I bought Raymond Carver's "Where I'm Calling From" today, on the recommendation of a friend who is known in my life as the literary guru (JAK). I read a few stories, nice ones, ones about the fallcies of the so called "fairy tale" lives that people hope to live. I found it refreshingly honest, wonderful really in the way the characters in each story eke out their places in the world, their ficticious world which so closely mirrors ours.

The boy and I had a revelation too, today, that the famous "fairy tale" doesn't exist in relationships. I think the each of us probably knew it too but talking about it today made everything seem so alright and just worked to confirm what we already might have suspected about ourselves. On top of that, it's nice to come to a mutual agreement that there is no longer any need for nagging insecurities. Nothing to conclude but we love each other and that we're as perfect as perfect realistically gets. It almost sounds like we're settling into middle age; it's hilarious.

The humidity in NYC today was pretty ugly so by the time I got to P&W Sandwich with Jenny I was sweaty and disgusting. It was after lunch that we went off to Labyrinth and incidentally, I ended up buying the Carver book. What struck me, though, is that entire store is a meagre slice of the books that I want to have read by the time this lifetime is through and I haven't been making very good progress. I haven't read Zadie Smith's "White Teeth" nor Roy's "The God of Small Things" and I'm hardly scratching the surface of the authors I even do claim to like and attempt to follow. Didion is one of them, and I've made almost no progress since reading "Slouching Towards Bethlehem." She is due to come out with a new book soon, Jenny tells me, and now with her husband and daughter both dead (prematurely, really), she is alone in the world and will undoubtedly have something to say about death and dying. I have been trying to narrow down lately what it is I like about the books I like, and I've come up with a few interesting themes. I think to a degree anything that puts human relationships, emotions and dilemmas in terms I consider lucid and poignant tend to be the favorite, though anything with an astute observation I generally appreciate.

Now I leave to read. My apartment is set up and allllmooost clean. Pictures when it is clean.

I'm now officially moved into my apartment in the city and it's lovely, though still a bit of a mess. I have more or less everything I need for an apartment except...(yes, this is going to sound ridiculous) chairs. I have no chairs. I have bookcases and desks and even a futon, but I don't have a chair to sit at either my mini dining table nor my work table. In light of this, I went out today and got a couple of leather folding chairs from DWR. They weren't too badly priced (though I wouldnt' exactly peg them at a steal, either) and they're comfortable - sufficiently so to eat dinner and to lounge around with friends in. I was also wondering whether I should buy another task chair for my desk considering these folding chairs have no arms and aren't as cushy as I'd like a desk chair to be. I'll see, though, in light of this ever-present state of poverty-due-to-rent-check, I will have to consider and pare down what I buy for this place. That I will be living here for the next couple of years is somewhat reassuring, though.

I'm absolutely exhausted from both moving in and moving things around and up stairs all weekend long so now I'm just lying lazily in front of the computer. When I'm up to it I'm going to hook my speakers up so that I can get some good music playing (or maybe just Law and Order at extremely high volume).

I miss my friends and with Ganges and Flake going off to Paris this year, it's going to be a bit suckier for sure...but then again, it also means I get to spend time with other people whom I almost never get to spend time with and I suppose that's a silver lining. For now, though, I'm going to unpack the rest of these damn boxes...

Pictures to come, once everything is sorta set up.

And a late addition: FUCKER i left my Kundera collection and most of my Steinbeck at home....fuck.

And if the darkness is to keep us apart
And if the daylight feels like it's
A long way off
And if your glass heart should crack
And for a second you turn back
Oh no, be strong
Walk on, Walk on.
...
What you got they can't steal it
No they can't even dream it
Walk on, walk on...
stay safe tonight
And I know it aches
And your heart it breaks
You can only take so much...
Walk on...

-'Walk On' U2

From one of my favorite songs at one point in time. I used to run to this song, long lonely hours on the treadmill at Bally Total Fitness. A friend of mine and I were obsessed with this CD (U2's "All You Can't Leave Behind) which did more than anything else to fend off private demons the both of us had. We even wrote up a contract where the two of us would stay relatively "sober" of our vices despite the irresistable, heartwrenching, damaging pulls of them at times. Songs remind you of phases of life, and this one always reminds me of then, when I was clawing myself into a mess I'd gotten into trying to make sense of what had happened and what it was all for. Maybe one day, I'll know.

"...You've got to leave it behind...you've got to leave it behind."

In memory of those runs, I'm registering for the NYC Ford Triathlon this coming July. This time, I'll be running to something instead, I guess, of away from it

I begin this post on an awfully interesting note: I have enemies who don't know me! This is along a similar vein to the rumors surrounding me (also passed around by people who don't know me at all), though these rumors, I supoose, could be construed as "positive" ones.

I think it's a bit flattering to have enemies who don't know you. I clearly have a slight "larger than life" persona that has garnered blame for something that...truthfully speaking was never to be blamed on me. But the perception that I was the sole one in power at the time to do something so "terrible" is amazing, because it's flatly untrue. The positive rumors also entail a fairly incredible story (or two) which is nice - funny, but nice.

My grandfather wrote before his death that if you had no enemies upon your death that you weren't even important enough to be hated. Word.

Cheeeeeeeesecake

Cheesecake is actually technically a baked custard, owing to its ingredients. I will not go into the ingredients here, nor will I justify myself. You can order Alton Brown's cheesecake episode from foodtv.com and he will explain to you why it is considered a baked custard. I will assume you are familiar with the cheesecake and its variations from this point forward.

I love cheesecake. It's my favorite dessert by far. It can be dense and short with a thick crust or light and fluffy and piled high with a thin one. There are two officially recognized types of cheesecakes, a "New York Style" cheesecake and a "French Style" cheesecake. Contrary to popular opinion, "New York Style" cheesecake does not refer to a flavor, though it is commonly used to imply a plain or vanilla flavored unadorned cheesecake.

The New York Style cheesecake is dense and can sometimes be a solid, unbaked block of cream cheese mixed with sugar. (The no-bake cheesecake, however, is not recommended for consumption. They suck.) More commonly, the quality baked version of New York cheesecake is simply a dense, flavor infused block of "cheesecake" crusted on the bottom and sides by a layer of graham cracker. The French Style cheesecake is quite the opposite in consistency to the New York cheesecake. It is light and fluffy with an almost mousse like body and texture. It is generally flavored with a layer of jam sandwiched between its "cheesecake body" and is crusted only on the bottom by a graham cracker crust.

Personally, I am a fan of New York cheesecake, plain flavored. There are exceptions though, like the mango cheesecake I had in Hull, Quebec at Le Tartuffe *before* it had become overrun with tourists who had read about it in the paper. Right now the most reliable cheesecake comes from Peter Luger's in Brooklyn, which serves an enormous slice of heaven in classic New York style which always begs to be ordered whenever possible. But back to the exceptions. Most recently, these exceptions have come from Fortnum and Mason in London. They serve French style cheesecake (obviously) and in these adorable little gold-colored shells all neatly wrapped in a plastic rim which keeps their uncrusted sides from getting squashed in transit. I have had two of these mini cakes (well, one and a half...one was shared with the boy) and they are presented here in technicolor:



And what more can I say about them? They were delicious. They were so good, it seemed as if F&M whipped cream into their cream cheese (more than usual, anyway, and note the extra thick graham crusts. They must have been a liberal sprinkling of crack to get both of them that good. The euphoria post-consumption was absolutely real. I could go on about them. But I won't.

What started as innocent curiosity has now spiralled out of control. For some reason, I caught myself taking pictures of enormous legs of pata negra ham at Gallerie Lafayette and drooling over the prospect of potentially having more at some unknown date in the future. I now know the prices of pata negra in 3 different countries: England, France, and Hong Kong - and I think that qualifies this state of being, officially, as a semi-obsession with Iberian ham. The average "leg" of Iberian ham, after sneaking a look at the official grocer's information tag (which is not supposed to be shared with the public) is 8 kilos, making the retail value of each leg well over 1500USD in every country surveyed:

England: lowest price seen = 125 pounds sterling/kilo
France: lowest price seen = 210 euros/kilo
Hong Kong: lowest price seen (only one known) = 1500HKD/kilo

I post some pictures of the "room of legs" at the Lafayette food hall:















And I continue, with one final, glorious picture of an entire leg, up close (because, American friends, this is the closest you're going to get to some for a while if you choose to stay in America. There is one plant, however, that has been recently build which IS up to FDA snuff but it will be a few years before it will have exportable stock. So drool on for now).











I will post again shortly. On Cheesecake. And other musings

Dear diary,

I am now running around in a foreign city dominated by the a language that I don't speak but where croissants are actually made with real give-you-a-heart-attack butter. PS the pata negra ham I was raving about earlier positively engulfs the meat section of the gourmet food area of La Gallerie Lafayette. wouldn't you just love some? Pictures of the bounty to come, I promise. Also, they demoted the Mona Lisa to now sharing a room and they put her behind dark tinted glass. F&M tea is triple the price here and sold in a fancy shoppe called Olde England. Go figure. I am poor. Please send money.

Love,
Your Secret Admiree.

So the boy has left London now and i am a little bit alone for the time being. I could fill this entry with talk of our travels to Cambridge and Oxford and other things but it would seem like useless drivel and I don't particularly need to say anything of it now. We had a great time at Oxford with Scott, a tutor of Classics and it was nice seeing the city and the various colleges. We have also been to Harrod's for the past four days (yes, in a row) and it's still pretty exciting. Everything here is hideously expensive, without a doubt. It is akin to taking everything in New York price wise and replacing the dollar sign with a pound sign. I'm fairly ready to leave London now and I'm headed to Paris tomorrow, even if only for a few days, just to see what there is to see, stuff myself with fatty croissants (one of my primary reasons for living) and to soak up the typical tourist sights. I will find a way to munch on confit canard and if possible I will have pictures of me taken in various places, though I won't count too much on it (I'm travelling alone). I feel like a 70 year old woman though...today I bought a Longchamp tote bag to help cart away the few things that i bought while here and in Dubai. I also have to mail off my uncle's present before I leave, but i can't get motivated enough to move. I also feel an inclination to skip dinner today on account of my body being hideously full from Lunch, still. I may go to Wagamama's and get another noodle dish. It would do me well to walk outside again today.

And crap, I need to be spending less money. I have been thinking about the things that I need for my apartment and they include quite a few things that are reasonably expensive like a bed, a futon, some furniture, etc. I also need to buy books for this semester and pay for incidentals like...food. I'm so much happier that I get to cook for myself this year, which is better for my mental health and physical wellbeing at the end of the day. I don't need to rely on HamDel's eggplant mozzarella sandwich to get me by anymore, and with the stash of interesting foodstuffs that I will bring back from europe from this trip, I'm super super excited to be cooking myself.

I think I've been pretty reasonable this summer with buying things, having really only acquired my new cellphone and the carpet in Persia, as well as small random things here and there which don't cost a lot of money but take up a considerable amount of space. I have a pound and an ounce of my favorite English Breakfast, for example, which just takes up a ton of space but wasn't a considerable financial burden. On the whole as long as I don't buy my the Apple ibook I've been lusting after, this summer won't have been too hideously expensive...This coming schoolyear, however, is another matter entirely.

So I interrupt my voyages in London to bring you, reader, this posting of great importance. Today, Ted and I tried the famous "pata negra" Spanish Ham. For those of you in North America and who read the Times' Dining & Wine section, this is THE famous ham that cannot be imported to anywhere in North America due to the lack of processing plants in Spain which are up to FDA snuff.

So boy and I traipsed off to Fortnum and Mason today for tea and after eating buckets of clotted cream, scones, smoked salmon and "mousse" sandwiches, we continued our food shopping extravaganza of the previous day. We picked up the F&M strawberry Preserve, a can of the blackcurrant tea(!), a box of assam and some cheesecake, to complement the spoils of the previous day, which included a hoarding of English Breakfast, various fruit teas and other goodies. It was all I could do not to buy cans and cans of duck confit (a decidedly expensive habit that I would not be able to shake once I got to New York). It was passing the deli counter that I saw the ham. We bought a hundred grams of it for the hideous price of 13 pounds (about three times as expensive as Prosciutto San Daniel and Prosciutto Di Parma) and *only* twenty times less expensive than Beluga Caviar. We then ran off to McDonalds to open our spoils and eat. And oh lord, eat we did. We bought the "grand reserve" ham, figuring that "grand reserve" meant it was probably worth the extra cost.

The first bite was not fabulous. It is a rather fatty type of ham, with a thick crust of just plain lard coating the outside. The meat is decidedly much more intense and much darker than Prosciutto. It was not an earth shattering experience until we neared the end of the 100 grams. It was there we realized it was a bit like eating Prosciutto with a slice of truffle. It had the rich, truffly undertones which was overscored by the intense ham flavor (I can't describe it any other way. If you could somehow intensify the taste of top grade prosciutto by two to three times I suppose that's close enough). It was good. The aftertaste lingered a long time without being rancid and it was much stronger than the coke we'd bought from McD's to wash it all down. And it was expensive. But worth it because now I can die happier. It was wonderful, and I will be sure to get my greedy meathooks on it whenever possible.

I'm tired. Really really tired. I guess owing to the fact that I got about three hours of sleep last night and was up and running at 5:20am for another photoshoot more or less has worn me out. The Starbucks I slurped down two hours ago is wearing off now and I'm here, heavy lidded trying to write a media kit for my business.

I leave Dubai tomorrow morning (or rather, in exactly 12 hours I have to be at DXB airport), and admittedly I'm sad to go. It will be a while before I see my uncle again, a hilarious guy who shares shocking similarities with me. We've been spending the last few nights talking, really just talking about life directions and our own five year plans. He empathizes with my distaste for school lasting another six years, though he's "wise" enough perhaps to insist that I just get it over with and also insist I finish it. I am offering him as much insight as I can toward the attainment of his life's goal, which is retirement, and which he'd hoped happened a year earlier. I suppose, though, he's capable of retiring now, but he's chosen to stay in the grind for another three years, and he still harbors a fundamental disappointment for not having retired earlier. We both came to the consensus, though, that we should be living life on our own terms, both in his work and my own life. He's sixteen years older than I am but it really doesn't seem like it and I suppose it never has. We've had good conversations in the past few days about how to make both of our lives more bearable for the time being, the both of us waiting for the big day we get to throw off all shrouds of responsibility (well, within reason) and just do stupid things like sit on the beach and program videogames (him) or hurtle down mountains at forty kilometers an hour on a Tuesday morning (me). He'll be coming to New York, though, which will be nice. We will hopefully have culinary adventures worth talking about. I think it's been him who has shown me all of the neat "hole-in-the-wall to blow-your-broke-student-mind" restaurants I know of that I would likely have never found myself. In exchange I offer the pittons of singing the praises of Peter Luger, dropping hints on Japanese restaurants I've known to be good and reasonable, and solidly warning him of Chica-licious' Times writeup (thereby making the damn place impossible to enter.) One day, on all fronts, I will have more to offer.

In other news, I see my other whole tomorrow at 3pm-ish local time. I can't wait; I think it's been months since we've spent any substantial measure of time with one another and I'm sick of being alone and I think he is too. I think the first thing I will do is fall asleep on his stomach, to the sound of his heart racing a little, then slowing to tango with the gurgles of his stomach.

Success! After pecking around a "learn to read Arabic" book and website, I have figured out the name of my carpet! The script says "Qum Afal-Asif", Qum being the city in Iran in which it was made (I got this from the dealer) and "Afal-Asif" is the surname of the guy who made the carpet, or as the dealer put it, the "family name" of the crafter. I will be verifying this with somebody who actually speaks Arabic, but I am pretty sure that I can name this carpet "Ibn Afal-Asif" which means "son of Afal-Asif."

My days in Dubai are winding down now - two more to go and just one more photoshoot day to work, so I'm scrounging around for things to do last minute. I'll be visiting a gawdy mall tomorrow called "Wafi City" which is one of the more luxurious (read: over the top) malls in Dubai and I will also have to buy postcards and write them and send them out tomorrow. Maybe if i sucked less, I would have the addresses of my friends to send them TO. hrm.

I have acquired a magic carpet. It is indeed wonderfully magical and I think it's going to be my one "Arabian" souvenir from this cavort in the Middle East. It is a wonderful carpet. It was acquired at the Al Sharjah "blue souk" which is basically a pseudo tourist trap in a non-touristy area (way to go guys) - in the Emirate neighboring Dubai, Al Sharjah. (I know that sounded heinously repentitive, but Al Sharjah is the name of the city, the souk, and the Emirate.) Anyhow, I haven't found a suitable name for this carpet yet, but as soon as I figure out the surname of the guy who made it, I will name it "Ibn *his surname*." It's 100% silk (down to the guide strands) and I have estimated its knots per inch at around 1500. Some poor dude worked really hard on this little carpet. It's a pretty intricate design and it has fun things on it like lions and a coupla elephants and also this generally large unassuming (but very Arabic) pattern in the middle. Also, the name of the guy who made it is woven into the pattern. The fascinating thing about this carpet is that the silk threads actually change in "color" and "intensity" when viewed from different angles and in different light. This little rug (it's tiny - slightly larger than 2' x 3') will likely be mounted on the wall in my new apartment so that nobody steps on it and so that it doesn't suffer undue wear. I can't seem to take a picture which captures its color sufficiently well so I will just say that it's black, gold and maroon. Come visit me to see it and witness for yourself.

I post these pictures.

(click to enlarge, oh wave of brain)

Let's talk about institutionalized racism today, kids!

Apparently Dubai is supposed to be the most tolerant (and by tolerant I mean racially tolerant) society in the Middle East - and I have no doubt in my mind that is certainly the case. What is still a little striking to me after having lived here for three weeks is the sharp contrast, still, between the UAE (well, more like just Dubai, actually)'s position on racism and that of back home, in New York (and other parts of America too), where racism is something to be largely kept under wraps from the public eye and discrimination based upon race and racial divisons are officially denied when allegations arise. Dubai's society seems to be largely based upon divisions of race and uses these divisions to 'better' itself and survive. Yes, Dubai is a very very racist society. I use "racist" in this context as 'a distinct division based upon race' not necessarily implying discrimination - you can glean and conclude whatever you want from what I write about Dubai's society and I encourage you to see it for yourself if you have the chance. It grows and thrives leveraging its racism and evidently Sheik Saeed's plan is at least, from an economic standpoint, wildly successful.

What brought this on was a chat I had with a couple of models from the photo shoot I'm working on right now. Irfan, a Pakistani national (yes, holding the green passport) was cast as an Arab in today's shoot, which he can pull off quite readily. He looks like a "local" (Arabs of all kinds are referred to as "local" regardless of which Emirate or which country they reside in). He seems well educated, intelligent and he is fluent in Arabic and English - more than comfortably fluent, dare I say perfectly in both. He, however, confessed he was a model because he had to supplement his income. He was a Pakistani national and was thus paid less than 10 thousand Dirhams (about three thousand USD) per week less than a British national and six thousand less than a locally born Arab - he makes the equivalent of 330USD/week currently. His situation is not unusual, in fact, he informed me, there is thought of racial "salary caps" being implemented for specific types of jobs. Still, in spite of this tiered salary system, he has stayed in Dubai for over 7 years now and has no plans to leave any time soon. And still, Pakistani workers flood into Dubai to fill jobs in both free-zone (foreign owned) and local companies.

Ghassan is a Dubai native. He is considered "local." He is thinking of moving to the US to work and earn his PhD. He is a microbiologist working in a government office - the ministry of transportation, perhaps? Something entirely unrelated to his field of microbiology. It's not possible for him to do PhD work in Dubai or in the UAE because the universities are not research institutions and therefore can only grant Bachelor's degrees. Furthermore, he cannot find work in his desired field because there simply isn't much of a demand for microbiology in the UAE (for whatever reason). Still, he is considered by some to be lucky. As a UAE national, he is entitled to work in government offices and government ministries. The work is not difficult, and though it doesn't pay particularly outrageously well, he is at least guaranteed a job in an air conditioned office. When he marries, he will be given a government allowance to do so and should he choose to have children, he will also be given a government allowance for each of them. Still, he admits that he is getting by but unable to save money due to the ever-skyrocketing cost of living in Dubai.

I am adding a short little bit on the "less fortunate" (unskilled) laborers in Dubai, the ones who man construction sites and are signed by companies owned by their own countrymen, and are brought to Dubai, to live in slavery (yes, literally slavery), creating the newest parts of the landscape. They are largely Indian and Pakistani. These laborers work twelve hours a day in either the sun or the darkness of night (construction occurs 24 hours a day here) in the blistering sun for no pay and are trucked back to labor camps far into the desert so escape is both impractical and virtually impossible. What is striking is that they are all of one race, and they are deliberately picked to be so. There are no Indonesian or Bangladeshi workers in Dubai (none in the labor camps at least), leading me to think there must be a relatively convenient official avenue for Indian and Pakistani organized crime to win contracts for building...

Also interesting is that when people want workers of a certain "nationality," they freely advertise in the newspaper for exactly who they want: 'Arab engineer wanted,' 'Philipino office administrator desired.' Everywhere else in the world, this practice would be met with protest but here it is the norm. There is a definite intention to slot people of certain race into a given, predetermined income bracket.

Makes you think about where you live yourself.

"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. It owes you nothing. It was here first"
-Mark Twain