"Art Hotel: Touching Emotion" in Hanoi (this is the funny slogan of our hotel)

Here in Hanoi, time seems to work in multiple and sometimes paradoxical ways. On one hand, the city might seem to take a teeny-weeny catnap (at best, maybe late, late at night) but it never truly reaches R.E.M. Even Michael (a New Yorker) agreed that Hanoi has an energy that feels so palpable and virtually unceasing. On the other hand, the city seems to abide by unspoken rhythms--meal times served during certain times, the dizzying criss-crossing of rush hour traffic, folks sitting on plastic stools to enjoy a refreshing evening drink with friends--daily rituals that remind me of each day passing by.

Some of my favorite moments so far (sorry but I'm not sure how to type Vietnamese accents):
Not surprisingly, enjoying Vietnamese cuisine, which is perhaps my absolute favorite. While the Lonely Planet has been helpful in some ways for locating cultural sites, Michael and I have found that the best restaurants so far have been small places that LP didn't mention and ones that tend to specialize in one dish but seem largely overlooked by the tourists for some reason (does it have something to do with their location or seemingly less-inviting facade?). A few examples: Bun Cha on Duong Thanh (god help me, a bowl of this stuff is heroin for my belly...I'm already missing this place), Hanoi-style pho at Pho 49 on Bat Dan (large cuts of brisket hang from the counter and tonight the owner/employee smiled at Michael as she scribbled down the price in a wet puddle of broth on the table...fantastic, especially with a side of the bready things called "quay" that are shaped like dog bones). THE best pate EVER from a tiny shop on Ly Quoc Su...a slab of this pate on a fresh baguette keeps me a very happy carnivore and I noticed a healthy line of folks ordering fat slabs of it to take home. And then our latest find last night--Bun Bo right next door to our hotel on Hang Dieu Street (a bowl of vermicelli noodles with beef, bean sprouts, mint, lemongrass?, some broth, and sprinkled with peanuts). As Michael said blissfully after we ate this dish, "Bun bo will be the death of me." And of course, Vietnamese coffee and banh mi pate sandwiches from several vendors around the city(sometimes we carried two at a time from different vendors to eat later!).

Other dishes I've especially loved: banana flower salad at Koto, Banh Cuon on Hang Bo Street (banh cuon is made of steamed rice rolls filled with pork, mushroom, and shallots, served with a dipping sauce called nước chấm); Banh Xeo from a place on
Huy Chu; beignet-like donut things that we ordered with the bun bo; and from Quan An Ngon restaurant on Pahn Boi Chau Street, Banh hoi chao tom Cuon Banh Trang, a pounded shrimp hash fried on sugar cane served with rice vermicelli rice paper and vegetables.

Well, after last night's performance at the Hanoi Opera House (an incredible venue that's reached its 100th birthday this year) which showcased about a dozen musicians who performed from a range of musicAL genres, from classical compositions and Spanish ballads, to opera and jazz, Michael and I are hankering badly for more live music, so we're about to head over to Minh's Jazz Club where live jazz shows apparently take place every night.

I've also enjoyed the times we've had the chance to talk with the locals here, whether it be a group of Vietnamese college students taking a survey of what foods foreigners like most (we've been asked to participate in this survey twice now, at different places), or chatting with a guy at Pho 49. He was born and raised in Hanoi and he explained that many young adults in the region commute to Hanoi for work (which adds to the sense that Hanoi is a young city). I'm always amused to hear the impromptu guesses by folks about my ethnicity. A couple times now, people have expressed difficulty in reconciling my Asian-looking face with my American nationality. The results are in: I'm either Japanese (60%), Chinese (10%), Singaporean (5%), or other (5%). Don't folks know how many Korean telenovellas I've been exposed to over my life? :)

More soon (including non-food related)...hehe...

Patchen's An Astonished Eye Looks Out of the Air

Favorite lines from Kenneth Patchen's An Astonished Eye Looks Out of the Air (1945):

The poems were printed in a conscientious objectors' camp, red and black typography layered over on white and olive-green pages with white type. The symbolism and motifs remind me of a modernist version of Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience.

from "The Dimensions of the Morning":
I will allow you respect for
Red apples and countries warm
With the races of men; peep pver
The transom at China if you like;
But I will have no hatred or fear
Entering this poem.

from "A Letter to the Young Men":
When the days grow teeth at last and games
Are done; when sunset stills our eyes and search
Is at an end--the ways all blocked, the wind's
Majestic house gone slack to the crush
Of quarreling planes in all their blue skies...

from "The Origin of Baseball":
There weren't enough birds around
And the hills had a silly look
When we got on top of one.
The girls in heaven, however, thought
Nothing of asking to see his watch
Like you would want someone to tell
A joke--"Time," they'd say,"what's
That mean--time?", laughing with the edges
Of their white mouths, like a flutter of paper
In a madhouse.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

So he wanted to throw something.
And he picked up a baseball.

from "'Keep Life'":
Town on the back of a hairy
Fish.



from "'Joined Together by the Rule of Peaceful Love'":
Their bodies writhe as that mating
Frees bulls down lanes
Of sweating roses. But a wall
Circles some grim town; and the
Reason for winter
Puts hooves on the sparrow.

from "The Naked Land":
A beast stands at my eye. //
I cook my sense in a dark fire.

from "What is the Beautiful?":
The narrowing line.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Unrest in the outer districts.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Perhaps the shapes will open.

Multiorganed, the Footnoted Confession

“The dream was marvelous but the terror was great; we must treasure the dream whatever the terror."

"My most favorite of things are optical illusions."

"I know why the line breaks: it is because something dies, and elsewhere, is born again..."

"She folded her bed sheet like a love letter....she should rather that the world remained extremely life-like....The paraphrase would always be bad, her antennae bent and remorseful....I must spit in the keyholes....How she so believed she alone was meant to discern the signs and omens, the secret addressee."

--Excerpts from Jenny Boully's The Body: An Essay.

Chest my Nut

Isn't the chestnut a prettier version of a wood-paneled room? I hope the chestnut would take this as a compliment...

Worm Friends!

Who'd a thought I'd have my hands willingly in some worm and horse poop this week. Last weekend, I took a vermicomposting workshop offered at Wasatch Gardens, which was actually really fun and insightful. I mainly went in hopes to figure out how to do a better job of maintaining a worm compost bin this time around and how to not eventually kill the worms! Last night, Michael and I made our worm bin and it all cost less than $15 (including worms). After we transferred the worms to their new home, Michael did the "worm dance," consisting of a robot-like dance and self-accompaniment of a song tentatively titled, "Worm Friends."

Today we picked up some horse manure compost (given away for free at some horse training place). Surprisingly, it didn't smell at all and we spread it all over our garden plot. We're hoping the horse manure will help revive our little plants after this plague of rain and lack of sun we've been getting the past week.

Green Thumbs Blistering in the Sun (Part 1)

After three years of being on a waiting list for a garden plot through Wasatch Gardens, I finally was up for a spot at the 4th East Garden location and now am the proud keeper of a plot that is about 8 x 30 feet.

A few days ago, Michael and I turned over the soil in our garden plot, pulling up weeds, and later mixed in some diluted fish emulsion and what's called diatomaceous earth. The next day our bodies felt like we'd been beaten with broomsticks, but we had so much fun...a healthy kind of masochism, no?

Next we planted our little seedlings (and some okra and beet seeds): 6 varieties of tomatoes, squash, pumpkin, basil, cucumber, Thai eggplant and another kind of eggplant (forget the name), onion, lavender, and oregano. We tried our best to plot out the garden so that everything was planted alongside a companion plant.

Yesterday, much to everyone's chagrin, it snowed and rained (!), and night threatened to reach freezing temperatures. With my grumpy pants on, I bought some cheap, transparent tarp from Lowe's and covered the plants and am hoping that they are okay.
I also bought a couple strawberry seedlings and am growing several teeny, on-the-verge-of-death basil seedings indoors. When the sun pokes out again later this week, I'm going to try growing more seeds indoors in hopes to plant them soon on the other half of our garden plot, which we'll probably prepare some time this weekend. I'd also like to try growing some ginger in my sunny-ish back room (though it's kind of more the kitty litter room right now).

Gardening and gardening books I find are a kind of porn and a great distraction from exam reading!

Egg + Plant + Massaman = A lived-in nest

Tonight I cooked with Thai eggplant for the first time. Along with their round greenness, I threw in some peanuts, massaman curry paste, basil, coconut milk, tamarind paste, and potato. The Thai eggplant taste more like a cross between yellow squash and maybe zucchini, but firmer, and their seeds feels/taste reminiscent of sesame seeds. So frickin good.

Even Punchki, the Polish Donut, loved it:


A lovely quote (one of the many windows) from Poetics of Space: "The house is a bird's very person; it is its form and its most immediate effort, I shall even say, its suffering." If I hadn't met Michael, I might've fallen for Bachelard, that is, had I lived, oh, a hundred years ago.