On Being a Chinese-looking, half-South African, and Family Stories That Should Be Told More Often

The recent passing of Nelson Mandela, as well as a few events in my own family have had me thinking of my South African heritage a great deal in recent days.

I always enjoy the reaction I get when I tell people that my mother was born in South Africa.  Reactions range from:

Outright denial - "No way!"

Trying to go with the flow - "Oh... really?  That's interesting..." <smoke seeps from skull>

Immediate bonding - "My family's from Nigeria! We're practically family!" <hugs>

Immediate joking - "Well of course - you totally look South African! /sarcasm"

That last one is particularly fun, because for most of the 20th Century, if you were from South Africa, how you looked mattered a LOT.

Cute & Creepy Asian Kids Love Panera

Lunch during a rough day at work is going to go one of two ways:

Option 1: The most unhealthy, comforting food your can find, consumed in huge quantities with the goal of putting you in a pain-killing, carbohydrate-driven coma for the rest of the day

or

Option 2: Something fast and reasonably healthy to keep you kicking @$$ and busting heads for another four hours

Recently, I was having a bit of an Option 2 day, so I cruised down the road to Panera, getting there at 11:45 to make sure I beat the lunch rush, only to find...

That I was in the middle of the lunch rush.

Strike A Pose - There's Nothing To It

Aydana had just finished ringing up my thousand Rubles or so of souvenir purchases.  Armed with a friendly smile, fluent English, and a just-aggressive-enough brand of salesmanship, she had managed to up-sell me on a bunch of tchotchkes I didn’t need.  But then, I figured that if you’re going to get up-sold, it might as well be done at the hands of a pretty, young Kyrgyz girl, right?

As we wrapped up our transaction, I asked if it would be OK if I took a photo.  Ayadana replied that it would be no problem, and backed up, out of the shot.

The field of view, a generic souvenir store, half-full with stragglers from an Asian bus tour, was decidedly uninspiring.  I turned back to Aydana.

“How about a photo with you in it?”

A raised eyebrow.  A split second of feigned shyness.  And suddenly, the situation took a turn.

Glasses off.  Hair smoothed, and gathered, tossed over a single shoulder.  A partial turn towards the camera.  Arms crossed.  Just a hint of a half smile.

Smiling myself now, I took the photo.

Lowering my camera, I nodded my thanks and moved to leave, but my new Kyrgyz friend wasn’t about to let me get away without some quality control.  Cutting me off, she peered over my arm to get a look at the photo.

Rejected.

Taking me by the arm, she took me further into the store, setting up in front of a wall of amber jewelry.  Feeling better about her backdrop, Aydana struck the exact same (apparently well-practiced) pose.

Take two.

Another QC check, this time a pass.

Girls in Russia do love to take a pretty picture.

Things Russians Like

Alright.  So, I've been in Russia a little over a week now, which obviously makes me qualified to blog about the place as if I'm an expert.  Over the past seven or so days, I've noticed that there are number of things that seem to be inordinately popular here, compared to other countries.  Proceeding with the disclosure that these are all ridiculous generalisations, and an apology in advance to any Russian readers who I am probably about to offend, I present to you nonetheless...

10 Things That (I think) Russians Really Like:

Aeroflot – Red-Orange Outfits, Strange Film Choices and Affirmative Action

As we were planning this vacation, I received the prospect of flying to Russia on Aeroflot with a 90:10 blend of excitement and nervousness.  On the one hand, I was pretty pumped to check out a new airline I’d never flown before, and having been an air show geek as a kid, I remember Aeroflot as a cold war equivalent of Air Canada.  Only I remember thinking that Aeroflot’s stewardesses, while highly skilled and coached to work as a highly coordinated unit, just didn’t have the same intangibles that our Canadian stewardesses had <translation note: that’s a Canadian hockey joke for you non-Canadian readers…>.

But on the other hand, Aeroflot doesn’t exactly get the same kind of positive press that, say, Singapore Airlines, or Emirates does.  There was another itinerary on SAS that wasn’t very different in terms of scheduling or price, and seeing as how I love all things Scandinavian, I was tempted to go with the Swedes.  In the end however, Aeroflot got the nod, so away we went.

Airports, People-watching, and Adventure

I love airports.  And it's a good thing too, since I've probably spent more time in them than most.  I'm not talking about specific things, like how I love the international arrivals area of YVR, or the food at La Carreta in MIA, or the impossibly posh duty-free shopping at Heathrow T5.  I'm talking about loving airports in general - in the abstract.

I have always found that the people-watching in airports is exceptional.  As soon as you set foot in the terminal, you are surrounded by farewells and reunions that run the entire gamut of the human emotional spectrum.  Soldiers returning from a tour of duty.  A toddler visiting their grandparents for the first time. A long-distance romance leaving again after too short of a long weekend.  So many glimpses of so many stories in just a few short steps, from the entrance to the check-in desk.

And the security line - the source of so much angst, so many missed flights, and so much unintentional comedy.  Watching people struggle with the concept that their beltbuckle is made of metal, or that a 6oz bottle of contact lens solution is, in fact, larger than 3oz, is surprisingly entertaining as long as you're not running late because you forgot about how long the shuttle from the parking garage takes to get to the terminal.  And the absurdity of seeing a burly TSA screener pat down a 10 year old because he left a foil-wrapped piece of gum in their pocket serves as a discordant reminder of the security-in-exchange-for-freedom transaction that we made a dozen years ago.

But it's past security that I probably love the most.  Every passenger on the concourse is beginning or ending a trip that carries with it the potential for adventure.  Young twentysomethings returning from their first trip to Europe, memories of the people they've met and will never see again swimming in their heads even as they start to plot out their next voyage.  Immigrant families, travelling home to reconnect with family and old friends, wondering if their old neighbours' son, the same age as their daughter, is still single.   Even the jaded, weary, salaryman sitting alone at the airport bar, killing time before his 27th trip to Kansas in the past 27 weeks by nursing a Jack & Diet Coke wonders if this might be the day that a young-but-not-too-young divorcee sits next to him on his flight.  In every face, every Hudson's News purchase, every black rollerbag, there is a story about to be written.

As I write this, a young muslim girl has just sat down across from me in the Saudi Airlines boarding lounge where I have camped out to kill some time during my flight delay.  Co-ordinated blue-grey track suit, hoodie pulled up to conceal her hair, punctuated with an expensive looking handbag and designer sandals.  Her carry-on luggage is an American Flag backpack, from which a very new-looking neck pillow dangles at the ready.  We trade some friendly smalltalk as she awkwardly looks for a spot to plug her cellphone charger into. It takes me a second to realise that she has a double-charger, and she plugs in both an iPhone and BlackBerry to it. The back of her iPhone case has a stylised portrait of Marilyn Monroe on it, but the iPhone goes neglected as she taps message after message into the BlackBerry.  What's her story?  Where's she from?  Where's she going?  Does pulling up a hoodie really satisfy the modesty requirements in the Koran?  So many questions, the answers to which are almost certainly mundane.  Judging from her native-sounding English, she's probably American.  Probably off to visit family.  And she probably doesn't care about whether her hoodie is strictly compliant (kosher? halal? what word am I supposed to use here?) or not.  But that's OK.  For me, just the potential for ridiculous adventure is enough for me.  For instance, she could be the heiress to an enormous petro-fortune, travelling home to meet with the executors of her father's estate, where she will need to head-off a powerplay by her younger half-brother who intends to use her American residency and secular lifestyle against her.  Yeah, I think I'm going to go with something like that.

As for myself, I'm on my way to Russia.  Basically just tagging along with Liz on one of her work trips.  But you know, we are flying into Sheremetyevo Airport, which just happens to be the same airport that Edward Snowden is hiding in...

Let the adventure begin

Today's Pin-Up Is Tomorrow's Murder She Wrote

There is a movie called "The Court Jester."  It's a period drama/musical set in medieval England.  The plot involves a usurper king, the infant rightful heir being cared for by plucky rebels, and a princess who wants to marry for love instead of for political gain.  Just like Game of Thrones, only without the incest!

Anyway, this movie came on TV the other day, and I wound up watching it for a little while.  I was struck by the actress who plays the princess, and thought to myself:

"Wow - she's pretty cute!  I wonder who that is...?"

This of course, is exactly what IMDB was invented for, so off to the intertubes I went for an answer that totally blew my mind.

56 Up - New Meaning To The Term "Old Friends"

Back in 2006, Liz and I discovered the "Up" series of documentaries.  For those of you who may not have heard of them, it started as a film called "7 Up" wherein a British documentary team recorded little vignettes in the lives of 14 British children in 1964.  Every 7 years, this same crew has revisited these children (now adults), checking in with them at the ages of 14, 21, 28, 35, etc...

These films are absolutely captivating.  We introduced them to several of our friends, and we watched them together, right up until "49 Up" which was released in 2006.  Seeing a group of strangers literally grow up before your eyes is a surreal experience, and in a bizarre way, you wind up invested in their lives in much the same way as you would an actual friend.

And that investment is a double-edged sword.  The series presents a pretty unvarnished look at how the lives of the participants progress.  Certainly, some of the kids, particularly those from upper-class families, have a reasonably smooth go of things.  They go to good schools, get good jobs, build perfect-looking families, you know, the whole Game of Life winning package.  But for others, it goes a lot less smoothly.  You see the impacts of divorce, mental illness, failed ambitions, and the general malaise of post-Thatcher Britain.  By and large, there is little social mobility among the group, with the UK's class system seeming to hold everyone firmly in place (with one awesome exception - you should watch the films for the details on that one).

But once you begin, you have to keep watching them.  And at some point, it may occur to you that these intermittent check-ins with these people, each one seven years apart, aren't that different from some of the real-life interactions that you have with your own friends.  Facebook has made the work of keeping in touch with long-distance friends a heck of a lot easier, but think about how long you go between face-to-face visits with friends who have moved away (or who you have moved away from).  Weeks and months easily give way to years, and the "Up" documentaries' format, with 20-odd minute vignettes serving to provide an update on 7 years of elapsed lifetime, aren't that different from how many modern relationships are managed:  A few beers on a weekend afternoon when you happen to be in town.  Lunch or coffee when work happens to take you to the same conference.  Maybe even an entire weekend at someone's destination wedding.  Small slices of time, made all the more precious by the gaps that separate them.

So, you can imagine our excitement when the release of "56 Up" happily coincided with a wedding that was going to bring much of our old viewing crew back together for a weekend in DC.  Once we saw how the timing aligned, it was a given that we would be setting aside a few hours to watch this latest installment at the E St. Theatre downtown.

However, that excitement gave way to a bit of nervousness as we got to the theatre.  After all, 56 is an age at which it wouldn't be entirely inconceivable for someone to have died - and based upon the past few films there were definitely a few candidates for us to be worried about.  And you do worry.  Not about the wealthy ones - Their vignettes are pleasant, and happy, and without drama.  It's the less-well-off cohort you worry about.  The ones who seem like they might be living paycheck to paycheck, or maybe on the dole.  The ones who have had past struggles laid bare in previous films.  They're the ones you worry about.

Fortunately, all those worries were unfounded.  Everyone is still alive and kicking, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that everyone in the film seemed to have achieve a near-equivalent level of happiness (or at least contentedness) by the age of 56, no matter what their circumstances.  It was really uplifting to see so many different and divergent paths to happiness represented in the film, and by extension, the series, and I left the theatre in a really positive frame of mind.

Today, I turned 37.  And while it's definitely an intimidatingly large number for me on some level, I'm happy to see that there are at least a few more decades of upward trajectory waiting for me out there somewhere.

Pass the tequila - let's get this party started.

Adventures in Charcuterie Episode III - When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Preserved Lemons

I'm pretty sure it was Liz who first introduced me to Moroccan food.  I can't remember exactly when or where, but I'm pretty certain it was somewhere in Vancouver, sometime in the late '90s.  It was a real gamechanger for me, food-wise.

Up until that time, I had eaten pretty much every variety of Asian, and most varieties of European cuisines, but aside from a handful of South African dishes that my mom would make, I had never tried any sort of African cuisine before.  Moroccan food, with it's aromatic spice blends, slow-cooked tagines, and novel-looking starches was a gateway to a whole new, and delicious, world for me.

So naturally, I eventually wanted to try cooking it myself, discovering in the process, that Moroccan food can be a real pain in the @$$ to make.

Why, you ask?  Because procurement of all the different spices and condiments can be a serious impediment.  Some of them, such as mace and saffron, are not so much hard to come by as they are annoyingly expensive.  But others, such as, say, ras el hanout, are pretty much impossible to find, leaving you to instead procure 20 separate individual spices in order to blend your own.

Which brings us to preserved lemons.  Preserved lemons, so key to so many amazing Moroccan dishes, is both difficult to find, and annoyingly expensive when found.  Fortunately, it is incredibly easy to make your own.

Here's the mise en place:

A clean jar, with a lid
Enough lemons to be able to fill the jar with lemon halves (and maybe a few extra if you like)
Kosher salt (lots)

Ready to preserve some lemons?  Here we go:

1. First, you'll need to rinse/scrub the lemons.  Mold is the only thing that has the potential to screw with this process, so a bit of a surface cleaning of the lemons is useful.
2. Trim the ends off of the lemons and then cut them in half
3. Pour about an inch or so of salt into the jar
4. Jam as many lemon halves into the jar as you can
   
5. Pour more salt into the jar until it is completely full
   
6. Optional: If you have a few extra lemons squeeze their juice into the jar
   
7. Seal up the jar and put it someplace dark for three weeks

It should look something like this

Three weeks later, you will have beautiful preserved lemons.

Let your adventures in Moroccan cuisine begin!

...

What's that you say?  You don't know any Moroccan food recipes?  OK, I'll post a couple up in the near future, but in the meantime:

Using Your Preserved Lemons

• Pull one half lemon out of the brine
• Scrape out the flesh from the middle and discard it (it is technically still edible, but tends to be overpoweringly salty)
• Slice the rind into thin strips
• Use the strips to garnish your favourite salad

Well I love that dirty water - Thoughts on the Boston Marathon

In some of my rare moments of introspection, I think of the concept of "Home," and whether I am someone who has one Home, many Homes, or no Home.  Usually, these thought exercises end with me deciding that I am lucky enough to have several places that I can call home.  New England is one of those places.

As a foreigner living in New England, the first thing you learn is that New England is a really parochial place. The second thing you learn is that most of the people there don't know what parochial means, but that's beside the point.  The takeaway here is that New England has a lot of its own traditions and its own culture.  Patriots Day, and The Boston Marathon are big parts of that.

Most of New England doesn't actually get Patriots Day as a holiday.  Massachusetts observes it, as does Maine, but living in New Hampshire, it was not a holiday for me or my colleagues.  But every year, a cadre of my coworkers would schedule Patriots Day off, and head down to Boston to hang out, enjoy the emergent spring weather, drink crappy American beers, and give out water and Gatorade to a bunch of complete strangers.

I have to confess: I didn't really get it at first.  In fact, it took me years to figure it out.  But in time, I found the answer: It's a chip.  Boston as a city, and New England as a region, have always carried a big chip on their shoulder.  Home of Great Patriots, Cradle of The Revolution, Athens of The New World, but overtaken and overshadowed by New York, and then Chicago, and then Los Angeles... Boston is a city whose primacy, in nearly every way, belongs to the past.

But on Patriots Day, Boston gets to be The Hub once again.  Once every year, on a holiday given to almost noone else in the country, Boston gets to steal the spotlight.  The Marathon.  A Red Sox game.  A Bruins or Celtics game.  It's a dawn to dusk tailgate, early in the New England spring, replete with alcohol, chicken parms, and contests of physical prowess...  So close to a pagan fertility festival, the only thing missing is a maypole.  It is, quite literally, the happiest day on the Boston calendar.

Which is what makes today's events all the more galling.  The contrast between what everyone who has ever lived in New England expects from this day and what actually transpired is a gulf of such immensity that the human brain can barely process it.

It just. Makes. No. Sense.

On 9/11, I had only lived in the US for a little over a year.  I didn't know anybody in New York.  I hadn't even been to New York.  I felt the same overwhelming sadness as everyone else did, but I was spared the personal connection that impacted so many of those around me.  

Today was different.  Today was personal.  Today saw me going through a list of everyone I know who lives in New England, and trying to assess the odds of their being in the vicinity of the explosions.  Fortunately, most of those I know in New England either don't get the day off, or are too out of shape to even want to watch a marathon.  And those who were in the vicinity had thankfully left the area before the blasts.  But that in no way detracts from the shock and anger that I've been carrying around since 3pm today.  I saw links to photos pop up on twitter soon after the blasts.  Then that six-second Vine clip that we've all now seen replayed a thousand times.  Then the escalating casualty numbers, which, if they remain where they are (3 deaths at last count), will somehow seem mercifully low, despite being at least 3 too high.  It all adds up to an affront to all civil societies.  

A marathon is the softest of targets.  It is impossible to secure a 26.2 mile course through public streets.  Impossible to screen 500000 spectators.  Impossible to cover every possible escape route.  It is, in many ways, an exercise in trust.  Trust that evaporated today in two plumes of smoke, a hundred yards apart.

Betrayal of trust is hard on the psyche.  The trauma of betrayal often involves a lot of anger, a lot of confusion, and a lot of questioning of one's reality frame.  In the wake of that kind of trauma, many will turn to prayer.  Others will console themselves with something a little more secular, like the Mr. Rogers quote that makes the rounds whenever this kind of thing occurs.  Those looking for something more tangible will find solace in the arms of a loved one.

But don't forget about the anger.  There is nothing wrong with being angry, and a lot to be angry about.  I will readily acknowledge that if I could get my hands on whomever did this, I would make Abu Ghraib look like a tea party.  That anger is natural.  Feeling it is a reminder of our humanity.

And don't forget about the confusion.  There is nothing wrong with being confused, and a lot to be confused about.  I stopped counting the number of times I've wondered why someone would do this.  Asking 'why' and not being able to answer, explains why you aren't the kind of person who would ever do this. That confusion in natural.  Feeling it is a reminder of our humanity.

But most of all, don't forget about the questioning.  There is nothing wrong with asking difficult questions, and there is a lot to ask about.  As the days go by, proposals will no doubt be made in an effort to make our world safer.  These proposals will all be well-intentioned.  Some of them (ideally most of them), will even be effective.  But they all need to be questioned.  And we all need to ask ourselves what kind of society we want to live in.  The American mythos makes prodigious use of words like liberty, and freedom, but it is an uncomfortable truth that America is a less free place today than it was on September 10th, 2001.  Are we ok with that?  So far, it seems that we are.  But how far should the pursuit of security go?  How do we decide what is a civil liberty and what is a national interest?  Where is the boundary between 'I want to feel safe?' and 'I don't want to feel scared?'

Asking these questions is natural.  Making sure they get answered preserves our humanity.

Requiem for The Iron

In my family, Monopoly has never just been a game.

For us, it's a contact sport.