Angela L. Das

Double lucky for luuurve: Valentine’s Day plus Chinese New Year are landing on the same day this year. How awesome is that? Even though I’m not Chinese in the slightest, I’ve been celebrating the Lunar New Year with traditional firecrackers, Hóng Bāo (those red envelopes), dragon dances and loud, loud drumming forever. Since moving to LA, I’ve made it a bit of a tradition to head down to Empress Pavilion for dim sum before the parade. I can’t recommend it enough – my favorite dim sum in all of California so far. And the parade is just so wholesome and happy, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better place to spend your day. Everything is open and everyone is out and everyone is happy. What more do you need?

Dim sum isn’t all dairy free, so you’ve got to use common sense when ordering, but you can bet on it for the most part. Luckily Empress Pavilion is one of those places where you can just flag down the person pushing the cart that smells most appealing to you. One of my favorite things to order has got to be Char Siu Bao (and yes, the “bread” is completely dairy free – here’s a recipe) because it reminds me of Char Siu Rice in Singapore, and probably the only reason I ever tend to (ever) eat pork. And the “Chinese broccoli”, too. Although that always tends to be the hottest, slowest, and most sought-after trolley in the restaurant each of the dozen or so times I’ve been there.

Not so much with the ordering of dim sum for me this year, as a very generous friend has offered to have us stay in her very lovely (and very haunted) hotel. More on that later…Back to New Years/Valentine’s: I am particularly in love with celebrating the lunar new year over our Western, traditional Gregorian calendar because it’s a bit like having a second chance at a fresh start every year. January was just a rehearsal – now, it’s the New Year for real. And because by now you’ve had enough time to recover from December’s holiday madness, you’ll actually have a passing chance at sticking to those resolutions you made. For good measure, every year I buy a pocket sized Buddha or zodiac animal that represents what I’m hoping for most out of the coming year, and carry it with me in my purse, or put it on my desk at work, until the next year. It helps me remember all of the fun of Chinese New Year, the great food, and my resolutions, too.

Best wishes to everybody for this weekend! Hope you find health, wealth and happiness for Valentine’s Day and the Year of the Tiger!

Sitting at a picnic bench, overlooking the hills, horses, a beautiful wine tasting room and my then-boyfriend-now husband bringing out a picnic complete with a chicken piccata sandwich, my favorite olives, and an engagement ring.

I’m passing through London for a day on my way back to California, and I stop at my brother’s flat in Earls Court. I hold my 3-day-old nephew, Tomasz, for the first time.

We spend the first day on the beach about three seconds away from our hotel room in Nusa Dua. It’s overcast, and the tide is low, so we stay there all day ordering a couple of cocktails and exploring the exposed undersea inhabitants (like star fish that are bigger than the size of my head), laid out under the sun and waiting for the water to come back.

We hit the breakfast buffet the next morning, hungry and happy. Except my husband seems frozen in his seat at the table. When I ask him what’s wrong, he says (careful to move nothing but his lips), “I think I got sunburned yesterday.” And I notice he’s as red as a lobster.

The rest of the afternoon disappears getting after-sun treatments and massages at the hotel spa. Just as I step, blissfully massaged and relaxed into a warm, stone bath full of fresh flower buds, I’m handed a cup of delicious tea. A satisfying tropical rain starts as I sink into the tub.

*** Ramadan is the traditional annual Muslim festival that involves fasting from sun-up to sundown***

Petaling Street and Central Market, usually the human equivalent of beehives, have been practically deserted all day. We’ve had the most amazing chicken rice in the world, gone shopping, seen some sights…then the sun goes down and locals seem to come out from everywhere. Suddenly the world is incredibly crowded, hungry, and looking for a party…Actually alarmed by the sudden change of pace overtaking the city, we find a rooftop bar with a great view of the beautifully lit Petronas Towers and spend a quiet evening taking it in.

I lived there for seven years, but this kopitiam has everything I want to show my husband in one, tiny breakfast nook. The staff are friendly, the food is above-and-beyond delicious, and I swear if we moved back, I’d go there every. Single. Morning.

I order one of just about everything for my husband to try and the whole bill comes to about US$7. It’s so good, we’ve entered into a silent agreement to appreciate this moment of bliss-infused food without words and with hearty, appreciative eating. Everyone who comes in while we’re there takes one look at us and assumes we haven’t eaten for days.

My husband and I hit Bourbon Street – and promptly get pelted with beads from drunk kids on a balcony to let us know we’ve arrived. We’re absolutely enthralled with the place, drink our first real Hurricanes, discover Abita beer and stuff our faces with

oysters at Acme Oyster House. On the way home much, much later, we bump into a couple who are the spitting image of The Dude and Walter. My day is complete.

My speed-demon mother and I are stuck behind a car proudly displaying a DE sticker on it that refuses to drive above the speed limit (despite the fact that everyone else does there). I hear her swear alternately in two different languages for over

an hour at it. But the meal we get when we reach Gargiano is totally worth it: seafood and asparagus tart on a bed of fresh red cabbage, followed by a baked pear with Asiago cheese and walnuts. Mixed seafood salad (of grilled fish with fennel seeds with fennel puree, mashed potatoes and fresh salad on the side – apple torte, to finish, with coffee.

My usefulness-to-humanity factor gets raised a notch when I’m in a bookstore and an American man is grilling the saleswoman on how best to use his transit time on his way back from “Europe” to visit the city of London in 9 hours. Between grinding my teeth, I decide to put my 7 years of constant Tube-travel while living in England to good use, and pull him aside. I tell him everything he has to know to store his luggage, get on the tube (including telling him the exact price of a day ticket), what station he wants to aim for, what to see, what he can walk to and what time he’ll need to get back on the Piccadilly line in time to catch his flight home. I answer every question the saleswomen couldn’t answer because she didn’t actually live in London, but commuted from Reading.

This man is older, and bewildered on a number of levels. He takes vicious notes, and never says thank you.

My husband and I take a weekend just o appreciate the The Hitching Post, a steak house made famous by the movie Sideways, and Pea Soup Andersen’s, a quirky diner next to our hotel.

It’s a busy night at The Hitching Post, so we aim for the bar first. After a glass, two seats become available and we opt to order an appetizer. Some guy sitting next to my husband strikes up a conversation and within mere minutes has ordered us some of the best mussels I’ve ever eaten (***link to Moules Mariniere), and ordered us a glass of the Highliner. This guy looks like he’s in the area on business, and I’ll be honest, I’m suspicious that he’ll start trying to sell us something. But he’s interested in wine, which is what keeps bringing us back to the area, so we have a nice chat and he turns out to be pretty nice.

When we move to our table about 40 minutes later, we find he’s picked up our tab.

We’re driving around and getting utterly lost in the rolling hills and gorgeous scenery. I experience a moment of zen-like bliss in the passenger seat as I let go of every thought and feel the worries of the world release themselves from their stronghold on my shoulders. It takes considerable determination to do this mentally, but the scenic grapevines, farm houses, gardens, horses,

cows, and perfect sunshine streaming through perfect clouds in a perfect sky make it, somehow, seem easier.

Suddenly, I hear my fiance ask impatiently if I wouldn’t mind helping out a little with the directions, as we’re well and truly lost. I snap to attention. Engaged to each other for less than three hours, I suddenly panic as though the whole thing is off if I don’t do my part to navigate. I pull out the GPS which is still charging, my Blackberry for Google Maps (in case the GPS doesn’t load fast enough), and some print outs of the area I made before leaving for the trip. I’m also trying to find somewhere to put my sunglasses, but I’m all confused with wires and paper and technology, and nothing is moving fast enough. I realize I’ve started to sweat under the pressure. He obviously hasn’t gauged how seriou

sly I’ve taken this, because he then says, “What are you doing? Put all that down and LOOK AT ALL OF THIS GODDAMN BEAUTIFUL SCENERY.”

Every time I think about that moment, I get a huge grin on my face.

Looking forward to what 2010 brings…:)

Every year on the days leading up to Christmas my Italian mother has a flurry of Cooking Frenzy, and she makes what she has made every year of her life: Christmas Ravioli. Over time, I’ve come to realize that what we grew up calling “ravioli” are more accurately called cappelletti, which are named after the little hats that nuns wear (think Sally Field in ‘The Flying Nun‘). The family tradition has these cute little parcels of meat and garlic in a clear soup with a generous helping of Parmesan on top. Remarkably, the recipe echoes the economic environment she grew up in.

A baby boomer, born in rural, northern Italy right after the Second World War, families my mutter grew up with knew how to utilize food and how to maximize to feed as many mouths as possible. Every usable part of everything is incorporated into the final meal. My grandparents still try to instill this philosophy in me and my brothers, which is something that in some countries remains the same, and in others has sort of been forgotten. In a country like the US, where food is plentiful and constant, there’s a lot of wastage, plain and simple. In a third world country, and even some European countries by comparison, food is purchased and composed more carefully, with greater economic consideration  factoring into the recipes. (That is, until the recent economic crisis has encouraged everyone purchasing in the US dollar to be slightly more thrifty, overall.) For example, the cut of meat used to make the soup is later taken out, cooled, sliced and becomes the base for the first course of Vitello Tonnato. It should be noted though, because I’m no lush when it comes down to it, that since veal was not always readily available in the countries we’ve lived in, I’ve come to actually prefer beef in its place. The ravioli filling is made up partially of this meat, and a mix of others, plus a healthy handful of flat leaf parsley, and can be made in advance, allowing time for the different flavors to fuse.

I’m hoping that this economy will inspire more “economy” (stay with me, I’m about to explain) in the sense of being clever with what you’ve got to begin with. That out of this period, which we will call a “World Depression” no doubt, this necessity will breed delicious family traditions that people will pass on to their own families (like I did this year, teaching my mother in law, her sister and my husband’s cousin how to make ravioli from scratch), and talk about, and blog about, ad infinitum.

Homemade Christmas ravioli I made the other week.

Pandoro, which literally means “bread of gold” is a traditional Italian cake from Verona with a flavor that instantly puts me back in my grandmother’s kitchen. Soft and fluffy, the egg, butter and flour contains the same ingredients as the brioche, only the cake rises higher and the dough isn’t brushed to make that crispy croissant-y crust.

Pandoro is a wonderful dessert and comes in an large and impressively stylish looking box that contains the star-shaped cake wrapped in an airtight bag and comes with powdered confectioner’s sugar on the side. My grandmother’s technique was to slit the bag open at the top, pour in the sugar, and shake the bag until the sugar coated the entire cake. Once the cake was cut, we would take turns dipping our slices into the “sugar bag”.

The inside is a delightfully sound yellow cake. The usual size feeds up to 12 people, easily. The pandoro I found at my local Italian market, pictured here, is a mini version but easily feeds three.

Where To Find It:

It used to be that you could only find this in department and specialty stores around the holiday season, but for a while now they’ve been popping up in the US around the food sections of Ross and Marshalls stores. Don’t gag – as the announcements in those stores periodically remind you, they get their stock from canceled orders from department stores, which doesn’t necessarily mean that the food products have reached their expiry dates (although I always check anyway, ahem).

What To Look For:

I should mention here that my family are all involved in food distribution. So aside from being Italian, and therefore obsessed with food, illness and …no, actually, discussions are pretty much always centered around those two in some way. The point is, food is a really big deal. So bringing around a box of sub-standard pandoro to an Italian family would be a surefire way of being thrown out. Or maybe just frowned at with plenty of finger groupings being bobbed up and down. (You know what I mean, right? That funny hand gesture they do? I’m Italian, I do it, I still think its funny. I digress.) There are a variety of brands out there, but the best ones are:

Tre Marie: Pretty hard to find this one, so if you do you’ve hit the jackpot. Their website states that some of their products are made exclusively for distribution to pasticcerie and Italian bars (which are really more like French cafes than the places we might call “bars”). You can find it on Amazon for a small fortune of $31.99. The seller “pastacheese” has a pretty good seller rating on Amazon Marketplace, and sells Torrone, another Italian Christmas tradition, but that’s a whole other article…

Bauli is probably the most prolific brand of Italian baked goods, as they’ve diversified into producing croissants, brioches and even confectionery to cater to the year-round market. Clever clogs that they are, I’ve tasted their other products and they’re pretty gosh-darn-it-good.

For a national writing month, NanoWriMo sure is getting a lot of attention this year. Living in a cave (I mean, office) most of my adult life, this is the first year that I’d heard about it. But the ongoing news updates on the site announced on October 27th, with just four days to go before kickoff, visits to the site were hitting the big time: United States 673,795, UK 83,107 and even down to 256 Croatians who are up for being the next Vladimir Nazor or Dubravka Ugrešić.

I think it is entirely possible that I will not write 50,000 words this month. Probable, even. But I do intend to keep both of my blogs happily updated and to learn to categorize my own epic creations. I can think of no better challenge to better myself and my own organizational skills than to do this, and it will certainly be interesting to see how many words I actually produce, even if it’s not within the perimeters of NaNoWiMo’s rules and regs.

Along with over two thousand Singaporeans and 612 Argentinians, I’m logging in and checking it out. Who knows, maybe one year I will write that novel. Just not this year.

I love getting into the holiday spirit by “watching” movies in a hidden window while I’m working. This Halloween, I happened across a bunch of great links to watch feature length movies, old television shows and cartoons online for free, so I thought I’d share it with all (2? 3?) of my readers…Enjoy! And feel free to add to my list using the Comments below.

Child-Friendly and Nightmare-free Halloween Flicks:

• Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas – Netflix users can watch this on Watch Instantly, or on YouTube here, divided into 8 parts.
• The Halloween Tree – Too cool, somebody made a compilation of all 8 parts from YouTube and put it on one page. The author just asks that you click on an ad or two.
• It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown - Halloween just wouldn’t be a holiday worth looking forward to if it wasn’t for Charlie Brown.

Halloween For the 80’s Kid In All Of Us:

• The Pit and the Pendulum – The face of Vincent Price etched itself into my nightmares for years following this 1961 classic. Why is it in this category, you ask? Well, I first watched it in the 80’s, that’s why. Here’s your Trivia of the Day to make up for this categorization: You now know that Vincent Price and Christopher Lee were born on the same day (27th May) and Peter Cushing was born on the 26th. *Twilight theme song, please*
• Teen Witch – This one is broken into 9 parts, but you may be thankful for the breaks. Alternatively, check out the classic clips from one of the corniest movies of all time here!
• Teen Wolf - OK, not strictly Halloween-y enough, but after Teen Witch you’re going to need a really good movie! Fluffy Michael J. Fox is just the ticket. Teen Wolf Too is available to ‘Watch Instantly’ on Netflix, for those of you who need more. And if that’s not enough, YouTube offers clips from the popular cartoon series.

Timeless Halloween Loveliness:

• Bewitched TV Series – Nose-twitching witchiness from TV’s best newlywed couple to date.
• The Addams Family – Full episodes from the television serious, plus the cartoons are available on tons of sites, but YouTube has a good selection here.
• The Munsters – Begin at the beginning again with the bright and chirpy Munsters family. Very tough to find the old episodes in their entirety online – all I kept finding was The Munsters Today, which was a bit rubbish, IMHO. If you get tired of the canned laughter, head on back to The Addams Family and prepare yourself for Christmas.

Halloween Horrors that Have Horrid Storylines:

• The Island of Dr. Moreau – not much like the book at all, and makes half as much sense. When you get bored, turn it off and read H.G. Wells’ ‘The War of the Worlds’ instead. Or read about how when the story was broadcast on the radio in 1938, listeners actually believed Wells’ fantasy was fact. Yes, H.G., you did much better things than The Island of Dr. Moreau, but this movie at least has an attractive cast (including Fairuza Balk of Return To Oz fame…too scary to add to this list, but yes, Youtube has it, here).
• Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers – Odd Nordic vampires who are distant descendants of cats. Warning, pet lovers, there are some pretty creepy scenes with cats in here.
• Bram Stoker’s Legend of the Mummy – Shortly after renting this one year, my parents actually cut up my Blockbuster renters card as though it was a credit card and I was forthwith banned from choosing movies for family movie nights. You’ll need a Hulu account (but it’s ok, it’s free) because of the “mature” content.

In my freelance journeys I’ve gone everywhere from having an office of my own with a view of the Hollywood sign, to sitting in open office plans, to sitting in a blackened cubicle in a maze of identically spaced and completely nondescript office walls with strict rules on “personalization”. At the moment, I’m sharing my daytime office with 4 other people. And not for the first time, I realize how although my environment changes from contract to contract, one thing never does: I google everything.

When I say “everything”, I do literally mean all things possible to google. Someone in my office asks what an obscure acronym means, and I’m the first to know. Mostly quiet and serious in the workplace, I can assure you this is a surface thing. Under the calm exterior is an avid googler, googling away at the speed of light and sound. In the process of writing this article, I have already googled four things, which I kept track of by opening multiple tabs in Firefox:

1. Recognizing that I am a Googleholic, I decided to google support groups in my area. Result: One poor Facebook page in Ohio called “Googlers Anonymous” that has only 26 members. These members seem more interested in new Google news than in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive Googling.
2. In choosing the title of this article, I was curious to know if anyone else had already written similar content. Result: No. But someone did hyphenate “Google-holic”, which lead me to my next search…
3. Should “Googling” be capitalized? Result: No. Google and “to google” as a verb joined the Oxford English Dictionary back in 2006, which again, I actually knew, but had to google just to make sure.
4. Googling again, I was lead to its first known usage, in a blogpost by Larry Page in 2006 which ended “…keep googling!”. Subsequently, I edited this info on Wikipedia.

As a former Google employee (where the office was open plan, if you were curious), I feel like I am somewhat justified in my manic obsession to Google things. I know it is the fastest, most efficient resource at my fingertips. I was an avid googler before working there (which is, in fact, how I got a job there, too). As an academic, I also understand that it’s like having the entire web categorized like a library at my doorstep, which I can visit any time of day or night, rain or shine, and regardless of whether or not my books are seriously overdue. To me, Google allows me to cross reference information at high speeds (since I type as fast as I think most of the time), and come up with well-researched information about anything from the best ways to grill toast (for my current job) to finding replacement shoelaces at bargain prices (which my husband needed).

A friend of mine on Facebook who was concluding her PhD at Oxford once posted that she was considering only limiting her internet time to an hour a day, including Facebook and Googling time. I thought she was mad until I realized I’d broken into a bit of a cold sweat over the thought of it. What would I do if I couldn’t Google? The anxiety rose up in my throat as I realized how many things I would just sit and wonder about, or if my teenage years were an indication, how many hours I would have to spend reading the encyclopedias in the library. Yes, if you didn’t know this by now, I am a true geek.

As I conclude this article, I’m resisting the urge to google many more things. I feel like this urge is exactly what makes me so good at what I do since I am updating myself daily on how search works, what’s new in the search world, and what’s new with Google. The point though is to understand that if you have met me or work with me, or are thinking about working with me, this is one of my quirks and one of my strongest selling points: I am a googleholic.

All of your wordly possessions are located in one of those crates.

While working at my first job, back in 1999 on a street called Free School Lane* in Cambridge, I had a boss who took a great interest in my background and where I had been growing up. A former history teacher, she was and continues to be the best boss ever for lending me the phrase, “So, ‘home’ is where you hang your hat.”

I’ve had many “homes” then, in over 35 different countries and across 4 continents. Realistically though, when I feel the pangs of homesickness, they are usually narrowed down to only 3 or 4 specific places, where I have actually lived for more extended periods of time: the small town where my family still lives in Italy; England (both Cambridge and London); Singapore, where I spent my teenage years; and occasionally, my mother’s house which, like me, moves in shape and distance across the globe like ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’.

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So a few weeks ago, I had the wedding-related task to search for Thank You cards for my wedding shower. I was hoping to find charity cards where at least a portion of the proceeds would benefit a cause instead of filling Target’s big, jolly red pockets. I didn’t think this would be so hard: in every post office, museum shop and local supermarket in the UK you can find packs of cards which benefit charities — and not just UK charities, but global causes as well.

But it would seem out here in the US, we’re are only interested in donating or buying charitable gifts when it suits our taxes. I could only find Christmas cards, and expensive ones at that.  What I didn’t expect to find was an endless array of beautiful handcrafted goods. I do mean beau-ti-ful crafts that you would consider placing right in the center of a mantelpiece (or, at least, I would if I had a mantelpiece).

I’m used to finding gorgeous handcrafted goods on Etsy, and they do have their very kind Pay It Forward scheme, although as I understand it, it benefits sellers more than impoverished children in the Sudan. If you love Etsy half as much as I do, you’ll understand why I felt the need to list some of the beautiful handicrafts I found on my mission to buy charitable Thank You cards. Obviously, I am not looking in the right place for these cards, and when the wedding is all over and done with I’ll return to my sightseeing adventures to museums and the like, find the cards, and kick myself for not looking there earlier.

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A couple of bad experiences too many, and I learned my lesson: Bring Your Own…

“Something about traveling always makes me crave junk food,” a traveling companion once told me. I had to agree, as I stuffed my face with a McDonald’s cheeseburger Happy Meal (ah, but those were the days…). What is it that is so appealing? The friendly yellow arches amidst a torrent of unfamiliar people? The hostility of the people behind the check-in counters endlessly typing away only to present you with a boarding pass and a soulless smile that says, “I’ve long since abandoned my hopes for humanity”? (This is particular to LAX, by the way and similar to Idiocrasy’s “Welcome to Costco, I love you…”)

The answer is actually yes. Junk food is comfort food and when we’re in transit, we’re in need of some comfort. While traveling itself can be a joy to experience, the antichamber of airport terminals is similar to a birthing process. You have to squeeze yourself through crowds and wait in cramped lines and finally pass security before you can gallop down a deserted beach on horseback at sunset. Ok, that was a disturbing analogy, so let’s just forget about that and move on.

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