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Category Archives: Monday Mix

Appetites

01 Apr

flaming onion volcanoPhoto credit Angie Jordan, sister-in-law

When my husband and I lived in Japan, we used to laugh at how the food was “Japanesed” in every non-Japanese restaurant we tried. Chefs doctored Mexican, Indian, and Italian food to include traditional Japanese ingredients and to suit Japanese palates. Not even American fast food chains were exempt from tampering—McDonald’s offered an ebi (shrimp) filet and a “juicy” chicken sandwich made from the fattiest, gnarliest dark meat you’d ever want to see, and Pizza Hut’s menu was a complete shock to an American searching for a taste of home. Who ever heard of putting tuna, mayo, and corn on a pizza…much less squid, seaweed, and fish eggs?

Now that we’re living in a small village in England, eating out has generally been limited to the nearby traditional English pubs where we’ve been sampling what we assume to be traditional English food (meaning loads of delicious, fresh, local ingredients seasoned with a dash of salt and maybe a flake or two of pepper if the chef is really daring). Lately though, our travels have taken us to some larger towns and cities where we’ve encountered a more exotic variety of dining choices, and sure enough, the English corrupt ethnic cuisine as well. In our tourist adventures this weekend, for example, we found ourselves an “authentic” Indian restaurant owned and operated by “authentic” Indians (and not second or third generation UK citizens, judging by their accents) where I could have supplemented any of the “authentic” entrées (i.e. prepared with something approaching the correct amount of spice, which is the equivalent of adding napalm for most Brits) with a side of chips (complete with malt vinegar). We also tried an Italian establishment, where my starter of creamy garlic mushrooms (garlic is also considered heavy artillery in the spice arsenal) was served on top of a Yorkshire pudding. I’m willing to bet I couldn’t walk into a true Thai restaurant in Bangkok and expect to order a sticky toffee pudding for dessert.

Please don’t think that for one second I believe ethnic cuisine in America is unmolested. I knew that Taco Bell was not Mexican food, but until I lived and travelled overseas, I didn’t realize to what extent we’d adapted foreign foods to meet our gastronomic expectations. I’ve been to Hong Kong, where despite their autonomy from the mainland nation, they eat a lot of Chinese food, and they’ve never even heard of General Tso’s chicken. In three years in Japan, I didn’t see a single Japanese steakhouse where a Chinese “chef,” assisted by a Mexican “sous-chef” would toss eggs into his tall white hat, build a flaming volcano of onion rings, or toss grilled shrimp into the open mouths of sixteen strangers seated around a scorching hot griddle-cum-table. However, I think despite its reputation as a cultural melting pot and an abundance of Americanized dining establishments, the US does still offer plenty of opportunities to find authentic ethnic cuisine. Thanks to immigrants who have held fiercely to their native customs and been willing to share their dietary traditions with their adopted homeland, Americans with an adventurous appetite can travel the culinary world without even applying for a passport.

Thus begins the April A to Z Challenge. A big thanks to challenge founder Arlee Bird for inspiring a legion of bloggers to expand their creative horizons, and for fostering a supportive community where they can also receive encouragement and feedback!

 
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Posted by on April 1, 2013 in Challenges, How It Is, Monday Mix, True Life

 

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Introspection

25 Mar

100_1731-001

I was reading Rarasaur’s latest post this morning, in which she mentioned having recently taken a quiz to assess her character strengths. Hmm, I thought, I am going to be looking for a new job in a few months, so maybe a little insight into my own strengths might be useful ammunition for sprucing up my resumé and answering questions during interviews. The quiz was a painless 15 minutes of clicking radio buttons, rating how accurately specific statements describe me on a scale from one to five. At the end, I got a link to an instant ranking of the character strengths (twenty-four were assessed) I exhibit. Note: I could have dropped $20 to get a 19-page in-depth analysis of each strength and how it manifests itself in my life, or for $40 I could have purchased a complete set of graphs, statistics, and psychobabble suitable for sharing with my coach, therapist, manager, or consultant, along with exercises for further developing each strength. Since I haven’t got a coach, therapist, manager, or consultant, I opted for the free list, displayed below for your entertainment.

Character Strength #1
Appreciation of Beauty & Excellence
You notice and appreciate beauty, excellence, and/or skilled performance in all domains of life, from nature to art to mathematics to science to everyday experience.

Character Strength #2
Prudence
You are a careful person, and your choices are consistently prudent ones. You do not say or do things that you might later regret.

Character Strength #3
Fairness
Treating all people fairly is one of your abiding principles. You do not let your personal feelings bias your decisions about other people. You give everyone a chance.

Character Strength #4
Honesty
You are an honest person, not only by speaking the truth but by living your life in a genuine and authentic way. You are down to earth and without pretense; you are a “real” person.

Character Strength #5
Judgment
Thinking things through and examining them from all sides are important aspects of who you are. You do not jump to conclusions, and you rely only on solid evidence to make your decisions. You are able to change your mind.

Character Strength #6
Leadership
You excel at the tasks of leadership: encouraging a group to get things done and preserving harmony within the group by making everyone feel included. You do a good job organizing activities and seeing that they happen.

Character Strength #7
Perspective
Although you may not think of yourself as wise, your friends hold this view of you. They value your perspective on matters and turn to you for advice. You have a way of looking at the world that makes sense to others and to yourself.

Character Strength #8
Gratitude
You are aware of the good things that happen to you, and you never take them for granted. Your friends and family members know that you are a grateful person because you always take the time to express your thanks.

Character Strength #9
Social intelligence
You are aware of the motives and feelings of other people. You know what to do to fit in to different social situations, and you know what to do to put others at ease.

Character Strength #10
Curiosity
You are curious about everything. You are always asking questions, and you find all subjects and topics fascinating. You like exploration and discovery.

Character Strength #11
Forgiveness
You forgive those who have done you wrong. You always give people a second chance. Your guiding principle is mercy and not revenge.

Character Strength #12
Kindness
You are kind and generous to others, and you are never too busy to do a favor. You enjoy doing good deeds for others, even if you do not know them well.

Character Strength #13
Humility
You do not seek the spotlight, preferring to let your accomplishments speak for themselves. You do not regard yourself as special, and others recognize and value your modesty.

Character Strength #14
Teamwork
You excel as a member of a group. You are a loyal and dedicated teammate, you always do your share, and you work hard for the success of your group.

Character Strength #15
Love
You value close relations with others, in particular those in which sharing and caring are reciprocated. The people to whom you feel most close are the same people who feel most close to you.

Character Strength #16
Hope
You expect the best in the future, and you work to achieve it. You believe that the future is something that you can control.

Character Strength #17
Perseverance
You work hard to finish what you start. No matter the project, you “get it out the door” in timely fashion. You do not get distracted when you work, and you take satisfaction in completing tasks.

Character Strength #18
Love of learning
You love learning new things, whether in a class or on your own. You have always loved school, reading, and museums-anywhere and everywhere there is an opportunity to learn.

Character Strength #19
Humor
You like to laugh and tease. Bringing smiles to other people is important to you. You try to see the light side of all situations.

Character Strength #20
Zest
Regardless of what you do, you approach it with excitement and energy. You never do anything halfway or halfheartedly. For you, life is an adventure.

Character Strength #21
Creativity
Thinking of new ways to do things is a crucial part of who you are. You are never content with doing something the conventional way if a better way is possible.

Character Strength #22
Self-Regulation
You self-consciously regulate what you feel and what you do. You are a disciplined person. You are in control of your appetites and your emotions, not vice versa.

Character Strength #23
Bravery
You are a courageous person who does not shrink from threat, challenge, difficulty, or pain. You speak up for what is right even if there is opposition. You act on your convictions.

Character Strength #24
Spirituality
You have strong and coherent beliefs about the higher purpose and meaning of the universe. You know where you fit in the larger scheme. Your beliefs shape your actions and are a source of comfort to you.

I was kind of surprised that Appreciation of Beauty & Excellence ranked as Strength #1–not that I don’t think it’s a major facet of my personality, I just expected it to rank below the next four traits. If anyone had asked me to rank Fairness, Honesty, and Judgement based on my own perceptions of how they apply in my life, I would have declared a three-way tie…and I wonder if my scores were actually tied in the survey, since these three strengths are listed in alphabetical order (if I’d paid $40 for the graphs, I’d know for sure!). If you’d asked me twenty years ago whether I thought Leadership would ever rank in my top 10 (or even top 50) character strengths, I’d have said no way, I am way too meek to be a leader. So I’m quite pleased that I’ve made significant progress in that aspect of my personality. I honestly expected Curiosity to rank higher, because I always have a million questions about everything, but maybe because I do try to filter them in order not to drive everyone around me crazy, that trait didn’t score so high on the questionnaire. I also expected Love of Learning to be much higher on the list, so I must not actually be doing as much as I think I am in that area. That’s definitely a strength I’d like to improve upon, but I bet I can figure out some strength-building activities on my own, without input from a coach, therapist, manager, or consultant (even though Creativity did only rank #21, so maybe not). Perseverance also needs to move up the list, although I’m not really surprised to see it in the bottom third. I have really good intentions in all situations, and my completion rate is outstanding when some other entity is holding me accountable, but my follow-through drops off if it’s a project I’ve set for myself and there are no consequences (other than a lack of personal fulfillment and feeling of accomplishment) if the task doesn’t get done. It does not shock me to see Spirituality as my weakest character strength. I do believe I am a spiritual person (though not a religious person, and in my mind there’s a big difference), but that is a very personal side of my personality, and not one that I explicitly share with others. I am content to let it lie at the bottom of the list, because I do think my beliefs guide the rest of my actions–I don’t knowingly cause harm, I help whenever I can, I stand up for what is right–and I’m happy to carry on doing so without any recognition of my spiritual motivation. So long as I never give anyone reason to claim that I did not act in a spiritually guided way, I feel fulfilled in that feature of my character.

So, having taken this Character Strength Assessment, I’m not convinced that it will be of much use in securing new employment…not sure Appreciation of Beauty & Excellence is a marketable skill in many fields. However, it provides fuel for some serious introspection and guidelines for personal growth, which are never bad things. In the meantime, if anyone knows of a similar assessment for career-related strengths that might actually be applicable when I attempt to re-enter the full-time workforce, I’d appreciate the link!

 
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Posted by on March 25, 2013 in How It Is, Monday Mix, Observations, On Me

 

Check!

18 Mar

100_2819

I’ve got a bucket list that I started compiling during college titled, “100 Things To Do Before I Die.” There aren’t actually 100 things on the list yet–at 20, I thought it pretty conceited to presume that I knew enough about life and all the world had to offer to just scribble down a hundred dreams off the cuff. Even now at 40, I’m still reluctant to round out the list. However, one of the items I was sure of, even as a naïve undergrad, was my desire to see the Northern Lights.

We’ve just returned from four nights in Iceland, a trip carefully plotted to fall near the spring equinox because auroral activity typically peaks then (we did not know at the time that NASA had declared 2013 the year to see the Aurora Borealis thanks to a 50-year spike in solar activity). Saturday’s Northern Lights tour, which turned out to be more of a glorified hunt party, was included as part of our holiday package. Four busloads of eager tourists, armed with wide angle lenses and sturdy tripods, set out from Reykjavik at dusk to cap off a day that had been dominated by cloudless crystal blue skies; our local guides were forecasting the most spectacular display of Northern Lights of the season. As we drove away from the city lights, a low bank of clouds gathered over the mountain tops and proceeded to engulf the stars almost as fast as they appeared. Undaunted, and armed with four different meteorological reports that promised clear skies across the entire island, our fearless guides continued on to the night’s pre-selected viewing location in the national park. Gamely, we all tromped off the buses into the biting cold and spent the next hour watching the thickening clouds blot out every last star in the sky. Not ready to give up, our guides herded us back onto the buses with the promise that sources on the south coast were reporting clear skies overhead and we should move quickly to that location. Alas, upon arrival, visibility there was just as poor and the cold was even colder, so around midnight the guides finally admitted defeat and shepherded us back to our hotels, reminding us of the company’s policy to take us out again the next night (and the next, and the next…) until we finally spotted the Aurora Borealis.

Sunday dawned just as bright and cloud-free as Saturday had, so after a day spent paddling around the 100°F waters of the Blue Lagoon to chase away the lingering chill of the previous night, we once again bravely layered on all the clothing we had packed and joined the throngs for another evening of stalking. Our buses headed north out of the capital city under tantalizingly clear skies, and as the miles passed and darkness descended, we watched star after star appear magically in the heavens. Our guide alternated between apologizing for the previous night’s fiasco, disparaging the forecasting and observation skills of the various weather and space authorities the company consults when planning these nightly tours, and meekly offering optimistic promises for the evening’s success. An hour into our 90-minute drive, skies were just dark enough for the first glimmers of the Northern Lights to be visible in the skies ahead of us. The level of excitement (and relief) in the bus ratcheted up with each sighting, and we all tried to pay close attention to the guide’s tutorial on the best camera settings to capture our experience. By the time we finally alit from the bus, the sky was fairly dancing with ribbons of light. It took every last bit of self-control to allow my night vision to become fully functional before running pell-mell up the lava strewn path to claim a spot on the hill for my tripod.

This being only the second time I’ve ever used the manual settings on my trusty and much-loved, but far from professional grade, digital camera, I can’t claim any postcard-worthy shots of the lights (got everything adjusted but the ISO, darn it). While I’ve only got some blurry physical proof that I was there, the entire show is etched indelibly in my mind. Light danced across the sky like the first snowflakes that fall on a cold highway, swirling gracefully across the blacktop in the wake of the car ahead. Ribbons stretched downward into curtains, undulating back and forth like veils in an unseen breeze, their sheer green panels edged in purple and red. More than once, extremely rare (according to our guide) coronas appeared directly above our heads, the shimmering aurora radiating out in all directions from a central halo and occasionally bisected by shooting stars. Light literally flowed across the sky in rivers that brightened and faded, disappearing from the left or behind us and reappearing on the right or in front of us. There was no wrong direction to look, and if my joints had not been so stiff from the cold that I feared not being able to get back up, I would have lain flat on my back on that razor sharp bed of lava in an attempt to take it all in at once.

When the guides finally declared it was time to pack up and head back to Reykjavik, not a single passenger remembered the crushing disappointment or freezing discomfort of the previous night. As our bus headed back to the hotel, our guide was just as ecstatic as we were, assuring us that we had just witnessed the most brilliant display of Northern Lights in Iceland in a full year–high praise from someone who does this every night during the season.

Standing in the check-in line at the airport this morning, strangers offered each other the display screens of their digital cameras, and all of the small talk centered around one burning question. “Did you see the lights last night?”

Check!

 
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Posted by on March 18, 2013 in How It Is, Monday Mix, Observations, True Life

 

Shiwase

11 Mar

100_2871-001100_2871-001100_2871-001Today’s post started out as a belated response to last Monday’s Weekly Writing Challenge: Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction over on the Daily Post, in which we were asked to take or find a photograph in which the subject showed true joy, rather than that I’m-smiling-for-the-camera brand of fake happiness. I had bookmarked this photo in my archives last week, but my postings went in other directions and I couldn’t find a day to squeeze this one in. (What?! Too many blogging ideas? Must we start two-a-days?)

The truth behind the photo: I took the original photo (top left) during a visit to Hachimangu Shrine in Kamakura, Japan, in November 2010. I noticed a family feeding the pigeons, and snapped a few random shots in passing, without really stopping to compose the images. It wasn’t until I was back home reviewing the pictures from the day that I noticed that the little boy found it HILARIOUS that his father was covered in pigeons and I wished I’d focused my lens on him rather than just the overriding family scene. I wanted to draw the viewer’s eye to the boy’s shiwase (happiness), so I tried cropping the original shot (top right) to get rid of the empty baby stroller that was on the left side (his younger sister was standing tentatively on her own a few feet away, surrounded by a dozen pigeons), but by trying to keep the same scale, also eliminated the birds around the dad’s feet. I hate creating headless corpses when I edit photos, but in the bottom version the boy is much more the center of attention, although the severity of the cropping has highlighted the fact that he is out of focus. Now I wonder if I’ve removed too much of his body language for the viewer to truly appreciate the extent to which he was enjoying this close encounter of the feathered kind? Other than the obvious advice to be more thoughtful in the way I initially shoot my subject, any feedback on how I should have edited this image to highlight the little guy’s happiness would be appreciated.

Now I veer off the track of the original prompt, and contemplate the contrast between the shiwase in my photograph and the emotion the entire nation of Japan is likely feeling today. March 11, 2013, marks the two-year anniversary of the devastating Tohoku earthquake and its resulting tsunami and nuclear crisis, collectively Japan’s worst disaster since World War II. Some 19,000 victims perished and a further 315,000 either lost or were forced to flee their homes (300,000 are still lodged in temporary housing). I was living in Japan in 2011 (though was vacationing in Hong Kong on the day of the earthquake) and I witnessed firsthand the shock and sadness permeating the whole country as the scope of the tragedy became apparent. Yet almost immediately a wave of compassion, support, and encouragement (ganbatte!) spread across the nation, and survivors showed unbelievable resilience as they pushed through their personal anger, confusion, and heartbreak to work together for the good of their neighbors and communities. Today is surely a somber day for the country, as citizens mourn individuals, families, homes, schools, businesses, and entire towns lost to the catastrophe. But I also know today is a day of renewed hope and determination for the Japanese people, as they are wholeheartedly committed to rebuilding and revitalizing the devastated areas as quickly as possible. To all of those still struggling with loss, I offer wishes for comfort, peace, and hope. To all of those involved in the ongoing recovery efforts, I send prayers for continued guidance, strength, and endurance. Above all, I wish the people of Japan shiwase.

 
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Posted by on March 11, 2013 in Monday Mix, The Daily Post Prompt, True Life

 

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