Tapas and Couscous

2010-06-10T18:58:00.002-04:00

Trendy

Because I know you're dying to know, here's what's latest in djellaba fashion (in Rabat): short-sleeved djellabas! I know. I _know._ Some of them are half-sleeve djellabas with a diagonal cuff, and others are long-sleeved ones that have s cinching mechanism so that they can be held up to 3/4 sleeve length. Apparently, Chomeicha is singlehandedly responsible for the latter as a trend; I was specifically told about this while watching her work her darija culinary magic today and I noticed something weird about her sleeves, and then I knew to look for it. I only saw it once, but _still._ The short-sleeved djellabas, though, I kept seeing them over and over.

Another thing that seems to have taken off here (I doubt that I just hadn't noticed this before) is folding bikes. Today I saw three, two of which were in use (the third was parked outside, in the i'm-leaning-outside-a-business-and-therefore-belong-to-someone-local way that I'm sure is more a hopeful deterrent than anything), one of which was a Dahon. I also saw (in non-folders) a Batavus and a Giant.

I wonder when I'll see a woman in a short-sleeved djellaba on a folder?

2010-03-07T15:48:00.003-05:00

My brother

So, on Valentine's Day, I get a series of text messages from my brother. I am reproducing them verbatim, with no corrections for capitalization or punctuation. They ask the following:

(,) do you think people would rent office/work spaces if they were in nice loft apts but you shared the space w/ someone in a long term coma

(,) so the office brainwaves help the coma patient, and by giving company. and then the offices are cheaper, and people just come to use them as work spaces.

(,) and if there is a giant high rise building full of comatose people, they can all share one staff of health care workers. Does this system work do you think?

(,) think a giant city, where you want to ditch your coma people or old people, and you can go visit them. you know, you can also like use the senior service.

(,) where it is sort of assisted living, senior home, but, one can go hang out there, bc they are sort of separate nice apts. idk, what's the next stage? biz plan?

I read these messages to him today, and he noted that he vaguely remembered having sent me a very long message that might have been a little off.

2009-10-24T23:28:00.002-04:00

A Conversation

The other day, one of the residents where I live and I had this conversation:

She: When did you dye your hair?
I: I didn't dye it; I cut it.
She: I see that you cut it, but you dyed it, too, right?
I: No. I just wear it differently now that it's short, so more grey shows.
She: Really? It looks dyed. I thought you dyed it because you were in a play or something.

I might start telling people that I dyed it because I've taken up theater.

2009-09-22T14:03:00.003-04:00

A little bit of Granada

I had convinced myself that not blogging would make me write more dissertation, but I don't think that's working. To be fair, I now think that the total length of this blog isn't terribly much longer than the dissertation, but still.

Today there was a moment that felt like Granada. I left class wearing my sandals Moroccan style with the back of the heel folded under (since they stay on that way, and they're so comfortable), and outside, there was someone walking towards campus wearing vans with the heel folded under in the same way. And then, two benches away, there were people playing flamenco guitar and singing.

Granada. *suspiro* (=sigh)

2009-02-01T19:53:00.002-05:00

How to find this corner of the blogiverse

As per Google analytics, recent visitors to this blog have stumbled upon me by googling the following phrases:
piatic numbers
"dhaba" nyc
a box of outdated couscous
can you get worms from couscous?
churreria san ginez madrid

Not one, but two people found me by wondering about piatic numbers. Unfortunately, I'm sure they didn't find any answers, other than that I'm in awe of math when my friend Alex talks about it.

And I really hope that the people who were concerned with their expired, wormy couscous found some delicious, non-expired couscous to eat.

2009-02-01T14:09:00.001-05:00

Moroccan Neighbors

A lot of the people from my life in Morocco have been around lately (in New York and LA), which is as it should be.

This brings up: it turns out that the neighborhood around my parents' house is turning somewhat Moroccan. The neighbors across the street diagonally from them (where, according to Google street view, the sky becomes unreal) are, as of two or three years ago, Moroccans from, I'm pretty sure, Rabat.

The other day (this was just a couple of weeks ago; that is totally the other day!), my Mom told me about how at some point during the summer, my cousins had been over, and they were all upstairs, and they looked out the window to the garden when my mom told them that she had been growing lots of tomatoes.

At that precise moment, the Moroccan neighbor goes and takes a basketfull of tomatoes from the garden. My cousins wanted to know if my mom wasn't going to do anything about it, and my mom said, meh, there are so many tomatoes.

What I thought was a little bit creepy was that the neighbor had scoped out the house enough to know that there were tomatoes in the backyard, and then had the brass to go into the garden and take them.

I told my mom this, and my mom said, "but they can see the tomatoes from their yard! And they can reach right across the fence!" And I had no idea what she was talking about, because as far as I knew, the Moroccan neighbors were the ones across the street from us.

It turns out that there's a second set of Moroccan neighbors (also, it turns out, from Rabat) whose house is behind ours and whose backyard abuts ours.

Next year maybe we should label the tomato plants in Arabic?

2009-01-18T13:19:00.007-05:00

"World's Best President"

I am very excited about Tuesday.

That being said, the Congress (collectively) has really bad taste. These inaugural gifts look like something a second grader would have chosen at a school store for Father's Day (I didn't even know that there were inaugural gifts, but I guess they need souvenirs, or it'll seem like it never really happened):

(The image is from the above link. Click through if you want to see what the VP bowl looks like, or a slide show involving Dianne Feinstein and the president of the crystal company that made the bowls.)

The only thing missing from the engravings are corny poems about what a great president/vice president the respective recipient will be.

Maybe those are on the back?

2009-01-08T21:48:00.006-05:00

The General Consensus

Is it that 2008 wasn't so great?

Mine was going swimmingly, I guess.

Except for the part/s in which I:
a) didn't get anywhere near finishing my thesis;
b) left Spain, which makes me wistful;
c) got hit by a car and had my commuting bike totaled (although, to be fair, I am physically alright);
d) had my beloved touring bike not show up in time from Spain, and when it did eventually show up in the wrong place (NJ after I had left for CA), had a huge dent in the top tube and the stem ground down. Grrr.

I guess there are some other things, too, but the ones above are the ones that make me particularly grumbly. I guess that they're the concrete ones that I can put a finger on without sinking into general despair. The thesis one's pretty big, though.

I also never managed to get around to getting an aerator from the tool library or mulch for the front yard. I worry that the house where I live is the one with the appearance that sets the blight standard for the neighborhood.

Oh, and there's also the part in which I didn't manage to fall in love/write a novel/have offspring/whatever it is that we're supposed to do so that society thinks we're worth something.

Maybe 2009'll work everything out, though. Especially that thesis part.

Wrought about leaving Spain: my bike and my heart

2009-01-07T21:20:00.007-05:00

Clarification on Curry Hill

I went with my cousin's wife to Indian lunch yesterday. We took the 6 down to 28th, and popped up above the ground on that little strip of Lexington where it's all Indian food all the time. Then we just had to pick where to eat.

I didn't want to eat at the delicious Saravanaas (sp?), since I'd eaten there with Zora and Peter not two weeks ago (although, to be fair, it was last year) and since it's a menu that's pretty typical of West Berkeley chaat houses. There's the place with the big kosher certification in the window at the corner of 27th, and that has really tasty food for not expensive, but it turned out that it is closed on Tuesdays. And of the two places, one right next to it, and the one next to that, I remember not having been bowled over by the one, and the other was closed.

So there we were, window shopping for Indian buffet, and someone was outside of one (Dhaba; I hadn't been there before) cleaning the windows. The place looked pretty schmancy, but the buffet was right under $10 and there seemed to be a fair amount of people there, at least two of three who looked Indian (although it wasn't the ideal overwhelming majority), and so I figured I'd ask the window guy if he had any opinion of the food.

This is the conversation that we had:

Me: The food here, it's good?
Guy Cleaning Window: No.
Me: It's not?
GCW: No.
Me: You don't like it?
GCW: No.
ME: Do you like Indian food?
GCW: No.

After this, I paused for a couple of seconds. I mean, the people inside all seemed really happy, and the restaurant wasn't empty. So I decided to try the conversation again.

Me: Do you like the food here?
GCW: No.
Me: Why?
GCW: No English.
Me: What do you speak?
GCW: Spanish.

So I started the conversation over again, and this is how it went:
Me: La comida aqui, ¿está buena?
GCW: No.
Me: No?
GCW: No.
Me: No te gusta?
GCW: No.
Me: ¿Te gusta la comida India?
GCW: No.

Long story short: the lady from inside came outside, and told us that we were welcome to see the buffet if we wanted to consider it first, and so we went inside and took a look and it smelled and looked delicious and there we stayed until we were full and couldn't eat another bite of the sooji halwa they had for dessert.

Dhaba is my new favorite Indian restaurant in New York.

2008-12-26T17:45:00.000-05:00

Christmas Tree

Usually, I arrive home sometime between the 20th and the 22nd. The first year or two that I was in college, there would somehow already be a tree at the house (we have an artificial tree from my childhood, but we we've gotten a pine/fir--I can't tell the difference unless you tell me first--for years now) and my brother and I would decorate it. Then, at some point, I remember arriving home and there wasn't a tree anymore: my mom had unilaterally decided that tree acquisition was a chore best left to P and me.

So, the way it's been for the past few years (when I've been home, so about half the time, and not at all for the past three years), is that my brother and I take $7 and go to a tree lot somewhere on either the 23rd or Christmas Eve. By then, the only trees that are left could charitably be described as either poor judgment on the part of the feller, or, well, Charlie Brown.

The dialog goes something like this:
P: How much do you want for this tree?
Tree Lot Guy: Um ... you want that tree? Um, I dunno, twelve dollars?
AV: We brought seven.
TLG: How about ten?
P: We have seven.

By this point, Tree Lot Guy's putting the tree through the netting that they use and I'm giving him seven singles. And within twenty minutes, we have a perfectly workable, albeit lopsided, Christmas tree in the living room and are trying to make the tree stand hold it up in some semblance of upright (usually, wedges are involved.)

This year, we didn't manage to get a tree until today. You will note that today is the day after Christmas (although we're having Christmas on the 6th or 7th, since that's when P gets home. Conveniently, that's also Three Kings' Day/Armenian Christmas/Eastern Orthodox Christmas, so it's not as if we're outside the bounds of tradition. Another one, but a tradition nonetheless.)

My mom and i went to the tree lot, where there was exactly one (1) tree left, and it was way too tall, and the guy wanted $35 for it, which is absolutely insane. He offered to chainsaw it down to a smaller size, but still. He had two little weird tree-top things that were super scrawny. We were going to the hardware superstore anyway, and my mom mentioned that they had trees there, so we decided to see if they had any left.

They had some, but no one knew what the prices were (we asked at customer service and the lady told us to look on the box and we said, no, not a fake tree, a previously-live tree) and the people in the greenhouse area were unknowledgeable and so we didn't get a tree there.

Anyhow, on the drive home through Passaic, my mom says, keep an eye out for Monroe Street; there's a tree there. And there was.

Someone had put it out to the curb already; I'm not sure if it had previously been decorated or not (it didn't seem to have been; all the branches are still super up-pointy and the tree seems closed. It was right outside a big parking lot; maybe that was a tree lot before?) and so we put that into the trunk and put down the hatchback of the car and then I talked to my dad on the phone and I said, "Hey, we got a tree!" and he asked, "Where did you buy it?" and I said "Monroe Street."

2008-12-25T23:51:00.013-05:00

Material Culture

So, my mom has a few nativity sets that she puts up around the house around Christmas. When I was little, she would put up a fairly elaborate one involving the model-making equivalent of roll-out turf, a water feature, and some sort of structural framework underneath it all for topography.

This was nowhere nearly as elaborate as the nativity scenes facilitated by the Christmas markets in Spain, where you can find scale models of, among other things, pigs in various stages of life/slaughter/curing/finished product, and miniature eggs: whole, cracked, and fried. (Aside: they also sell masks at these Christmas markets in Spain, and kids wear them for New Year's, and I have yet to satisfactorily figure out why.)

We had some model animals that went into the mix: there were sheep,goats, and camels, and, I think, some ducks. I had (I still have, somewhere!) a set of jungle animals, to pretty much the same scale. There was a jungle section of the crèche where they were supposed to go, but I remember insisting that at least one of the tigers should go threateningly close to the manger.

My family hasn't put a nativity set requiring any effort up in years, though. Today my mom mentioned that the cats have a particular penchant for running through it and knocking it down.

Her solution? Instead of putting up one complex, labor-intensive set, she's put a few small (the tallest one of these is maybe four inches) one-piece sets around:

Classic! Note the emphasis on the manger, what with the thatchiness of the roof. Also (not visible in the photo): the faces are definitely just suggestions.

Essence of Nativity: no wise men, no architecture. The colors on this one remind me of light-up Madonna lawn statues from my Italian-suburban New Jersey childhood.

This was given to me by my friend Lital, who had gone to a conference in Alaska. It's an igloo! And a jewelry box! Snazzy!

My favorite: The Guambiano Nativity.

The Guambianos live in Silvia and other places near the Piendamó River in Colombia, about an hour from Popayán (NB: the Wikipedia article needs editing; it notes, "there is no straw roofs in town anymore although there is plenty of them in the city neighborhood.") There are some Guambianos here and there in Popayán, too. I love the colors on this one. But what I love even more than that is that none of the adult figures are kneeling or sitting: they're all just standing around, as if they don't know what to make of the little swaddled Guambiano baby. And the way they're gathered also always reminds me of this.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

2008-12-14T04:58:00.005-05:00

Best. Present. Ever.

from Pablo!

2008-12-05T04:13:00.006-05:00

Bread:Filling

Yesterday I met up with my friend Alex, who is a Scottish mathematician who works on piatic ... numbers? sequences? Did I mention that I've never even taken calculus?

Anyhow, Alex is great fun and is a pretty fantastic ambassador for math as a way of life/religion/drug. He uses rapturous adjectives to describe how great math is. In short, he's a breath of fresh Scottish air. We go to Raleigh's together once every couple of weeks, and he talks to me about things that I'm pretty sure are making my mind crack, like the idea that different prime numbers have different distances, and that somehow these distances translate into alternate universes in which mathematical concepts that seem simple to us seem outlandish to those hypothetical residents of those other universes, and what seems incomprehensible to us is like adding for them.

But I digress.

Yesterday, I was feeling peckish and so I ordered myself a sandwich. Three years away, first in a country with pretty fantastic sandwiches (ma3quuda?! hello!), and then in Spain, where the sandwiches are terrible* (with a couple of notable exceptions) somehow made me forget that other than my regular Cheese-n-Stuff fix, California sandwiches are to be avoided.

There are a couple of reasons: first, one of the ingredients on the sandwich was avocado. What I was served was an avocado sandwich with a little bit of some other stuff.
Second, I was never asked what kind of bread I wanted (and, as far as I remember, the menu didn't give any options.) It was honey whole wheat (as far as I can tell). That's almost parodically Californian.

The main problem, though: the bread:filling ratio was all wrong. And that's not just there; it's symptomatic of the California sandwich.

In this weird coastal universe with beaches and Atkins diets, you would think that the bread slices would be normal, if not tending to thin. But no: this was a tall sandwich. And two-thirds of that height was too-thickly sliced bread. Each slice was about three times as thick as a slice of, well, sliced bread. Blech. Even after making the sandwich open-faced, there was still too much bread for the amount of filling.

Never again.

I'll still keep going back to Raleigh's to have my mind blown by Alex and his mathtalk (Did you know that there's something in math called a motive? There're probably also plots, narratives, and backstories.) I'll stick to the $2.50 pints, though (and maybe I'll get some onion rings; some of those came with my sandwich, and they were crisp and tasty.)

* an explication for my Spanish friends: Spaniards are sandwich literalists/fundamentalists. In Spain, when a sandwich is billed as a cheese sandwich, it consists of bread ... and cheese. Which I guess is alright, if that's what you want. What I usually want is for there to be a pile of green leafy things and tomato and mustard and mayo and swimming in vinegar.

2008-11-05T22:59:00.005-05:00

Obamalection:* Effects

Here are my bets on some of the effects of the Obama election:

a) that Obama will be used as a first name in the developing world (not confined to Africa; definitely it'll be widespread in Latin America)

b) that Barack as a first name will skyrocket in the US, especially in the Black community

c) that Barack as a first name (and permutations thereof: Baraka, Mabrouk) will skyrocket in the Middle East/Arab world

d) that visa applications to the US will skyrocket

e) that inner-city crime rates will plummet. I'm convinced we would be heading to another low-point-of-the-American-city, as in Lower-East-Side-1982, if McCain were to have won (not so much as a direct factor of McCain but as an antibama corollary)

f) that crime rates in Brazil will plummet

g) that Venezuela and Colombia might be seeing some political changes



and now back to my lagging dissertation ...


* alternately: Obamelection. I can't figure out how to type a schwa.

2008-10-01T13:56:00.002-04:00

Hiatus

I'm back in California now, and had about four entries in some stage of the thought-draft process (and then my computer died.)

I'm not allowing myself to blog any more until I finish a dissertation chapter. In its entirety. Ouch.

I should be back by the end of October. (Since I know that the rush of activity since late June has kept all three of you rushing to read the new entries.)

2008-06-23T06:22:00.011-04:00

Futbol

There's some big soccer tournament on now; all the Europeans seem particularly into it. I went to see part of the game last night with my housemate, and it was fun because we went to a bar (the Café Futbol, which is more a chocolate-and-churros kind of place than a bar, but they do, of course, serve beer and tapas there since it's Granada) and everyone there was pretty into it.

After I figured out that the Spanish team was wearing red, and Italy was wearing white, it was much easier to understand. The Spanish uniforms were pretty bad, with a really difficult-to-read font in a color that is too gold and not contrasty enough with the red color field. Anyhow, the game was tied 0-0. And then it went into overtime. And then it went into double overtime, or whatever it is that they call the part of the game (I'd never seen a soccer game go into this part [since I don't think I've ever watched so much of a soccer game before, on teevee anyway], and it certainly hasn't happened in any soccer game in which I've played [and I'm certain that my presence on the field would have something to do with such a situation, since I flee projectiles generally, and duck a lot, because who wants to hit that thing? I only really enjoy sports where I am the projectile]) and then Spain won 4-2.

And then Inga (my housemate) and I went on a run, and everyone was out in the streets in celebration mode, and it appeared that the proverbial fun was had by all.

A lot of people got into the Fuente de las Batallas; apparently, we missed the first round of people jumping into the drink, since there was water everywhere around the fountain and the fountain was off. A few minutes later, though, it got turned on again and people climbed it and splashed around a lot.

I like how, in this photo, a neon sign that isn't the Spanish flag looks like the Spanish flag. I also like how the kids in the photos look like turn-of-the-(20th)-century urchins.

There weren't many girls in the fountain; once in a while, one would go in but not stay very long.

Also, one thing that Spaniards do to celebrate soccer victories (or maybe it is to celebrate in general) is to yell "¡Olé! ¡Olé!" and pretend that they are bulls and bullfighters (done here with a Spanish flag.) There was a larger version of this going on in the street, where five or six people would run through the flag at once, pretending they were bulls.

The game was just yesterday; this is as close to live reporting that this blog'll ever get. There are things from weeks (and, um, months) ago that I keep meaning to write about, but then other things come up.

2008-06-23T05:42:00.005-04:00

Vermiculture, Crop Failure

One of the things that I love about the balconies of my apartment is that I have compost bins on them. It took a really long time to find appropriate worms for them, however. I had asked at probably a dozen nurseries and florists, until I asked at a florist near my apartment, and she said that they had some in the compost at her house. In short: a few days and some worm-decorated cupcakes later, I had my own compost worms! (The nice red kind, that I believe they call California redworms, but I might be remembering incorrectly.)

Anyhow, that was months ago, and at some points in the meantime, I've been pretty concerned about the worm population (or seeming lack thereof) in the compost bins. Now, however, there are so many! They are very densely spread throughout one of the bins in particular, such that each trowelful turns up at least two of them.

This makes me happy to no end.

Also, I may have mentioned (way back when) that I was really excited about some tulip bulbs that I had bought. And, later on, I was thrilled with some chives that I had planted.

Did I mention that I went to CA for three weeks? And that, during those three weeks, the plants didn't really get watered? (Sigh.) To make a long story short, all of the plants on the balconies except those that would probably be thought of as weeds (spider plants, weird-looking spikey-curly succulents, gerania) either died or are very sad. And I was so excited about the tulips, and one of them was looking really healthy (the stalk, anyways; it hadn't bloomed yet) and two were looking alright, and only one or two of them looked DOA before I left.

And so now I am re-planting some chives, and I guess I'm done mourning the dead basil (except, of course, every time I want to use just a leaf or two of basil), and thinking twice about the prettiness of the weird succulents that, literally, tripled in size while I was gone.

But I still have my worms.

2008-06-18T13:37:00.003-04:00

Pros and Cons

I've gotten to the point at which I'm thinking I should be back in California for the next academic year. I don't really want to be, since I think I'm doing alright here (although I do miss having triceps.) And so I'm trying to reason things through. Please add to my list of Spain (Granada) and California (Bay Area) pros and cons.

I also keep seriously thinking about moving to Chicago, but haven't made a list for it yet. Chicagoans, please make suggestions!

Pros—Spain

Octopus
Already here/inertia
Archives
Ham
Tapas
In Europe
Best. Apartment. Ever.

Cons—Spain

Smoking
Refrigerated tomatoes
Ham
Bars
No cafés
Everything closes at insane hours.
Sundays
Granada is provincial.
The Euro
Earthquake denial
Spaniards are ridiculous/Spain is ridiculous
Lack of ethnic food

Pros—California

The gym
The Bay
Live music
People like me.
I like people.
No smoking
Hills
Cycling club
Sailing club (which I fully intend to join)
Swimming pools that are beautiful, so that I at least get to get water up my nose in an aesthetically pleasing environment.
In the US
Fog
Thai food
Indian food
Dozens of tomato varieties

Cons—California

Earthquakes
Spency
Many of my friends have moved away.
In the US

2008-06-13T11:02:00.011-04:00

See?

As of last night, when I went to the supermarket again, some restocking seems to be taking place. Most of the things that were in stock and/or being re-stocked weren't exactly what I would classify as essential, however.

Also no baked goods (this shelf usually has fresh sliced bread and pastry-type things.) There were some baguettes on another bread shelf, though (unlike the case three days ago.)

No eggs. Not even quail (which are usually on the top shelf.) Weird soup concentrate stuff has been fully restocked (if, that is, it was ever out of stock.)

No fruit (this is where potatoes, garlic, bananas, and oranges usually are. There are some containers of bottled water, in case you're planning for the year 2000. Also, there does seem to be some garlic in the background.)

One (half) watermelon, a couple of (bad) ears of corn, and a box of something weird. In the background, note that soda has been fully restocked.

At least there are a few containers of soymilk (I bought two.) But that's a new development as of today. When I last attempted a supermarket trip (two days ago) there was not even soymilk.

The meat shelves are also empty. The junk food shelves immediately to the right had just been filled. (Two days ago, I believe there was nothing in the family of pre-made Spanish tortillas, frozen pizzas, and egg beaters, But those are the things that nobody wants! Right?!)

I will be so, so happy when there are things like bags of fresh spinach and eggs in the supermarket. Tomorrow, I'm going to go see if the vegetable market is open.

2008-06-11T08:10:00.003-04:00

No Tapas For Now

Actually, the bars don´t seem to have run out of food yet, but the supermarket shelves here are empty empty empty. Photodocumentation to follow.

Luckily, we have lots of lentils at home. Unluckily, we don´t seem to have onions or anything else worth eating.

Addendum:
For those of you who have asked, the supermarkets are empty because truck drivers are striking to protest the high cost of diesel fuel (I believe that today is day three of said strike.)

Another strike that's currently happening, and which is predicted to make Spain a country with no fish to eat (both fresh and frozen) in about another five days is a fishing strike (that I believe has been going on for over a week already.) If my knowledge is correct on this, the fishing strike started in France and is also in effect in Portugal. This, as far as I can see, is the BEST thing that could possibly happen: Spain overfishes, and maybe even a couple of weeks of break from being fished will somehow positively affect world fish populations. A few months of Spain not fishing, though, would be much better.

2008-05-25T18:43:00.003-04:00

Economic Stimulus

Since I know you look to me for advice,I'd like to inform you that this is what you should do with your economic stimulus payment:
buy a bicycle.

If you've already got one that you don't ride: get it tuned up, buy a helmet, buy some gloves, a rack, and panniers. And while you're at it, take those plastic pedals off of it and put something decent on there.

If your bike is a K-mart/department store bike:
do not get it tuned up. Donate it to Goodwill and get yourself a tax receipt. Then look around the Goodwill for something from the 80s with a steel frame and an Italian name.

Just my two cents of economic stimulus.

2008-05-14T09:42:00.004-04:00

The Nomination

I am really ready for the Democratic nominating race to be over.

In the meanwhile, I'm edutaining myself with this list of things younger than John McCain.

2008-05-04T19:12:00.004-04:00

Spain in Lights

I meant to blog this ages ago:

It might be a little small to see, but it is the product of about 45 minutes of four of us sitting at the mirador of San Nicolas (overlooking the Alhambra) and taking long-exposure pictures while trying to write "Spain" using the LCD of a digital camera as a pen.

This was ridiculously fun.

2008-04-26T13:29:00.003-04:00

Join the International Jihad

I've been meaning to take a picture of and post this for a while.

I don't understand how Franco fits in with all this. Also, I love how the end of the pistol is at the end of a part where the plaster and paint are chipped off, and it seems as if the stencil has reached through from another, 1970s dimension to shoot at the building.

2008-04-22T09:52:00.002-04:00

Worst Argument for Monotheism Ever

Ok, I guess I lied about that hiatus thing. But I did get a good amount of work done on al-Tarjamaana al-Kubraa, which is one of the couple of books I´ve recently picked up for my dissertation. The problem, it turns out, is that my to-do list always gets longer, even when some things get crossed off. I managed to get through about half of the relevant/possible-relevant parts last night, and hope to toss it into the "ship to the States/make visitors take Stateside for me" pile within the next couple of days.

Anyhow, I´ve been stewing about this for a while (three days) now:
on the plane back from Morocco, I had this conversation (the conversation was thrust upon me, really, since I was in fact reading Le Città Invisibili and managing to understand most of it, and picking up some good Italian vocab to boot), which started with the guy sitting two seats away from me asking how long I´d spent in Morocco.

Since I´d lived there, he reasoned, I was obviously Muslim, because how could anyone spend more than a minimal amount of time somewhere where everyone is Muslim and not convert?! Anyhow, I told him that I wasn´t, and he went on and on about how great Muhammad was, and how great Islam was, and that if I were just to read some of the Qur'an I´d convert in a snap.

I, of course, think that proselytizing should be illegal in most places, not the least of which is international air space. But none of that's really new, and I´ve had the "how could you possibly speak Arabic/have lived in the Arab world/have heard of Islam and not converted?" conversation (um, it´s more of a monologue, really) thrust upon me more times than I care to recount.

That wasn't what's been making me shake my head in incredulity, though. What did it was that the guy, realizing that I wasn't about to say, "you know, you're right; why don't I just say the shahaada now and become become Muslim," pulled an, "oh, well you know, Islam says it's okay anyways. Christains and Jews and Muslims are all monotheisms with overlapping prophets."

People usually end right there.

This guy took it one step further: "It's really important that there's just one God, because do you know what would happen if there were more than one? They'd start fighting, just like people!"

I was really, really glad that this guy wasn't a mufti.

2008-04-21T09:08:00.002-04:00

Morocco Redux, and Semana Santa

The future of djellaba fashion seemingly involves the following three trends:
1. large all-over print flower patterns (almost like a Hawaiian shirt or muumuu print)
2. a stripe between the body of the djellaba and the sleeves
3. sleeves that are a different color than the body of the djellaba.

Use the above information to do what you will; if you end up being the next hot djellaba designer, let me know.

Also, I know that Snoap (who visited, along with his girlfriend Vicky whose name I´m not quite sure how to spell), who visited for Semana Santa, is waiting for me to blog about it. It was fun! There were people in those pointy caps that make Americans cringe, and lots of processions, and it didn´t rain so much, unlike last year, when it rained the whole time and there were almost no processions. We talked about the Sierra Mountains and how we´d really like to go there and drink some chai tea, and maybe have something involving salsa sauce.

In other news, this blog is going on hiatus until I finish a dissertation chapter. I have about five (pretty long, now terribly outdated) entries waiting for editing, but realize that I´d rather make everyone I know call me Doctor Valencia than blog up a storm (which, um, I haven´t been doing lately anyways.) Not that I´m close to finishing or anything anyways. I´ll be back and blogging by June.

2008-02-29T14:53:00.002-05:00

Leap Day List

These things have changed in Rabat lately:
1. The medina is now full of knockoff Crocs
2. One out of every five teenagers is dressed in a Moroccan version of Oakland indie rocker circa 2002
3. The other four out of every five are no longer dressed in knockoff Dolce and Gabbana, or if they are, it is no longer in three-inch letters
4. The typewriter guys at Bab al-Had are back, but they are no longer in the Bab
5. All of the city walls have been "restored" with the injudicious application of Marrakech-red spraycrete. The walls are now boring.

2008-02-25T05:55:00.002-05:00

Couscous! Couscous! Couscous!

So, I'm in Morocco for the week, where I'm madly trying to find things that I hadn't been able to find before, and I walk around the medina with my Disto and a compass to reconcile the (not so good) official map of the medina (courtesy the Ministry of Culture) with my (soon to be new and) improved, AutoCAD version.

Having spent a huge amount of time when I was here in 2005-2006 not getting access to buildings and not finding things, at this point I'm working on a comparison of houses that I believe to be Andalusi here with their counterparts in Granada. So I'm just knocking on a lot of doors and making not a lot of floor plans.

But that is neither here nor there (and I really should go to the library in a minute): what this entry is really about is couscous. As you may imagine, I don't eat much couscous in Spain, and when I travel, and someone inevitably says, "hey, there's this great Moroccan place; why don't we go there?" I'm the first to say no, and suggest that we find something Indian or Thai instead
.
I just don't see the point in eating disappointing couscous, and in Spain, it's both disappointing and expensive.

As you can imagine, I partially planned to arrive on a Thursday and leave on a Saturday so that I could have two weeks' worth of couscous. I report with great joy, however, that in two days I had three weeks' worth of couscous: for lunch on Friday, for dinner on Friday, and again for lunch on Saturday. Saadia (the friend I'm staying with) made it three times because her son, who is doing his military reserve service, came home on Friday evening: he'd missed the lunch couscous, and so she made it again. And since he eats so poorly where he is stationed (he was a skinny kid to begin with; now he is an even skinnier kid with a buzz cut), couscous was made yet again on Saturday.

2008-02-14T07:49:00.010-05:00

Owner of a Broken Heart(-Shaped Cookie)

I´m sure it´s just as tasty as all the others, though.

I was particularly pleased with the way the pulmonary veins came out on this one:

You can have all of my hearts. Even the slightly-burnt ones. Also, this plate reminds me of Cairo, and how there they would (and probably still do) sell organs in trays:

Happy Valentine´s Day!

2008-01-12T07:21:00.000-05:00

When I Grow Up

I believe that I’ve mentioned this, but the lady who’s in charge of the four-apartment building where I live is this little old lady named Maria. She’s about four-foot nine but acts as if she’s five eleven and owns the place. A couple of days ago, we went to tapas, and, I’m not kidding you, she got digits. Granted, it was the phone number for this middle-aged couple and their family who thought that she was adorable and wanted to invite her to dinner, but still.

Anyhow, a while back, she said the following (I’m translating here):
“When I get older, I’m going to stop doing this.” She was taking a bucket of laundry to hang on the roof, which is on the equivalent of the American fourth floor.

She continued, “I’m going to go live in an apartment building with an elevator, and central heating, and an induction range. I will do that when I am eighty-eight.”

By her accounts (which I suppose are the only ones that matter), she’s eighty-two.

2008-01-12T07:17:00.000-05:00

Intelligent Life

I can't possibly be the only person in this world who has synapses devoted to worrying that communiques like this will be the first thing that intelligent life from another solar system manages to intercept.

2008-01-08T17:00:00.000-05:00

I've been there!

These are from b3co.com

Now what I really want is for that site to marry the site that has maps of a few major metro systems all to the same scale.

2008-01-06T14:19:00.000-05:00

We Three Kings of Orient Are

So, I may have mentioned this last year, but Spanish children traditionally got Christmas presents from the Three Kings, and not from Santa Claus. (Now some kids get both, and friends have told me that since people get together with extended families for Christmas and not January 6th, gift exchanging occurs on Christmas.)

Kids would put their shoes out (outside of the house or out in the hallway, I don't know, with some straw and carrots in them (for the three kings' camels) and would get presents in return. Or somesuch. I'm convinced that there's some sort of latent foot fetishism in Christmas worldwide as a result of this (stockings, big red boots, whathaveyou) but that is neither here nor there.

Today, kids' getting gifts from the three kings is, as it is in the Santa scheme, constructed around judging the kids' relative goodness and badness (which could be interpreted as the institutionalization of right-wing value judgment of the poor and their lack of merit in society as directly reflected in the lack of material wealth, but again I digress.)

What Granada (and, I'm told, every city in Spain, does to celebrate this is that they have a parade on the Eve of the Feast of the Epiphany (aka 3 Kings' Day) in which there are parades, and they throw candy. I went to the parade last year, but had then just gone home. This year, Ruth and I were walking home, and we noticed that the whole shebang ends at the Ayuntamiento (town hall.) There, the Kings and their retinues go into the town hall and appear on the balcony.

There were speeches, mostly about how much better then children of Granada had been this year than last year, and then before some fireworks, things were thrown down to the crowd: soccer balls, t-shirts (I got a t-shirt--it's from the Granada CF and says that this year you should ask the kings for your team's success), candy, and these:

It's the Three Kings on a ladder, which they use to break into people's apartments to deliver gifts. Weird, no? There are Santas on ladders, too, on people's balconies (but, obviously, none of those were being distributed yesterday.)

It makes me understand why kids are scared of Santa, as well as of the Three Kings.

Which reminds me, I went to see the municipal crèche a week or so ago (bizarre that total lack of division between church and state, no?) and there was a family on line in back of me. They went and got their picture taken with Balthazar (I think?! I can't tell them apart, but they told me that it was the black one and that the black one is Balthazar) and the little girl was so proud of having sat on his lap and not having freaked out. The people in front of me went and got their photo taken as well, and they didn't have any children with them. Naturally, I also got my photo taken. It was just like getting a mall Santa photo, except that adults also do it! There was even a mailbox for sending letters.

The photo is quite nice; they print it out on a sheet that makes it look like the front page of the Ideal newspaper (who, naturally, sponsored the thing) and all the news is Christmas and Kings-related, like a little corner blurb about how many energy-saving LEDs were used in this year's municipal light display.

This afternoon, we had a Roscón de Reyes at home:

Since last year there'd been a last-minute scramble to find one, this year I pre-ordered one. I invited a few friends over to have some this afternoon, but only one showed up. So much of the cake is still left! Ruth got the bean (which means that she would have to pay for the whole cake), but nobody's gotten the little figurine that means that you get to wear the paper crown that came with the cake. Last year, there had been six figurines and no bean.

I hope that lots of people come over to eat (or just for dessert) in the near future; it's not the tastiest cake. Happy Three Kings' Day, everyone.

2007-12-31T09:57:00.000-05:00

Twelve Grapes, Redux

You may or may not remember that Spaniards have a quaint New Year's habit of eating, in rapid succession (one with each stroke of midnight, it's supposed to be) twelve grapes at New Year's. This seems to me to be a hazardous custom (grapes are round and can easily be choked on), and do you really trust a crowd of drunk (well, if it's just turned New Year's they're probably not drunk yet) people to administer appropriate first aid? But I digress.

So, this year it's the 31st of December again, and, until about an hour ago, I didn't have any grapes. I thought about acquiring the grapes, sure, but I didn't remember really seeing a lot at the fruit stands, and then yesterday was Sunday.

I don't really leave the house before noon, and so once again all factors were against me in grape acquisition.

I went to the fruit markets, and the first stand was closing, and they had no grapes. The second and third stands were also closing, the fourth was open but had no grapes, and the fifth and sixth were also open but, again, grapeless. But a guy at that last one told me to go to the fruit stand that said "Belen." (I was confused, because why would a fruit stand have a crèche, but then it turned out that that was the stand's name.) I went there, and a woman was buying the last nice big container of grapes.

Apparently, I looked purposeful enough, and sad enough at seeing the last basket of grapes sold that the woman automatically put the grapes from the proverbial bottom of the barrel and the literal bottom of the display basket into a bag and gave them to me.

There are probably a couple of dozen, and once I remove the ones that are well on their way to being grapes, I should be all set to greet 2008 like a Spaniard!

Alternately, I could just go to the supermarket and pick up one of these:

These are bizarre! They are canned, seeded, peeled grapes, sold in twelve-grape packs. They even say "Special for New Year's Eve." And the big supermarkets have them at the ends of the aisles and by the checkout right now (or, they probably did until sometime this morning.) Talk about a niche marketing idea.

Happy 2008, everyone!

2007-12-26T07:37:00.001-05:00

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-03T09:56:00.000-05:00

Christmiss*

So, this year the Valencia family is going to be spread out for the holidays. Pablo´s staying in LA, I´m staying in Spain, and the crumblies are staying in NJ.

We wanted to do something together, though. We were thinking of a conference call, which´ll probably happen anyway, but we´ve all agreed that what we really like to do together is eat together.

The plan is for us all to make the same dishes (they don´t even have to be had on the same day) and take pictures of ourselves eating and sharing them. We´ll take pictures of us passing plates over to the person next to us, and toasting with the people on either side. We´re going to gather the pictures and then it´ll be the whole Valencia family together!

The menu, so far, is going to be¨:
penne in sun-dried tomato and vodka cream sauce
caramelized onion tartes
something salady

We haven´t decided on desserts yet.

Care to join us?

*or Hannukan´t. We still haven´t come up with a proposal for an Eidquivalent. We also tossed around FauXmas and Ersatznukkah.

2007-11-22T07:01:00.000-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving!

The leaves in the plaza by my house are beautiful!

And they're bigger than my face!

I made this apple pie just for you, and seven other people.

2007-10-28T09:49:00.000-04:00

Parents Who Hate Their Children

This conversation happened about five feet away from me on Friday. I have translated it from the foreign for your horror:

(Woman lights cigarette about a foot from her daughter's four- to six-year old face.)

Man: You shouldn't smoke so near your children. It's bad for their health.
Woman: Oh, it's okay. She doesn't know the difference.

First, I was glad that a stranger would tell someone that she's killing her child. Second, I was horrified that that would be her response.

2007-10-17T04:17:00.000-04:00

A stupid, stupid, stupid idea

In another move to make New York even more appealing to the tourist masses, the city and some BIDs are teaming up to put decals on the sidewalk at some subway exits. These, planned to help people orient themselves once outside of the subway station, are supposed to help people the article called "New Yorkers" orient themselves once at street level.

Am I the only person who thinks that these are stupid?

a) When you ride the subway, you know what direction the train is headed, and therefore what direction you are facing when you get out of the train.

b) The sign leading to the exit tells you which corner you will be at when you exit.

c) The flow of street traffic tells you which direction you are facing.

d) The street signs for the next short block over are, thanks to those huge signs they put in a while back (that was probably ten years ago now), easily legible from a block away.

e) It's not as if they're putting them in remotest Flushing. They're putting them in Manhattan! In my absence, has Manhattan been re-engineered to consist of meandering cow paths updated for vehicle traffic? Have the streets been de-numbered and renamed for trees?

f) C'mon. Decals?! Decals are for malls, not cities. Those are going to last all of a week, will age horribly, and will be slippery. Depending on where they're placed in relationship to the stairs, there'll be a slip-n-fall lawsuit within three months. Also, (unless that guy in the photo has tiny feet) those are huge! If you're going to insist on orienting people, how about a simple northarrow stamped into the sidewalk the next time curb cuts are re-done (à la San Francisco street names being stamped into the sidewalk at the corners?)

Sigh.

2007-10-16T19:48:00.000-04:00

Cokehead adman commits suicide.

That's my one-sentence summary of 99 Francs, a movie by Jan Kounen starring Jean Dujardin I saw a couple of days ago. It is excellent, and I strongly recommend that you find yourself a copy to watch in the near future. Learn French if it's not available in your local language. It's that good.

In other news, I'm now 32. Happy birthday to me!

2007-10-14T15:07:00.000-04:00

Research in Paris

I went to DC, and then home, but now I'm back in Europe and madly (!) working on things, trying to have something presentable so that eventually I can apply for university jobs and be done with school. It's been a good 27-year-run, though.

Then again, a university teaching job isn't so much being done with school as much as it is going to school in a different capacity.

What I'm doing here is getting my hands on maps and views of Rabat-Salé, some of which I've seen published, and some of which (I just saw yesterday) haven't been published or referred to in anything that I've come across. I also need to go to the naval archives in Vincennes, and the National Archives here in Paris, and (eventually, I was planning on going on this trip, but I've got so much to do here) I will wend my way to Nantes, to see the diplomatic archives.

If you know of anyone who wants to hire me to talk about the late sixteenth and the early seventeenth century in Spain and Morocco for the next year or two, let me know.

2007-09-20T16:03:00.000-04:00

Paris

They have rhubarb jam here, and chestnut spread that comes in a toothpaste-like tube. The cap for this tube is double-threaded, so you just flip it over to pierce the top and then you can keep it on that way, or turn it back around. The choice is yours. I'm visiting for a week; my family's here, and while they're off at the Elysian Fields and whatnot, I'll be at the Archives de la Marine looking at some pretty sweet maps and views of Rabat.

In other news, I am living in a big old flat in the center of Granada with three balconies (having left Calle Elvira and the din of its gutterpunks and drunks), I may or may not be going to Egypt at the end of October (I've heard thirdhand that I am, but won't believe it until I have a ticket in my sweaty little palm), and there is an inordinate amount of lettuce growing in the balcony planters. Also, I am sending in a rough draft of a dissertation chapter today. It's really more of a partial chapter than anything else, because I think of it as a partial thought, but it feels good to finally be turning something (however tenuous) in.

2007-08-29T16:45:00.000-04:00

What if it falls here?

That's the literal translation of the Christmas lottery campaign here in Spain.

It's August! And that slogan's already covering the bus billboards (busboards) here in Granada.

And I thought that the US was Christmas-crazed. Here, however, they're already selling Christmas lottery tickets. A guy on the street (one of the ONCE people) was selling them today.

Bizarre.

2007-08-27T15:20:00.001-04:00

Pad Thai Weekend

When I was in the States last month, I was very happy to, over the course of three weeks, eat Thai food three times. I returned to Granada particularly dejected at the lack of culinary diversity in this fair burg.

Naturally, I decided to see if, given the lack of Thai restaurants between here and Tarifa (that's the closest one I could find on the Internets), I couldn't make a close-enough approximation of Pad Thai at home to keep the withdrawal jitters from kicking in.

I noodled around on the Interweb until I came upon this. Naturally, I hopped on my bike and got to the Asian supermarket just before it closed. They didn't have tamarind of any sort, and they only had industrial-sized bags of sprouts (which I knew I wouldn't get through), so I went home with rice noodles and the idea that I'd somehow still manage to make a Pad Thai.

I'd bought a kilo of yellow plums a couple of days beforehand, and some of them were starting to get mushy, so I made a batch of tart plum jam (the skins were delicious with sugar) and figured that some of that would be a suitable, if inauthentic, substitute for tamarind paste. Anyhow, I made some, and it was pretty good, with a nice combination of tangy and sweet, but it still wasn't what I was looking for.

This was about a week and a half ago.

I mentioned my tamarind quest to Marisa, at Páprika, figuring that she would have some ideas. She was the one who knew about the Asian supermarket, after all (she told me about it when I noticed that they were serving Thai black rice.) Anyhow, she had a jar of tamarind paste that she said she never used, and she gave it to me.

I made myself Pad Thai for dinner on Friday, for lunch on Saturday:

and then again for lunch yesterday:

Delicious! Now I have to ration the tamarind paste, until I manage to get myself a dealer.

2007-08-25T10:07:00.000-04:00

A Memo

ATTN: Spain
RE: Your Overuse of the Refrigerator

So, Spain, we’ve been on pretty close terms for a while now, and there’ve been many things we’ve been able to talk through. I’ve come to accept your ways of shutting down all functions during, inexplicably, the middle of the day, and your bizarre notion that during the summer, people should only work in the mornings, if at all. I appreciate that you’ve been willing to throw my American ways the occasional bone; I thought it was pretty nice of you to make at least a few bars and restaurants smoke-free. But sometimes, you just don’t know how to do things right.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m aware that the death of your longstanding Fascist regime is an event branded upon the memories of even your younger middle-aged inhabitants. I mean, I remember when they showed the news that John Lennon was shot, so it’s not like I don’t have experiences with the end of an era. But seriously, while a refrigerator is a pretty handy thing to have, you don’t need to use it for everything. Some things actually taste better at room temperature.

In particular:
Bananas
We’ve been over this several times. Bananas, from tropical climes, are ideally to be suspended from a hook. Not only does this remind them of their natural habitat, just beyond the reach of the fingers of hungry monkeys, it also prevents them from getting bruised. They are not to touch plastic, and they are not to be put into the fridge. Ever. Not even when there are many bananas, and you think that, just this once, it will help them to last longer by storing them somewhere cold, dark, and humid.

Putting the bananas into the refrigerator does not enhance their flavor, increase their longevity, or add in any way to the experience of eating one. It just makes them get disgusting and brown. I know that this is you in general, Spain, and not just one of your denizens. Just a month or two ago, after eating lunch at a friend’s house, she offered me fruit, and one of the things that she did was that she took bananas out of the refrigerator. Then she said, (I’m translating here) “I don’t know why they’ve turned brown. I refrigerated them and everything.”

Also:
Tomatoes
Now, Spain, hear me out. I really like gazpacho. I find your chilled raw tomato-based soup a refreshing addition to my summertime diet. However, your insistence upon refrigerating a perfectly good tomato when it’s not even threatening to go mushy is, I’m willing to bet, one of the major reasons for the general weakness of your economy. Compounded with your missteps in the New World, your expulsion of the moriscos between 1609 and 1614 and your consequent loss of a labor force, and a century of epidemics, I’m pretty certain that someone’s dim-witted idea to keep tomatoes somewhere cold instead of, again, somewhere room temperature, was what brought your standing down in the world stage. Big time.

You know why? It makes you lose credibility as a potential culinary superpower. And, as we all know, no one wants to do business with a place with no respect for the integrity of ingredients. The thriving economy of Silicon Valley? It’s all because of Alice Waters. Your insistence upon refrigerating tomatoes, even ones that I, not you, purchased, for use in salad, makes the inventions of paella and the delightful small plates that are tapas seem like flukes.

Even the New York Times thinks you should never refrigerate a tomato. As we both know, they are never, ever wrong.

Thanks for your attention, Spain. I knew that you would understand.

2007-08-21T15:53:00.000-04:00

Day of Croquetas

Yesterday, I walked a lot more than I usually do: I went up to the EEA library the long way (the walk that takes a half hour instead of 20 minutes), rode my bike around a bit, and ambled around downtown. A lot. I haven’t been doing that much exercise lately. Everything in Granada is too close for an in-town bike ride, and it’s still hotter than the sun out in the middle of the day, making a ride outside of town seem like a terrible idea. Also, I keep meaning to join a gym, but I haven’t, because they are depressing and they make me just think of the RSF at Berkeley and how much I loved Total Athletic Conditioning, Abs and Back, and Cardio Kickboxing. Come to think of it, I was ripped! (I definitely, definitely had a six-pack under a layer of fat.)

But I digress.

Because what I mean to write about is this: yesterday, I had four different kinds of croquetas. This started off when I left the EEA library to go home and cook (it was my turn.) Oscar had left a note saying that he wasn’t coming home for lunch, which kind of messed up my day, because I had actually been so productive in that last hour before I left the library; I could have stayed another hour and worked. By the time I got home, of course, I was hungry and then by the time I ate there wasn’t enough time for me to get back to the library (even on my bicycle) and have enough time to request a book.

I ate some leftovers (salmorejo and tortilla de patatas) and noodled around for a little bit, mostly reading up on Anton van Wyngaerde and sixteenth century depictions of cities/trying to justify my academic reasons for existing, but then I got hungry.

What I had really wanted all along was spinach, so I sautéed up some onions, and added what fresh spinach we had. Naturally, it made a pitifully small amount of food, so I decided to stretch it by making a béchamel, processing the spinach and adding it, breading it, and frying it. Delicious.

In the evening (after moping around the house some more), I met up with María, the little 82-year-old lady who rents rooms out, and whom I know from my first visit to Spain five years ago, for tapas. We started off at the Salon 2004; I suggested it, even though it’s not my favorite, because she’s so ridiculously enthusiastic about it. The tapas there are always slices of ham (“very high quality!” exclaims María) and some kettle chips.

We continued to Regio, a bar in the neighborhood behind Puerta Real, very close to the Ayuntamiento. I had a tinto de verano (refreshing!) and María had a Rioja. All of the employees there know María, and the young guys there call her “guapa” and she gets a big kick out of it. At some point, on of the staffers brought over a plate with a couple of croquetas. “Try these,” he says, “they’re not like the usual croquetas here.”

So we did. They were vegetable, with onion and fried green bell peppers in them. They seemed to be based on semolina, or maybe even had a bit of cornmeal in them, instead of just regular flour. They were pretty good. They were just room temperature, though.

And then (even though we hadn’t ordered a second round of anything), they brought over another plate of croquetas. Those, apparently, were the real tapas: the first batch had just been to taste something different.

Round two was chicken croquetas, and they were the most chicken-laden croquetas I’ve ever had: I’ve definitely had croquetas that are purported to be chicken, but just taste vaguely of chicken fat. These had lots of shredded chicken meat in them, and were a much softer béchamel than the first, and were on the hot end of the warm temperature range. They were delicious!

We finished those, and (still on what would be our only round of drinks at the Regio) one of the cooks emerged from the back and asked María if she’d ever had the eggplant there. María answered that she hadn’t.

“I’ll taste you some,” said the cook.

So, we each had a fairly thick, but buttery soft and not at all bitter, lengthwise slice of battered, fried eggplant, served with a drizzle of molasses. Delicious.

And then it was off to Los Migueletes, a bar near Plaza Nueva that is always packed and in the middle of a row of restaurants that, from my understanding, are tourist traps. María popped her head into the kitchen and waved to the cooks, who I saw waving back, and then we staked out a spot. We ordered a round there (tinto de verano for me, again) and were handed what seemed to be bits of stewed white meat (this being Spain, I can only imagine that it was pork) in a bit of sauce, but María sent it back and asked for croquetas instead, which we were given in short order. “These are so much better for you than meat!” exclaimed María, without a hint of irony.

These were huge; each was about the size of a spring roll (not the kind in Chinese restaurants here in Spain; that’s a different blog entry altogether), Their crust was crisp and light, and the middle was an oozy, soft béchamel. There were a couple of tiny ham squares in the middle. Over all, it was a pretty good croqueta but frankly, I was pretty full by that point.

I may never eat croquetas again. Then again, there’s still some spinach béchamel in the fridge.

2007-08-09T01:42:00.001-04:00

A Photo I Like

This is of my dad, painting, in 1978 or 79. (Presumably) after this painting, he made another one, very similar to it, but with some key differences: a man is walking by, there is a flower pot in one of the windows of the building, there is a box in the storefront, and a hyphen in a sign is changed. I like the two paintings together, and am going to convince my dad to have giclées of them made.

His studio is in a different room of the house now, and he paints sitting down (I can't remember if he always stood to paint then or not; I was three.

2007-07-26T14:44:00.000-04:00

I like Chinese.

I have very vague memories of junior high. I'm sure I learned something in the academic classes (I have a memory of having filled out Punnett squares, and of having read things, and having done some math) but I don't remember specifics as to the content. My memories of social awkwardness are themselves foggy, as they are obscured by memories of more recent social awkwardness. What I do remember vividly, however, were Home Ec., Woodshop, and Chinese Cooking.

In Home Ec., we sewed checked pillows and made muffins. One of the cooking tests was to make pancakes; I can't remember if we had to have the recipe memorized, or if we got to use a recipe at the time. The muffins I distinctly remember as having been delicious; Michael Prokop and I were partnered for that assignment. Mrs. McDonald distinctly said that we had to pour water in the muffin tins, and so we put about a tablespoon of water on top of the muffin batter, and threw that in the oven. It turns out that we were supposed to have put water in any empty spots in the tins, and not in the ones that had batter. But those muffins were delicious (they were blueberry) and moist, and had a good crumb, and were perfect. If I remember correctly, other people's batches were dry and overcooked.

In Woodshop, we made napkin holders, and useless decorative items, and I made a bookshelf for videotapes that to this day holds videotapes (because, you see, my parents still keep such things around.) We made nametags with the jigsaw.

Chinese Cooking class was the one of those three that wasn't part of the Carlstadt Public Schools' standard curriculum. It was offered as an after-hours elective to the seventh and eighth graders, and it didn't cost anything. It had limited spaces, and you basically had to turn your permission slip in the day after it had been sent out to get a spot. The teacher, in my mind his name was Richard Yee, but I think that I'm making that up. My dad can't remember what his name was, either, but thinks that he was a garbage-truck driver in his non-Chinese-cooking-enthusiast hours. Weird, no?

Anyhow, I remember making shrimp toast, which made me feel faint (that's before I'd come to the conclusion that I'm allergic to shellfish), and egg drop soup, and wontons, and stir fried things. and egg fu yung. Even though I don't make any of those things now (well, I did make some wontons the other day), I think about them on occasion. And today, I find myself wondering: did anyone else have cooking class as an after-school add-on? Did anyone else out there go to the Carlstadt Public Schools Chinese cooking class? Wasn't it the best thing ever?

2007-07-26T14:41:00.000-04:00

Boston is Cold.

I've never been to Boston when it hasn't been cold. That was true this past weekend as well.

2007-07-13T18:20:00.000-04:00

Friday the 13th!

I went to the archive today, and when I was filling out my document request card, I remembered that it was Friday the 13th! And I pointed it out the desk staffer and she said, it's Tuesday the 13th to worry about.

At some point, I think that that Spain quirk had been mentioned to me, but I'd completely forgotten.

Apparently, there's a saying (I'm translating, so it doesn't rhyme anymore): Tuesday and 13th, don't get married, don't board.

Since Tuesday is a pretty low-demand wedding day anyways, and I also think not a peak travel day, it doesn't seem like that big a superstition to have to worry about.

2007-07-11T16:11:00.000-04:00

Dreadmullet

Worst haircut ever.

When I got here to Granada, it was something that I saw in the street maybe once a month. But now that it's summer, and I guess the gutterpunks who previously had dread-covered heads have decided to shave off only part of their hair, it's a hairstyle that I see three, maybe four times a day. I even saw it on a seven-year-old two days ago.

Gross.

My brother astutely pointed out that the dreadmullet is a combination of bad taste and bad hygiene.

2007-06-27T16:53:00.001-04:00

Moors vs. Christians, Part II

Just us young Moors, enjoying a bag of cheese doodles

We come bearing fire.

The Moors' costumes really are much better. That's why everyone wants to dress up as one for the Moors and Christians festivals. There were three different groups of Moors at the Mojácar festival, but only one of Christians.

Even the little old ladies (the one on the left in the official uniform of the Spanish old lady that includes a knee-length skirt) in their natural habitat (on a bench) want in on the Moor costumes!

2007-06-27T15:54:00.000-04:00

Fifteen Hours in Granada: The Official Tour

As you may imagine (although I suppose that it’s a bit much of me to think that you should spend your time imagining about the quality and/or content of my life), I’ve gotten to know Granada fairly well. I am now self-certified to lead the official fifteen hour nocturnal tour of the city. I pity the fool who came and visited months and months ago, before I had done in-depth research as to quality and size of tapas.

Danielle and Adrian drove into town at about eight-thirty the other day, and had to head out of the city before noon the next day, which gave me just enough time to give them the tour. Here’s a play-by-play:

Evening:
Round one: Páprika. It’s not the closest bar to my house (there are two closer), but it’s got a nice outdoor setup, friendly service, and sometimes-innovative tapas. We were given dilly tomato salad with cheese and onions.
Stop one: Mirador de San Nicolás. We missed sunset by about ten minutes, but the views of the Alhambra were stunning nonetheless.
Round two: The bar near Plaza Larga that is labeled “Comedor” outside, and that probably has a name, but that I don’t actually know. The gazpacho there is perfect: it is cold, and it is salty, and it is exactly what you didn’t realize that you needed on a hot Granada day, until you are there, and everything is right with the world. The tapa there was little cubes of fish in adobo (not the Mexican kind) and cabbage salad. Perfect.
Stop two: The Camino del Sacromonte, for another view of the Alhambra and a look at the caves on the main street.
Rounds three-five/Dinner: Bodegas Castañeda. Between the three of us, we split a small cold platter (cold cuts, patés, jams, salmon) and an empanada.
Stop three: The Capilla Real and cathedral.
Stop four: Plaza Bibarrambla, just because it’s the closest that Granada has to a Plaza Mayor.
Stop five: We then took a walk and ended up by the Rio Genil
Stop six: Then we walked through the Realejo and went to see Santo Domingo, my favorite church in Granada. The lighting was a bit harsh, though (a really strong streetlight), so it wasn’t absolutely magical.

Morning:
Breakfast: Churros and chocolate at Café Futbol. They are my favorite in Granada. The chocolate is thick, and the churros are perfectly crisp on the outside.
Stop one: The Alhambra. We didn’t have tickets, and D and A didn’t have much time, but we did go up and walk around. We went through the museum in the Palace of Charles V, looked out over to the Mirador de San Nicolas and waved , and saw the baths in the Alhambra.
Stop two: We walked down from the Alhambra and over to the Albayzín (my neighborhood). We stopped in at the Palacio de los Córdova, and then at the Bañuelo. And then we raced back to my house (taking a slight detour along the Calderería, so that D and A could see the touristy street with all of the Moroccan tea houses, and the imported Moroccan souvenirs.)

And then it was time for them to go!

You, too, can take this tour (or a more refined variant of it) if you have exactly fifteen hours to spend in this fair city. Come visit!

2007-06-23T16:24:00.000-04:00

Flash mobs, and Madrid

So, I was on the phone not too long ago (last Sunday?), and the following three things happened: someone screamed, a car drove by loudly (in a beeping, rattling way), and something, somewhere, exploded.

This was all explained not too long afterwards, when streams and streams of people with cars and horns and motorbikes and banners kept driving by on the street, making happy honking and yelling sounds.

It was all for a soccer game!
Someone won, apparently!

It was Real Madrid (and, apparently, David Beckham's last game with them, since it seems that someone's decided that he should be the one to breathe life into American professional soccer.)

I’m glad I wasn’t in Madrid for that, or a fan of the opposing team.

2007-06-15T15:26:00.000-04:00

Moors vs. Christians, Part I

What happens when two friends who've both studied Arabic literature are in Andalucía in June? That's right, they find the nearest Moros y Cristianos festival, and drive clear across the Iberian Peninsula to go see it.

I've never been to a U.S. Civil War recreation, but these seem to be along those lines with none of the attention to historical accuracy.

Sam (who was in town last week) and I rented ourselves a Hyundai with a five-or-six horsepower engine and went on over to Mojácar, the warmest little town in the U.K. Seriously, there were so many Brits there, and a supermarket named Mr. U.K.

In Mojácar, we watched the first evening of the annual Moors and Christians festival, which is a celebration of when, in 1488, the Catholic Kings and the local rulers agreed that the town would have equal rights for all! (That is pretty much verbatim from the tourist office brochure. Read: that is when the city fell to the Reconquest, four years before the fall of Granada and the end of Al-Andalus.) In addition to some Christians, the groups at the M and C festival were the Moros Viejos, the Aljama Mudejar, and the Moriscos. Interesting, no?

Presumably, after the weekend of mock battles (indicated by copious blunderbuss shots--that's a new word for me; the Moros y Cristianos schedule was very fond of the word, using it at least once per event entry), the Christians win, and the different groups all go their merry ways, accompanied by their bands.

Also: we stayed at a campground that was overly well lit for my sleeping comfort, next to the camper van of a little retired French man named Bernard, who had worked in security at a nuclear plant, and who made us tea and set up a little card table and chairs for us.

Also: we went to the beach, and swam around a bit, and stared in shock/awe at how red some of the people (presumably Brits) at the beach were.

2007-06-02T17:38:00.000-04:00

They are wearing masks!

I am back in Granada, and allergy-prone. I usually sneeze three times in a row, but I hit eight the other day. And I'm itchy.

Apparently, though, I'm not the only one allergic to Granada. Plenty of people (I've seen between three and five a day that I've noticed) are walking around with masks on. They are not just plain surgical masks, but some sort of 3M-branded fancy looking masks with contours and a little breathing grate. They don't look like these.

I am told that what they are all wearing is masks because they have allergies, and not anti-bird-flu masks (did I miss a bird-flu scare while I was in Morocco?)

I just sneezed twice. It made someone laugh at me. Sigh (sniffle.)

2007-05-23T17:44:00.000-04:00

Libraries, Librarians, Frustration

I just returned to Rabat from a trip to Tetouan, where I attempted to get some still-incomplete field research done. I planned on going to the city's public library and archives to continue working on a seventeenth-century manuscript that's there (that I've managed to read, oh, a couple of pages of and I don't actually know if it will be useful for my dissertation), and to look up some references, and generally bother the librarian for the things that I want (that, say, I've found in the library catalog) but that don't actually exist at the library (altogether too often the case in Tetouan.)

The library, however, was closed. Indefinitely.

Last time I had been in Tetouan, the library had just closed for emergency water main repairs. That was in mid-2006.

The sign that announced the library's closed-ness this time was from October of 2006, though, so not only was it re-closed after having been open, presumably, for a short amount of time between when I went before and this visit, but it's already been closed for a while.

The doors looked very open, though; the door attendant told me that the library was closed to the public, but that I could return to talk to the archivist the next morning, which I did.

I was allowed into the library to speak to the archivist.

It turns out that all of the employees are still working: the circulation desk staff is manning a dust-covered desk, the main reading room desk attendant is there. There are just no patrons! And many of the books aren't there! And everything's covered with dust! And the lights are off. Weird.

Anyhow, the archivist was nice and, while I wasn't able to find anything else for my project other than the one manuscript I'm already working on (which, apparently, is being digitized), he seemed excited by Josie's project, and I ended up with a list of manuscript references for her.

Then today, I had another negative library experience. This one was at the Hassaniyya (the Royal library in Rabat.) I had taken my notes from last year, so that I could ask for the manuscripts that I had, at some point in my catalog browsing, decided had something to do with Rabat, Tetouan, the seventeenth century, and possibly moriscos.

I asked for the manuscript number that I had noted, and eventually got the requested manuscript. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what on earth it had to do with the what I was expecting to receive, and eventually decided that I should go back to the catalog. In the catalog, I didn't find the title, and I didn't find the reference number in the catalog (I had used an older catalog.) So I asked the librarian.

He came up with a reference number for the mss. that I wanted, but refused to explain where or how he had gotten that number. I really wanted to know so that I could replicate the results. He wouldn't give up the knowledge, though, even when the front desk staff asked him (after I had asked him and he wouldn't tell me.)

Aren't librarians supposed to be enablers? Isn't that why librarianism is (along with city planning) the current chosen hipster profession par excellence? Isn't the beauty of enabling people to do research well without actually doing the research the joy of librarianship? Not for the guy at the Hassaniyya it's not, apparently.

Coincidentally, there's an article about academic librarians in the Chronicle of Higher Education today; it's really written with academic librarians as an audience, but as an active user of the reference desk, I was interested.

2007-05-22T19:42:00.000-04:00

Maqouda: It's complicated

Maqouda (I would put an 'ayn' in there, but it messes up the html, and it won't let me superscript. Those of you who speak Arabic don't need it, and it makes no difference to those of you who don't, so onward ...) is probably my favorite Rabati streetfood. It is a spiced mashed potato mixture that is then battered and fried. The texture of the potato reminds me very much of the knishes at the knish truck near Washington Square Park, but instead of being sliced open and filled with mustard, maqouda are themselves put into something.

The maqouda stands (this picture was taken at my favorite medina maqouda spot, right by where Consuls turns into Ouqassa/runs into Souiqa, for those of you in Rabat) make sandwiches out of quarter, half, or whole loaves of Moroccan round bread. The available fillings (depending on where you go) are maqouda, fried fish, fried egg, roasted bell pepper, fried eggplant, and garnishes of chopped onion and sauces.

What gets me about the enterprise is that to make the maqouda sandwiches, they go to the trouble of making the maqouda, and then when they serve it, they squish the maqouda up in the sandwiches, to spread them out evenly.

Delicious!

2007-05-16T18:11:00.000-04:00

Bab al-Had, Rabat

The recently-restored Bab al-Had in Rabat.

I take issue with the finishes that they're using to restore all of the walls (making them look like pisé instead of leaving the masonry exposed.) The plaza in front was previously where all of the buses stopped and was a traffic nightmare. They've moved the bus stops. Given how lush the greenery in Rabat can be, I wish that they'd incorporating more shade trees and shrubberies into the landscaping. There are all too many shadeless plazas that are new and under construction. Apparently, the interior of the bab is going the way of other medina babs: they've made an art gallery of it. One of my favorite things about this bab (pre-restoration) was that in the interior was a cadre of men, most with Arabic-language typewriters but a couple with French, just sat there waiting at your (my) beck and call to type out a document. I don't know if they've re-located to another part of the medina.

2007-05-12T17:36:00.000-04:00

Running, sort of, near Rabat

I went running with the Hash House Harriers here today. Well, there were a few short running bits thrown in, and a lot of planning, standing around, and drinking (I didn't do much of the drinking. Beer is okay. But just. And the beer was warm, which makes it much less okay.) The running bits were done one what I consider inhospitable terrain; there were lots of gravelly downward slopes that I don't consider pleasant for hiking/walking/whathaveyou.

The running/walking/general attempts to not tumble to my death down a slippery hillside took about an hour and a half, including the mid-run beer/water break. The preparation for going and the hanging-around afterwards took much longer.

Plans for going on a run with the Harriers started about a week ago; Josie mentioned wanting to go, and so we Googled them but the website was down. Somewhere else it was posted that they had a happy hour on Wednesdays at the American Club, so we went. Now, to get into the American club you have to be affiliated with something American, and having a U.S. passport just doesn't cut it. So we loitered at the front door until a nice Irish(?) lady who was on the appropriate list signed us in as her guests.

It was pretty empty when we got there, though, so we contented ourselves with the food from an Americana-heavy menu (mushroom swiss burger, anyone?) and speculated as to who might be a Harrier. There was a big group of early-twenties Americans. Josie figured that they were too young. Then there was this one guy who walked in who was muscular and was wearing a visor at a bizarre angle. Josie pegged him as a Harrier.

It turns out that he was the hare.

And so, we ended up waiting for him in front of the American Club today at eleven. It was past eleven thirty when he showed up. We drove to a supermarket, and he bought the drinks for the run. His friend commented that we should probably go acquire some food, since the run itself wouldn't start until three.

And so Josie and I left, not wanting to spend four hours doing nothing before the run.

I ended up finding a ride, Josie didn't want to waste the entire day on another Port Said Soccer Trip, and so I went by myself.

My hair still smells like beer.

2007-05-04T12:39:00.000-04:00

Sights, Sounds, Smells

So, Semana Santa was, what? A month ago?
I got really sick, and missed a bunch of the few processions that happened, but on the last two days I rallied, and it didn't rain, and I saw processions. And at some point, I not-so-dutifully posted some imaged from said processions to flickr.

Anyhoo, I'm in Morocco for now, where today I had delicious delicious couscous for lunch, and I tried to read some handwritten seventeenth-century stuff, and yesterday I walked around the old neighborhood, and I had an avocado juice.

There is one smell that I smelled, though, that I would always go out of my way to avoid when I lived here, and that caught me off guard last night: the snail soup cart. Blech. I had escargot in France once, and then we had them in Spain not that long ago, and I'm sure I've had them on another occasion, but the snails that the cart sells are, as far as I can tell, maybe sea snails? And then they're just boiled and boiled and peppered and people drink them out of bowls; they don't just eat the snails, they drink the broth that the snails make, and to me it smells not unlike wet dog mixed with mildewy bathroom.

2007-04-04T17:19:00.000-04:00

Holy Week, Batman!

So, it's Holy Week.
Does that mean that today is Ash Wednesday? Or is that during some other time? Because I certainly didn't see any Spaniards with any ash on their foreheads.

Anyhow, you may or may not know that Holy Week is special to me because when I was seven years old, for some reason we had Good Friday off of school (and this was in the Carlstadt Public Schools, so maybe it overlapped with Spring Break? Because I imagine the ACLU would have been on my little New Jersey town's case otherwise, no?) I went with my mom to work that day. I distinctly remember asking her if I could get my ears pierced that day, and she said yes, later. And on the way home from work with her, at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, I got my ear pierced! They used a gun, and the earrings that I got were small gold circles, with, I distinctly remember, very pointy tips (the better for piercing with.) I always think of that story around Good Friday.

But this year I'm in Spain! And to top that, I'm in Andalucia! I'm in Holy Week land, as far as I can tell, and I was looking forward to seeing some processions, particularly as I'd never gotten to go to my hometown of Popayán to see them!

The first processional confraternity to leave its home church, the Borriquilla, was supposed to pass by my house! I was so excited to put my balcony to good use seeing everything be carried by! It drizzled, however, and so the procession was off. And it's been raining on and off ever since.

Today, we were supposed to go see the Gitanos (gypsy) procession that ends in the Sacromonte. It was supposed to be fourteen hours of proceeding! But it rained and so that got cancelled too. I went into the church because they have the floats (if they can be called that) on display, and saw some of the people in their getups (the men in their robes, minus pointy caps), and some women in beata outfits.

I understand that (in some cases) what they're carrying around are four century old pieces of art. But on Sunday, it drizzled way before the procession was supposed to happen!

The day wasn't a total loss, however, since I made sun-dried tomato waffles with a caramelized onion and cheese topping.

2007-03-04T15:18:00.000-05:00

Eat, Granada

My lovely readers:

Although I fully intended to write about the shawarma and bars of Calle Elvira on this blog, I have decided that a better venue for that will be my brand spankin' new dedicated Granada food-and-drink blog, Eat Granada.

That way, if you're not in the mood to read about shawarma, you don't have to. But if you don't want to read about how I still don't know anyone and spend my days in solitude at the archive, you can read just about shawarma.

2007-03-04T05:51:00.000-05:00

Eclipse!

Did you see the lunar eclipse?
It was beautiful.

It was so pretty to see the moon disappear.
I was happy when the moon came back. Naturally, I was nervous that it would not.

Also: that was our shadow!

2007-02-14T13:34:00.000-05:00

Happy Valentine's Day!

To celebrate, I am wearing a pink shirt, and I made these anatomical heart cookies just for you:

I looked around for the appropriate food coloring, but none was to be had here in Granada, and so I ended up making them Neapolitan. I ended up using a lot of strawberry syrup to attain a passable artery color, and the flavor of that part of the cookie can best be described as "aggressive." (My housemate's boyfriend--I mean, recently-enfianced--described it that way and, frankly, it's altogether more appropriate than I'd like.)

2007-02-11T10:17:00.000-05:00

Saint Cecilio!

Las Sunday was the festival of Saint Cecilio. I'm not usually one to seek out religious celebrations, but my housemate Oscar had been talking it up for days, and apparently only some early-rising types go for the mass, and everybody else goes for the dancing and singing and food.

Saint Cecilio is the patron saint of Granada, and the festival was held over by the Abadía del Sacromonte. The story goes that in the late 16th century, some lead tablets with Arabic writing on them, along with some saints' bones, of course, were found in some caves outside the city. The tablets and accompanying bones were used to make the argument that, before the Muslims got there, Granada had been a Christian city.

A. Katie Harris, a history professor over at UC Davis, writes about the Sacromonte tablets and the layers of interpretation surrounding them; she's got a forthcoming Granada history book that, needless to say, I'm pretty excited about. If you've got JStor access, (or even if you don't), the abstract to one of her articles is here.

Anyhow, the way that all of this somehow got distilled through the centuries into popular celebration is that, on the festival of Saint Cecilio, the cultural branch of the municipality serves up some food, and there's a lot of flamenco music, some of it by small children to pre-recorded lo-fi singing.

There's a lot of waiting on line:

What are they on line for, you ask?
For this!

That's right, they're waiting for a plate of uncooked fava beans, a piece of salt cod, a small loaf of bread (not pictured), and a dixie cup of wine:

The line went pretty quickly, even though it was long. The fava beans were pretty standard for uncooked unseasoned fresh beans, and the salt cod was ... ridiculously salty. I was glad that there was bread to go with it, and that, in addition to the wine, I happened to have a water bottle. I read Mark Kurlansky's most excellent Salt: A World History a couple of years ago, but can't for the life of me remember if any discussion of salt cod in relation to religion. Salt cod itself is a big focus of the book, though.

After wandering around for a bit, I decided to walk down the hill and to go back after four p.m., when the cave where the bones had been found would be opened. The chain on my bicycle broke when I was halfway up the hill (for the second time in about as many months), and so I coasted back home.

I replaced the chain just yesterday.

2007-02-04T15:59:00.000-05:00

Critical Mass Granada

On Friday, I did what was one of my favorite things in the Bay Area: go to mass. I had seen a flyer for Critical Mass up on my way home from the archive, and figured that I'd give it a go. I've been pretty lonely lately, and I figured that it would be good for me to meet some people who like bicycles, who might even be about my age (I was going on some weekend longish rides with a group, but haven't been since the weather's gotten cold and rainy; the group is large, but there are maybe three people in it younger than forty. The rest are men in their sixties, who are a riot, but I really need friends to hang out with and bake cookies and maybe just take some walks with.)

It was a fairly small ride (the count was fifty-five people); one of the guys on the ride said that it was the largest ride Granada had had in a long time. Sigh.

The route that we took was not intuitive to critical mass, which I think of as occurring on main streets usually during hours of high traffic. Here, it started at a little past eight, and went on tiny little cobblestoned streets, and on main streets for maybe five or six blocks. Granted, Granada doesn't really have too much traffic even on the large streets (maybe there's a morning or a 2A.M. rush hour I don't know about?), but we could have ridden around downtown a bit?

The mood was festive all around, on the part of both cyclists and pedestrians; I don't think that any drivers were confrontational at all. This might be because waiting for a few dozen cyclists (some in pirate costumes, some in funny wigs, others of us dressed in our civilian cycling garb) differs from waiting for several hundred.

Afterwards, we went to a bar and got some beer and tapas. I talked with a couple of the people from the ride. One of them was some Italian guy who plays the didgeridoo (sp?) in the street. Not to generalize, but from the looks of it, many of them could have been substandard street performers (not that I've heard this guy, specifically, play the didgeridoo in the street. I'm just presuming here, that based on the quality of other didgeridoo players in the streets of Granada, he might not be that good.) Which led me to suffer from profound disappointment: when will I meet the people in Granada who I want to hang out with? At San Francisco critical mass I would always either meet up with friends or meet friends of friends, most of whom seemed to have things like jobs and ambitions. Not that jobs and ambitions are everything ...

Sigh. If anyone out there knows people in Granada who are awesome and who want to be my friends, let me know.

2007-01-31T14:36:00.000-05:00

Misunderestimated

So, I've taken an official count of the bars and shawarma places on my street, and it turns out that at the rate of just one bar a week, I'll be done by the summer!

There are 18 (maybe 19, since one thing that seems to be a bar is behind scaffolding; maybe 20, since one place that seems to be restaurant-like might actually be a bar), and 13 (not counting one place that's right off of the street but clearly on a plaza) shawarma places. One of the bars is a shawarma place, so that gets counted twice.

2007-01-28T12:19:00.000-05:00

If you can read this ...

I certainly could use your company at the AHP. Just kidding. I can read this perfectly well. Well, mostly. The signatures really look all squiggly, but for the most part the handwriting is alright, and since what I'm looking at is land sale documents, the format that gets followed is really standard, so if I lose my place, I skip forward to the next standard phrase, and work backwards. This particular document is in really bad shape, and crumbling in my hands, which is why I took pictures of it.

2007-01-25T14:38:00.000-05:00

Snow!

It's been snowing since a little past two this afternoon. As of six, none of it was sticking. The flakes are wet, but they melt as soon as they hit the ground.

The orange tree in the plaza next to my house had snow-covered leaves. And oranges! Those poor (non-eatable, not really) oranges!

As of seven, some snow was sticking to the rooftops. Tomorrow morning (or maybe later tonight), I'll walk over to somewhere from which the Alhambra's visible. I imagine that the Alhambra is pretty when the hill is snow-covered. Because it's always pretty.

I believe that I mentioned that I happen to live on the most happening street in Granada? Why, the first entry when I googled "Elvira nightlife Granada"
claims that, "Calle Elvira is the district at the center of Granada night life."

That's why I had trouble sleeping my first night at home.

That's also why I am going to subject you, dear Reader, to my comprehensive survey of Calle Elvira not-quite night life. (Really, who wants to stay out until four in the morning?)

In these pages, look forward to reviews of every bar and shawarma/kebab place on Calle Elvira.

I plann on posting two entries for each category (bar/shawarma) per week, when I'm in Granada. At that rate, I'll be done with the street by September (I haven't actually counted the bars and/or shawarma places yet, but there's probably an average of three bars per block, and Calle Elvira has about seventeen blocks (from a quick count of a not-too-detailed map on the interweb.)

2007-01-20T10:53:00.000-05:00

A Day in the Life

So, as you may have guessed, my life in Granada is fun-packed and action-filled.
In the mornings, I hang out at the AHP. I stay there until it closes at 2:30 (they kick me out at about 2:20), and then, sometimes, I go to the supermarket.

I go home for lunch; sometimes I make lunch, sometimes Oscar does, and once in a while Molly makes breakfast burritoes.

Then I go to the Escuela de Estudios Arabes a little before five in the afternoon, and stay there until seven or eight. I'm reading a couple of fairly recent books, one is L.P. Harvey's _Muslims in Spain_, his follow-up to the book that ended at 1500. It's recent. It's good, and it has a chapter on the Hornacheros, who were a major community in Rabat. I'm also working on reading Bernard Vincent's _El río morisco_.

What I'm working on in the mornings is the most fun, though. I've gotten really good (if I say so myself, and I am saying so) at reading sixteenth-century squiggeldynuts. I'm looking at the transfer of properties from Moriscos to Christians, and what's really exciting is that some documents tells you who the neighbors were, and give some of the history of the neighboring properties.

In the evenings, I tend to go to Paprika, where I am right now, and where I check email. Sometimes I walk around. Lately, I haven't been taking the surly out since it's so cold in the mornings, and now that I've given in and bought an ipod shuffle, I listen to NPR on the way to the archive.

Next week: getting a student card, so that I can stay in Spain legally.

2007-01-08T13:11:00.000-05:00

The End?

Well, the Spain-Morocco research sandwich is officially over, now that both my Fulbright-Hays and SSRC fellowships are over. And, um, I haven't been so diligent about posting.

Fret not, there will be more content. I've got a new hard drive that actually functions (the old one just whirred and whirred) and plenty of things to say, but a nagging doubt as to whether or not they're worth saying.

I can tell you plenty about the AHP in Granada, but I don't think you'd want to hear it. I mean, I'm going to _force_ my advisors to read about it, but chances are that late-sixteenth century property auctions do not interest you.

2006-11-23T12:09:00.000-05:00

Happy Turkey Week!

In lieu of eating a Turkey sandwich and some yam fries, I´m heading off to Istanbul.

My computer´s on the blink. The Apple store here in Granada hasn´t even looked at it, as far as I´m aware, and I took it in two weeks ago. Sigh.

2006-10-24T16:59:00.000-04:00

Still in Granada, still on the balcony

One week ago today, I turned 31. To celebrate, I invited everyone that I know in Granada. This means that two people, other than my two housemates, came over for dinner.

This is what I made:
stuffed mushrooms
spinach, mushroom, and onion quiche
caramelized onion tarte
carrot cake
brownies

Good times were had by all!

Today, somebody put a dresser out on the curb across the street from my balcony. Apparently, one of the drawers is broken. I've been sitting out here for about half an hour, and every couple of minutes, someone stops to try the drawers and lifts up one end of it to see how heavy it is.

2006-10-08T13:27:00.000-04:00

In Granada, On the Balcony

So, I've been in Granada for a month now, and I've spent the last two days sitting on my balcony. I live in a house that, much like the school building in Sideways Stories from Wayside School, has one room on each floor. The house is on one of the busier streets in the Albaycín (on second thought: most likely the busiest), and my room faces the front. This makes for excellent people watching. The first night here, I got woken up several times by all of the street noise. Since then, either people have been fairly quiet, or I've slept through the noise.

My first night in Cairo nine years ago, I woke up to the dawn call to prayer. After the first night, nothing. I'm hoping that this works the same way.

This is the third place that I have lived within the past month. The first was a room in a rooming house run by an 82-year-old lady. That was for a week while I found another place.

The second was in the penultimate building in Granada. The other two housemates were never going to be around, though (one got a job excavating in Guadalajara, the other goes to Portugal three days a week), and I was going to be lonely and depressed, so I left. Also, the building was ugly, the apartment was ugly, and the neighborhood was ugly (there wasn't really anything in the way of neighborhood). Gangs of sixteen year olds on motor scooters terrorized me there (more or less.) And so I left.

And the place where I live now is awesome.

I have two housemates, one girl and one guy, one American and one Spanish. Oscar, the Spaniard, does things like make pressurecookersful of lentils and leaves them on the stove with notes that he is taking a nap, but that the lentils should be eaten. Also, he leaves coffee on the stove for us (the Americans) in the morning. Neither one of us is really a coffee drinker, though.

Did I mention that there is a roof terrace?
And that I live across the street from an early-sixteenth-century mudejar church?

2006-09-13T14:42:00.000-04:00

Vuelta a España 2006!

You may recall that last year, when I had just moved to Madrid, one of the first things that came through town was the Vuelta a España. And then a week later, the UCI World Road Championships were in Madrid. And I got a photo fo Tom Boonen from about three feet away (he just happened to walk past when I happened to have my camera out.)

The other day, the Vuelta came through Guadalajara; I left Guadalajara a couple of hours before it got there (everyone was in a rush to get out of town before all the roads were closed), so it was lovely to learn (from a billboard upon arriving in town) that the Vuelta was coming through here yet.

It was here today! I went and watched from the finish line; naturally, my camera didn't get any shots of the finish. I got a couple of good ones though, of the people who weren't riding by so ridiculously quickly.

Afterwards, since I was already wearing cycling gear (so that I could get a photo of myself by the finish line, of course) I decided to take a ride up to the Alhambra. I rode up past it by where all of the hotels are, and in front of one of the hotels were the bike buses for some of the teams. I chatted with the italians and loked at the beautiful bianchis, and then with the phonak mechanics, who were super friendly. They were pressure washing and tuning all of the bikes. At some point, one of them picked my bike up (and made a face from how heavy it is; I took a picture) and started washing it, and then another one of the mechanics completely tuned it up. My bicycle is shinier that it's been since I bought it. And teven then, since I had put grubby pedals on it, it wasn't really so shiny. And it was nice to have the gears and brakes adjusted, since I had mounted the thing myself after moving back here to Spain, and, um, last time I checked I still wasn't very good at those two details of bike fixing.

They also gave me a water bottle (they gave everyone who was passing by a water bottle.) Thanks, Phonak! (namely: Antonio and Modesto.)

Other than that, I moved some stuff into my new place today; let's call the new place my experiment in living in suburban hell. It's not that bad, actually, since it's actually in an apartment and it's actually _in_ Granada. It's past the Carthusian monastery, though, which in my previous frame of reference for Granada was pretty much as far out of town as one would want to be. (I was going to link to a picture of the monastery here, but this connection is slow and I'm hungry. I encourage you to find a suitable image on your own. The couple of minutes I gave myself to do it only resulted in interior pictures, and I wanted to show you an exterior.)

It's with two of the people (whom I know from a conference here before) who do stuff with the CSIC/EEA (Superior Council for Scientific Investigation/School of Arab Studies.) If it weren't with people whom I already knew, I would never move into somewhere that far from the center. By "far," in Granada, I mean a twenty minute bike ride from the center. It's really not that far away. The furniture in that place is awful; it's like a 1980s suburban Omaha dream house. There are flower patterns everywhere, even on the bathroom tiles.

Woohoo! The Surly is so shiny!

2006-09-10T09:27:00.000-04:00

Granada, Nada happening just yet

I'm finally in Granada, where the whole look-for-a-place-to-live drama begins again. Sort of. Not really in that I have a couple of options: one (expensive) has a gorgeous balcony and is pretty close to the center of town, and whatnot. But it's too spency, and this is Granada, not Rome or NY or the Bay Area. So I'll just be there for a week or so until If ind someplace cheaper.

Another option, which I hope works out, is to move in with two of the people form the Arab Studies School (Escuela de Estudios Arabes) where I do research. Apparently, they're not that close to the center. Where they are, I don't know; I'm hoping it's near the university not-near the center, not near-an-industrial-polygon not-near the center. I've got wheels, though, so I'm good. By wheels I mean my bicycle.

I think I neglected to mention: I went on the best bike rides last month. I would ride up form Guadalajara through a little town called Marchamalo and 12 kilopeters up a road to another town called Usanos, in a middle gear the whole way, and then I would go back down to town quickly. And there were cows, and goats with pretty-sounding bells, and whatnot. Also, one day I rode to Hita, and saw the archpriest's plaza, and a bull that they had just, erm, valiantly fought to death.

2006-07-22T18:43:00.000-04:00

Mood: Frantic

Did I say a week? I meant to say until I'm good and settled in Spain again.

It turns out that municipal employees all over the country are striking from Wednesdays to Fridays, so most municipal offices are only open two days a week. This makes a really important errand that I've been trying to run (to get a better map of Rabat, ideally digital and vector-based) much harder.

Also, I had been putting off going to the Sbihi library in Salé for, oh, the entire duration of my stay here. I like Salé, don't get me wrong; it's just so easy to try and run the millions of errands that I need to run on the southern side of the river. So I went to Salé the other day, and it turns out that the Sbihi library closed for summer vacation on July 13th. They re-open on September 12th. Oh, well.

Also, I got all sorts of permissions to see documents held byt he Ministry of Islamic Affairs. It turns out that nobody knows where the documents that I'm looking for are, and I'm convinced that they're in an unlabeled cardboard box somewhere ...

2006-07-09T18:04:00.000-04:00

Couscous and Tapas and Couscous and Tapas and Couscous ...

I'm in Tetouan right now with limited internet access. The passt couple of weeks have involved driving to TinMal with my parents and brother and Morgan, packing up my apartment, going back to Spain with y family, and yesterday coming back to Morocco to get a last three frantic weeks of research done before the longer-term Spain stint.

So, yes, I am neglecting the blog, but for good reason.

More in a week or so.

2006-06-10T21:18:00.000-04:00

Mileage and Madrid

I'll post mileage at some point.
I'm back up in Madrid--I gave a conference paper yesterday, my parents arrive tomorrow, and my brother arrives the day after for Valencia Immediate Family Reunion 2K6.

2006-05-27T19:14:00.000-04:00

Black Lung, Two Flats

location: Casablanca
distance: 57 miles

The ride between Mohammedia and Casablanca is disgusting. I think I've cut my life expectancy down by a couple of years.

I got a flat in Mohammedia; the valve stem of the inner tube leaked.
I had it fixed, and then I got a pinch flat in Casablanca. Grumble.

2006-05-26T21:54:00.000-04:00

Franciscans, Franciscans, Franciscans!

(I wrote this in Tetouan, but I didn't have internet access there and just remembered that I hadn't posted it now.)

I got back from Spain on Sunday and I’m currently in Tetouan, where I really should have been spending more time all along because Tetouan is one of the case study cities for my dissertation. The library here (the public one, anyway) is none too user friendly: other Moroccan libraries have, if nothing else, printed catalogs of their collections that, believe it or not other libraries actually have. So, while in Rabat, I am actually able to look up some of the books and manuscripts that I might need that are in Fez. Granted, the Qarawiyyin library’s catalogs do break down after volume four. But I digress.

Tetouan has no such thing; what Tetouan has is a single spiral-bound typed copy of their different sets of holdings (there is a different volume of the Spanish rare books collections—which is actually printed, but not actually really available anywhere but the library itself—and another volume of the manuscripts collections.) The catalogs are located in the actual room where those particular pieces are (granted, there are all of three rooms in the library.)

The manuscripts and rare books room has strange hours (they close from one to four) and so, during those long hours in the middle of the day, it is impossible to look through the catalogs. Not that looking at the catalog is that useful anyway, being as the catalog information is limited to the title, the category of work (fiqh, tarikh, etc.) and the catalog number. The Qarawiyyin catalog, while I’m certain it’s incomplete, and while it isn’t the most user-friendly thing in the world, has a description of each of the items listed (number of pages, dimensions, date.) The Tetouan library catalog lacks all three of those descriptors; the one that I’m particularly interested in is the date, since what I’d like to read are things produced during that specific time period.

Anyhow, I did actually read a couple of things yesterday, and one of them was an account, written by an expelled morisco, of how his brother organized a group of twenty-four expelled moriscos to go back to Spain to recover some of the worldly possessions that they had buried when they were being expelled. Once they reached the shores of Spain, they discarded their clothes and changed into the robes of Franciscans (for one of the people involved in this enterprise, before they were expelled his brother had been a manufacturer of such garments.) They all then proceeded to the place on the road between Madrid and Alcalá de Henares, where the organizers of the expedition had buried their jewels and cash.

They get caught, and the organizer, who was the letter writer’s brother, was torn to bits, or somehow otherwise killed, to serve as an example to everyone (it was something graphic involving disemboweling.)

2006-05-26T20:18:00.000-04:00

One Day Later

We're still in Rabat. I hadn't figured in the potential (definite) jet lag of my visitor.

It was lucky, though, since it stormed in the afternoon. It hadn't rained in weeks, and it's not supposed to rain again until Tuesday (but that's supposed to be a light rain, and not where we'll be then.)

We leave early tomorrow! We'll just have to ride faster. Or not as far. Eh.

2006-05-25T22:55:00.000-04:00

Same Coast, Different Ocean

So, I'm super-excited because tomorrow begins West Coast Bike Trip 2K6!
I am going with Sarah Syed, whom you might recall from West Coast Bike Trip 2K1 (although, you probably don't, unless you were in Berkeley at the time, and abreast of the minutiae of my circle of friends.) The trip in 2K1 was 1161.1 miles long (for me; Sarah had begun in Vancouver before meeting up with two of us near Bainbridge Island) and took 17 days. This one is much shorter, and will take about five days. (You will note that I am only really using two days during which I would otherwise be in the library, as I tend to write Fridays off as non-productive days during which people are away from the office eating couscous and praying and napping after the couscous. Yes, yes, I am trying to justify to myself taking these days off when my research time here is almost over.)

The trip is alternately known as Rabat-Casablanca-El-Jadida-Oualidia-Safi-Essaouira

Here's the tentative itinerary, the May 25th part of which is already over:
May 25th--Sarah arrives Casablanca
Sarah gets to AV's place by some ridiculous time of the night

May 26th--
brief tour of Rabat (Oudaya, Chellah, Hassan Tower)
couscous lunch
depart Rabat
goal: Casablanca. Hang out at Camilo's.

May 27th--
depart Casablanca, am. optional stop at the Hassan II mosque.
goal: El-Jadida

May 28th--Sam arrives Marrakech
Depart el-Jadida am.
Goal: lunch in Oualidia, night in Safi

May 29th--
Try to meet up with Sam? If he wants?
Noodle around Safi.
(alternate plans for the 28th and 29th are to get to Oualidia one day and Safi the next.)

May 30th--
ride from Safi to Essaouira

2006-05-25T22:13:00.000-04:00

Pimp my Ride

Since I know you've been wondering all along, this is the build that's on my bikle (in not too organized an order.) The bikle is my Surly Long Haul Trucker (42cm), and the long haul starts tomorrow.

handlebar: TTT forma SL 42 cm
stem: Roox Danny Junior (in orange, FYI)
headset: Cane Creek S2 1 1/8" aheadset
seatpost: Kalloy Uno Susp. Al. 27.2
shifters: Shimano STI Tiagra
brakes: Tektro cantilever (I should have sprung for something a little nicer, but eh.)
brake shoes: Kool Stop
saddle: Selle Italia Lady Trans Am (which is more comfortable than the Terry Liberator that's on the Giant that's in storage in California, and which was, until it wore out, on the Trek)
wheels: Mavic XC 117
tires: Ritchey Tom Slicks 26 x 1" (I would have gotten Continental Gator Skins if I'd gotten my act together. I switched to those on the Giant a while back, but don't even know if they have them ina 26" and I already had the Ritcheys.)
derailleur: Tiagra Abraz 28.6mm
shifters: Tiagra

Shimano LX:
crankset: M-580 170 mm 44/32/22
chain: HG73 9-speed
hubs: 570
cassette: HG70 9-speed 32/11
rear derailleur: M570

Did I forget anything?

2006-05-24T06:54:00.000-04:00

Mais c'est une rumeur!

So, Moroccans (and I generalize grossly here) have heard that a tsunami is going to hit here, oh, sometime tomorrow. I hadn't heard this at all, and then two days ago Hind (from, as you may remember, across the alley) comes over and wants to look on the internet for tsunami information. She was saying something about its being for a school presentation, but also about its being because she had heard that a tsunami was going to hit on Thursday.

I dismissed that, but then yesterday I came home and the Moroccan kid the new housemate Jessica was tutoring was talking about the tsunami as well ...

I tried to convince both of them that tsunamis, as far as I'm aware, having taken an entire semester of a class about seismic retrofitting at the UC Berkeley campus, require an earthquake, and that earthquakes can't be predicted like that.

They didn't believe me.

Then this evening, I went and visited my host family, and my host mom asked me if I was worried at all.
About what, I asked her.
Don't you know?
No, what?
The tsunami.

Sheesh.

So I left, and I went and watched the fireworks display over the Oudaya today that they put on to celebrate the ending of a music festival. It was pretty spectacular, with lasers pointing at the ground, and at us, and with fireworks going off both over the river and over the ocean.

The waves did seem somewhat high tonight, come to think of it ...

2006-05-23T19:52:00.000-04:00

Aw, sick!

I got back from Tetouan on Sunday night, and didn't do much on Monday. I tried to get some work done, but that was not to be as I didn't feel so hot. I hadn't felt well on Sunday, either, but I did make it home from Tetouan (an hour on the bus and five and a half more hours on the train) before being violently ill.

As it is, I've managed to eat all of two bananas, some popcorn, and a slice of bread today. Yesterday I ate a sandwich but I'm not counting it because I didn't retain any of its caloric value.

The employee at the Ministry of Culture office where the archives are kept gave me some tea (this is the employee I've been told to ask for tea and photocopies and blueprints and paper clips) and told me that the reason that I was sick was because I didn't wear warm enough clothes (I was wearing a t-shirt; it was maybe 75 degrees out.)

I didn't ride my bike over to the Ministry, but took the bus instead, because I don't think I can handle heavy machinery at this point. Although I need to be ready to, because on Friday starts West Coast Bike Tour 2K6.

2006-05-10T19:05:00.000-04:00

Snacks in Spain

I went for rounds of tapas with a bunch of archaeologists here in Granada. I had three (!) rounds of tinto de verano, and the tapas that we had were as follows:
round one: pulpo, with a nice pickled salad
round two: croquetas
round three (at a different place): fried fish and eggplant

This all came out to five euros, for such is the quantity of money that we each put in at the beginning. It was a decent amount of food, too.

Have I mentioned that octopus is one of my favorite things to eat? It wins points for texture, shape, and flavor.

A couple of Christmases ago, an octopus was the centerpiece of one of the dishes. I've forgotten where we went that Christmas, and all of the other details, but the octopus was delicious.

Also, speaking of the food in Spain, I am in Granada now but I was previously at a conference in Seville, attended largely by Moroccans. At dinner the first night of the conference, one of the courses served was gazpacho.

"They forgot to cook this," one of the Moroccans said.
Another smelled it, and made a revolted face.
"Really, they should cook it for a while and then put it on top of pasta," said a third.

I managed to convince a couple of them to try it, and one of them liked it, but for the most part Moroccans (to generalize) do not appreciate the refreshing qualities of cold, uncooked soup.

2006-05-02T19:17:00.000-04:00

Hiatus, again

I'm off to Tetouan and Spain for research and a coupla conferences, so I'll not be bloggin' it up so much for the next two weeks.

2006-04-25T21:55:00.000-04:00

Mo V, Triple Threat

So, in the past week I've gone to see a choral performance, a play, and a ballet at the Mohamed V National Theater. All of these have been with Hind, the twelve year old who lives across the alley from here.

This intensive cultural program began when Chad, one of the Fulbright senior scholars, sent a group email that he had thirty free tickets to a choral celebration of three Mediterranean cultures. The choir's performances included renditions of Fayruz's "Habaytak fis-Sayf," which an first year Arabic student can croon to you, as well as "Zurooni, kuli sena marra (Harram tinsuuni bil-marra)" These, if you can imagine it, were sung not with the standard-issue Arabic melodies in which they do all of the multiple tones in a single note (musicians: what's that called?) but how it would sound if a Teutonophile were doing all of the arrangements. In a word: weird.

There was also a song in Hebrew, and the final piece was "Carmina Burana." This is the reason why I went. I will never get tired of hearing O Fortuna! Plus, it makes me brush up (however little) on my Latin.

Now, Hind attended this performance with me because, on the same day as the performance, Chad sent a message that he had not tickets for thirty people (fifteen each allowing two to enter), but for sixty, and that we should feel free to bring more guests. I had invited Ghizlane, one of the people in the history graduate seminar that I attend (erm, attended; I haven't gone in a month, since I was in Spain and whatnot.) She said that she would come, and bring one of her friends. She ended up texting me that she wasn't able to make it, though, so it was a good thing that I had a date regardless.

How this came about is that as I was preparing to leave, Hind rings the doorbell. She asked what I was up to, and I told her. I asked her if she wanted to come along, figuring that it might be fun if she did, but that the chances that her parents would let her leave the house for four hours in the evening on a school night were probably pretty slim.

"Waakha," she said. (That means "okay," for those of you who aren't up on your Moroccan colloquial Arabic.)

She went across the street and asked her mom, and returned in a minute. She was ready to go.
Her mom was at the door, so on the way out, I told her that we'd take a while, maybe up to four hours.

"Waakha," her mom said.

So we walked across the medina and to the National theater. I think that Hind enjoyed the performance very much, as she smiled and clapped a lot; Kristen (my roommate, who was also at the performance, but who had arrived later) and Hind and I walked back home through the medina, stopping for pizza along the way.

The next day, Hind came over with a card. It was an invitation (admitting two) to a production of Al-Qantara (The Bridge), a play that was going on at the Mohamed V National Theater on Thursday.

So I went with her.
The play, which was sponsored by the National Association for the Preservation of Amazight Culture (the society's name is actually different than that, but you get the point), was not in any language that I speak.

As far as I can tell, the play was about the following:
• a man
• he enjoys drinking coffee and is mean to the coffee-server
• he also enjoys laughing, exaggeratedly, much to teh delight of the audience, who may or may not speak or understand the language of the play
• he dies in an accident involving crossing a bridge and being crushed by pieces of the bridge that fall on top of him
• it is unclear as to whether the bridge is physical or metaphorical, but in the play it was physical, and poorly constructed, and made of wood. Also, the play started almost an hour late.

I asked Hind if she had understood; I presumed that she had, since she had laughed so much.
"Shwiyya," ("a little") she said.

Then on Friday, there was a free ballet. It was put on by the Turkish National Theater's dance troupe in celebration of the recognition of fifty years of diplomatic relations between Morocco and Turkey.

Hind and I walked over, and met up with Andrea, Alex, and Kristen. We had a lovely time, although I was particularly sneezy, and the first part of the ballet was a bit academic. Then there was a part where they wore deep purple (I would describe them as an oxblood, although the lighting kept changing and so the colors kept changing) and the music was what I would call an electroklezmer, but maybe that's just what Turkish music sounds like? I can't recall having heard any Turkish music ever and having been aware of it as such.

Since then, Hind has come over to do French homework and to eat dinner yesterday (we made tacos; there were about seven people over, most over the age of twenty.) Today, she knocked on the door to see if I wanted to go to a play with her tomorrow; I'm going to Fez, though, so I couldn't plan on it.

Recommended: taking your twelve year old neighbor to three cultural events in one week. Even if you have no idea what's going on.

2006-04-17T20:08:00.000-04:00

You are coming from Japan on a bikle?

On Friday, I think that that may have been the only English spoken to me until I got home from my bike ride, and that was when I was about a block away from the house.

So, I rode to Skhirat, where I had been invited for couscous by Aicha, a lady who sells oranges by the side of the road. What had happened was that on my previous bike ride, I had stopped to purchase oranges. I had a twenty dirham note and no change, and I'd selected a dirham and a half's worth of oranges. The woman (I did not know her name at that point) told me to just take the oranges. So on my way back, after I'd gotten other snacks, I returned to the stand and tried to pay my dirham and a half. She refused the money and gave me more oranges.

And she invited me to come to couscous on Friday, and gave me her phone number. How do I find your house, I asked her. She pointed to a field across the street from the fruit stand, where there were three houses, and said, "the white one."

So, on Friday I dutifully rode over there, arriving at about two o'clock. A woman answered the door and told me that Aicha wasn't home. I put my helmet back on and was about to leave, but she invited me in; Aicha had gone to the eye doctor. I was fed a pea tajine and fresh bread and homemade leben and tea. Aicha returned, and yelled at me (but nicely) for not having called to confirm. She had gone to the eye doctor, and then the hammam, and looked all pink and freshly scrubbed.

The family (they were all there) talked about how they had some photos somewhere to show me, and I took a bunch of photos of them, and they sent me off with a loaf of fresh bread, and some hardboiled eggs (they have chickens! and cows! and sheep!) and a pile of oranges.

And then I rode home, where, as I was turning onto Mohamed V street, someone yelled the above question at me. He pronounced bikle just like you imagine that he did, like "bike" but with an el added.

2006-04-12T10:43:00.000-04:00

Heavenly

I had been nurturing my cold/bird flu/eccentricities/hypochondria for long enough, and I felt significantly better on Saturday, and so I went for a bike ride. I hadn't been riding since before the Fulbright Morocco conference! (It's possible that I took the Surly out for some errands, but nothing memorable.)

Being a creature of habit, I took the shore road that goes southwest from the medina. I couldn't go directly north (water), and didn't want to go east (water and the bridge to Salé, and I'd rather not have to bike through more city), or south (downtown, the highway to Fez.)
The past couple of times that I'd ridden, I'd only gone about as far as Temara (maybe ten miles out of town?)

On Saturday, I was fifteen kilometers from Mohammedia when I turned around! I rode for five hours! That ride alone was enough justification for having brought the frame from Esseff to Spain, and then the built-up bike from Spain to here.

There were elements of the ride that reminded me of every single one of the environments that I have inhabited on two wheels: I was riding on a coast, but the topography was flatter, and much more like the Jersey coast than the California (and yet I was on a west, and not an east, coast.) The dirt was supersaturated ochre, and at some point, when I was off-roading (see below), I had flashbacks of the quality of the clay in Georgia. The cow smell reminded me of Vermont and the hills around Middlebury, where I took my first rides that were farther than just a noodly commute.

The road that I took was, for the most part, straightforward: I wanted to go along the water, and up through Temara the coast road is right by the beach. After Temara is Skhirat (where I have a couscous invitation for this next week from a lady with a fruit and vegetable stand), and at some point there, I decided that instead of taking the road that looked busier and went a tiny bit inland, I would take the road that went by the beach. So I took it, and there were sheep lazing about in the middle of the road, and by the beach, and a kite that had just finished being flown. That detour was pretty short, and maybe half a kilometer later it spat me right back on a continuation of the road that I'd taken.

Later, though, I decided to take anouther detour (again, by the beach), and ended up taking a road that got narrower and narrower, and then was unpaved, and then became a cowpath in the middle of a field. I could see traffic on the main road in the distance, and figured that it wouldn't be too difficult to get there, even though the undergrowth was really high. The cowpath split into two, though. Luckily, a man happened to be standing on the left fork, about ten meters from the split. So I asked him for directions and, a few off-road minutes later, I ended up back on the main road.

I then crossed the Oued Bouzniqa (a river), and was then at the Casbah Bouzniqa, where there was a large tent set up across the street from a smaller-scale replica of the Hassan II mosque in Casablanca. There was singing coming out of the tent. I asked a woman, who was seated next to a standing dwarf, what the singing was about. She answered that it had to do with the prophet's birthday, which was upcoming. A tailless cat cavorted in the street, and then I was off to continue my ride south, but not before another dwarf, seated, motioned for me to go over to where he was (right next to the road), and shook my hand.

I rode for a few more kilometers and turned around at the right moment: when I rode back through the medina walls of Rabat, they were glowing and golden.

2006-04-11T19:51:00.000-04:00

Happy Birthday!

Today was the mawlid an-nabawi. For those of you not in the know, that's the prophet Muhammad's birthday. To celebrate, the fourteen-year-old neighbor girl across the street invited us over for sweets. Then we went to lunch at her cousin's house a block away, and had a dance party to Nancy Agram music.

In the late afternoon, I stopped by my host family's house and drank some lemonade and ate delicious powdered sugar sweets with them.

2006-04-09T07:30:00.000-04:00

Avocado Lollipop

Here's a bit of SPAM that arrived today:

combination... mulatto by avocado lollipop in as northeast title or conveyor belt repatriate fleck appropriate, clothe hothead fabrication miserable it
normal,. clamor of as warhead completely rector. predominance defiant, a yoke Chief Executive the of sardonic, reflexes sculpture the
trail, as unheard-of compliments everyplace, as snorkel in whistle. the fortuitous was bedclothes the tsp. of equitable, snuggle plodding. the flyswatter quarry, amateur

Unlike the best of SPAM, it lacks appropriate syntax, but both "avocado lollipop" and "as snorkel in whistle" really speak to me.

I'm not sure what they're saying, but they speak to me.

2006-04-06T05:04:00.000-04:00

Back in Rabat

After a train/ferry/bus/bus/train/car/train/ferry combination from Rabat to Tangier/Algeciras/Seville/Madrid/Toledo/Granada/Algeciras/Tangier, I took the final train of my excursion from Tangier back to Rabat last night.

I stumbled in the door and couldn't get to sleep, and today I got up super early and covered in sweat. That I'm sleeping under my winter comforter may have had something to do with that. It might also be the fact that I've gotten some sort of cold. I'm pretty sure I caught it in the Strait. I wasn't sick when I left Spain, but I was sick by the time I got to Morocco.

Granada is my favorite. I am so, so looking forward to moving there in August.

2006-04-02T13:00:00.000-04:00

Hiatus hiatus

Did I not mention that I was also going to the Fulbright conference in Toledo?
That just happened, and now I'm on my way back to Morocco, with a stopover in Granada (until tomorrow.) I'll be home before Thursday, and then I'll blog up a storm.

For kicks, here's a message that I received on Friendster today:

hy
hello.
i want to say some things.
to day see ur profile and view ur nice pics then like
u as my nice and honet friend .but i dont know
what u think and what u want .coze the westren
not like asian as any nice relation .i m pakistani
male 30 year old to.but u r nice cuty and beautifull
girl and hope u wont mind abt my message if u
want then hit me bck and if u nt like that so forgive
me for that mistake .
but take nice care abt ur self and have nice time
for u there and any where u fly .
bye

2006-03-08T14:39:00.000-05:00

Hiatus

The Fulbright mid-year conference is next week and I have a paper to prepare!

Hiatus until late this month.

2006-02-27T06:41:00.000-05:00

Conversion

So, I don't know if I've mentioned, we are currently in the year 1427. Or thereabouts. I'm not really sure. Here in Morocco, though, they like to put the hijra dates on things, and not just on historical manuscripts. They put it on the newspapers (well, they also put the milaadi, Gregorian, date on those), on the plaster of buildings, and on calendars.

The manuscripts are what really get me, though.

Since I'm working on a limited period of time (1609 to 1666 milaadi--a literal translation of milaadi would be "birthy"), I thought one day that I would simply do the math to figure out the limit dates, since until then I'd been guesstimating every time.

So I looked up an equation online, and went through a couple of pieces of notebook paper, and came up with a different number _every_ time. And when I finally ended up with numbers that looked reasonable (and not, say, a hundred and fifty years apart even though I'm looking at a half-century time period and even though the hijra year is shorter, it's not a third), I looked up the dates, and both of the numbers that I'd figured were completely wrong.

I'd like to think that the equation was wrong.

Have I mentioned that I haven't taken math since high school?

Anyhow, the other day when I was at the library of the mudiriyyat al-wathaa'iq al-malakiyya (the directorship of royal archives), they asked me what years I was looking for, and I told them in milaadi, and they looked it up in a big concordance, and the fact that they have a thick binder dedicated to figuring this out made me much happier.

2006-02-20T17:20:00.001-05:00

Hey, I'm married.

So, as of a couple of months ago, I changed my Friendster profile from "single" to "married." This despite the fact that a) I have no foreseeable reasonable marriage prospects of which I am aware (impromptu proposals from the shabbaab on the streets of Rabat do not count. See "reasonable" above), and b) should my currently-single soulmate happen to be checking Friendster for a five foot tall girl from New Jersey who likes bicycles but is currently located somewhere between Spain and Morocco who also happens to be single, I will not turn up in said soulmate's search results. Alas.

It's a risk I'm willing to take, because I was getting way too many alternately amusing/creepy messages. Somewhere in the text of my actual profile, I do note that I'm not actually married. (I have gotten more than one shocked/congratulatory email from people in the groups of friends with whom I haven't had too much recent contact, but have remedied those mis-perceptions of my actual, as opposed to Friendsteral, marital status.)

Even though my status on Friendster is now "married," that doesn't prevent me from receiving messages such as this one (which I just received today). Line breaks, capitalization, and punctuation as in original:

Hi,
Woman is like the sun, sometimes we love it and
sometimes we hate it but we can't live without it.
man is like the river sometimes calm and sometimes
wild but he is needed to keep the life going.
Some people are nice and some not, but you will
never know till you talk with them. I hope i will
be lucky and chat with you and who knows we might
find each other nice.
I know that we are far away from each other but
with a true feelings, Opened minds, big kind and
true wells we could be together by mind and who
knows we might meet in person one day.
I hope that you will reply to that message even if
you are not interested
Ahmed
[his email address was here, but I have done him the favor of removing it.]

2006-02-19T15:28:00.000-05:00

Casablanca International Book Fair 2006!

For the past week and a half, they've had an international book fair on in Casa. Today was the last day, so I woke up fairly early and took the train. I met up with Camilo, the only Fulbrighter who lives in Casa (who is also a Fulbright-Hays and who is also Colombian), and we went over to the ginormous quonset-hut-like structure in which the thing was held. We spent about six hours there!

I got a bunch of books, so now I'm really hoping that the parents Valencia will come and visit at some point near the end of my stay here, so that they can help me carry them home.

In case you're interested, this is what I got:
Roger Coindreau's Les Corsaires de Salé
Abdelhadi Tazi's Histoire Diplomatique du Maroc (abridged one-volume edition; the full set is ten volumes!)
Al-ahbas al-islamiyya fil-mamlaka al-maghribiyya (Islamic Land Trusts in the Kingdom of Morocco)
Fihris al-makhtuutat al-'arabiyya wa-amazighiyya (Catalog of Arabic and Amazight Manuscripts in the Roi Abdul Aziz b. S'aud library)
Al-Manaahil: Al-'Imaara fil-maghrib qadimaan (The Ancient Moroccan Building issue of the Manaahil journal)
Casablanca: Genèse et évolution (a bibliography)
Mohamed Naciri and André Raymond's (eds, really) Sciences Sociales et Phénomènes Urbains dans le Monde Arabe
A French-Arabic Lexique d'Urbanisme (I have an architectural dictionary in English, one in Spanish, and one in Arabic; this is a nice addition to the architecture/urbanism reference collection.--I also have the Dictionary Islamic Architecture, an illustrated glossary of architectural terms, and Francis Ching's illustrated dictionary of building terms. )

Finally, I got the 2005 Maghreb Index (the Roi Abdul Aziz b. S'aud library catalog, on cd), and the Bibliographie des Publications Marocaines, 2004 (the S'audi library threw that one in because I was already buying four books from them. They also didn't charge me for the Maghreb Index, which is good, since I think it takes an Arabic Windows machine to run.)

Was this the most boring blog entry ever?

Seriously though, I'm psyched about the books. Unlike in Spain, the libraries here close in the early afternoon, so it's nice to have books to look at at home.