I’ve recently been working through a collection of essays by the inestimable John Maynard Keynes, Essays in Persuasion, that my mother gave to me for Christmas a few years ago.  There is a lot of thought-provoking material within – as the title of the work implies, it’s fairly polemical in nature – that I may or may not blog about later, depending on whether I feel a sufficient amount of rigour to tackle a subject other than, er, what I ate for diner last night.  In the meanwhile, though, allow me to share this excerpt from an essay called “Liberalism and Labour,” in which Baron Keynes attempts to carve out a place in the British political system for his dear Liberals (emphasis added):

Possibly the Liberal Party cannot serve the state in any better way than by supplying Conservative Governments with Cabinets, and Labour Governments with ideas.

This was written in 1926, mind, when the Liberal Party were in the process of losing more radical members to Labour and more moderate ones to the Conservatives, but I laughed aloud when I read it, for I would like to think that Keynes unintentionally predicted the outcome of a general election that would happen 74 84 (my arithmetic skills are clearly in decline) years later!

Last weekend, my family drove down to DC to deliver some items to the apartment and, more generally, just to visit.  A few days before their arrival, my parents called to ask if there was anything in particular that they could get for me.  Given the District of Columbia proper is sadly lacking in Asian supermarkets and I have not yet had a chance to venture out into the suburbs for these venerable institutions, I casually mentioned one or two vegetables that I miss eating on a regular basis and also asked if she could pick up some frozen dumplings from Assi.

Their Chinese minds must have reacted to the request like this: “Well, if it’s one or two vegetables she wants, why not five or six – or ten – additional foodstuffs, including ingredients for a double batch of homemade dumplings that we’ll all make together in her only slightly cramped flat?”

Let it never be said that tiger parents do not feed their cubs.

The result is that I now have a very full fridge indeed, as well as at least a few meals’ worth of dumplings tucked away in the freezer.  I will wax rhapsodically about them once I start cooking them, but, for now, I feast on the simple but delicious dishes of my upbringing.  In addition to the actual act of consuming them, I am very much enjoying the intuition that goes into their preparation and cooking: my parents left me with no recipes, only guiding principles, but a lifetime of eating these dishes has left me with a fairly good idea of how they ought to turn out, at least.  Here’s a quick documentation of tonight’s dinner:

First, 土豆丝炒豆腐干, or shredded potato fried with dried tofu.  The potatoes involved are very pedestrian and can be bought anywhere, the dried tofu less so.  As the name implies, the consistency of dried tofu is much harder than normal tofu, but that’s why I have always preferred it in stir fry.  Also added to the mix are jalapeño peppers, which add a necessary spicy kick to the proceedings.  At home, my parents always prepare this with a bit of shredded pork, but that particular ingredient needs to be prepared beforehand.  Something to keep in mind the next time I want to make this.

Next up, 韭菜炒鸡蛋, or chives and fried egg: absurdly easy to make but so, so good.

Finally, to supplement the protein in my diet, I heated some 叉烧 that my parents picked up from Ting Wong (天旺), our favourite restaurant in Philadelphia’s Chinatown.  My online Chinese-English dictionary tells me that the translation of 叉烧 is “char siu,” but that term is utterly unfamiliar to me, so I shall endeavour to explain it in my own words: it is roast pork cooked in some slightly sweet sauce, which gives it a distinct red colouring on the outside, and, when done right, it is tender and flavourful throughout. 

Ting Wong makes the best 叉烧 in the world, as far as I’m concerned; to have some sitting in my fridge is just an absolute delight!

(Also, for those who may have missed it and are potentially interested in this sort of thing, I posted a summery classical music mix last night – do check it out!)

Apologies for the sparing updates.  I think that part of me remains convinced that I am still running on a university student schedule and can therefore get away with only blogging once a week when, really, posting once every two or three days is the desired frequency.  I’ll hopefully manage to achieve that in the near future for my own creative necessity, if nothing else!

While I brainstorm & prepare posts for some point in the near future, here is once inspired by something I read over at Deceptive Cadence, NPR’s superb classical music blog.  Last week, one of its erstwhile bloggers asked readers, "What are your sounds of summer?"  Having already answered this in indie rock/pop form, I decided to take on NPR’s challenge and create a classical music playlist for summer.   As there is no shortage of bright, happy, and shiny sounding classical music out there, I wanted to find songs that exude a certain casualness and ease of composition and were, above all else, fun at first listen, even for those who do not spend their waking hours pouring over the minutiae of, say, the Köchel-Verzeichnis (not saying I do that or anything…).  This is partially reflected in the names of some of these pieces, which are definitely more descriptive than “Symphony No. 4 in F major” or “Violin Sonata No. 10 in C minor.”

I am incredibly tempted to ramble at length about all twelve tracks, as each was selected with care, but I shall restrict myself to some highlights.  Note the youthful ebullience of Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream overture, written when the composer was only seventeen years old.  The creative, vibrant instrumentation in the “Russian Dance” from Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Petrouchka follows, and, a little after that, the evocative piano lines of “Jeax d’Eau.”  The Boccherini piece, borrowed from the Master and Commander soundtrack, is what I think would happen if a drunk violinist met an equally inebriated cellist at a bar and the two decided to strike up an improvisatory tune.  Similarly, the final movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 15 finds the usually weighty German in a surprisingly sunny mood; I love the little musical leaps in both the melody and the harmony.  The majestic – and slightly maniacal – overture to Mozart’s The Magic Flute concludes affairs. 

I dare you not to feel at least somewhat happier after listening to these pieces!

classical summer
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1. Felix Mendelssohn – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op. 61: Overture
2. Igor Stravinsky – Petrouchka: Scene 1: Russian Dance
3. George Gershwin – An American In Paris
4. Maurice Ravel – Jeax d’Eau
5. Léo Delibes – Lakmé: Dome Epais Le Jasmin
6. Frédéric Chopin – Impromptu No. 1 in A flat major, Op. 29
7. Luigi Boccherini – La Musica Notturna Delle Strade Di Madrid No. 6, Op. 30
8. Domenico Scarlatti – Sonata in E major, K. 380: Andante commodo
9. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Le nozze di Figaro, K. 492: Act 2: ‘Voi, che sapete’
10. Ludwig van Beethoven – Piano Sonata No. 15 in D major, Op. 28 (“Pastoral”): Rondo: Allegro, ma non troppo; Più allegro quasi presto
11. Claude Debussy – Fêtes
12. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Die Zauberflöte, K. 620: Overture

One week and a half into my Real World existence, my self-education in cooking continues apace.  Beyond my existing arsenal of dishes, I managed to make after an epic fail the first time around these lemon and basil chicken breasts – believe it or not, it was actually the first time I had ever handled raw meat – and, a few days after that, a pretty delicious chicken and broccoli alfredo with aid from this recipe (the garlic is absolutely essential).  Trawling the blogsophere and the internets at large for new things to make is all quite fun, but I will always feel most comfortable (though comfortable isn’t precisely the word I want to use but, rather, some English equivalent of 对劲) with the culinary traditions of my Chinese background – and, more specifically, the cooking of my parents.  To that end, my greatest kitchen coup to date occurred last week, when I successfully recreated a dish that I have eaten for as long as I have been capable of digestion: 骨头汤.  (We shall overlook the fact that I required repeated phone calls to my parents to ensure that I wasn’t botching things.)

This literally translates into “bone soup,” except that doesn’t sound particularly appetising, so allow me to elaborate.  The soup takes most of an afternoon to prepare, but it is both a simple and versatile dish.  One simply takes a few pork loins and places them in boiling water over low heat for about two hours, creating a very flavourful broth in the process. 

Once this is done, the broth and the meat can be portioned accordingly, and any combination of vegetables, tofu, and/or noodles, with salt added to taste, can be added for a truly wondrous serving of home-cooked deliciousness.  On Sunday, my greens of choice were Napa cabbage and scallions –

– and, to make it a full meal, I added some Shandong noodles. 

The result?

Easily the best meal I had eaten since moving in!  And, best of all, I am still feasting on the leftover soup and creating variations on the above dish in the evenings, which blessedly means less cooking for me to do when I get home from the office.

To the Reader: greetings from the Real World, where I blog from the comforts of my studio apartment in Washington, DC.  I have been here for eight days now, but any plans to update this space had to wait until I at last got my internet installed.  Although there is much to share, I will resist the temptation to cram everything into one entry.

The actual process of moving in itself occurred without incident.  Goodness knows, however, that I would not have been able to do it without my parents, who were infinitely helpful in transporting boxes/furniture up the four stories to my flat, carrying all manner of necessities from the nearby Target, and cleaning the floor with great zeal (well, it was just my father doing the latter…).  After everything was in place, I spent most of the following day making the plain white walls appear somewhat less so.  Then I took some pictures so that I can give you all a virtual tour of my new premises!

First, here is my kitchen.  There is less counter space than I would like, but it is nevertheless still wonderfully functional.  I spend a lot of time here, attempting to feed myself, but I’ll save that particular subject for a later post.

Here is one side of the apartment.  The Roger Federer photoshoot from the December 2006 issue of Vogue naturally occupies a prominent place on the wall.  The chair at the bottom of the picture is where my kitchen table will eventually go.  Next to that is my bookshelf – or, to be more accurate, half of the bookshelf that a Georgetown friend kindly gave to me.  When my parents were moving it out of my dorm room, the entire thing was altogether too big for the storage capacity of our van, so we had to dismantle it into two pieces and toss one of them.  Next to that is a television.  This bears mentioning because I have never had a TV in my room until now.  With an HDMI cable on hand, I can play any kind of video on my laptop and watch it on a proper flatscreen monitor while lying in bed.  With the RemoteDroid app, I can even turn my phone into a de facto remote control, eliminating even the need to get out of bed to, say, queue up the next episode of The Thick of It or The Good Wife.  Entertainment and laziness, concurrently: has life ever been so delightful?

My free conscious activity does not solely consist of TV watching, though.  For the bibliophiles among you, here are the books that made the journey to DC with me.  I do actually mean to read Infinite Jest – I think I’m going to participate in Infinite Summer – but I have a sinking suspicion that I might just jettison all other books in favour of re-reading A Song of Ice and Fire…

Above the TV, I have put up a selection of postcards from my rather extensive collection thereof.  Next to that are four cork boards that took at least a few hours to prepare: each one has a particular theme, and then, having decided that, I had to decide how to arrange everything.  Times like these leave me feeling very convinced that I do, in fact, suffer from an undiagnosed case of OCD.

On the opposite side of the room, I have my (queen-sized!) bed, with the requisite collection of stuffed animals, and a wicker sofa pushed up against that.  The wall decorations here were also very deliberately planned, and I have Katherine to thank for the absolutely wondrous Napoleon poster.  As I told her earlier, it adds the right amount of megalomania to any living space.

Finally, I present one of my favourite parts of living here: the massive walk-in closet.  It is a far cry from the tiny wardrobes with which I made due while at Georgetown and a luxury in its own right.

All in all, I’m very much enjoying it here so far.  With a Giant and Target right around the corner and easy access to both metro and bus lines, I could not have asked for a more convenient place to life.  I am finally approaching the exalted ideal of independent living, and, as much as I loved residing in Georgetown for three out of the last four years, learning to call a less tony and more vibrant DC neighbourhood home is an adventure that is only just beginning.

Next up: some notes on my new job.  Later: results of my cooking!

By the time this post goes live, my parents and I ought to be well on our way to Washington, DC – provided I-95 isn’t snarled in traffic – for the Big Move™, as I have taken to calling it in my head.  On the eve of my departure (quick refresher: I am beginning my Real Person Job soon, and, by “soon,” I actually mean next Monday), I offer some thoughts, more or less taken verbatim from my journal because, well, it’s more efficient that way!  (Aside: title for this post borrowed from Meg & Dia’s “Here, Here and Here,” which remains my go-to song for these sorts of occasions.)

Although my post-graduation future has been fixed since the end of February or so, I feel that I have yet to fully internalise the fact that the next great stage of my life is upon me, whether I like it or not.  I am leaving the nest again, not unlike that time, nearly four years ago now, I first relocated to the District to begin my studies at Georgetown.  Last week, I was reading some of my journal entries from the end of summer 2007 and was stuck by my preoccupation with the idea of dislocation and the perception that there must always necessarily be some incongruity between myself and my surroundings.  Before I left for Georgetown, it was the “hallowed land of higher education” (I was a piece of work at seventeen, no?) to the intellectually lax mundaneness of high school.  Upon arriving at Georgetown, it was filled with happy, laughing peers who all had friends and social lives when I had neither.  When I returned home for the first time, not merely as Malin but Malin the College Student, it seemed alien and unfitting as old friends appeared set on divergent paths.

These emotions were held quite strongly at the time, but, in retrospect, I suspect they were largely just adolescent histrionics.  The critical knowledge and skills I gained from high school (or at least during my high school years – I daresay I learned as much, if not more, from reading and writing done beyond academia proper) become more apparent with time.  We are all of us, at our core, fearful of some unshakeable loneliness that winds itself around our veins.  And, as for home and its associations, they have become my deepest reservoir of comfort, strength, and love.

Thus, as I commence the next great stage of my life, I cannot deny my trepidations, but, compared to those that possessed me the last time I did this, they are positively dull in substance: where to buy Chinese groceries, what internet service provider to choose, managing my personal finances (with added hard budget constraint) prudently, hoping that my employer does not find me completely hapless.  I am sure that my worries will be in abundance because they are, I have learned, an inseparable part of my story.  Yet I must believe that the interceding four years have left me more mature, more resilient, and perhaps even more at peace – with myself, with all that I have seen and felt and lived, with the turning of the page, and the next, and the next.

It has been a while since I’ve inflicted the internets with my taste in music, so I have quite a backlog of mixes to share at some point or another.  First, allow me to present a collection of tracks that is appropriate for the Northeast’s current meteorological situation (read: hot and humid).  I posted a summer-themed mix two years ago inspired by a driving-induced rush of blood to the head.  This time, I come bearing a summertime mix of a more mellow nature, inspired by late afternoons spent lying in the backyard with a book, iPod, and sunglasses for company.  Special attention was paid to maintaining a sense of continuous tempo & sound throughout – the aural equivalent to watching the idle drifting of clouds.

One artist to whom I should like to draw your attention is Foster the People.  A friend of mine introduced me to them within the last month, and, as soon as their debut album leaked, I snatched it up immediately.  Their sound reminds me not a little bit of Phoenix’s magnum opus of an album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix: the music is fun, brash, and, most importantly, effortless, while the lyrics are much darker in nature.  If there is one song that you must download, it is their impossibly catchy “Houdini.”

But enough rambling.  Here is the music!

vaguely pretentious songs for breezy summer days
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1. Rose Elinor Dougall – Another Version Of Pop Song
2. Metric – Soft Rock Star
3. Foster the People – Houdini
4. Milo Greene – 1957
5. Broken Social Scene – All To All
6. Andrew Belle – Static Waves (featuring Katie Herzig)
7. Mumm-Ra – She’s Got You High
8. Patrick Wolf – Bermondsey Street
9. The Shins – Phantom Limb
10. Phoenix – Fences
11. Vampire Weekend – White Sky
12. The Decemberists – The Crane Wife 3

Because, yes, I use my holiday to fiddle around with a sewing machine.  While I’ve yet to attempt any of the projects I linked to here, mostly because I am quite good at wasting hours looking at crafting blogs for more things to make, I have undertaken a few smaller, simpler projects.  They have also been a good way of using up leftover fabric from previous projects.

First, I turned to one of my favourite blogs, Purl Bee, for ideas.  Per my mother’s exhortation to make something that has nothing to do with rabbits for once, I decided to make a Purl Frog with some cheerful polka-dot green fabric.  The beads were from a collection thereof that I discovered in my closet – last time I must have used them was elementary school!

Little froggy also found where our pet goldfish resides.  Nothing good can come of this!

Second, I adapted Rosey Corner Creation’s Too Cute Card Keeper to suit the materials at hand.  Given I did not have any vinyl with which to make the pockets, I just used the lining fabric instead.  I also added a button enclosure to give the piece a bit more polish.

I plan on using this to carry my DC Metro SmarTrip card around with me.  This not only frees me from having to pull out my wallet every time I need to enter/exit a station but will also, hopefully, make it less likely that I will lose said card.  Which I may or may not have done a few months ago, much to my eternal annoyance.

Finally, some of you may recall my blogging about punting in Oxford last year.  The boathouse at Magdalen Bridge sells cheap, charming, and only slightly ridiculous straw hats to accompany the experience of drifting down the River Cherwell.  I could not bear to leave the hat behind when I dragged all of my things back to the States, so it has been sitting, sadly neglected, in my room ever since.  But I decided on a whim today to spruce it up a bit.  Using a template from Wise Craft, I made an adorable fabric flower to attach to the hat.  Instead of using a button for the centre of the flower, though, I used some pearl-shaped beads.  I wish I had been able to give the “petals” more volume, but the end result was pleasing nonetheless.

My fashion challenge for the summer, then: find an excuse to wear this hat.

After a month of substantial blogging (finally!), I am bringing this feature back to life.  I meant to get to it sooner, but the French Open and A Song of Ice and Fire have thus far conspired to monopolise the bulk of my time.

This Month in Blogging

I, at long last, recapped my trips to New Orleans and Yosemite National Park and found time to nerd out about the Carroll Round too.  I reached a rather big milestone in my relatively young life – namely, graduating from Georgetown with with Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service degree.  And, thus far during my truncated-by-the-demands-of-Real-Adulthood summer holiday, I disparaged the intelligence of the broader American populace, started learning how to cook, and flailed over Roland Garros.

And, since I haven’t done these more introspective reflections for a while, a quick refresher: the four following categories roughly correspond to my New Year's resolutions – no point in making them if I do not mean to keep them, after all!

Mind

I can officially cross resolution #2 off my list, as I inexplicably had my best term ever at Georgetown just as I was about to leave the place.  I am more or less satisfied with my overall academic performance as an undergraduate, a handful of course marks here and there notwithstanding.  Simply because formal education has concluded for the time being does not mean that learning ends, though: I am quite sure that my impending research assistant position will put me through the wringer on that account…

Body

My diet and exercise declined precipitously with the onset of thesis/Carroll Round/exams-stress; I both envy and admire people who are able to stay on top of academics and health-related things simultaneously.  I have been much better since returning home, though.  Chinese food – by which I mean the proper home-cooked stuff – always seems healthier to me than the alternative, and I have actually left the house every now and then to work out.  A few sessions on the tennis court, biking in Valley Forge National Park, and even running: how exciting!  I hope to keep this up when I move to DC for good.  At least I won’t have to worry about coursework interfering.

Heart

Mental health status: absolutely buoyed by graduation, followed by much-needed summer holiday relaxation.  The waning days of my undergraduate years were an ideal opportunity to reflect on the many wonderful things that Georgetown has brought to my life, and it is an emotional high from which I’ve still yet to come down.

Soul

Leisure reading is in full swing with George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire keeping me company.  I’ve read 16 books since the beginning of the year, which means that I am on pace to meet my goal of 30.  Other activities, such as journaling and piano, suffer while I remain engrossed in ASOIAF, but summer’s possibilities are boundless.

That is all.