PLAY: What a Hike!

Today I did something rather unusual: I spent the day hiking in the Catskills. It was phenomenally beautiful and so nicely exhausting. The leaves are more colorful than your typical gay pride flag.

Below are my adorable fellow travellers- Kevin, Bryan and Brian.
Final note worth sharing is that the patron saint of the journey was Suze Orman by way of Kirsten Wiig. Inspired by this video, we spent the whole day talking in Suze-talk..
So. Good night. My. Dear. Readers.

PLAY: Californication Nostalgication

Maybe it's the jet lag striking again or maybe my body is simply refusing to spend precious free time in bed.  Either way, I am sitting in front of TV in the middle of the night, watching the new 90210, DVRed from earlier this week, remembering the excitement with which I watched the original show back in my elementary school days.  Back then watching Brenda and Dylan kiss was the emotional highlight of the week, even when I still had no clue it wasn't Brenda I had my eyes on.  Not to mention that was the show that formed my early image of the US, only to be replaced by Friends a few years later.. both images so tragically off.

Ironically, that was not the only instance of California creeping up in my life this week.. As chance would have it, I also flew to LA this week for an annual work trip to visit a few companies headquartered in the area.  It was the same trip which 2 years ago I conveniently attached to a long weekend in San Francisco, in order to reunite with my long-distance boyfriend at the time - and took the chance to peacefully agree that we shouldn't be, anymore.  Even more concidentally, that ex apparently got engaged some time in the past week .. In other words, in the span of a week I have relived the memories of one of my significant relationships as well as those of my early formative childhood years, with California being the common thread to all this emotional baggage.  

I am too tired at this point to draw any meaningful conclusions out of all this, but that's a whole lot of California and a whole lot of nostalia for a week.

PLAY: Last Set + I Found the Place Where I Will Get Married

So here's the final set of photographic highlights from my Asian trip. It includes photos I took in Nusa Dua (a lifeless resort town about 20km from Seminyak, my village, where I biked on Thursday), Jimbaran (another resort center, this one fully gated and basically spread over a hill on top of Jimbaran Bay with insane views - hence the wedding reference above), and a visit to Tokyo's Tsukiji market - apparently the largest fish market in the world (I had a 12 hour layover on my way back).

All in all an amazing trip though ironically the highlights for me where the 2 short-ish stops in Tokyo.. which I guess is simply a reflection of the fact that I am such a city person and that I am obsessed with Japan (something I didn't quite realize beforehand) even if Japan isn't particularly fond of me (here I am referring to the fact that it is not particularly foreigner-friendly - let alone vegan-friendly - both of which I actually respected in a weird way). There were obviously many nice and impressive things in Bali but much of it is either (1) the downunder take on Cancun, with American frat boys replaced by Australian surfers (2) dirty and neglected, including the historical sites and buildings.. but that could be the ignorant Western snob in me speaking, who knows.

Anyhow, enough of my rambling. I am back in the city, it's 3am and I am exhausted after 18 hours of travelling but I am technically on 3pm in the afternoon so I am far from sleepy. Here's the final preview set..

PLAY: Second Update from Interior Design Central

Finally I had the time and energy last night to upload and sort out some of the photos I have been taking. 2 full days have passed since my last entry - first of which I spent walking around my village, bumming on the beach and then having dinner at the officially hip KuDeTa (certified by the fact that it has its own soundtrack of electronic lounge music - all three volumes of it!) - the chef crafted a bunch of outstanding veggie dishes off the menu - after which I barely had enough wind in my sails to walk back to my hotel before passing out. Today I did a mini tour to Ubud, the art and cultural capital of the island, with a stop at the elephant cave and the monkey forest. Finally some serious flora and fauna a.k.a. photo opportunities galore. Since I woke up at 2:30am yesterday morning (possibly the most ridiculous jet lag I've ever had - on the bright side it gave me a chance to watch CNN for 5 hours and catch up on all the DNC stuff and my favorite op-eds, yay!), I spent the 2nd half of the day glued on the beach until it was time for dinner - this one at Chandi - modern Indonesian cuisine run by a guy who worked at a bunch of NYC restaurants.. lot of tempe and tofu, peanut and tamarind sauce, mango and papaya in everything, oh so delicious.. not to mention yumy ginger cocktails :)


On a different note, I have been reading the book Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali - and the woman is seriously amazing. She was raised in a strict Muslim family only to escape to the Netherlands, denounce Islam, become an MP, and then had have her citizenship taken away when she became too controversial even for the Dutch after she wrote the script that was made into a movie Submission by Theo van Gogh who was assassinated for making it. Not exactly a fluffy beach read, but so interesting.

Lastly, speaking of the Convention, what a joke. Reading today's columns from Dowd and Friedman side by side, I can't help but feel like the Democrats are so unduly obsessed with themselves and - to use a severly overused term - "out of touch" in a world where there are so many much more pressing problems.. Anyway, at least they finally nominated Obama, Hillary did her long awaited speech (which I have yet to see), Bill wraps it up tonight, hopefully not producing any juicy material for the networks to obsess about, and we can move on from the silly theatrics.

PLAY: Sitting on the Balcony

After what seemed like 3 days of travel (but was only 18 hours, net, plus 24 hours for crossing the date line, a concept which I still find mind boggling, and a 28 hour layover in Tokyo..) I am finally in Bali, sitting on the balcony of my hotel listening to the ocean. I am so tired that I could paint clouds with melatonin yet the excitement of the being here - and a jet lag of epic proportions - is keeping me wide awake at 4am.. perhaps I will just stay up until sun rise / breakfast and then pass out in the sun? Tough decisions..

2 notables so far along with this first greeting:

1. Japan is amazing and definitely worth a longer trip. Just getting on to the Japan Airlines flight at JFK I felt like I was transported into another universe, one characterized by incredible politeness, insane precision, over the top service and unending obsession with fashion. It was almost challenging for me to play along with all the acts of kindness but in a sense it was a good way to break my mindset away from New York for the week. Of course, the real downside of it all is the omnipresent lost-in-translation feeling.. or actually lack of translation, since almost no one speaks English and relying on figuring things out on your own is difficult when most things are written in Japanese - like ATM instructions.. imagine trying to take the subway with no Yen, no idea which line to take, how much the ticket is.. long story short - I didn't - instead I browsed the nearby mall (there always seems to be one nearby! - it was packed at 10:30pm on a Sunday - hence the unending obsession with fashion) and then walked back to the hotel in pouring rain with no umbrella (which I can't buy because - remember - I have no Yen or no idea how to withdraw money and the convenience store lady doesn't seem to like the idea of accepting amex.. or the $20 I offered her)! Even funnier were the communication adventures in the hair salon.. but the cut turned out sort of OK (with one hour left in Tokyo I decided that rather than getting even more lost and risking missing the bus to the airport I may as well get a haircut.. a souvenir of sorts).

2. After settling in to the hotel here, I decided I need to go out and explore and maybe get a drink and some food.. Imagine my surprise when the only thing going at 2am was a gay bar. No, I didn't go in.. something about me set off a strange response from the crowd - I can't tell what they were shouting and whether it was good but I definitely attracted attention. Then as I walked back to the hotel, a guy, could have been 20 years old maybe, drove by on a motorcycle and first asked me if I needed a lift and then delivered an indecent proposal.. It took me all of an hour to be at this place before getting harassed. The good news is it was all very harmless and he retreated almost immediately when I said "no, thanks!". OK fine, I had to say it twice. But I suppose it wasn't threatening.

Anyway, so much for now.. check out a mini preview of my trip so far here. I am going in because the damn mosquitoes are eating me alive..

EAT: Breadmakers

One of my favouritest photos from the wedding in Beirut. These 2 ladies were making bread on the spot - or really little breads with 3 different toppings - cheese, minced meat or za'atar. It was such an incredible little snack to have during the cocktail hour. Fresh, warm, fluffy.. YUM!

I asked about the shape of the bread making grill apparatus and no one could explain. I have to investigate, of course :)

Update: Of course I couldn't help myself and had to find out immediately. The dome or upside-down-wok-looking aperture is called "saj" and the bread they were making "manakeesh" or "markook". Not entirely sure how those are different but I will most probably need to find out. Fantastic. PS: this website has a lot of cool Lebanese food photos.

PLAY: Beirut Trip

PLAY: Puerto Rico