the artlessness of cooking

After several summers of dabbling at stir-fry, I’m still below par at making a dish actually taste good. There aren’t really good instructions for stir-frying. Of course, recipes can tell you how much oil to put in, when to put in the other ingredients, etc. etc., but it’s much more complicated than that.

Having grown up in a family that does very minimal stir-frying where pepper, salt, and spring onions are frequently the only condiments, there’s an art involved. The first step is one that I get wrong a fair amount of time: how much oil to put in. I’ve experimented, but I do think that I don’t put in enough. I see stir-frying as a balance between oil and water. You need some oil to get the vegetables jump started, then the natural water in the vegetables should take care of the rest (helped along by a liberal dose of salt). The problem with not putting in enough oil is that the vegetables can start burning before the water comes out.

After observing my dad, I see that he usually puts in tomato or tofu in whatever he’s cooking. It prevents the problem of drying out. The amusing part is that we use the same ingredients and roughly cook the same way, but his food and mine tastes radically different. It’s as if the molecules in his food are dancing and skating, and mine are just limping along.

Usually, I don’t even venture into the realm of meat because it’s so mysterious to me. Besides the standard salt and pepper, there’s the additional cooking wine and soy sauce. That baffles me because once again, I don’t know how much to add of each. Add too little and the meat is undercooked and flavorless besides. Add too much and I get something the consistency of leather. No, I haven’t graduated to the meat stage yet.

I have tried other meals besides stir-fry with varying degrees of success. Chicken pot pie is something that turns out fairly consistently each time. A few months ago, I tried spaghetti carbonera, Sicilian pasta, gnocchi, and other Italian dishes. Everything was rather heavy and not all good (especially the gnocchi). I attribute my 50% success rate to not enough experience in the kitchen.

I love staring at all of the cookbooks in my house, especially the ones with scrumptious desserts. Maybe in another life, I was a five-star chef. In this life, I can’t be bothered to invest the time learning how to cook well. For the past week or so, I’ve subsisted on cereal, whole wheat bread, eggs, bacon, and instant noodles. It’s a diet that will probably take years off of my life. Since I would have spent those years actually cooking, that’s fine with me.

breaking the connection

One of the major questions I’ve asked myself this summer is: Should I get Internet in my apartment or not? This should be a simple yes or no question, but I have created some sort of an insipid drama out of it.

The two main forces that are battling each other are convenience and time wasting. It is rather inconvenient not to have Internet at home, especially since it’s dangerous to walk around the neighborhood very late at night. Then again, is it really necessary to check email once every hour? Am I going to miss a life-changing opportunity if I only check my email twice a day? One of my greatest dreams is to follow a schedule that involves waking up at seven every morning, having an absolutely productive day including ten to twelve hours of solid work, an hour of exercise, and sleeping at eleven o’clock every night. Needless to say, this dream is but a dream. Shifting to earlier hours not only solves the Internet problem (emails sent at 3AM should expect a reply the next day) but also promotes good habits.

Over the summer, I slept remarkably earlier than during the year, typically at around midnight to 1AM. This continued until I realized that the library had a wide selection of DVDs, which brings me to my next point. At home, I typically use the Internet for four purposes: email, watching online episodes of tv shows, reading gratuitous fanfiction, and talking on AIM. I can only justify the first and the last as a means of keeping in touch with people. If I wanted to watch tv shows, I should just borrow them from the library. As for fanfiction, I could be reading much better written works of original fiction, also borrowed from the library. The problem is that I just can’t force myself to wake up at 7AM every morning and to sleep at an earlier hour.

The Internet is a huge time-waster, but I’ve become so dependent on it that I’m slightly lost without it. Since I really don’t enjoy calling people, I enjoy talking over email and AIM, where I feel that I get across more of what I actually mean. It’s also lazier and much easier. One problem is that it’s so easy to get side-tracked. I’ll be looking for an article, and suddenly reading the NYT, BBC, Independent, Boston Globe, and twenty other newspapers. Another problem is that there’s such a wide range of quality in websites. Aside from newspapers, I gravitate towards the simple ones because I don’t have to think about it. It’s easy to spend hours on IMDB and stare at pictures of actors and actresses and read random reviews.

Now as an addict of Internet culture, I’ve bought into the fallacy that ‘the world is at my fingertips’. When I can wiki almost everything and expect instantaneous results, it’s sometimes hard to remember that the real world demands self-discipline and dedication. Many people including myself see the Internet an artificial construct that spews instant gratification and removes the need to think or analyze. It’s true that there are quality websites on the Internet, but with so much floating around, it’s infinitely preferable to enjoy the cheap and instant thrill.

It’s not true that the Internet has somehow corrupted the way I think and taken away my ability to think, but I do think that it actually reinforces some of my perceived weaknesses. After wasting several hours and sometimes an entire day on the Internet, I always berate myself for not having enough self-control. Cheap thrills don’t take away the disappointment that comes later. It’s so much harder to trade the instant fun for the quiet satisfaction that results from doing something meaningful for an hour.

scenes from a sunset

where we live now

Philadelphia is a dump. For everyone who likes the ‘artsiness’ and the ‘uniqueness’ of the city, I’d just like to say that it’s hard for me to appreciate the finer aesthetics when I feel like I’m going to get mugged walking to and from campus every day. Last month, there have been gangs of eight to ten year olds racing around on their little bikes both on campus and around my apartment. Things aren’t looking up when you consider that people have been mugged on campus before. A few years ago, someone was mugged on Sunday at 5PM, before dark.

Despite the new housing projects that are popping up in Philadelphia, the streets teem with homeless people, beggars, winos, and dirt. I try to avoid the subway at all costs not only because it smells like piss on a good day, but because I’m usually the only non-African American there. When I first moved to Philadelphia, I rode the subway until I became bothered by the real or imagined looks others were giving me (probably imaginary). Now I just dish out the ten dollars for a cab ride, which is preferable to the possibility of getting stabbed or shot.

Over Christmas, someone was killed at the subway stop just twenty feet away from my department. Of course, the campus is much better than it was six years ago. Now there are restaurants, a supermarket, and a security guard on every corner for twenty blocks. I suppose that the chances are low that I’ll get mugged if I don’t walk home after 10PM or intoxicated. Sundays are the worst because everyone comes out and wanders the streets on that most holy day. I guess they work or do whatever it is they do for the rest of the week.

Nor is the danger solely from the bums wandering the cracked and dirt filled streets. Penn is aptly nicknamed the Australia of the Ivies. Last year, I was sitting in four classes with an Econ student who was a convicted child molester. In fact, he lived rent free in Buck’s County Prison every night. Having never sat next to him or spoken to him, I was still freaked upon finding out in May. I’ve had many disagreements with my colleagues, who believe in ‘forgive and forget’. I suppose I’m just a bit less forgiving, not that it matters since he doesn’t prefer girls anyway.

Of course, this doesn’t include the marketing professor who went to Thailand and came back with a massive load of child porn tapes, many of which he taped. Nor to say anything about the econ professor who is accused of beating his wife to death, and so badly that she was unrecognizable. Then there are minor cases of some Penn student putting fifteen rounds through his ex-girlfriend’s door at Drexel or something of that sort. At other schools, the largest scandal is plagiarizing. Here, we have events that are grotesquely Hollywood-esque in their scope and execution.

I’ve become a proponent of the nurture side of the nature vs. nurture argument. It seems wrong that there is indeed so much wrong in a city that was once the pinnacle of sophistication and knowledge.

the joys of las vegas

My trip to Las Vegas was mildly disappointing. Too many bright lights, intoxicated white men, a lackluster wedding, and the over-satiated gaudiness of the place all contributed to my antipathy towards returning for a second round. The entire city is a giant conceit composed of its mini-conceits. The first casino’s interesting. It’s all downhill from there. Whether we’re standing in a miniature pyramid or the Eiffel Tower, the gilt, carpeting, and ambience all blends together.

Having actually worried that I would enjoy gambling a bit too enthusiastically before going, I shouldn’t have bothered. Gambling is not terribly fun when you’re extremely averse to losing money. I lost fifteen dollars, but God help me if I had lost any more than that. Maybe I should have tried actually playing at the tables, but the buy-ins were, well…much more than fifteen dollars.

The Rockies were absolutely breathtaking, however. I spent a lot of my time staring at the mountains and wishing I were climbing them. I probably should be more appreciative that people actually built a mecca in the middle of the desert out of neon lights and slot machines, but it’s hard to feel for Las Vegas. Much of it probably has to do with the fact that I’m not a fan of the crowds. Walking on the strip, there is a general crassness about the people. Everyone’s drunk and laughing raucously. Maybe it’s like how teetotalers feel in a room surrounded by drunk people.

A fun lesson I learned in Las Vegas (though not so fun at the time) is that buffets are evil when you want to try everything and when you don’t have much self-control. True, I do have more self-control than I had several years ago. Instead of eating until I can’t move, I merely felt very stuffed. After deluding myself after the first buffet that I would be able to control myself in the future, I ventured into the second buffet a few days later and…presto! Nothing happened. I overate. Yet again.

Still, I’m glad I went. It will probably be the last vacation that I take for a long time. It is nice to spend three days in a place where everyone’s ambling around slowly and having the time of their lives.