I am both pleased and relieved to say that Irene did not live up to apocalyptic expectations, at least in this corner of Washington, DC.  The worst of it passed over here just past midnight, when the wind picked up a sufficient amount such that I could actually hear it whistling by my window, but that in itself is hardly out of the ordinary.  When I wandered over to the supermarket this afternoon, everything was bright, warm, and lamentably humid again.  One could hardly tell it had rained the night before, let alone that a tropical storm had skimmed past the East Coast.

I did use my copious amount of free time yesterday to work on some blog posts so that I don’t end up going on accidental week-long hiatuses again.  One of the things about which I have neglected to blog is my trip to Boston earlier this month.  Although I was only there for a weekend, it was the closest thing to a proper holiday that I have been able to enjoy this summer – an unfortunate, unavoidable consequence of employment.  Readers who have been around for a while might recall that I ventured up to New England this time last year as well, and the purpose was the same: to see friends who had studied abroad at Oxford with me.  Since a disproportionate number of them have recently graduated from Tufts, many of them are still in the general Boston area.  I was never able to follow through on my plans to visit them during the academic year, so I was determined to make up for that at some point during the summer.

I know that I have previously remarked upon this, but I am constantly awed and humbled by the permanence of my Oxford experiences.  They are over, of course, in the sense that I have not had to lose sleep over an essay crisis since last June – and, come October, it will have been two years since I jetted off to England – yet there is not a day that passes when I do not, if only for a few moments, immerse myself in memories of hushed college quads and silly academic dress, dream of walking through Christ Church Meadow, or wonder what would have happened if I had gone back (because there was a chance, albeit a stillborn one).  There are any number of reasons for this, but the fact that I became inordinately attached to the people around me is surely one of the more prominent ones.  We might not have had the opportunity to talk much during the time since, but, when the bonds of friendship are there, any such disconnect is always transient.

This time around, I stayed with Rachel and her family in Lexington, which meant that I saw more of Boston this year than I did last.  Robin joined us from Rhode Island for a planned trip to the Chihuly exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts, but, sadly, it was sold out.  In lieu of culture, we headed over to Cambridge for cupcake consumption, shopping at Anthropologie, and general strolling about.  It is a very lovely neighbourhood, even if I am slightly resentful towards its resident university, from which I have been rejected on two separate occasions.  But let us not dwell on my academic bitterness!

Later on, dear Bryan, whom I had not seen since leaving Oxford, joined us for dinner at the Corner Café, where we enjoyed delicious Mexican fare and likely inappropriate conversation.  Drinks followed at Tory Row; I appreciated the British-inspired name, naturally.  I nearly outdid myself by having half a glass of beer.

The next morning featured an absolutely delectable brunch at Sound Bites, which, I was told, is something of a Tufts institution.  It did make me deeply sad that I never found an equivalent place in Georgetown, but maybe that is inevitable when one attends university in uncompromisingly upscale neighbourhood.  I am sure there was good brunch to be had somewhere, but would it have been affordable on a student budget?  Not likely (please correct me if I am wrong, Hoyas both present and past).  I had a fair chunk of unconstructed free time that afternoon, so I hopped on the T, filled with romantic notions of exploring the downtown area on foot as I had so many European cities.

Alas for me, the weather was wholly uncooperative – let’s just say that Boston was being hit by more than just a little fall of rain, if I may make a Les Mis reference.  I braved the conditions long enough to wander around Boston Common…

…and Beacon Hill. The latter reminded me very much of Georgetown, all brick sidewalks and tony rowhouses, though with fewer tourists, I think.  That is always a plus in my books.

At a certain point, I did tire of feeling like a drowned gutter rat and sought shelter in a Starbucks, where I caught up on some journal writing while attempting to coordinate meeting up with more people.  Eventually, they all somehow converged at the Starbucks: Greg and Limmy from Oxford, and, more unexpectedly, Sarah, a very close friend from my high school days who recently moved to Boston.  It’s always slightly jarring, at first, to have two separate social circles, but we had a very lovely time together, huddled in a nearby pub – food is clearly the unifying theme behind this entry – and chatting away until, miraculously, the skies cleared.

(Note: the soft-focus, vaguely angelic effects were entirely unintentional result of my camera lens fogging over.  This is what I got for trying to take pictures earlier in the pouring rain, sigh.)

After left, Greg and Limmy provided an impromptu tour of other parts of Boston, including the North End with its unapologetically Italian character.  Along the way, I managed to get at least one nice picture of the city:

The sidestreets of the North End, narrow snakes of cobblestone lined with cafés in the shadow of cast-iron balconies, seemed to be distinctly Old World and European, and it occurred to me how unusual it is, to find such history – a history diffused through the everyday, not the sterile, meticulously cultivated kind commemorated with plaques, museums, and statues – in an American city.  The allure of modernity always proves stronger, or perhaps I am simply not looking closely enough.

The only downside of this trip was my return flight to DC being delayed by a number of hours, resulting in my not getting home until almost 1am, but such an inconvenience felt very minor indeed when compared to the manifold joys of my Boston adventures.

One of these days, I will go back to blogging about shiny, happy things, but the universe, being unsatisfied with the earthquake that visited the mid-Atlantic region earlier this week, has now seen fit to rain, well, a lot of rain upon us this weekend in the form of Hurricane Irene.  Incidentally, the storm shares a name with my younger sister; interpret that how you will.

I am deeply resentful about this freak weather, as it just so happens to coincide with my twenty-second birthday, which is tomorrow.  I have to say that I rather dislike my birthday on principle – since it coincides with the beginning of the academic year and all of the transitional craziness that goes along with it, it is quite poorly timed – but, really: I have to spend this one huddled away in my flat all weekend and pray that my windows won’t get blown out in some spectacular fashion, thereby potentially maiming me for life if I have the misfortune of being near them when that happens?  Cheers.

Part of me is convinced that Irene will amount to nothing more than a bit of wet weather, though perhaps more sustained than what I am used to.  The other part is taking very seriously indeed the need to stock up on non-perishable food items and water, in case this storm leans closer to devastating than merely a nuisance.  I steered clear of the supermarket today and simply picked up some things at the CVS across the street from my office, correctly assuming that it would be better stocked and less busy than the alternative, even if it did mean that I had to lug a three-quart jug of water halfway across the city.  I felt like I was outfitting a fallout shelter for nuclear winter, although it has occurred to me that much of my stockpile will be fairly useless if I cannot boil water (see: instant ramen, copious amounts thereof).

The one item I was not able to procure today was a flashlight, naturally, as I have been informed that power outages are possible/likely.  Fortunately, I realised that I do have one candle in my flat and was able to find some cheap lighters at Target (I don’t have any matches around and never learned how to light them, in any case – I believe I’ve always been afraid that I would somehow end up burning my fingers).  Hilariously/pathetically, aforementioned emergency source of light is a votive candle from Notre-Dame.  As in, you know, the very famous cathedral in Paris.  It has only functioned as a decorative piece until now, but, if I do in fact end up electricity-less, I will take incandescence wherever I can find it.

And, of course, I have a coterie of stuffed animals and an entire shelf-full of books to keep me company throughout – necessities not merely for extreme meteorological conditions but also the everyday.

Stay safe, friends on the East Coast!

That’s what they’re calling it on Foursquare, anyway (check in now and you can earn an Epic Swarm badge! /social media nerd).

Unless you have been hiding under an especially sturdy rock, you have undoubtedly heard that a 5.9-magnitude earthquake with its epicentre somewhere between Richmond and Washington, DC sent tremors up and down the East Coast and office workers scrambling for their smartphones in a game to see who could tweet the wittiest quake-related witticism fastest. I can only speak for myself & my co-workers, but, after evacuating our building, we stood outside for some time while the engineering powers that be, I suppose, ensured its structural integrity.  It was still decided to close the office for the remainder of the day – who knew that half days, a staple of my grade school years, would reappear in the professional world? – at which point those without family obligations organised an impromptu happy hour at the ever classy hour of 3:30pm and those with attended to them.  If you were in DC post-earthquake, then, you were either at a bar or stuck in traffic.

When I at last returned to my flat, I was able to survey the damage that the earthquake had wrought upon my material possessions.

→ My beloved Remy stuffed animal (that would be the protagonist from Ratatouille, fyi) had taken an unfortunate tumble from his perch atop my bookshelf – gasp!

→ The meticulously arranged package of toilet paper rolls in my closet had shifted perilously close to the edge of the shelf – horror!

→ And, in the course of dramatically running to safety, i.e., walking with as much speed as I could muster in 3-inch heels, I marred the heretofore unblemished exterior of my dearest, most darling Ann Taylor pumps.  (In a disgusting #firstworldproblems kind of way, I am just a little bit genuinely irritated about this, but it is probably best to accept the relationship between a girl and her shoes as being wholly irrational and not enquire any further along these lines.)

Anyway, now that I have gotten that tongue-in-cheek commentary out of the way, I am going to beg forgiveness from my West Coast friends, who are likely scoffing at all of our “OH NOES THE GROUND IS MOVING!!1!!11!!ONE!1” talk, and admit that the moment I fully realised that everything around me was audibly & visibly shaking – that it wasn’t just some angry co-worker who had slammed a door shut harder than intended – was a fairly scary one.  Two panicked thoughts immediately came to mind: (1) I work on the sixth floor of a building whose exterior features not a little bit of glass, and (2) oh shit, I think I should hide under my desk!  Fortunately, I spotted somebody positively sprinting past my office and realised that leaving the building was likely a better proposition.

And that, my friends, was my first earthquake.  I would hate to experience a real one.

I could rhapsodise about the wonders of tea for many paragraphs, but I will let this succinctly worded poem do it for me:

If you are cold, tea will warm you.
If you are too heated, it will cool you.
If you are depressed, it will cheer you.
If you are exhausted, it will calm you.

– William Gladstone

This poem is featured on the menu of The Rose in Oxford, an establishment I frequented for their delicious cream teas.  Although I grew up drinking tea – inevitable in a Chinese household – it was not until my year abroad that I slowly became enamoured with the simple rituals associated with it.  There may have been the industrial quantities of Earl Grey downed in the middle of an essay crisis, but there were also the afternoons when, comparatively liberated from academic obligation, my friends and I would come together and partake in this ubiquitous drink, blissfully lost in the flow of our shared stories & laughter.

It is a mundane recollection from that time, but, when confronted with demands of the everyday, which are perhaps equally mundane yet rather great in number, it is a very sweet one to nurse – as one might a cup of tea, snuggled warmly in the hands.

mellow like a cup of tea
♪ download ♪

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1. Miles Davis – Blue In Green
2. George Gershwin – Concerto in F: Andante con moto
3. Laura Veirs – July Flame
4. Stars – This Charming Man
5. David Arnold – God And Nature
6. A Fine Frenzy – Come On, Come Out
7. Ludovico Einaudi – The Snow Prelude No. 2
8. The xx – Islands
9. Squarepusher – Tommib Help Buss
10. Ludwig van Beethoven – Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat major, Op. 73 (“Emperor”): Adagio un poco mosso
11. John Mayer – The Heart Of Life
12. The Paper Raincoat – Safe In The Sound

I am a packrat of the highest order, filling every place that I occupy with personal effects, and, when it comes to those items I bring around with me on an everyday basis, I generally adhere to the maximalist approach that one can never carry too much.  When I was at Oxford, for instance, I would usually throw my DSLR – and it’s a rather large camera, mind – into my bag along with my notebook, econometrics texts, and everything else on walks to the Social Science Library, even well after I had already documented most of the city photographically.  Who knows if I might spot something unusual during my stroll?  It was a contingency for which I felt obligated to prepare.  To use a more pedestrian example, I also have a drawstring bag that contains everything I might need while away from the comforts of home: sewing kit, Tide Pen, blister block, Band-Aids, hair ties, chapstick, etc.  Let us not even mention my preference for having reading material on my person, and maybe my journal too, if I find myself with an empty stretch of time and thoughts of this & that drifting through my mind.  It all started adding up to quite a lot.

Last month, during a bout of online shopping, my professional wardrobe still being a work in progress, I picked up this adorable purse from Ann Taylor at a rather steep discount.  None of the bags I had owned until then were especially suitable for the office, and, besides, look at this delightful shade of red!  I wear a lot of neutrals and dark colours, so this adds a nice pop to any look.

Because its dimensions are rather smaller than what I am used to, I had to impose an austerity budget, as it were, on its contents.

• Moleskine planner
• Soft-cover Moleskine cahier – as the company calls it – for fictional scribblings
• Sharpie pen (I am very particular about my writing implements and will only write in the aforementioned notebooks with this)
• Cardholder for my SmarTrip card, as demonstrated here
• Mobile, utterly indispensible
• Trusty iPod Classic
• Wallet for cash monies, plastic monies, various business cards, and one London Tube map
• Keys with adorable surfing camel keychain from Dubai

There is something surprisingly refreshing about paring those things I carry down to the absolute essentials, the psychological relief that accompanies a rigorous cleaning of my flat or the implementation of some new organisational scheme (and, on a more practical note, my right shoulder is much less sore by the end of the day!).  I still supplement them, of course.  When I go to work, I cheat by bringing along my sturdy Threadless tote, which usually contains a book, lunch, that day’s copy of the Express , and a pair of heels if I have sensibly decided to commute in flats. If I need my laptop with me for whatever reason, then I resort to my seemingly indestructible laptop tote that I bought years ago.  Yet life seems just a little simpler when I need only grab this little bag before heading out the door and know all that I need is already with me.

Oh goodness, how is it essentially the middle of August already?  Time flies when you’re not blogging, apparently.

Although I have been quite busy this last week with a visit to Boston over the weekend and then my younger sister staying in DC with me for two nights, the overwhelming majority of my neurons have been preoccupied with recent economic, financial, and political happenings.  The mind reels to take everything in: revised GDP numbers that tell us the recession was worse than was thought, debt ceiling shenanigans in the U.S., a reoccurring/seemingly intractable sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone, a complete absence of balls – and, in some cases, basic economic sense – among politicians on either side of the Atlantic, the S&P downgrade, stock markets worldwide stumbling around like a schizophrenic on a serious bender.  These are the times that try men’s souls, and possibly more importantly, provide fodder for amazing Tumblr blogs.  Meanwhile, if I am not reading debt-related economic news on my own time, I am working on debt-related matters at the office.  Most of my life, then, is consumed by economics.

Every generation, however it may be defined, coalesces around some Formative Moment.  I suppose that, for mine, this is 9/11 or the Second Gulf War, but I was still rather young in those years.  This Great Recession looms much greater in my overall consciousness, though, and, in a curious twist of fate, its early onset coincides with the beginning of my lengthy & ongoing affair with economics.  I still remember my AP Econ teacher, back in either late 2006 or early 2007, mentioning to us an article about the rising cost of rent.  He used this as an example of the substitution effect: the demand for owning one’s unit of residence was decreasing, thus the demand for renting it was going up.  I had yet to make a habit of visiting the Financial Times’ website everyday, so little did I know that American economic growth since the 1990s had been buoyed by a massive real estate bubble that was either peaking or had already begun to deflate. 

When I started at Georgetown in the fall of 2007, I was chatting with my RA, who was a senior in the business school, about the adverse job prospects facing that year’s batch of graduates.  Blithely, I made some sort of remark about how things would surely be better by the time I received my diploma, which, at the time, seemed ages away.  Of course, everything that has happened since does not require my efforts at summarising it (here is a very good resource for that), and, almost four years after the fact, I am still sometimes stunned to think that the economy is still mired in a self-perpetuating cycle of high unemployment and low growth and that, for all of our collective hand-wringing over the need get out of it, there is a terrifying unwillingness among our elected officials to be truly audacious in the face of what very well may be America’s lost decade.

Part of me feels at least somewhat hypocritical writing about this.  I know that I am one of the lucky ones: I have a college degree from a good university and the fortune to have found a full-time job immediately following.  Nevertheless, there is something to be said about the anxiety and uncertainty that seem to gnaw away ever more at the edges of the body politic and civil society itself, and I can only sit here and wallow in inevitably gloomy headlines and statistics.

I finally got around to seeing Midnight in Paris last weekend, for, if there has ever been a film with my name scribbled all over it, I certainly haven’t heard of it yet (just kidding, I have, but let’s allow the hyperbole to stand for now): nostalgia and romance!  literary references galore!  the opening montage of Paris in day and night, sun and rain, scored to such blatantly emotionally manipulative jazz music that my eyes involuntarily began to water!  But, in all seriousness, the wide-eyed wonder of Owen Wilson’s character spoke very directly to a particular time in my life when I wanted nothing more than to write novels like the great artists of old, minus the tuberculosis and syphilis.  Although my bohemian dreams have since been replaced by a slavish adherence to the System, Paris still exercises a particular allure over me that no other city can, as evidenced by the many posts I wrote about it when I had the opportunity to visit last year.

As the film emphasises, however, all nostalgia is changeable and treacherous – those times & places that are the object of yearning seem somehow liable to slip away into a space that memory cannot access.  I am reminded of this sublime quote from This Side of the Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a rather appropriate author to cite for something like this:

I’m not sentimental – I’m as romantic as you are.  The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person thinks things will last – the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won’t.

I have been a fairly avid collector of French music since my teenage days, and, since few things are as potent as music when it comes to evoking the past, whether real, imagined, or some fanciful blend of the two, I was inspired by Midnight in Paris to put together this mix.  The first half draws upon the tradition of French chanson, with the necessary dash of jazz sprinkled in, the second features French classical composers c. the late 19th/early 20th centuries, but who is to say where the sentiment ends and the romance begins, that what is most beguiling is often most impermanent?

a moveable feast
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1. Camille – Le Festin
2. Thomas Fersen – Au Café De La Paix
3. Django Reinhardt – Minor Swing
4. Paris Combo – Discordance
5. Feist – La Même Histoire
6. Maurice Ravel – Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2: Lever du Jour
7. Erik Satie – Gymnopedies Nos. 1 and 3
8. Claude Debussy – String Quartet in G minor, Op. 10: Andantino (Doucement expressif)
9. Gabriel Fauré – Requiem, Op. 48: In Paradisium
10. Camille Saint-Saëns – Valse nonchalante, Op. 110

The beginning of August has, until now, heralded the opening notes of summer’s swan song: the heat and humidity will simmer for a while yet, but, mentally, I must begin to reconcile myself with the imminent return of academia.  Except, this time, academia will not be coming back, and, in a reversal of the traditional pattern, I find myself getting busier as autumn approaches.  (Speaking of which: Dear autumn, your presence is requested as promptly as is meteorologically feasible.  Love, Malin.)

This Month in Blogging

I mused about my (other) nationality, gave my blog a long-overdue makeover, flagged a curious economics paper, whinged about this & that, saw the wondrous Ellie Goulding live, and waxed rhapsodic about the marvellous substance that is coffee.  I also realised, while putting together this little recap graphic, that I didn’t take many photos this month or post any mixes.  This should be rectified.

Mind

As alluded to in my previous monthly reflection, I have indeed gotten busier – significantly so! – at work.  I shan’t blather on too much about the details (not the least because, on principle, I should not), but it is genuinely wonderful to be given responsibilities of my own, even if I am on the bottom of the organisational hierarchy.  It has given me the opportunity to engage with a previously unfamiliar issue and to work with economists in my division, and it is one that I feel very lucky to have.  More generally speaking, I am growing increasingly accustomed to the workplace and know that I still have much to learn in the months to come.

Also, I’m not sure where personal finances should fall in this four-part introspective schematic of mine, but, since matters involving money should theoretically primarily concern the mind – sometimes, they end up dominated by that impulse which makes it quite impossible to stop browsing Ann Taylor’s gorgeous fall offerings online, ahem – I shall tack them onto this section.  With regular income and rather important bills to pay, I have been using Mint to set a monthly budget and track my every expenditure.  While I did an admirable job of setting enough of my monthly salary into both a savings account and a Roth IRA (!), I did make a few too many impulse purchases (BREAKING: Local Area Woman Shops for Clothes).  Some of that was defensible: my professional wardrobe does need to be significantly augmented.  (And I also really needed new headphones, A Dance with Dragons, and a Bialetti.)  Some of it was less so, and I’m going to partially attribute that to an odd need to prove to myself that I had the means of spending money somewhat more thoughtlessly than usual, if I wanted to.  Now that I have more or less worn this compulsion down, I believe I can do a better job of sticking to August’s spending targets.

Body

Good news: I went to the gym and discovered the joys of the indoor rowing machine!  Bad news: I only went, er, twice, if I still have the ability to count!  This is Not Good Enough, Not Even Close.  The problem is that the only time I have to work out is after work, which is to say somewhere between 5-6pm, and the problem there is that it interferes quite significantly with a normally scheduled dinner.  Alternatively, I could exercise – i.e., go for a quick run – in the mornings, but the obvious drawback is an earlier meeting with my alarm clock, and that is already scheduled to happen every weekday at 6:30am.  Some sacrifice is going to have to be made regardless.

Heart

The generally positive mental health status from last month has carried over into this one.  If anything, it has improved – my goodness, I sound like an optimist or something – as I have settled into my new circumstances.  Not only have I still been guiltlessly chattering away with girlfriends via Skype/mobile, but I have also been seeing more of friends right here in the District.  But that is a topic for a later blog post!

Soul

This also merits more discussion than I can currently provide, but, as Infinite Summer continues its lengthy march to the 21 September finish line, I am finding that Infinite Jest has transformed from a novelty of contemporary fiction picked up on a lark (interminable footnotes, stratospheric page count, DFW’s highly idiosyncratic porse, etc.) into the most thought-provoking work of literature I have encountered in quite some time.  Meanwhile, I’ve finally gotten back to journalling on a more regular schedule, writing almost every single day, even if some entries are just paraphrases of, “Lots of stuff happened omg bbl.”  When individual days of the working life blur quite easily, it becomes ever more critical to slow down and properly think.