Oh man....

I haven't updated this in soooooo loooooong...

but I will soon, I promise!!

It Would Be So Worth It To Conquer The World For This

For another little ray of urban biking sunshine, I recommend this site that maps the safest bike routes between two points in the five boroughs. Still has kinks, like not being able to show me how to get to my favorite tofu pot restaurant in Fort Lee, NJ, but pretty good otherwise.

Colonizing the Last Banana

The weather has finally turned uncomfortably warm, and we don't have AC in our kitchen. I've gotten a bit careless about the zero-crumb policy of New York living: More than zero crumbs or sticky patches of evaporated juice on the counter will breed cockroaches and mice in your very own kitchen.

The last banana in the house was sitting on the shelf, and I was looking forward to making myself a fruit smoothie. When I went to claim it, I found that someone had already discovered the banana. There was a large chomp taken out of the side, complete with little mice teeth marks, and an army of drunken fruit flies hovering lazily around the fermenting exposed fruit. The fruit flies had also taken a liking to the mouse poo stuck to things all around the banana. And I dunno. That puddle of liquid under it? A by-product of fruit fly colonization...or mouse pee?

Back In The Saddle. The closest F train stop is a 12 minute walk from my apartment, when going at a brisk pace. Last night I strolled to the station, and then discovered that I had forgotten everything I needed to get on the train: my Metrocard and my money. I actually considered panhandling for the $2 train fare, but couldn't bring myself to do it. I haven't lived in New York long enough, I guess.

So I trekked for 12 minutes back to my house, my eyes, nose and mouth collapsed into a dark, disgruntled, cursing mass. I decided that I would not waste another 12 minutes on the stupidity of my current situation, so I got on my bike and rode back to the station. It took about 3 minutes, and my soul scoffed defiantly at Karma, who rolled her eyes and plotted her next infuriation with my name on it.

New York has taken steps like a caveman towards becoming a more bike-friendly city, but still the only way you can take your bike (or stroller, or wheelchair) onto a train is to go through the emergency gate, which sets off a piercing alarm that is gleefully amplified by the natural echo chambers of the New York subway system. At this particular stop, there aren't even any turnstiles that you can carry your bike through--which is illegal anyway. There are only those revolving bars that would never fly in Texas because everyone is too fat to go through. And a bike won't go through, either.

So what you have to do is:

1. Leave your bike by the emergency gate
2. Scan your Metrocard for the revolving bars
3. Enter through the revolving bars
4. Run to the emergency gate
5. Push the bar that sets off the alarm and opens the gate
6. Look around frantically for your bike, which may or may not have been stolen by now

There should be an accompanying diagram for this complex process.

Anyway, a kind man offered to hold my bike for me while I went through the revolving bars. All sorts of images came to mind while I let him hold my bike against my better judgment. I just know he's going to make off with the bike. I just know it. He's throwing his leg over the seat now. There he goes. Pedal pedal pedal.

He didn't steal my bike. He didn't even try. Isn't that nice?

It turned out to be one of those nights on the subway. You know: the Manhattan-bound F train was running on the A track after Jay Street. What? How is that even possible? They announce it at the Jay Street station and you have to make a split-second decision about whether to get off the F, which is now the A, and wait for a real F, or stay on the F, even though it's an A, because you don't know where else you'd find an F. Since I had my bike, I decided to stay on. I could ride my bike from wherever the F-ing A train dumped me.

Biking in Manhattan only reinforces all my sweeping unfair assumptions about New Yorkers. No one could care less about anyone else. Life is all about yelling at people for how they've annoyed you. Somehow I arrived at my destination in one piece, insane, sweaty, and grinding my teeth into little nubs.

"I think it would be so worth it to conquer the world," I said to Holger, after he had soothed my nerves with some leftovers and cold drinks, "just so I could pass a law saying that cars aren't allowed on this planet and everyone rides bikes."

"Or," he said, "you could just move to Beijing."

Rogue Butter Knife

Just finished the dishes and kept trying to put a butter knife into the part of the dishrack that holds silverware. The dishrack is one of those stainless steel wire things from Ikea, and the silverware pocket has wider gaps in the corners, where silverware can sometimes fall through. The first time I dropped a butter knife in there, it slipped through the large corner gap and fell on the floor. I picked it up and tried again, and it fell through again. This time, though, it fell into the narrow gap between the counter and the wall, and is now irretrievable.

Isn't there a part of all of us that is actually a butter knife? Life can be such a silverware pocket, and we're all looking for big corner gaps to through which to escape. Only some people have the courage to run off and build a new life in the dark, musty space between the counter and the wall.

Man, I really tried to make this metaphor work. Let's face it. A butter knife is just a butter knife.

Also Possesses Solid Mastery Of Offensive Stereotypes. There are always a few outrageous stories in the back of my head that I always meant to blog about and kept forgetting.

There was the time during grad school when I was at my neighborhood Gristedes in Washington Heights, standing in the chicken aisle. A Dominican man and his 8-year-old son were standing nearby. In my lizard brain I was like, "Oo. Cute man. I wonder if he notices me."

The man looked at me, then turned to his son and said, "Hey, so what do you think about having chicken feet for dinner?"

Uhhh ex-squeeze me? "Hahaha, just joking," he said, still to the boy.

Then the man looked at me again, and he had this unbelievable look on his face. It didn't say, "That's right, go back to where you came from, you yellow slanty-eyed dog eater."

It didn't even say, "Hahahaha, I love making fun of your weird food, Chinkie lady."

No. How could I be so naive? What his face actually said was, "Hey, pretty lady, aren't you proud of me for knowing something about your culture?"

What country are we in? WHAT COUNTRY ARE WE IN????

Nimepotea sana

I have been so lost.

And, we're back. No point trying to justify my absence, which has no more interesting explanation than laziness, or being swallowed up by life, or accepting a five-month seahorse harvesting contract in the Solomon Islands.

The quick run down:

1. I graduated with a masters in public health (MPH) in May. I moved out of my apartment on campus at the end of May, and into a sublet in the South Prospect Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. It's a bit like Washington Heights except that in addition to English and Spanish, people also speak a Carribean language or two that I can't identify. Some woman I met at a friend's birthday party was like, "Well, why don't you just ASK what language they're speaking?" Well, why don't you just ASK why I'm about to trout-slap you in the face?

2. I'm looking for a job. It's been two months of pounding out resumes, cover letters, networking emails, and updates to LinkedIn profiles. No luck so far. Something is wrong with our economy when my brilliance and genius and modesty haven't landed me a job, but most people working in customer service in New York have raging attitude problems and IQs like they've lived too long in jars with not enough air holes punched in the lid.

Anyone know of anyone in San Francisco hiring MPHs? Specifically, an MPH with experience working in Africa and Asia on reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, and migrant health issues, with jaw-dropping writing, communications and project management skills. Other skills include qualitative data collection and analysis, needs assessment, literature reviews, community mobilization, health curriculum development and education, event planning, online content development, cross-cultural experience and grantwriting.

3. I've come full circle in my appreciation for New York. I feel like despite starting out with a negative attitude, I started to open up to the possibility that this town doesn't suck. There were months when I'd actually say that New York isn't that bad. I don't hate it. It's growing on me. I think I've given it a fair chance, especially after deciding to stay through this summer, when the weather is beautiful, the free outdoor events are copious, and I don't have grad school getting in the way.

But the verdict is in. This city bugs. Irrevocably. I outgrew it ten years ago, when I was actually earning a decent salary and flying in for business trips armed with an expense account. Now it's just loud, rude, obnoxious and dirty. I don't sound like a grumpy old lady at all. People say things like, "New York just wouldn't be New York without people screaming at each other and being jerks. You just have to love it." What is wrong with people??

4. One of my coping mechanisms, which I developed while rafting in Maine last weekend, is to put my hand on my air mouse and air click on everything in my field of sight that I don't like, which naturally air deletes it.

"Delete. Delete. Delete."

It started out as a way to delete away all the other bright yellow rafts full of life-jacketed, helmeted urban escapees from my view of the pristine river landscape.

"In New York you need to use the Select All tool," says Holger, my co-conspirator in hating on the city that should be put to sleep.

SELECT ALL. DELETE.

Oh, look. I can see Connecticut.

I May Not Post Often Enough, But At Least She Does

I just discovered this blog about AIDS, gender and health. Despite the dismal and academic-sounding subject matter, it's hilarious, so I spend a lot of time procrastinating here.

Here are some favorites:
Get Money From the Global Fund
Play Public Health Bingo During Boring Meetings

Recycling Is Edible

Grad school is affording few adventures to blog about lately, unless you want to hear about how the Republicans slashed family planning from the Medicaid portion of the stimulus package.

(What's that? You DO want to hear more! Here you go then...)

Lately my life extends from my bed to my desk to my kitchen to my toilet to my bed to my desk to my kitchen to my

In Kenya I started taking inventories of the food in my kitchen, so I could better plan meals, reduce food waste and save money. There's something satisfying about using every last bit of the goat that you never asked for, but that your well-meaning friend brought you as a gift. (Unfortunately, in the case of the goat, I tried to make wontons and ended up with a very pungent bowl of soup that reminded me of a petting zoo. Goat is gamey, make no mistake about it. I conveniently left it on my doorstep overnight "to cool", since I didn't have a fridge. In the morning it was gone, but in its place was a thank you note signed by a mongoose.)

Anyway, I've imported the inventory-taking habit back to the States with me, and have developed a rigorous system of meal-planning around it. Actually, last year my inventory-taking was occasional and recreational. I didn't become hard core about it until I got back from Thailand. When I moved back into my apartment in January, I found stuff sitting in the back of the fridge, or in the boxes I'd packed away for storage, and decided that if it was still good, I'd use it.

Some of it was easy. Grits, oatmeal, curry powder, spices, dried shitake mushrooms, rice. That sort of stuff doesn't go bad.

I also found some other stuff that seemed questionably promising. Mayonnaise? Olives?

The olives were probably still good, but there were a few white floaties in the jar, so I tossed them. They were purchased as garnish for martinis, and I figured that I might benefit from fewer of those this semester, at least until graduation.

It also turns out that despite mayonnaise being a code word for "lots of eggs that would normally go bad pretty quickly," my jar of mayo was still good. Apparently that's because mayonnaise also has enough preservatives to ensure a half-life of several centuries. Thanks to calcium disodium EDTA, I made a tuna salad last week and a potato salad this week.

It has actually been really nice to cook and eat exactly what I want, and not have to spend a fortune on it.

But first, a segue.

How much would you suppose this juice would cost?



Let's consider what you're getting in this 15.2 oz bottle of 100% juice. It actually tells you. Inside this bottle you will find: 30 blueberries, 8 blackberries, 3.5 apples and half a banana. Also you get an assortment of vitamins and minerals, and supposedly all the ingredients are natural.

The suggested retail price is between $3.19 and $3.79, not cheap.

I PAID $4.25!!!!

What's wrong with this planet? This is why poor people buy soda when they don't feel like drinking tap water. (Which, by the way, isn't filtered in New York. Very clean, but not filtered.)

Last I checked, people were still quoting the liar who said that health is a right, not a privilege. Tell that to the folks who designed our health care system, the only one in a Western developed nation that isn't nationalized and universal.

I've been studying my health policy notes too closely. Switching gears...

Tonight's dinner was a meal-planning, food recycling success story. It's almost like having my own Iron Chef show at every meal. I opened the fridge to find today's special ingredients:

a bowl of leftover chicken broth
white mushrooms, getting old
brown mushrooms, getting old
shitake mushrooms
tom yam soup mix in a jar
half a container of tofu fa* I bought in Flushing** last week, getting old

* a very very soft tofu that is usually eaten as a very very delicious dessert
** better Chinese food than anything you'll find on the island; try Jade Asian Restaurant for dim sum, but be prepared for a wait

I was inspired by this Korean tofu pot restaurant I went to in Ft. Lee, NJ, a few weeks ago. I don't remember the name, but I think it was this one. I don't have a ton of experience with Korean tofu, but it was the best I've ever had, by leaps and bounds. I'm accepting eating buddies to accompany me on a second visit.

Anyway, I had a Thai soup mix, not a Korean one; and Chinese style dessert tofu, not Korean soft tofu. But, throw it all together, add vermicelli noodles and a raw egg, and voila...



A ridiculously delicious recycled meal.

New York in LEGOs

This is so creative...

I LEGO New York

Next Time I Will Procrastinate More Productively

So I've been a bit addicted to iGoogle, which is a customizable web page where you can get news feeds and other web content delivered to you in one place. They have some pre-designed templates ("themes") that you can apply to your iGoogle page for visual variety. This is their Classic theme, which I use for my home page:



I poked around a bit and found that someone had designed one for CARE International, and as you know (or maybe you didn't) I was doing my practicum last semester with CARE Thailand.



Anyway, I came upon some comments that people had posted about the template. The description given for CARE was this: "CARE fights global poverty by empowering women and girls to bring lasting change to their communities. Learn more at www.care.org."

It's from their website but I don't think it's their official boilerplate, because I know for a fact that their work doesn't focus exclusively on women and girls.

Anyway, someone had posted the following comment:

Charity for all... Anonymous - Jan 10, 2009 - Report this comment

Males are just as affected by famine and hunger as females. I don't understand this charity's preference and emphasis on the female sex (sexism?). Please explain.

I don't know why I bothered to explain, since the audience for the CARE iGoogle Theme Comments Page is probably even smaller than the one that reads my blog. Usually I write off infuriating comments as the gaseous by-product of ignorant commentators. But for some reason tonight I was compelled to explain. And quite politely, if I do say so myself.

Response to "Charity for all..." Anonymous - Jan 28, 2009

Actually males are not affected by famine and hunger the same way as females. Females, and girls in particular, are more vulnerable to natural disasters, disease, poverty, conflict and every other misfortune that life doles out in developing countries. They have a higher rate of HIV infection, lower levels of education, and fewer opportunities to earn money to support themselves and their families.

This is because in most cultures women and girls do not have the same social status as men. They are not valued as equal members of society. Many men in these cultures will tell you that women are property. They will tell you how many cows you should pay in order to get a wife.

In poor families, girls are passed over for education in favor of boys. Uneducated or poorly-educated females have fewer (no) opportunities to earn money. Without economic power they depend on their husbands for support. If these women do not have husbands or are widowed by disease or war, they're out of luck. If their husbands are abusive, drunk, unemployed or generally irresponsible, these women have no way to escape their situation. In many cultures a woman is blamed and/or rejected, often by her own family, if she tries to leave an abusive or exploitative marriage.

In many cultures, women do 90% of the work in a household (cooking, cleaning, fetching water, taking care of the kids, often even farming) but has virtually no say in how or when money is spent for the household - or when they get to have sex.

Without social status women do not have a public voice; they are not allowed to enter forums where the exchange of ideas occurs that bring about the changes that benefit them, their families, and their communities.

CARE does not "prefer" women/girls over men/boys; they simply know that giving women and girls the resources to support themselves and their family benefits the community as a whole - including men.

Having said that, if you go to their website you'll see that they have a broad range of projects, not just those targeting girls and women. http://www.care.org.

P.S. The light orange link color is hard to read. Please change.

Subway Diaries

My friend runs a blog site called Muni Diaries in San Francisco that chronicles the oddities and the banal seen on the public transit system in the Bay Area. I just Googled for a similar concept here in New York, and got a few decent hits. The most compelling one, at a glance, is The Subway Chronicles, which I plan to peruse at some point in the next decade or so.

Anyway, I thought of this as I was riding the C train back home from my friend's place in Harlem tonight. There was an ancient, homeless-looking guy on my car who appeared semi-conscious or drunk, leaning at a 45 degree angle, mouth-breathing and staring at nothing. I walked towards his end of the car looking for an empty seat, but immediately spun around and headed to the other side of the car because he was steeped in pee. Nothing personal, I just didn't care to smell him for the next 50 blocks.

A few minutes later I noticed he was alert and smoking a cigarette, which has been illegal on New York subways for the last 500 years. Strangely enough, everyone on the car was staring at him. I mean every.single.person. No one was staring when he was just this crazy smelly old homeless guy half sleeping next to a spilled cup of coffee.

A woman started scolding him from across the aisle. "You can't smoke on the subway. You're going to have to put that out."

The man just nodded and continued smoking. He was clearly mentally ill and not grasping what she was saying. People started whispering and continued to stare. One woman coughed loudly, several people covered their noses with scarves, one guy rolled his eyes, and about half the people on the train shook their heads and turned their frowns even lower.

The man sitting next to me said, "You know, Obama has never mentioned anything about mental illness in his health care plan."

I wasn't sure if this was true or not, so I said something else that I wasn't sure was true or not. "Yeah, mental illness is one of those things that doesn't get prioritized in health care because people don't see it as a physical sickness."

"Oh my God," the man next to me said. "Now there's someone kicking that guy."

This was true. Someone had gotten on the train, taken one look at the dude smoking, and started kicking him.

I feel like rule number one on the subway is, don't kick mentally ill people. It's not nice, and not really safe either.

The kicker got off at the next station, and the homeless guy started ranting to himself. "Nggh mgh nngh I don't GIVE A SHIT! Fnggn ghnn nngh."

Then he took his cigarette and got off the train.