Singapore, 6:15am

Hey party people: I'm gone. We packed up our stuff and said good bye to the old life for the summer. It's all Southeast Asia for the next four months. I'm kind of in stasis with this blog, so I decided to start a new one that just focuses on what I will be doing this summer: eating, and being sweaty. J. has an internship in Malaysia, so it's going to be all kinds of good food and learning how to cook and eat, with pictures of food and recipes. And of course, the kind of google-eyed yapping you have all come to know and love.

Here's the first post from Badger Eats Asia, where I will be posting from for the summer. See you on the flip side.

A woman in a headscarf walks by, trailed by two girls in Islamic school uniform, like black and white ducks following their more colorful mother. A kid in a square cap comes next, and a old, old, old Chinese man, who should be smoking an opium pipe, but isn't, and is smoking a cigarette instead. I'm wearing shorts and flip-flops. It's already almost 85°F/30°C, and the humidity hangs from the low sky in invisible curtains. I can't sleep any more, even though it's just six fifteen in the morning. We arrived last night, greasy and butt-sore, twelve hours off our schedule, twenty-six hours later. Numbers are confusing. That's why I am drinking a cup of too-sweet nescafe and watching Singapore wake up, happy to already be sweating into my pants, happy to be wearing sandals and feel the heat, happy to smell that smell of rotting and spicy food frying and damp air. Happy to be here.

Wanderlust-o.

I made posole for dinner tonight. It's a stew of pork shoulder and hominy, spiced with cumin, chili powder and jesus. Ok, he wasn't in it but it reminded me how amazing Mexican food is. I should move there and learn how to cook the entire pantheon of mastery over defeat that defines Mexican food.

Self-Employeed Tuesday

Sitting snug at my kitchen table drinking a cup of coffee and listening to the rain, I realize that I haven't put on any pants (that's trousers for you foreigners) yet. And it's 11 am. But I've been working. And that makes me decide if working from home is the best scam ever, then working for yourself is the biggest scam in the history of scamola. It's the boyband of jobs: you hate them, but how did they get their hair so perfect?

God I love it. No office, and therefore no uncomfortable office birthday party in which everyone stands around and makes small talk before trying to grab a piece of cake and slip away unnoticed. No boss, so really, if you want to search craigslist for mopeds or read what the interweb has to say about building your own sauna before you answer any emails, then that is what you do. I mean, you have to do work sometime, but let's be honest: out of the 40 hours one spends at the office, most of the work can be completed in like ten hours.

Actually, let me correct myself: all of the work can be done in ten hours. Or at least that's how it worked out for me. I am sure that some of you are out there saving babies and nursing the rainforest back to health and recycling whales or whatnot, but I was making a lot of flow charts. Granted, I get paid for about ten hours of work, but whatever. Either this will work out or it won't. It's about fifty-fifty right now.

An Open Letter to the POTUS

President Obama-

No, really, you are doing a great job. Is it hope we can believe in? Unclear, but what it seems to be so far is soft hearted pragmatism. That's all I ask for. Let's look at the mess we have ourselves in and decide to do the best with it that we can, and let's try to make the solution not destroy the lower or middle class.

I think it is hilarious to listen to Fox News parrot on and on about how forcing the CEO of GM out signals a new “socialist blueprint” that the agenda is following, or to read The Economist drone on and on about interfering in the free market while glibly calling it “Government Motors”. I can't believe that I just lumped Fox News with the Economist, but there it is.

Guess what: I don't care if the President made the CEO quit. It affects me not at all. I hope you start firing people right and left. It makes the business world jumpy that “some egghead in Washington”, to quote a Fox talking head, could analyze the situation, see that appropriate remedy had not been implemented, and told the boss-man to get out. That is exactly what happens to every worker who doesn't do what their boss asks of them. They get fired. And as soon as the car companies took tax dollars to cover up their own years of failing management, they became employees. See? Some other egghead in Washington was also able to clearly analyze a situation. It's not rocket surgery. Keep up the good work.

Love,
Badger

PS. I would totally love, like OMGZ, some health care if you could hook that up.
PPS. Tell Michelle to show those arms off. She looks best when she is holding up that flag for working motherhood that people seem to want her to drop. Maybe that's how those arms got so toned.

Carpet we can believe in.

Hello Neglectarinos!

In the words of Ned Flanders, this post is do-didley-belate-arino. And he would be correct. Let's catch up by me throwing a bunch of mess together and you deciding to read it or scroll by while screaming LA LA LA LA so that nothing leeks into your head.

I quit my job.

Yeah. It was great. I feel good. I have decided that 2009 is the year of working for myself, because I am an awesome boss. I was working seventy hours a week, on average, at the restaurant. In the beginning, I didn't really mind it, because I felt like I was learning. I could forgive the poor accounting, late paychecks, and strange directives the owners would issue because I was getting to cook some amazing food and was really enjoying learning how a kitchen should (and more importantly, should not) be managed. But after explaining for like the tenth time that our paychecks were late, or we were only getting paid for half of the pay period, or that we were out of butter or milk or wine or carrots or some other mundane thing, I decided I was done. I don't mind explaining my own incompetence away, but it's unpleasant to do it for others. I will defend my employers to a point, but beyond that point I will grab my pitchfork and torch and join the others demanding what is theirs.

So now I am one of those people who earns a living doing a little of this or a little of that. It feels weird, but also organic. I consult for a pasta company on shelf-life issues. I am organizing a series of cooking classes for a local kitchen store. I have a little catering lined up. I assist another chef who teaches. I hope to do a little personal chef work. And since I have an attention span of exactly five minutes, it's good to have a lot of projects on the go. I still wake up at night sweating profusely, dreaming about running out of money and having to live off of J.'s tip money (the shame! the shame!). Sometimes I worry that it's not a career in the standard sense. Then I remember that I am my own boss and that, midwestern upbrining be damned, maybe I am one of those people who work to live, and not the other way around. It's been the best resolution I have ever made.

Inauguration

Yes, yes, the excitement is over. But still, I got to be there. It was a strange day in DC, to say the least, but my favorite image has nothing to do with the ceremony and pomp; I loved walking under the capitol on the I-365 expressway that had been closed to traffic. It was very post-apocalypse meets Mardis Gras. Which is kind of what I hope for the post-apocalypse period.


But, thanks to Black Jesus, we no longer have to worry about the apocalypse. He's going to fix everything.

more mess to follow...

SNOWTASTROPHY!

Oh hai, blog. Yeah, it's been awhile.

The following things have happened:

I returned from the midwest without accidentally buying a house, again.
I quit my job.
I watched Black Jesus take office on Jan 20.
J. finally got back from Thailand.

I promise an entire blog post on each one of those topics this week. That's right! Four!

For the present, it's snowing and snowing and snowing, with the explicit promise of ICE and FREEZING RAIN tonight! And because this is DC, there is an implicit promise that when I go to Safeway this afternoon a woman in a parka will be fighting a woman wearing flip flops for the last roll of toilet paper because SNOW IS THE END OF THE WORLD.

Run from the falling death! And have some hot cocoa!

Transit Bliss

I missed my flight at the airport and now I am sitting in the bar, wishing malice and destruction on almost everyone around me. But not the bar tender. Who else would bring me refreshing beers? I'd have to get them and we all know that isn't going to happen. I can't believe that I missed my flight. I mean granted, I arrived at the airport like four minutes before the plane left and all, but still. Who do I blame this on? There's a list, like usual.

1.Dulles. That's right, I am starting by blaming the ENTIRE airport. It's in the middle of no where and there is no train.
2.Fat Stupid Woman at Security. She stood there, holding the entire line up as she asked the Transportation Security Authority Officer about every item of clothing she had. “Do I have to take off my shoes? My hat? My puffy coat? My socks? What about my hideous sweater that I found at the bottom of a bargain bin?” Then she proceeded to put through the x-ray machine the following items, each of which caused the entire line to wait while the TSA riffled through her baggage to find the offending item: a full size bottle of shampoo, a liter bottle of Mountain Dew, a laptop, and a jar of honey. I kid you not. A jar of honey.
3.United Airlines. Uhhhhhh, the sign says that passengers must be on board ten minutes before the flight departs. It's twelve minutes before departure, Mr Gate Monkey, and you are informing me that the plane has left and you cannot let me on. The plane hasn't left, my ugly friend. I can see it, It's right there. When I point that out you get offended. Feel lucky that I didn't point out that you aren't moving much further in life.

The frustrating thing is that all around me are flights departing for London, Munich, Rome, Buenos Aires, Johannesburg... places that I would like to go. I'm going back to a square state, bitches. Let me on the plane. NOW.

Flight #6482

Sitting on the plane, learning how oxygen masks may drop from the ceiling in the event of pending doom. Going to Toronto! Going to be great! I heard they have a paved road up there now. Good job, Canada.

I just talked with J. He's on the otherside of the world right now, learning Thai. While I am so happy that technology provides a means that I can call him while also shopping for groceries at Safeway, I feel hollow. I think that hollow feeling is me missing him. Alot. He's twelve hours ahead of me. And I'm twelve hours behind him. And that's where we'll be until the end of January.

And I don't like it.

12 behind, and 12 ahead. Fail.

Singularity.

A point in time in which one doesn't quite know what to do...that's my kind of singularity. That's what I've got right now. My boyfriend leaves for Thailand tomorrow and I feel kind of lost. Directionless. He'll be gone for six weeks, and I guess I have to remember what it's like to not have a partner. I mean, it's not like he died or anything, but still.

It's going to be quiet in here.