argh, and I was just so proud that I lost 5 lbs.



Speaking of the Strip, Tim made a discovery a few weeks ago for anyone who loves to cook - Penzey's Spices sells an herb mix called Mural of Flavor that instantly makes soups and meats taste 100% more delicious. I have been experimenting with adding it to all kinds of recipes and so far I have not been disappointed at all. He's also been using their Northwoods Seasoning (a rosemary-paprika blend) on steamed and roasted veggies lately, another fantastic combination. If you have a Penzey's near you, I can't recommend it more highly - I am determined that next time I have occasion to get an awesome gift for myself, it's going to be the Big Crate of Spices. <3 Their spices taste so good, you don't even realize what you're missing with normal supermarket spices until you've tried these.

The office next door to mine invited a bunch of us (50 people crammed in a tiny reception area) all in to watch the Inauguration on a big projector screen, and there was much cheering, hissing (when Rick Warren came on), dancing, and champagne and snacks. What awesome people. <3

Obama's flub in doing the oath was adorable (and his wife breaking out in a big grin as he screwed it up), and that John Williams song "Air/Simple Gifts" was gorgeous. I also caught on the NY Times home page when they were showing Obama in the Oval Office doing his first official act as president - they put the proclamation before him, and he stretched and then went to sign it, but paused and said "Yeah, I'm left handed. Get used to it!" before he signed. I wasn't one for Obama-mania, but it's a refreshing change to watch the president and go "Aww, he's so cute!" instead of wanting to bash his and Cheney's heads together. Obama also mentioned atheists in his speech - my god, is this the first time a politician in such a position has admitted that atheists are people too?

I'm making mabodofu for dinner from the fantastic recipe jokrack gave me (well.. a mabodofu/mabonasu combination, as I had a lot of Chinese eggplant left), but I forgot to start cooking the rice because I was watching the inaugural parade. I'm such a sap, any kind of parade with high emotion makes me cry like a little girl. Tim thought someone died when I was watching the Olympic parade of nations. ^^;; Those people who cry at telephone commercials? *hangs head in shame* That would be me. ("But.. but it's so wonderful that the runaway boy could call his parents! WAAAAAH!")

Let's hope this administration takes a good long while before it goes south, people.

Since I seem to be incapable of keeping up with Japanese study on my own, I started taking a private lesson class on reading last week, which looks like it will at least force me to up my kanji recognition by a fair amount. I'm reading articles from the monthly journal Kinema Junpo, so I'm getting lots of movie industry and interview vocabulary out of it, but this is proving that nonfiction essays are definitely the way to go for me right now. I don't know enough "real world" vocabulary, and I have a bad habit of reading things and letting my eyes skip over kanji I don't know, so this is forcing me to actually look up definitions and readings. <3

This week's article is an interview with Jack Nicholson about The Bucket List, so I'm enjoying the puzzle of figuring out translated movie titles. Apparently Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is called "Face Tomorrow and Shoot!" (明日に向って撃て!), Bonnie and Clyde became "We Have No Tomorrow", and As Good as It Gets is "Romance Novel Writer". Not quite as good as some other films' translated titles (Army of Darkness = "Captain Supermarket", Being John Malkovich = "Malkovich's Hole" (no snickering), etc.), but it's still fun trying to figure out what the change indicates.

I'm also happy because saiphgrl and I are going to see a bunch of musicals this summer on a 3-ticket plan that Pittsburgh CLO offers. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat comes out right at my birthday, and then Les Misérables is in July, and August is Into the Woods, except that since she'll be in Europe then, I just need to find someone who wants to see the final one with me. If anybody who'll be in Pittsburgh is interested, the ticket for only that show would be $42 for front orchestra seating on August 8th! I was pretty musical-ed out for a while, but I adore Joseph and although I've seen Les Mis before on Broadway, the music is so good.. and I've never seen Into the Woods but rkold has had good things to say about it, and summer is a lovely time to go cool down in a theater.

That godawful song has it right again.. Here we go, Steelers, here we go - Pittsburgh's goin' to the Superbowl!

..only the Department of Education, kind souls that they are, scheduled a conference in DC starting the same day to do technical training and hints on reporting for our grant. Here's hoping that my office will get their act together and get us to the hotel before the game starts..

Edit to add:

Man, this is practically the greatest plane crash story ever. 154 unbelievably lucky people and 1 amazing pilot.