(Originally posted, September 16)
I always find it fascinating that the United States is basically the only nation on Planet Earth that hasn't adopted the metric system. I have spent much of my adult life living in nations that use the metric system and it is so incredibly amazing how much easier it is to use, if only you adapt for a few days and put your mind to it.
Once you get over your initial resistance and stubborn mindlessness, it is such a joy to work in multiples of 10 rather than in multiples of 3, 12, and 5280. It's not just ease of use and its logical simplicity that makes the metric system superior: if the U.S. were to adopt the metric system, even when considering the initial cost of conversion, most studies indicate that, in the longer term, the U.S. economy would gain billions of dollars from being in sync with the rest of the world.
There's only one reason America doesn't adopt the metric system: most Americans would rather remain trapped in an outdated past than make the effort to transition to a better future, because it would require a little work and a change of mindset.
So, what does this resistance to the metric system have to do with Donald Trump?
Donald Trump is like our antiquated system of measurement. Outdated. A relic of centuries past. Something lesser and inferior to other alternatives out there--a pathetic attachment to a warped vision of the past. Trump and the old measurement system are both attractive to those who are fearful of the changing world and resistant to new realities. 62 million people voted for Trump because they were afraid of the changing demographics of America and frightened of the changes that happen in a chaotic world where few jobs are safe and ways of life are never secure.
Donald Trump is proof that America is actually a very fearful country. The notion that we are a country of dynamic trailblazers may have been more true at one time in our history, but Trump is proof that, outside of a few bustling urban areas of progress and progressiveness, the U.S. is a fundamentally backward-looking country. Trump and our clinging to old ways of measurement, just to name a couple regressive American relics, indicate that American individualism is often more a function of our wanting to be isolated in our own little houses in our own individual cars, away from perceived threats. Just as many of our pioneering ancestors were searching for escape, looking for homesteads isolated from society, not integrated with the rest of the world, the Trumpian tribe of Americans is similarly retreating from facing the future by looking to simple, but ultimately unproductive, answers from the past to comfort them. (Besides, it should always be noted that any nation that accepts human slavery, then racial segregation for 90% of its history should never be considered forward-looking or progressive.)
In fairness, there are two tribes in America: the builders of walls and the builders of bridges. Currently the builders of walls are in control as evidenced by Trump, the stubborn refusal to adopt metric measurement, the rise of American Neo-Nazis, and the presence of a hundred other reactionary features in current American life. Whether those of us who wish to build bridges--we who wish adapt and progress, not only in the way we measure things, but also in our refusal to build walls and to accept the intolerance and bigotry of the Trumpists--will ultimately regain control of our nation's destiny is up to us who care. And we must begin now, one action, one meter at a time.
Sunday, October 28, 2018
The most disturbing sign I've ever seen in a public restroom...
(Originally posted, September 18)
Evidently some of the customers at this Kyrgyz roadside eatery have a little difficulty using the facilities. It makes me a little hesitant to order the dinner special. Glad I'm not responsible for cleaning this restroom.
Evidently some of the customers at this Kyrgyz roadside eatery have a little difficulty using the facilities. It makes me a little hesitant to order the dinner special. Glad I'm not responsible for cleaning this restroom.
Hobbies
(Originally posted, September 30)
When I was a child my hobbies were collecting baseball cards, climbing trees, and attempting to avoid my daily chores. Now my hobby is cooking assorted pastas and making lasagnas. Today's lasagna was particularly gooey and contained mascarpone cheese, Kyrgyz white cheese, mozzarella, sautéed red peppers, tomato sauce with roasted zucchini, garlic, onions, and best of all: a massive center layer of local morel mushrooms from Jalalabad. Strangely, I have morphed from being an eight-year-old boy into a grandmother from Napoli stranded in the Kyrgyz mountains, although at times I feel I am both.
Back to the Blog
Have not posted anything here for several months. First, I have not have time to write many posts. My life has been extraordinarily busy. And when I have posted, I have been putting things up on my Facebook page. I will put up a few of my highlighted writings from the past months and will try to put something up here from time to time in the future, as well.
Monday, April 23, 2018
Airplane Applause
(Originally posted April 21)
I am traveling this weekend and my first flight was from Bishkek to Almaty. The landing was a bit bumpy and we hit the tarmac twice. This mediocre piloting was rewarded by enthusiastic applause by most of the passengers.
I've never understood this. Why do passengers in many parts of the world ignore perfect landings and clap their hands enthusiastically for bumpy, horrible landings? Last time I landed in Bishkek was one of the worst landings I have ever ...experienced. We hit the runway going way too fast and bounced three times--and I felt the airplane go slightly sideways and, for one quick second, I wondered if we would end up in a bean field at the end of the runway. Of course, the passengers cheered and clapped as if Kyrgyzstan had won the soccer World Cup. "That landing was so bad we should be booing," I told the woman next to me who was applauding with the zeal one would reserve for an extraordinary performance of the London Philharmonic, but she clearly disagreed.
I am traveling this weekend and my first flight was from Bishkek to Almaty. The landing was a bit bumpy and we hit the tarmac twice. This mediocre piloting was rewarded by enthusiastic applause by most of the passengers.
I've never understood this. Why do passengers in many parts of the world ignore perfect landings and clap their hands enthusiastically for bumpy, horrible landings? Last time I landed in Bishkek was one of the worst landings I have ever ...experienced. We hit the runway going way too fast and bounced three times--and I felt the airplane go slightly sideways and, for one quick second, I wondered if we would end up in a bean field at the end of the runway. Of course, the passengers cheered and clapped as if Kyrgyzstan had won the soccer World Cup. "That landing was so bad we should be booing," I told the woman next to me who was applauding with the zeal one would reserve for an extraordinary performance of the London Philharmonic, but she clearly disagreed.
Why do airline passengers in some parts of the world cheer bumpy landings? It strikes me as being like applauding the dentist whose drilling was especially painful or cheering the uninspiring professor whose lecture had made one fall asleep. Are the passengers so glad they made it back to earth alive that they could not contain their enthusiasm that life continues for another day? Or maybe I am misinterpreting the applause and perhaps Central Asians are more ironic and sarcastic than I have previously realized and their clapping is actually brutal mockery of the hapless pilot? Or is the clapping simply aerobic exercise, preparation designed to limber up one's hands up so that bags can be more easily removed from the overhead bins? I simply do not know.
Maybe the answer is that there is simply something wrong with me and my concept of appreciation. Today I felt like applauding because no one cut in front of me in the check-in line at the Bishkek Airport--a shocking thing indeed. I also felt like cheering when no one elbowed their way past me in the boarding line. And the feat that most deserved a full round of applause, in my opinion, was that none of the elderly passengers, myself included, fell down the stairs at the Almaty Airport as we had to descend 25 steep steps with our luggage as we disembarked the plane.
I just hope on my next flight, to Bangkok, we land as softly as a mother putting her baby into the crib for the night, in an airplane wrapped in silence.
Maybe the answer is that there is simply something wrong with me and my concept of appreciation. Today I felt like applauding because no one cut in front of me in the check-in line at the Bishkek Airport--a shocking thing indeed. I also felt like cheering when no one elbowed their way past me in the boarding line. And the feat that most deserved a full round of applause, in my opinion, was that none of the elderly passengers, myself included, fell down the stairs at the Almaty Airport as we had to descend 25 steep steps with our luggage as we disembarked the plane.
I just hope on my next flight, to Bangkok, we land as softly as a mother putting her baby into the crib for the night, in an airplane wrapped in silence.
Antidotes
I like to eat chicken, perhaps three or four or even five times per week. When it is served to me 13 times in a given week, I have found that I begin to develop strange symptoms. Just the other day I felt the uncontrollable urge to roost on a perch up above the second-floor campus faculty terrace. And last night on YouTube I watched the movie Chicken Run about a half-dozen times.
Even worse, at breakfast this morning I felt an overwhelming urge to eat some of the dozens of kilos of the millet grain that our campus counselor left me when she moved to Khorog last summer. Without even cooking it! But the very worst symptom is the itching I have been having across my head and body. It appears, I have eaten so much chicken that I am beginning to moult.
Even worse, at breakfast this morning I felt an overwhelming urge to eat some of the dozens of kilos of the millet grain that our campus counselor left me when she moved to Khorog last summer. Without even cooking it! But the very worst symptom is the itching I have been having across my head and body. It appears, I have eaten so much chicken that I am beginning to moult.
I was thinking of visiting the doctor to deal with these frightening symptoms of what appears to be "chickenitis," an extremely rare malady one gets when living at high altitudes while simultaneously being fed a diet far too rich in poultry. But here everything seems to be treated with injections and I was not willing to face the needle today, so I had to find a different antidote.
We all know that you can find the answer to everything in Wikipedia and so I did today when I learned that creating a lavish dish you enjoy and devouring it rapidly can instantly cure the effects of chickenitis. So that is I what I did.
You can see that I created a burrito with whole grain rice, black quinoa, minced garlic (that alone cures many things), scrambled eggs with onion, yellow pepper, and smoked Spanish paprika, along with melted American cheese and hand-crafted honey chipotle sauce on top of homemade roti.
And indeed I devoured it rapidly, in all its chicken-less glory. Better yet, I seem to be cured as I don't ever want to see Chicken Run again and my itching instantly disappeared. Now that's something to crow about.
We all know that you can find the answer to everything in Wikipedia and so I did today when I learned that creating a lavish dish you enjoy and devouring it rapidly can instantly cure the effects of chickenitis. So that is I what I did.
You can see that I created a burrito with whole grain rice, black quinoa, minced garlic (that alone cures many things), scrambled eggs with onion, yellow pepper, and smoked Spanish paprika, along with melted American cheese and hand-crafted honey chipotle sauce on top of homemade roti.
And indeed I devoured it rapidly, in all its chicken-less glory. Better yet, I seem to be cured as I don't ever want to see Chicken Run again and my itching instantly disappeared. Now that's something to crow about.
Rice-A-Roni
Marooned on the Giant Yellow Spaceship now for 33 consecutive days, I am left at the mercy of the cooks in the dining hall to develop creative and innovative menus. Doesn't happen. This past week, 13 of the 14 lunches and dinners featured chicken--I never thought to serve boiled chicken before dining in our cafeteria and now I know I would never serve boiled fowl to anyone under any circumstance. The variety of starches isn't much better: plain white rice, plain buckwheat, plain mashed potatoes, plain pasta, and plain roasted potatoes, rotated over and over and over again.
This is why I sometimes retreat to the refuge of my apartment to cook up something entirely different. Today, for lunch I cooked up a box of Rice A Roni. When living in the U.S., I would look upon Rice A Roni as a last resort, if I had nothing else at all in my pantry. Rice A Roni would be among the first items I would donate to a food drive, if I were asked to contribute something to those in need. But, here inside the Yellow Spaceship, the box of Rice A Roni I stuffed inside my suitcase last time I visited America feels almost like a gourmet treat a chef possessing two Michelin stars might create.
Rice A Roni was created in the 1950s during that wondrous era in America when the food industry was inventing all sorts of strange novelties to capture the attention of suburban families eager to try out the newest food innovations advertised on that other new innovation: television. This was also the decade when cheese in a spray can, Jell-O, Tang (powdered artificial orange juice), and TV dinners (frozen meals in aluminum trays) were invented. Rice A Roni is a boxed meal with both rice and macaroni, hence the very clever little name. No more would families need to argue about whether to serve rice or macaroni with dinner, when one could have both!!!
Marketing and advertising was also incredibly important for generating sales of these weird Space Age food products. I still remember the catchy song and lyrics from the Rice A Roni ads I heard on almost a daily basis as a kid: "Rice A Roni, the flavor can't be beat. Rice A Roni, The San Francisco Treat!" The song would be accompanied by an animation of a San Francisco cable car zipping across the City by the Bay. Now, I don't know if Rice A Roni was invented in San Francisco, but I can imagine the ad agency that created the Rice A Roni commercials deciding that people across America would be far more likely to purchase a product that had BOTH rice and macaroni if these gullible consumers thought it came from the sophisticated kitchens of that illustrious city. Though I haven't heard the Rice A Roni song in probably 30 years and the product is no longer advertised on TV, you will notice that the cable car remains as the product logo on the front of the box--and the tagline is still on the box too.
What is important is not the history of Rice A Roni. Instead it is the peculiar mixture of slightly overly-crunchy rice and slightly overly-soggy macaroni that matters. In 60 years, The Golden Grain Company still hasn't developed a product or figured out quite the right cooking time where both the Rice and the Roni have the same consistency. Yet, I loved the bowl of fake cheese and fake broccoli, crunchy rice and soggy noodle I devoured this afternoon. When you are marooned inside a Yellow Spaceship: variety, no matter how odd the manifestation, is indeed the spice of life, especially when it harkens back to a day far in the past when the future seemed so promising and limitless.
This is why I sometimes retreat to the refuge of my apartment to cook up something entirely different. Today, for lunch I cooked up a box of Rice A Roni. When living in the U.S., I would look upon Rice A Roni as a last resort, if I had nothing else at all in my pantry. Rice A Roni would be among the first items I would donate to a food drive, if I were asked to contribute something to those in need. But, here inside the Yellow Spaceship, the box of Rice A Roni I stuffed inside my suitcase last time I visited America feels almost like a gourmet treat a chef possessing two Michelin stars might create.
Rice A Roni was created in the 1950s during that wondrous era in America when the food industry was inventing all sorts of strange novelties to capture the attention of suburban families eager to try out the newest food innovations advertised on that other new innovation: television. This was also the decade when cheese in a spray can, Jell-O, Tang (powdered artificial orange juice), and TV dinners (frozen meals in aluminum trays) were invented. Rice A Roni is a boxed meal with both rice and macaroni, hence the very clever little name. No more would families need to argue about whether to serve rice or macaroni with dinner, when one could have both!!!
Marketing and advertising was also incredibly important for generating sales of these weird Space Age food products. I still remember the catchy song and lyrics from the Rice A Roni ads I heard on almost a daily basis as a kid: "Rice A Roni, the flavor can't be beat. Rice A Roni, The San Francisco Treat!" The song would be accompanied by an animation of a San Francisco cable car zipping across the City by the Bay. Now, I don't know if Rice A Roni was invented in San Francisco, but I can imagine the ad agency that created the Rice A Roni commercials deciding that people across America would be far more likely to purchase a product that had BOTH rice and macaroni if these gullible consumers thought it came from the sophisticated kitchens of that illustrious city. Though I haven't heard the Rice A Roni song in probably 30 years and the product is no longer advertised on TV, you will notice that the cable car remains as the product logo on the front of the box--and the tagline is still on the box too.
What is important is not the history of Rice A Roni. Instead it is the peculiar mixture of slightly overly-crunchy rice and slightly overly-soggy macaroni that matters. In 60 years, The Golden Grain Company still hasn't developed a product or figured out quite the right cooking time where both the Rice and the Roni have the same consistency. Yet, I loved the bowl of fake cheese and fake broccoli, crunchy rice and soggy noodle I devoured this afternoon. When you are marooned inside a Yellow Spaceship: variety, no matter how odd the manifestation, is indeed the spice of life, especially when it harkens back to a day far in the past when the future seemed so promising and limitless.
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