Industry and mango

Looks like I haven't posted to the blog in a few days. Apologies to my readers, all two or three of them. Sorry about that, mom and dad. And SHB.

Speaking of SHB, this past weekend I was driving through an area I know she's familiar with, Dearborn and neighboring Dearborn Heights, Michigan. Some weekends I just take off driving with nothing more than a full tank of gas and a book by my side, Global Journeys in Metro Detroit: A Multicultural Guide to the Motor City. (Pick up your own copy here for as little as 40 cents plus shipping.) Lately I've become a real believer in a Detroit worth saving, and this book gives me reason to hope. In it all the ethnic enclaves within the city are laid out -- a real revelation for a Texas boy who didn't even think there were any people, let alone ethnicities, left in Detroit.

I'm still exploring the Middle Eastern areas of Detroit, and that means trips to Dearborn, the "Arab capital of the U.S." according this New York Times article. But of course, not all of Detroit and its surrounding areas are pretty. Take, for instance, the Ford plant in Dearbnorn:


Industrial complexes have always provoked the heebie-jeebies in me, especially when they have pipes big enough to fit a man in, steam and/or smoke coming out of them, and dread-inducing wasteland all around. I quickly drove past this monstrosity and got to my destination, the nicer parts of Dearborn.

I also wanted to mention that a few days ago I bought a mango from Meijer. I've been waiting for it to ripen -- going from all green to a little yellow to more orange -- and in contrast to the gray monotony that is a deep Michigan winter, the color change in this piece of fruit has been something to look forward to each morning. I might even be a little sad when the time comes to eat it.

Anyway, I thought I would share the experience with you, so I placed the mango -- this $1 piece of fruit from Peru -- in my nonstick-coated wok and snapped a picture.

Have 9 minutes to spare?

If you do, I can think of no better way for you to spend them than by watching the following: the director's cut of the video for Justin Timberlake's "What Goes Around".*


Ack, I hate that I love this video.

For a breakdown, check out what The Onion A.V. Club's Amelie Gillette has to say. The title of her posting is just short of classic: "Cheating on Justin Timberlake Will Result in Your Fiery Death". Ha! Good one, Amelie.

* And by the way, there are approximately 1.5 million better ways to spend 9 minutes than by watching this video. But I know you want to watch it anyway, so just get it over with so you can get on with the rest of your life.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave...

... when first we decide to drive on E.

Last night was one for the books. Feeling restless at 12:30 a.m. I decided to hit the gym and do a quick workout. The only gym open at that hour being the CCRB (Central Campus Recreation Building), I drove the three, maybe four, miles down there, parked, and went in. So far, so good.

About 30 minutes later, I was pretty exhausted. The previous night had worn me down pretty good, and I could only do a few strokes on the rowing machine, some weights, and a little yoga before I starting getting visions of a soft comfy bed. I finished up and slothed my way back to my car.

Sitting there in the breathless quiet of the cold and dark, I turned the ignition.

Rrroww--rrroww--bzzz!

Son of a ..., I thought and tried again.

Rrroww--rrroww--bzzz!

I repeated this exercise another half-dozen times before the truth hit me: It was 1:45 a.m. and I was out of gas. I looked at the looming Mosher-Jordan dorms to my right, cursed myself a few more times, and tried to think what to do next.

Several options came to mind:

(A) Put the car in neutral, steer past the car parked downhill and in front of me, and try starting the car again once it was level. From experience I knew the car sometimes didn't start if it was low on gas (but not out) and parked on an incline. But somehow this plan -- which I gave a 30% chance of working at best -- didn't seem worth the risk of careening out of control, over the curb, and into the nearest building, probably taking out a pedestrian or two in the process.

(B) Leave the car there until morning when I could take a bus to Meijer and buy a gas can and gas. The meter was set to be enforced at 8 a.m. City buses started running at 6:30 a.m. By the time I walked home, it would probably be 3 a.m. Or I could sleep in the lab for a few hours. I gave this plan -- whose timing ran tighter and tighter the more I thought about it -- a 20% chance of working.

(C) Call up one of my friends and have him either give me a ride home or take me to Meijer. I'd obviously owe someone big, but at least the probability of this working was near 100%.

In the end I called up CS who's a bit unpredictable sometimes but always good in a pinch. (I know you're reading this, CS!) He also lives fairly close to Central Campus. Just as I'd hoped, CS agreed to pick me up and arrived 15 minutes later.

As we made our way to the nearest Meijer, I tried to make light of the situation. I don't remember exactly what I said, but I remember not wanting to make myself look like more of an ass than I already felt. Going down State Street en route to our destination, CS suddenly took a hard left into the parking lot of a gas station. "Check if they have gas cans." Stroke of luck: they did. A few minutes later I was the proud owner of one gas can -- a flimsy red plastic thing, really -- and a gallon of Shell Regular Unleaded. We headed back up State Street.

It soon became apparent something was wrong. Fumes started filling the interior of CS' car, and he turned the air on full blast. In the dark I reached down and picked the gas can off the floor: A glistening shine indicated gas was spilling out the top as if there wasn't a top at all. CS started freaking out and rolling all the windows down.

Despite our best efforts we were soon feeling the intoxicating effects of petroleum fumes and laughing at the stupidest things. One thing in particular seemed really funny: the possibility that a small spark inside the car cabin might end our extended grad school careers. In our imaginations our bodies would be charred beyond recognition as a grand explosion sent pieces of twisted Passat everywhere. I thought I might have just enough time to get out my cell phone, snap a pic, and post it to my blog. And then we joked that if we were really lucky, I might have just enough time to throw the flaming canister out the window, in the process Molotov-cocktailing some hapless mom-and-pop business on the side of State Street. CS seemed to enjoy this crazy talk but sped up anyway.

Long story short, we made it back to my car and I deposited the hard-won gallon into my tank. The only lasting side effect was the smell of gasoline everywhere: on my clothes, in my skin, and up my nostrils. I'd heard you shouldn't drive in the wintertime on less than half a tank, and it was now clear why -- because plastic gas cans are shoddily made and you'll be freezing your ass off as your friend drives with all the windows down to stop the onslaught of fumes. Let this be a lesson to all of you.

And, by the way, the E in the first line of this post: That's "empty" and not the other kind of "E".

What do you know, I'm a liberal

The subject of this post comes from a thought I had this afternoon while I was sitting in the lab. Having exhausted all normal forms of tea that I usually keep here (black, green) and not wanting a coffee buzz this early in the day, I dug into my drawer to see what was left: two boxes of tea, Trader Joe's-brand Echinacea and Guayaki-brand Yerba Mate. The thought of echinacea makes me sick now (ironically enough), so I went with the latter.

As I sipped the earthy-tasting brew, I idly looked at the package. On it was a picture of three dark-skinned men dressed in khaki-colored shirts and pants sitting amidst tall trees passing a cup between them. "Sharing Guayaki Yerba Mate" read the caption. Underneath, the benefits of the tisane were splayed out, not only for health but for the environment, indigenous peoples, the cause of sustainability, and everything else Al Gore stands for. (He's running in '08, I'm telling you -- read this for more details -- and I'm voting for him when he does.)

And then I remembered that I'd ridden my bike in to work today. Yep, no fossil fuels were harmed in the process. Add alternative transportation to the list of causes I was implicitly supporting. (Side note: Do vegans use fossil fuel-powered vehicles? I've always wondered.)

Finally, I remembered the first thing that caught my eye on my web browser's start page, Google News, today: the defeat in the Senate of Democrats' efforts to pass a non-binding resolution against the troop surge in Iraq. I clicked open some of those links and ate them all up. Can we stop trying to intercede in a civil war that has been 1400 years in the making? For cryin' out loud.

And then it occurred to me, as I sipped my rain forest tea, next to my bike helmet, and cheered on the Democrats in Congress: Yep, I'm a liberal.

Random reveals

Last picture on my digital camera: The view from outside my apartment building this afternoon (4:11 p.m.).


Last number dialed on my cell phone: My older brother, STC (same initials as mine), at 11:35 p.m.

Last thing ingested: Popcorn kernel (~10 minutes ago)

Current song being played in the background: Radiohead, "I Will" from Hail to the Thief

Current location: The lab, Medical Science Building II - Room 6775

Current time: 3:40 a.m.

AA in AA

Clarification: By "AA" the first time, I'm talking about "Asian-American." And by "AA" the second time, I'm talking about "Ann Arbor".

Yesterday I attended an author reading at the Shaman Drum bookstore. If you're looking for the best place in Ann Arbor to see and meet authors, I highly recommend this place. In fact, here's a link that will take you straight to Shaman Drum's calendar of upcoming readings. As you can see, it's packed.

The author last night was Bich Minh Nguyen who's just published Stealing Buddha's Dinner, a memoir of growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan in the 80's after coming over from Vietnam in 1975 at the age of eight months. I haven't read the book yet, but from the selections she read last night, cultural disconnect plays a big role.

Hearing her read, I was reminded of my own experience growing up in Texas in the 80's and one incident in particular. In second grade our teacher, Ms. Aldrich, asked us to bring coffee cans so that we could grow bean seedlings in the window. Great activity, but at the time I thought, "What's coffee? And how do I get a coffee can?"

My parents didn't drink coffee at the time and still don't really. My mother will occasionally have a cup on the weekends, but so infrequently that a small jar of instant coffee in the cupboard meets her requirements and lasts for months if not years. And coffee, if it was ever mentioned in our household, was spoken of as slightly contraband, something adults engaged in because they had the right. We definitely had no coffee cans.

And so when the day finally came, I arrived at school with a metal can that formerly contained ground fried fish from China. (Hey, apparently you can buy something like it on Amazon. I'm impressed.) If any metal cylinder could be farther away from a coffee can, I couldn't -- and still can't -- conceive of it. I'm probably the only person in the class who noticed -- let's not forget how easily distracted second-graders are -- but this and a myriad of other memories that occurred before and since tell me there's legitimacy to having "Asian" as a separate category (or even more finely divided subcategories) on the U.S. Census form.

By the way, there are a couple of other places in Ann Arbor to catch author readings. Borders is one, and they host some of the better known authors (event listing here). But one place you may not have thought of is the English department at the University. Check out their listing here.

Surviving anywhere

This afternoon I was at the Duderstadt Center (formerly the Media Union) on North Campus of the University and decided to head off a case of the sleepies with a double espresso from Mujo Cafe, the cutely and cleverly named coffee stand just inside the foyer. Waiting for my doppio, I found myself staring blankly at the condiment packets stacked neatly into the slotted case before me:

Salt. Pepper. Soy sauce. (They sell sushi as well.)

My doppio appeared, and I took it and turned around to the second condiment stand behind me:

Sugar, Sweet'N Low, Splenda. Little plastic shakers with cinnamon and cocoa powders. Two tall metal canisters: one with half-and-half, the other with skim.

And then I had a thought -- one that's fine to discuss on a blog but perhaps not at parties:

Could a person survive on condiments alone?

Let's not even talk about palatability. But just by the sheer numbers, could a person get by on calories from a condiment stand? The scene from the Tom Hanks' movie The Terminal comes to mind, the one where he makes ketchup-mustard-and-Saltine sandwiches.

Some wasted time later, I'd tracked down the nutritional information for several condiments, packet-sized. Here are their caloric values along with fat-carb-protein breakdowns:

Ketchup: 10 [0-3-0]
Mustard: 5 [0-1-0]
Mayonnaise: 90 [9-1-0]
Light mayonnaise: 40 [4-1-0]
Sugar: 15 [0-4-0]

And if you happen to have access to more exotic condiments:

Coffee creamer: 20 [2-0-0]
Honey: 50 [0-11-0]
Barbecue sauce: 50 [0-11-0]

Finally, if you're at a place that sells soup or coffee:

Saltines: 30 [1-4-0]
Milk (skim, 8 oz.): 80 [0-12-8]
Milk (whole, 8 oz.): 150 [8-11-8]
Half-and-half (8 oz.): 315 [28-10-7]

[Sources: Chick-fil-A website, McDonald's website, Calorie King website]

To get 2000 calories it's clear you could eat a combination of foods. I'd personally go with a cup of half-and-half sweetened with two packets of honey, five times a day. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm feeling sick just thinking about it.

Now I've seen everything

The Wendy's on Plymouth Road in Ann Arbor has wi-fi. Why does Wendy's have wi-fi? I don't know, but what was supposed to be a quick stop for food has now turned into a thesisating work session. (By the way, that word, "thesisate," brings up 0 Google hits despite the meaning being quite clear. You other grad students out there, feel free to use it, but don't forget to acknowledge its source!)

Random food pr0n

Here are some gratuitous food pictures from over the past week that are clearly meant to elicit comments from you readers.

Tarts from Shatila Bakery in Dearborn, ca. last Sunday.

>> Strawberry-kiwi tarts. If they could speak, they'd say "What a great day! Love love!"


>> Blackberry tarts. If they could speak, they'd say, "What are you lookin' at? Damn."


Lattes from Ugly Mug in Ypsilanti, ca. 30 minutes ago.

>> Friend BH got the latte on the left, I got the one on the right. She says hers is an onion. I say it's, uh, something else. By the way, did you all know there's a Great Lakes latte design contest and baristas from Ugly Mug won second and third places? Seriously, go here.

Excuse me as I rock this esoterica

I'd like to think I have broader than average tastes -- in music, art, food, whatever -- but I'll be the first to admit a lot of things slip under my radar.

Take music, for instance. Internet radio, Pandora, the suggestions on iTunes, stopping at the listening stations at Borders, a subscription to Spin Magazine -- I thought I was doing pretty well. But then I surf over to Gridskipper (the self-described "urban travel guide") and come across a posting on the indie music scene in Taiwan. Doh! I knew I'd forgotten something.

I didn't even know Taiwan had an indie music scene. Obviously there's a lot more to world music than duets between Sting and Cheb Mami (though I still like that song).

By the way, you should take a listen to my new best friend, Mr. Scruff: here for video or here for audio. He's more than just expensive car commercial music.

What's in a name?

As I sit here on the North Campus of the University, working on many things at once that all should theoretically lead to a degree, I'm troubled by the thought that I'm now working against myself. If motivation be a gas tank that powers us through our days, lately I've been running on empty.

Symptomatic is my procrastination which sometimes masquerades as attention to detail. I mean, if I face a deadline, I'll spend the first 90% of the time between now and then working on 10% and then the last 10% of the time working on the other 90%. Or put another way, I'm much more interested in the beginning than the end. Luckily I usually choose the right 10% to focus on, and everything comes together just in the nick.

Looking back on my life, and I mean back back back, I see two events that foreshadow this unfortunate situation.

#1: The timing of my birth. My birthday, for those of you who don't know, is April 2nd. My mother likes to tell the story of how she waited so that I wouldn't be an April Fool's Baby. Despite feeling the pangs of imminent birth, my mother literally held it (and by "it" I mean "me"). And now I'm usually late -- is it any wonder? Ironically, my freshman year roommate in college, BK, was an April Fool's Baby, and I always thought him a bit "off". (No offense, BK.)

#2: The choosing of my name. My Chinese name -- which exists as my middle name -- translates into "ambitious to begin". At least that's what my parents tell me. Yup, nothing in there about "finishing" or "staying the course" (shudder) or even "taking it to the hoop". Historically, I see this manifest in how easily I tire of a geographical location. Any more than four years in one place and I start to feel like I've seen every building, street corner, and leaf on a tree one time too many. In the movie Mad Max, I empathize with, yes, Mad Max. That guy is always on the move.

You all might be interested to know that there are other people who take the name-determines-fate idea seriously. (I only half do.) You can Google "nomenology" and that exercise that will lead you to a book which as a scientist I can't recommend but which as an open-minded person I can't rule out either.

You might even try this sometime: Googling yourself or checking for yourself on one of the social networking websites. Disturbingly, I've found several other people in the U.S. that share my name (though I remain the top Google hit -- yesss!). On Friendster, one even sort of looks like me. (How's L.A., Stewart? We should meet for a beer sometime. Or do you prefer a gin-and-tonic like I do?) I've always wanted to talk to them and see how their lives unfolded. A similar idea turned into a documentary named The Grace Lee Project, made by one -- you guessed it -- Grace Lee.

Try not to think about it too much. You can really go batty if you start thinking everything's predetermined. In fact, I've spent too much time already thinking about this, so if you'll excuse me, I have 10% of my project to get back to.

Arizona dreamin'

First, kudos to you if you know what the title of this posting refers to. In fact, I haven't been dreamin' of Arizona so much as the whole desert Southwest. In Phoenix it's 79 degrees F today. In El Paso, 63. In San Diego, 62. Here in Ann Arbor, 9. With a wind chill of -2. Actually that's a lot better than last night's wind chill of -20.

As I try to wrap my Texas-born brain around the temperatures here, and when I'm not slathering myself in moisturizer to keep from drying out completely, I find myself wishing I were 2000 miles away. 2019, to be exact, would get me to Phoenix.

Right now I have a CD in my car that I'm playing on repeat, Kid Loco's A Grand Love Story, kind of a down-tempo, breezy, melody-over-bass affair. I've had this CD since the summer of '02, when I spent a month in Santa Fe, NM attending the Santa Fe Institute's Summer School. I played the hell out of this CD that summer. Afternoons not occupied in lectures, I'd head out for the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountains that bordered St. John's College where we were staying. Headphones on with this CD playing, I'd walk for hours on the roads, trails, and whatever gravelly surfaces were within reach.

Up there you're over a mile closer to the sun than you are at sea level. It burns a white hot patch in the sky that offsets, in the daytime, the cobalt blue expanse above, and at dusk, the blood orange red horizon ahead. The air is hot during the day, but it's clean and dry, faintly scented like you were drying herbs in an oven and just opened the door. Mountains rise in the background, mostly rust-colored but surprisingly verdant in patches where the creosote bushes cluster by chance.

I think somehow the desert environment suits me best. In college the religious writings I was most drawn to were by the so-called Desert Fathers, ascetics in the fourth century CE who had given up everything to live in the deserts of Egypt, either alone or in small communities. Out there, they survived on next to nothing, the slimmest of physical margins, but experienced life intensely and the give-and-take of good and evil daily. They were severest to themselves, kindest to each other. And their writings reveal a clarity of thought that lately I find enviable.

With the Kid Loco CD on repeat, these are the things that go through my head. I'm driving through the slush or else the salt, and my car is dirty. My thoughts are muddy. I know that by putting this CD on repeat I'm just tricking myself. Into thinking warm thoughts. Into thinking with clarity. Someday I'm going back to the desert.

UPDATE (10:40 am, 02/09): Albuquerque, NM was just selected as the nation's fittest city by Men's Fitness magazine. Detroit was second from the bottom.

Connections

For you geology enthusiasts, here's something I was thinking about when a cold spell passed through the area a couple of weeks ago.

Biking out of the apartment complex one day, I noticed a dusting of snow had covered some bushes at the parking lot entrance. The structure, which had never seemed so gossamer before, caught my eye.


In fact, something about the bushes seemed familiar. I couldn't put my finger on it, at least not until last night when I was going through some pictures on my computer.

Over Thanksgiving my parents, brother and I spent a whole Sunday afternoon at the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History. My dad was trying to find a rock he'd seen before, and while he was off on his Quixote quest, I wandered around with my mom and bro. Not much caught my eye -- I mean, we'd been there the year before -- except this thing:


Quartz with rutile inclusions. At the time I think it reminded me of the grasses you find growing on the beach, like out on Lake Michigan. Where the dunes rise hundreds of feet into the skies, and stalwart grasses poke up in their shadows, just beyond the waterline. You'd go back there if you could -- I mean anyone would -- because those were perfect summer days. Warm, with the earth blushing under your feet. Clear, with the water stretching ahead for miles. And gladness everywhere, with dogs and children playing in the distance down the beach.

For now frost-covered bushes in the parking lot and a picture of rutile inclusions will be the closest I get back to being there. But someday... back to that beach and back into the sun.

P.S. Leave a comment -- this is posting number 100! Best to you all.... Stew