Heading off into the horizon of my life without a map or compass. A curse, a blessing? Who knows? We'll see. Bring it on.
Monday, March 31, 2008
A poorly packed mannequin
Classy dinner party at Firdaus' flat last Saturday night. Maddie and Amy came by and the boys cooked and served for the girls. Gnocchi with mushrooms (Amy got a dirt ball in one), roasted vegetables (asparagus, red bell peppers, portobello shrooms, broccoli, and scallions), and a standard lasagna, followed by cashew caramel cookies (for everyone) and coconut sorbet (for me). Then Preston and Bryan stopped by and we watched the Simpsons movie and Super Troopers... everything else is left to your imagination.
I need to work out housing with Katie and Johanna.
And I need to find a job for the summer (in Atlanta, sorry nomads). Who wants to hire me, or suggest a means of employment?
And in other news, the wheels creak and groan as they begin to turn in Kenya. The tipping point has been reached, and soon I predict there will be a whirlwind of activity yet to be seen. Keep an eye on both of these amazingindividuals.
Today, I woke up at 7:30AM. I brushed my teeth, took a shower, and wiped my face down with astringent. I put on my "nippy weather" clothes, untangled my iPod, and headed out the door. I went to French and sat through a review of the past, imperfect, and pluperfect tenses. I went to Empirical Methods and aced Quiz #3. I went home and made mushroom couscous and sautéed spinach for lunch. I met with my adviser to discuss and coordinate my summer and fall course schedule. And I am now in the AIESEC office, doing not much of anything as I wait for my Accounting class at 6PM.
Our last day in Canada was Friday. We didn't actually have the hotel room for that night so we woke up REALLY early by our standards (8am) to pack up and check out by 10am. We cleared out of our temporary home, said our goodbyes, drove out, and took to the streets of Laval in record time. To the right you'll see us and our sole trip to Tim Horton's. As far as coffee and donuts go, it can't be beat.
After we made our way into the city, we diverged from each other and split into two groups. Shannon and I preferred to spend the day in a cozy bistro whilst cuddled up with our books/laptops, while Ryan, Thomas, and Masato wanted to wander around and see more of the city. I personally think they were crazy, since that Friday was hands-down the COLDEST day since we arrived in Canada. Plus, it was gusting winds of at least 50MPH. But whatever, I heard they had fun. You can probably read about their exploits at their blogs, linked at the right.
It didn't take long until Shannon got restless and decided she wanted to get her hair cut. So we found some salons online and hit the metro. The first two places ended up being complete duds: the first was in a building that was still being constructed, and the second had no one except for a 60 year-old woman cutting the hair of an 80 year-old woman. Our third and final place ended up being an ultra-chic place inside a mall (the Montreal mall, as it turns out). Girlfriend wanted a bang, so a bang she got!
Here are the before and afters:
The very definition of hot n' sexy.
After that, Shannon needed to accessorize her new 'do so we bought shades and then went to St. Laurent to wait for the boys so we could head to Odaki, where we were meeting AIESEC UQAM for dinner. They finally came, and it was obvious that they were a little tipsy (barhopping will do that to you). We passed this along the way to the restaurant:
Odaki has completely changed my perception of Western Japanese restaurants. It was so amazing I wanted to cry when it was time to leave. Why can't Rusan's be as good as Odaki?
Savanna, the VPER from UQAM, had used her contacts to get us a reservation at this atypical buffet restaurant. We sat at a traditional (sort of) Japanese table, complete with sliding paper panels and everything. The way the food worked was simple: you agreed to a 26.99CDN fee, and then could order anything you wanted at any time from the menu. All you had to do was fill out a paper order sheet, give it to the hostess, and wait for your fresh sushi to come out. You would then be given a fresh paper order to fill out if you wanted. DOES THAT SOUND AWESOME OR WHAT?! And they had more than sushi too. There was tempura, katsu, spring rolls, dumplings, fusion dimsum, and the list goes on. It was an amazing experience for such a cheap price. If you should ever find yourself in Montreal and craving Japanese, there is no better place than Odaki.
As you can see in the video above, a bunch of UQAM kids came out to see us. They were all awesome and really cool. The meaningful conversation didn't really happen though. After a certain point we got kind of inebriated... inebriated on sushi. I don't know how else to describe it. We weren't acting sober, but we definitely were. It was odd.
When it was time to go, it was too late to make it to AIESEC HEC's metro party (sadface). But we could still make it to Club 737 that Savanna had gotten us VIP access to (have I mentioned yet that this girl is awesome?), and we thought we should retrieve Ryan's car from the parking lot of Canadian Tire, just in case they didn't take kindly to overnight parking.
Savanna (there on the right) went with Ryan and I so we wouldn't wander around in downtown Montreal looking for parking. As soon as we got to the car and started our usual hapless search for a good radio station, she took control of the dial and immediately found two stations that blared out slick house tunes. Thank god for locals.
We got into the city and immediately found parking right outside the club building. The club itself is at the highest point in Montreal. The views were amazing.
No, my camera did not put on beer goggles after third picture. That effect is from the condensation that formed on the windows due to the body heat of the kids that were dancing nearby. Yes, I said kids. It seemed like everyone else there was on the lower end of 17-19, which was kind of awkward because we're all 22. Savanna swore that the place usually shows an average age of 21. Maybe everyone just looked young that night. Either way, the place was exquisitely awesome, and I'm already jealous of the AIESEC Canada 50th Anniversary Gala that will take place there later this year.
Drinks.
Our gracious hosts.
And then it was time to leave. We bid a fond farewell to Montreal, and took off into that good night for the USA.
We got to New Haven at midmorning on Saturday, and after a tour of Yale campus, recorded this final hurrah from Team Awesome.
We said goodbye to Shannon and continued on our weary way. Behold, car karaoke, courtesy of Thomas and Ryan:
Oh, those silly kids. We got into Atlanta at 2am on Sunday morning. And the rest is history.
If anyone from Montreal is reading, we cannot thank you enough for the hospitality and courtesy that you've shown us. This includes both random people and the AIESEC LCs. If you have the chance to visit New Haven or Atlanta, you should know that we will do everything in our power to make your trip as amazing as ours. And to you crazy AIESECers, I expect to see you at NDLC in Toronto. We all do.
Montreal, you treated us well, and we will miss you. This is Team Awesome for the final time... signing off.
So our excursion into Montreal was interesting to say the least. We went into the city with the intention of parking at the furthest Metro stop from downtown (the closest to us), and didn't realize that we were going in on a Monday when people would be working. Hence, the commuters would have jammed up all parking spots within miles of the Metro station. After a series of unfortunate events, we ended up parking at Canadienne Tire and trekking over.
Voila notre experience dans la Metro. (It's Franglish already, I'm not going to bother with accents)
Afterwards, we grabbed lunch at a shawarma place. We all agreed that it is still a shame that the Tech campus is without a similar place (Ray's does not count).
Just for you, Kyle. YES THAT'S MAYONNAISE.
Then we took off for Old Montreal.
Then we went to the marina?/shore?/park? to play in the snow. Oh man.
There are five of us, and five silhouettes in the snow. Coincidence? I think not.
Thomas has more pictures than I do, and they're currently sitting on his memory card back in our room. I shall succeed in snatching them off that card to post here, though. Just be patient.
We were feeling the afternoon drowse so we slipped into delightful little café to receive a caffeine/sugar infusion. Below is my selection.
Hot chocolate and baklava. Both homemade by a deliciously homey Turkish grandmother and served by her showboating husband. He chatted us up about AIESEC, Turkey, and his experiences in Quebec. Thomas and Ryan got Turkish coffee:
They got their fortunes read from the remnant coffee grinds in the bottom of their cups, a tradition that we successfully pantomimed to the couple. While Ryan's reading included a "girl made for dancing" and a big heart, Thomas' was basically "... you, not so good." Ouch!
Afterwards we headed to the LC in the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM). We got to see their office (bigger than ours, wtf!) and had a beer with two of their newies at their campus bar (wtf!!).
We taught them the cup game. Ha.
Conclusion for the day:
We're going back to UQAM tonight to watch their hockey game and partake in more beverages. It shall be glorious.
So, the four of us took off for New Haven, and ultimately Montreal, two days ago on Friday. We sentimentally named ourselves after the Fantastic Four (dibs on the Thing) and hightailed it out of the perimeter and up I-85 to get Shannon.
A special guest came along for the ride.
The trip along the eastern seaboard was marked with spotty performance. Ryan started driving first, as is obvious by the fact that we went in his car and from the pictures above. We made it through South and North Carolina, stopping only to visit Taco Bell for a quick beef injection. Oh yes, I went there. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any pictures of it. But it was pretty standard Taco Bell fare. Oh, the Hot Sauce packets they had there were purple instead of the standard red; correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought the Hot Sauces were red and the Fire Sauces were purple. In any case, each and every one of the Hot Sauce packets also had the following text on them: “DirectDaniella.com”. Just a tad bit awkward.
Afterwards, Masato took over driving until about 100 miles into Virginia, at which point I took over. At this point it was about 10:00PM. This exchange occurred after fuel retrieval and a trip into Subway, which is deemed worthy of a story. As you should remember, our hobohookah Jean-Pierre Laurent-Michel Delacroix was with us. At this time of night it had been going for almost six hours and needed a nice cleaning. So Ryan removed Dela and brought it into the Subway restroom to clean out while the rest of us ordered food (driving is hungry work). The workers inside the Subway completely freaked out and thought we were bringing marijuana into the store. They managed to explain it away to them (I think I was peeing at the time), but in hindsight (apparently) the stuff could be considered to be drug paraphernalia and thus a legitimate legal concern. But fie on all that. They threw our food at us and all but kicked us out of Subway so they wouldn’t be implicated in our possession (because that makes sense).
I drove through the rest of Virginia and West Virginia and into Maryland, where at 2:00AM we stopped at an auspicious landing that contained a closed Wendy’s (!), a closed McDonald’s (!!), a closed K-Mart (?), and no sign of a Wal-Mart despite the fact that there was a Sam’s Club right in the vicinity. However, there was this wondrous store called Martin’s with freshly baked goods in the early morning and bins of dried goods and candies that you were able to mix and match with. Thomas ended up with some German fruit candies and some sesame candies, and I ended up coming away with a pound of banana chips and a half bound of honey roasted cashews. TAKE NOTE, PLANTERS. IF YOU MAKE IT, I WILL BUY IT. Do not pass up the opportunity to cash in on this… cash cow.
Ryan took over again, and at this point both Thomas and I were dead tired and passed out in the backseat while Ryan and Masato commanded the car. Apparently Pennsylvania and New Jersey have SHIT for roads and the car was bumping and crashing up and down with a hurricane force. But I was able to sleep through it somehow. I don’t believe it, but whatever. When I woke up, we were already in Connecticut and Ryan was bitching about the New York/New Jersey toll road systems. Typical. We missed our FIRST OFF-RAMP FOR THE ENTIRE TRIP because the ramp was off of the left side of the road. I personally don’t see how that happened because I specifically wrote in the directions, EXIT OFF THE LEFT SIDE. Oh well.
We finally got to Shannon! The Fantastic Four has become the Planeteers! I know it’s a stretch, but hey, there aren’t many other famous fivesomes. No, I am not saying the Power Rangers.
Thomas took over driving upon leaving New Haven. And over the hills and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go… in Quebec.
We finally saw snow in Massachusetts (yay!) whilst plugging along on a toll road (boo!). I've seen snow before, but never draped on mountainous peaks like the ones in upstate New England.
Speaking of tolls, this is one of the booths from the toll in New York. You know you're nearing Canada when...
The border! Yay we made it! From here it was a quick trip into Montreal (with a very tired and very obnoxious Ryan in the back seat) for a lunch at local feeding hole where we had poutine. Poutine poutine poutine. Deliciousness. There will be more of it in our future.
Then it was just a short trip to our hotel, or auberge. This place is a freakin' resort. More pictures of the surroundings later.
And now, the week has just begun!
Thomas is sitting there in the back of the sled thing. More about Vince and his kids tomorrow.
Right now the only thing that affirms my belief that this war won't happen is the fact that it's an election year. To declare another wholly unnecessary and unjustified (at least to the American people) war would be the GOP shooting itself in the proverbial Republican foot. Or maybe this would be part of a calculated strategy, engineered as a truly divisive campaign topic, as a method of skirting the important domestic issues at hand, and as a method of exploiting fear for votes on November 2nd.
Either way, I pray for the youth of Iran and for development of the world that a brave American soul receives one of the expansion posts in Iran.
My dreams of a traineeship in the United Arab Emirates are looking more daunting and more tantalizing by the minute.
So I was instructed to continue the trend of posting pictures of food. How can I say no?
But first things first. My parents drove up from Florida again on Saturday, and we spent our time together doing the usual things: exploring Doraville's immigrant haven. I stupidly forgot to bring my camera along, but toward the end of the day I remembered that I still had my phone. And thus, after months of gathering dust, I polished off that once-fabled camera function and snapped the first picture that phone has seen in months.
That's kind of sorta completely not really weird. I just thought it was worth taking a photo of, at the time.
Ok I can't stand it anymore. Onward to the food!
So as I said, I didn't actually have my camera with me all day. And by the time I thought of my camera, we had left our restaurant already. It was some hole in the wall Chinese place with the cutest and most awesome staff. The mother worked the kitchen, the father worked the dim sum cart, the daughter waited tables, and the son was the busboy. This picture is just some of the leftovers that I ravenously crammed down my neck earlier today for lunch.
Starting at the top and going clockwise, this is what I had. Green beans stir-fried very simply with garlic, shoyu, and pork cracklin' (I don't know the technical term for that stuff) and awesomely delicious. Next, after the patch of barely visible white rice on which everything is resting, is something that can only be described as the pinnacle of Szechuan cooking. What you can see is the white fish pieces (it was either tilapia or Dover sole, or perhaps flounder), napa cabbage, and tons of red pepper flakes. What you can't see completely is the deliciously saffron-hued broth that had made its way into the nooks and crannies of the rice bowl. When my parents and I divvied up the leftovers, I thought I had the better end of the deal when I got most of the fish. But I took that broth for granted as I ate my meal and realized how lacking my rice bowl was without that fish broth soaking every single grain of rice. My parents called me when a couple hours afterward and described the soup they had made by recycling the broth into a concoction of cod fillets, winter squash, and more napa cabbage. The bastards. Anyway, rounding out this bowl is something that looks like spinach, but isn't. They're actually the greens of the soy plant. I like to think of them as the collard greens of Chinese folk, though I'm sure some people would smack me in the face for making such a comparison.
Aside from what you see there, we also got some amazing little wontons of shrimp, pork, and leek that were eerily reminiscent of dimsum, but served cold in a bowl, drenched in a hot-and-sweet sauce that can only be Szechuan. There was also the ubiquitous Szechuan eggplant that we always get, and some fried rice noodles that managed to keep their crispiness despite the pool of sauce that they were sitting in. We snapped up that junk like we were starving, so there are no leftover pictures of them.
But of course, my parent's are not to be outdone by restaurants, no matter how authentic.
I don't know what else to call these except buns. But they're not buns, though my grasp of Mandarin tells me that the literal translation of what my parents call them is buns. In any case, these are filled with pork and some vegetables that (to this very day) I don't know names for. All I know is that I saw a lot of them while growing up. Normally, you would eat these right as they came out of the steamer, and you'd have to be careful because the juices inside from the meats and veggies would squirt out and dribble down your chin if you bit into it too eagerly. But alas, these had been sitting into an icebox and all the juices had soaked into the dough part of the bun already. Still, awesome.
Don't be fooled by the shadiness of this shrunk-wrapped pork. It's remarkably delicious. My mom (in her infinite wisdom) bought a vacuum sealer off of QVC and has been using it on everything. The only reason you don't see it in any of the other pictures is because those items contain liquids or necessary air pockets. In any case, if you've ever walked around in a Chinatown, you've seen those stores with the ducks hanging in the window. That's what they're famous for. Equally delicious but often ignored by the masses are the cuts of crimson pork that are produced from the same venues. Think of these places as Chinese charcuteries. It's not quite ham, not quite barbecue. But they're very noticeable and very distinctive. I don't know how my parents found the time to make all of this, but I'm glad they did. I shall eat well for weeks. I'm sure if I did some research I could find out what they're called in English or Chinglish. But take note: study the red hue of this pork and keep an eye out the next time you're in the neighborhood.
TEA EGGS!! These require no further introduction or explanation. They are little bundles of delicious craziness.
If you ask the average AIESECer what is implied by "AIESEC work" and request specifics, you should be prepared to field completely unique responses for each and every person. While job descriptions float around out there for the formalized roles within LCs, MCs, and AI, the ultimate goal across all of them is the central mission and vision of the organization. And, I think, this is the measure that's used to determine one's success and effectiveness during their AIESEC career.
But what does this imply?
People always ask whether you remember experiences with your bodies of work more or if you remember the people more when talking about past experiences. Anyone that equivocates with a "both of them equally" is a liar and not in touch with reality, to put it bluntly. I suspect we feel an unconscious guilt in choosing one over the other, so we reason with ourselves to the point of elevating our memory of the lacking experience to something equal in worth to the greater one. If one thinks clearly about their past, they can define a clear front-runner, the one from which they draw the conclusion of "I was a success" or "I was a failure" regarding their time with the experience in question. Similarly, trying to explain this away with a mutually inclusive system where one has to focus at both in order to be considered successful is just being perfectionist and defeatist.
So when the work you do is so grounded in the personal relationships that you create, how do you reconcile the two and ultimately decide which one to prioritize? Is it even possible? Could it be that to attempt such a conscious decision is futile?
Let's bring it home for a moment. If you're involved with ICX and sales, which would you value more: the experience in working with companies to source traineeships, or that first moment when you spot the trainee from Cairo coming through the terminal gates? If you're involved with OGX, which would you value more: expanding your LC's role within your university and city and becoming the premier internship venue, or those late night conversations with your trainees on Skype? If you're involved with TM, which would you value more: the creation and execution of a mentoring and training program, or those dinner dates with your mentor/mentee? And if you're an LCP, which would you value more: coordinating all the work in your LC into a harmonious melody, or seeing your members grow and develop into something more than the sum of their parts?
As I said before, I don't think it's reasonable or possible to think you can place equal value on both at the same time. But conversely, I don't think the two have to be mutually exclusive.
It's a difficult question.
In the end, I could just be rambling about nothing. But I think everyone should take the time to perform a little introspection and figure this out.
I have to admit that sometimes my fascination with my own mortality extends into a curiosity on the mortality of mankind as a whole. And it doesn't help that the Discovery and Travel channels appear to have figured this out and subsequently developed programming that sates this piqued interest.
And as cool as the concepts of the shows are, at the same time they're somewhat disturbingly morbid.
Take, for instance, the Travel channel's 1,000 Places To See Before You Die. I like the premise of this show. There are so many amazing places around the world that everyone (ideally) should have the opportunity to experience. All you have to do is look at thesepeople'sphotoalbums to be convinced of this. But OH MY GOD, the title of the show. Talk about blunt and awkward. I don't mean to imply that death is somehow a taboo subject, or that the mass media should stick the happy-go-lucky side of life, but this is something that's just disturbing.
And then there's the Discovery channel's shows that are centered on the extinction of mankind or the outright absence thereof... due to an implied extinction. There's a show (maybe a series of specials?) focusing on the various forms of natural disasters that can occur which would wipe out life in various ways: animal life, terrestrial life, and even all life in general. It covers freaky stuff that includes the impact of a comet and generic stuff like global warming. They go into detail about how many days it would take for the human population to die out given current technology and infrastructure and have fun with the idea that any of these, while unlikely, are not as unlikely as we would like to think. And then there are shows that focus on premise that humans will kill each other off somehow, and the rest of the world will move on as if we simply packed up and left. They go buck wild with computer generated models of projected animal species if humans were to disappear and CG animations of what ubiquitously urban areas would look like thousands of years into the future, completely inundated in flora and fauna.
They're extremely interesting to watch, but at the same time, sobering in their implications. It's one thing to despair about one's impact on humanity and the "world"... it's another thing entirely to think about the big picture of big pictures, where even civilizations don't matter.
Moving on, everyone should get a Twitter account. Just take a gander to the right. It's like facebook stalking for those of us without iPhones... or until someone else releases a cheap, mass-produced phone that can access websites with the same ease.
All the evidence and all the signs are pointing toward this RoKS being one of the best ones in years. But in the overarching big picture of things, in the spotlight of hindsight, in the glorious afterglow of an anticipated experience... I feel underwhelmed.
Maybe it was the fact that I spent most of my time sitting at a table with Carleigh, checking in delegates and asking for damage deposits. Maybe it was the fact that I spent the rest of my time running IT and dreaming of sleep. Maybe it was the fact that I felt betrayed by the circumvention of conference structure by would-be delegates. Maybe it was the fact that I experienced a wholly unfounded and unreasonable feeling of inappreciativeness from everyone I came into contact with. And maybe I'm just getting old as an AIESECer, and I've finally hit the dreaded "sophomore slump".
And now that I'm sitting in LTM listening to everyone talk about how amazing this past weekend was and how to best bring that experience back to the rest of the membership, I'm struck with the realization that I now know what people mean when they say that they've become stricken with an inordinate feeling of boredom, the sinister form of boredom that makes one feel idle and useless. And maybe this is what has been eating away at me.
I need to focus less on negativity. But this is something I need to reconcile with myself and push through.
