Chase in pig country

A decade ago, I traveled through Europe between my sophomore and junior year in college with an old high school friend, Chase. Since, we have been in touch on again and off again. One day, Chase messages me that he is considering moving to Amsterdam for work and had I been there. I was, in fact, sitting in a canal house in the Jordaan, vacationing there with Tay and Saori. I told him truthfully that it was a hipsters paradise, and that totally, he should go. So he did. He has considerable travel experience and lived in Shanghai before, so the expat thing was not so intimidating.  His girlfriend, Whitney, also decided to come as well, although she had never before been out of the country.

Anyway, they popped over for the weekend to say hello and to visit Stuttgart's Oktoberfest. Their door to door time was under three hours. After we welcomed them to our place with guac and chips, we took them to Zum Paulner for dinner and more drinks. Saori took me there my first night in town.

Afterwards, we went to another bar, Akermann's, near our flat, and had another drink before heading back to the apartment where Saori had prepared towels, sheets, and bound everything with paper twine and welcome tags.

Saturday morning I woke up with a crushing hangover headache but felt well enough to whip up a batch of banana pancakes for the group before the really bad nausea hit.

I had three (3) drinks the night before. A half liter beer with chips and salsa, a half liter at the restaurant with dinner, and a half liter at the bar, all of these spaced out over about three to four hours.

I was sick for about six hours, where I was so ill I could only hold down water. This is not the first time that this has happened either. Nobody else was remotely ill which makes me think that I might be developing a gastric sensitivity to beer. Or alcohol. I should test this with tequila.

Anyway, I was so miserable, I couldn't of course be a great host or guide, so Saori told our guests how to get to the adorable village of Tübingen for the day while shouted a feeble farewell from the bedroom.

After some enjoyable hours playing `can I hold this down?´ and `bathroom biology´ my system finally righted itself with copious quantities of coconut water. It was a surprisingly fast recovery once begun, so I was able to meet Chase and Whitney at Wasen in the late afternoon. Saori joked her amazement that I could be in the searching  in the AM for a suitable pot for the bedside, and in the PM, a suitable hat for a drinking festival.

It would have been unthinkable that I would ever touch beer again four hours prior, but at Oktoberfest, I downed no less than five liters of beer and passed out facedown on beer-soaked asphalt. Actually, I had a scant half liter total, guessing I was probably pushing it with that. It was still a good time. We walked through what must have been the least terrifying haunted houses ever, rode a few rides, played some carnival games (I insisted on the bb rifle and I am a crack shot at blank range), and fought our way into one of the big tents.

Many Germans older and younger, reserve tables months in advance in large to medium groups and so get advance tickets so walk in at set times. The rabble who lack either forward-thinking friends or this level of preparation for drinking festivals, are punished by forming a mob at the front behind barricades while bouncers/hosts handpick groups frantically waving their hands showign the number people in thier party. We opted for the American style three fingers istead of the German thumb-plus-two in the hopes that it would make us stand out as Interesting People Who Would Bring Diversity to the tent. Which is important in a heavy drinking environment where the main concern is not inadvertantly uninating all over your own lederhosen.

We fought hard for this. Actually, I thought Whitney was going to get in a fistfight with a bitch who cut us in the scrum to the front. But, haleluja, we were finally picked out from the crowd and led inside ... to stand at a large wooden high top at the back of the tent. We could order beers, but no food, evidently. So we nursed our beers, stamped our feet and swung our half liter glasses with the live band playing Prosit, Prosit every ten minutes, and marveled at the massive wooden trays covered with a dozen steaming plates each containing a half chicken and a loaf of bread, or a mamoth pretzel on a mountain of potato salad. No food for you!

We abandoned our designated floor place and wandered through, deeper into into the tent where the people with reservations had places, complete with bench dancing, beer stein swinging, and ducking to avoid the giant wood boards flying by with food.

I actually really enjoy these festivals. They are totally kitschy, and most of the people who go are 20something guys in identical cheap lederhosen and shirts. But its undeniably fun. I was excited to step on the train and see a car full of people wearing traditional Bavarian and Schwabish costumes, especially the older people and the families who obviously spent some serious cash on their clothing. The festival itself is basically a state fair of beer, except all the beer is the same, but it is a tradition. There is not even the pretense of say, thanksgiving or Christmas, to remember a particular event (although it was started as a commemorative event originally). Even if an inherantly meaningless and vapid one, traditional events strenghten the bonds between people and places. It's a memory shared by the people of the city involving a particular place in the city. It is a part of the city identity, like the architecture or urban organization.

For Thursday please hand in your summaries from Scheer's Form Code and Spectacle by Bruce Mau.

Anyway, we walked over to the Schweinmuseum for dinner since they have a nice restaurant downstairs. Saori joined us and most of us ate dishes from the seasonal mushrooms which turned out to be wonderful while Chase worked his way through a massive schweinhaxle (deep fried joint of pork) with beer sauce.

After dinner, we enjoyed a last round of drinks at my new favorite bar in town, unlikely enough, a cellar pool hall and whisky bar. Old overstuffed leather couches, blackout red lighting, and a bar specializing in whisky and gin cocktails or bottled belgain and french beers. Where I also stuck to soft drinks.

Sunday morning, I made what we call Lumen Breakfast, which is basically an open faced fried egg sandwich with toasted local bread, bergkase cheese, and cured meat, although I swapped in fried bacon today and topped with some chives.

Afterwards, we walked through a short nature trail to see and feed the wild (tame?) boars in the nearby woods. Then it was time to put Chase and Whitney back on the train to the airport. It was a good visit, and now we need to also find a weekend to pop up to Amsterdam and visit them too.

short stories

I started running again. Not much, still only 30-40 minutes, but in Stuttgart it doesn't take long until you're climbing hills or stairs. The trick is to find the gentlest routes up and down. Half the time a rusty bolt, the other half, Usain Bolt.

Saori went to the late yoga session monday night and I went for a run. Afterwards, I was just tired and wanted some easy to make dinner. Frozen pizza would have done it. But we don't even have so much as a box of mac n cheese or a can of chili to dump in the microwave. It's something that's gone from our lifestyle living here- less from a consciencious decision as much as the fact that the frozen pizzas are terrible. Actually I don't know why we eat so little prepared food- Dr.Oetiker brand is owned by the richest family in Germany- but its probaby because we just aren't used to it.
So I set a bag of dried spätzle to boil, minced an onion and started carmelizing it in a pan, and shedded a block of spanish manchego to make kase spätzle. Saori pointed out that it would have been easier to just make ramen but Id forgotten about it.

Fall hit Stuttgart when the last date in August touched the ground. The weather dropped ten degrees celcius overnight. Now, well into scarves and jacket weather, we are facing a cold and rainy week.

Fun fact about Stuttgart- it's actually the hometown of Roland Emmerich, director best known for a bunch of big budget disaster movies like Independance Day, The Patriot, and The Day After Tomorrow. I can feel a strange sort of connection between these films, which are popcorn fluffed, bloodless, children's fantasies and the easy and sometimes sterile environment of Stuttgart. In many ways, Stuttgart is high density suburbia: affluence and listlessness, a bedroom community which happens to be located in a giant industrial and economic powerhouse. The reason you keep running into people you know is that the city doesn't really have that many compelling places to go.

pho weekend

Friday, I left the office early and went home to wait for Saori who went to yoga after work. We strolled to dinner at a vietnamese restaurant for some Pho, which turned out to be not bad- the soup base was really good and the meat cuts were good, but for the price and the lack of the usual add-ons, I was not so impressed.

Walking back, we came across Feuersee Fest, a small neighborhood party around the old church with lots of little crafts and clothing, a small stage, a few food stalls, and of course, a few stalls selling beers and wine. Whenever we come back to the US, I am going to seriously agitate to loosen these antiquated and puritanical open container laws.

Saori bought a pair of earrings, and we both plugged our ears to escape the attrocious live electro-pop or whatever it was claiming to be.

Saturday I made fried eggs with my salsa and we got out into town early. We had a long list of groceries and things to buy, so we hit the markthalle where I reloaded the pozole essentials (dried mexican chiles, hominy) and then we browsed a bit of this and that in the stores around the city center before getting down to business at the big grocery store.

This big new grocery store carries a lot of really nice things. This trip, we ended up picking up two small plants for the kitchen, a 30 inch tall little palm tree and a similar height banana tree.

We also picked up some fresh mussels from Belgium, and some other necessities. Hauling everything back home, we refreshed ourselves, and headed out again since Saori was looking for some pots for the new plants. We split after the city center and I headed back to our neighborhood to pick up some ingrediants for Pho at the asian corner store.

Saori ended up getting stuck for a bit because the police basically barricaded the city center and diverted a ton of traffic and mass transit due to a large protest of mostly turks protesting the Turkish government. It was quite interesting to see in this orderly city, a mass of chanting people not protesting the train station, but also the hundreds of police in full riot gear. Stuttgart tends to over-react to protests in terms at least of presence.

Anyway, the moulles, being an unexpected score (they were about 7 dollars for the package) required eating that night, so I whipped us up some moules mariniere with the leftover bread and white wine I had.

Sunday I made pear and walnut pancakes for breakfast. I got this great recipe from Jamie Oliver which is really quite good. One egg, one cup self-raising flour, one cup milk, one fruit (grated pear, smashed banana, cup of berries, whatever). Mix well and cook in pan with melted butter.

Today was also the big fall flohmarkt (flea market) where the three biggest plazas in the city center and all the streets joining them fill with stalls and people selling everything in a massive garage sale. Prices are dirt cheap as everyone wants to get rid of everything. I ended up buying a solid pewter beer mug with the crest of one of the city brewers on it.

Afterwards, we got maultauschen from a food truck and then pumpkin spice lattes from Starbucks.

Saori went to work to teach a coworker Nadine how to use Rhino and I went home to work on the beef soup stock for the Pho. It was exciting to make, and good, at the end, but a big greasy mess since all the gristle and fat renders in the pressure cooker. Also delicious.

Letting the stock cool, I joined Saori at Nadines rooftop flat and she served us up some homemade chocolate pound cake and tea. Do not let that description mislead you- Nadine is a really interesting and cool girl. She is a landcape architect who is obsessed with the band Social Distortion, California living, palm tree varieties, and tattoos, in that order.

So tonight I made pho from scratch for the first time. The beef bone and oxtail stock with star anise and cinnamon and fish sauce, bean sprouts, cilantro and mint, habernero chiles, squirt of lime. Rice noodles. Really really good. I need to up the star anise a bit though.

Birthday

Friday, I turned 31.

I am the fourth oldeset person in my office, including the principal, JW. At least I am not an intern.

I brought brownies to the office. Authentic American imported Betty Crocker box mix brownies. To my credit, I did also throw in a bunch of macadamia nuts and Austrian white chocolate. Yummy. And people liked them. We had a bunch of deadlines in the office so I decided to skip the usual everyone sits down in the conference room and makes small talk event and just set out the brownies in the kitchen, in easy reach of the coffee machine.

The other coworkers did surprise me as I was setting up a meeting room. They filed in and gave me a card and a wrapped traditional book on architecture. They also sang, which was something new since they were prompted by Tania, the Mexican intern who thought it odd we never sang in the office for people's birthdays. Sandro, the intern who was sick for a month, made the card, and everyone signed it. The book was a really nice Phaidon about Alvar Aalto, who is The Beatles of architecture.

Benni and I were the last to leave the office since we had  a late meeting with JW over the latest competition. We headed straight to Mezcal hoch Zwei and were the first there, although Saori showed up right after. We spent about four hours there, drinking great Mezcal palomas and micheladas and shots of Mezcal along with munching on a bunch of red and black mole tostadas. Good times. From my office there was Benni, Xi Wu the new Chinese intern, Tania, and Lukas. Saori also invited her coworkers Martin, his girlfriend, and Nadine, all of them charmingly eccentric. Martin's girlfriend was probably a classmate of Tay's back in Abu Dhabi. Rafa was also there (actually, he moonlights there) and Apo came for a drink as well.

Saori took a half day off and spent it running around the city hunting down the ingredients, (mostly exotic forms of sugar) for my cake, a wonderful sticky toffee pudding. The restaurant dimmed the lights and put on "las mananitas" as she brought out my cake with candles. The video is on facebook. The STP was delicious. I was transported instantly to the old pubs in the Surrey countryside.

After Mezcal, we all trooped over to our neighborhood and had one more round of beers at Akermanns, a traditional but open local bar with a pretty good selection of German beer.

Saori and I were both starting to pass out from the combined impact of a long week, a long day, nearly five alcoholic beverages in as many hours, and being over 30 years old, so we apologized to everyone for leaving early and staggered home to drink equivilant quantities of water to the alcohol we had consumed.

munich vacation

Two weeks ago, I told my office that I was taking two days off to go to Munich. What I actually did, was use those two vacation days to work in another office. Let me say that these offices are not direct competitors, and as it was my first time at this office, I wasn't really that engaged with real work anyway. This was more of an opportunty for both them and I to get to know each other a little better.

Things I liked about the office
-There is a seriousness and urgency to the work. The projects I would be working on are actual projects with clients and most of them will be drawn and detailed in house. This is a sharp contrast to WA, where the vast majority of the projects I have worked on are either studies or competitions, and the one ¨real¨ project was simply a core and shell designer project, with the construction documents drawn by another firm.

-I liked the working hours. I apprecitated the fact that the approach was businesslike rather than a sacred brotherhood of Architecture.

-The people were nice enough at first blush. I am strongly encouraged as well by my friend Rafa who has worked there for many years and really enjoys the environment.

- There is a lot of autonomy given to designers. The bosses seems to solicit your designs, and then seek your comment and opinion when discussing all the options. At WA, I often feel that I am coloring in the lines. The forms and plan organization are always set by JW, and there is little leeway from the typical facade. My work over the past year has primarily been laying out boards, making renderings, making 3D models, and making drawings graphically appealing.

- Importantly, there is more money to be made. The salary is 400 euros more per month than my current job, which equates to a 20% jump before taxes.

Concerns I have about the office
-They have expressed a desire to see my German improve dramatically, which I makes me worry about how realistic this is. They want me to be fluent enough to talk to customers in six months of starting. Damn, that would be fantastic, actually, since it would be an actual hard thing I could take from my time here. I have already re-enrolled in my classes again, but I think I need to step up my game.

- They want me to work in Revit immediately, which is a little challengeing since I will need at least a week or two to re-familiarize myself with the German version. It has been over two years since I touched Revit, so it`s a little rusty, but probably will come back quickly. What is important is understanding all the commands in German.

- The overall time frame is a bit of a wash. At JW, I work typically from 8:45 to 6:30, five days a week. This is about 45 working hours, with about 5 hours of commute. Moving over, I will work 40 hours a week with close to 9 hours of commute time. Working less, commuting more, and fridays back in Stuttgart several hours before I would be at JW.

- There are no food options in this tiny village where the office is. I will have to buy my lunch on the way or make it and bring it from home daily. Overall, this is also a nitpicky kind of detail, to be honest.

Tomorrow, I have another meeting with the office and we will hash out the details. Things that are critical for me to communicate: 1) My status as not having started AiT. 2) My office-specific visa which will need to be converted to the other office. 3) I want to increase my salary 100 euros to 3000 a month to take account for the extra costs of transportation.

under pressure

I had a really dorky moment a few years back in grad school, when I got a CrockPot and some of my classmates had also recently aquired slow cookers, and we were all geeking out a bit. How great it was you could leave it on all day and come home to a hot meal after studio, how great beans and soups and stews were in them, etc. etc.  Probably every generation goes through that moment where slow cookers suddenly change from that sad cooking utensil from your parent's college years  to this somewhat miraculous thing that enables you eat cooked meals like a real grown up.

Probably I wrote a few blog posts about how great they are, too.

Pressure cookers, on the other hand, are like discovering a never-ending stash of cocaine, or a portal to Restaurant With Linens planet. It is difficult to quantify my level of nerdines over pressure cooking, but let's just say that my introduction to pressure cookers ranks right up there with my time in Mexico and Kraft Mac'n'Cheese in the milestones of my culinary development.

Sunday night, I made steak carnita soup. Basically you pan fry a bunch of beef stew meat to brown it, and then dump it in the cooker with an onion, a lot of diced chili peppers, garlic, cumin and ground corriander, and a cup and a half of stock. 40 minutes later, the soup is done and its phenomenal. Meat falling off the bone. The soup flooded with rich beef flavor. The chilis lose most of their sharpness in the heat and pressure so you are left with the flavor and a deep, quiet heat. Especially with some fresh avocado and cilantro tossed in.

Saori invited an old classmate of hers from the language course to join us, Kenji. He told her that he was running late because he wanted to wear his "flashy" shoes. I thought they were slippers first becuse they had giant stuffed gorillas inegrated into them. Actually, they are Adidas shoes, basketball shoes designed by Jeremy Scott who has done a really bizzare line of shoes. Seriously, check it out.

Anyway, Kenji enjoyed the soup and we chatted for a long time. He is apparently very lonely and bored. We actually gave him the last of the soup to take home with him since he lives alone.

Monday, after work, I made BBQ pulled pork. It takes about an hour and a half. Saori had picked up a kilo of pork butt from the grocery store and I browned the surface in oil before sauteeing onions and garlic in the same pan. Meat goes back in, along with a cup of water and a cup of BBQ sauce. Lid, lock, and kick back for an hour. Out comes chunks of BBQ flavored meat so tender you merely touch it to shred it. Mix the BBQ soup in the pot with more BBQ sauce and its fantastic.

Karlsruhe

Lately, I've been getting really itchy feet to get the hell out of Stuttgart and see some new places, so Friday night, I proposed we catch a train to Karlsruhe.

Less than an hour by train from Stuttgart, Karlsruhe is a city smaller than Stuttgart, but laid out along a radial plan. Thomas Jefferson apparently came here at the suggestion of DC planner Charles L'Enfant and actually this year the city is celebrating its 300th birthday. (We're discounting the fact the fact the city was heavily bombed in WWII).

Actually, I was really curious to see the city organization, and also to check out a large new pavilion constructed specificity for the birthday festivities. And to try the local beer, naturlich.

We ended up leaving home late since we were both exhausted from a really long week and late nights. Fresh squeezed orange juice for breakfast (it really does make you feel like you should be getting super powers), along with eggs and zucchini bread and strong black coffee.

Baden-Württemburg ticket for two, less than $15 for a statewide ticket, and we were there in 53 minutes.

The train station is actually located beyond the edge of the old city center. It's about a 20 minute walk or a five minute ride to the marktplatz. This actually didn't bother me since it frees up the city center for its own purposes, and because one enters the city in a lovely and tree lined residential borough with the peaceful and not too big city zoo right in front of you. Actually the zoo is so small there is a pedestrian bridge which cuts across it, so you look down on flamingos, elephants, and people on small pleasure boats flattering through the zoo steam route.

Actually it was such an appealing scene we went in and bought tickets directly off the bridge.

The tiny boats run on an underwater track of some sort. We were imagining that it was drawn by harnessed turtles. It was lovely, a warm and sleepy sunny day, slowly floating along tree covered streams and ponds, attracting the persistent attention of ducks and unnerving carp with gaping mouths. It was nice to simply float for 40 minutes, slowed to the moment.

We saw big cats and polar bears and squeaky dwarf otters and sea lion feeding. We were worried about not making it more than a quarter mile from the train station so before it got too late, we jumped out to the city and shortly found a house hanging from a crane in the market plaza, and the palace and large circular garden in the city center.

It's quite all quite leafy and stately, really puts Stuttgart to shame in terms of the city environment. Everything feels a little nicer. In some ways it reminded both of us of Boston.

We walked around the Schloss to the pavilion, which is a big skewed rectangular lattice of giant wood beams. I enjoyed climbing up and exploring its little socializing decks more than its main aspect as a bandshell.

From there we walked to a large brewery restaurant called Badisch Brauhaus. Badish is a reference to the region, Baden, but apparently also forms its own dialect also spoken in parts of southern Alsace. The beer was good, although the biker club drinking by the entrance gave me a moment's pause.

It was a huge place actually, a warren of biergartens, covered courtyards, brewery basements, and upstairs lounges. It was strange and super kitschy. LED lighting, rustic beer barrel seats, Dali wall murals, bronzed glass, and whimsical Hundertwasser-esque housing above with mosaic onion domes and strangely shaped balconies and windows. We ordered two weisens and a banana beer. Banana beer is oddly appealing. It's so sweet and super banana-y, but intriguing. Not sure I'd want to drink an entire half liter, but interesting.

Later, we strolled through town, getting totally sidetracked by a sale at a sports store and the unexpected discovery of a TJ Maxx (which, inexplicably, is TK Maxx in Europe), so we missed the fastest, most convenient train home. So we ended up killing an hour or so near the train station and then took a slow regional train back to Stuttgart.

This particular branch should have been called Zenos Line because we stopped at a city halfway to Stuttgart, then 3/4 of the way there, then 7/8th the way there, until we were basically making stops at every bus stop along the route.

All in all, a good day though.

opportunities

Tomorrow morning I will not be getting on a train to Munich like I told my office- I will be taking two days of vacation to work at a different office.

I want to change my jobs because of several reasons that basically boil down to professional trajectory and salary. I am frankly not making the money I want to make, and this job would be a boost to my salary. Professionally, I work most of the time in Rhino and Adobe Illustrator. I make and remake and remake phantom buildings for print media. This is not the job I was trained to do, this is not the job I am interested in. Frankly, German conceptual design is terrible. What wins competitions, what is built, are white, blocky buildings with large grid openings. There is sometimes a kink knick introduced, but only a slight one, in plan. German technical design is great. This is where I want to improve. Details. Facade systems. Building systems. I am excited about the fact that there is an entire profession (lacking in the US) centered around building efficiency in terms of climate control and energy.

This new office is pretty new. I am a little concerned about the risk I am taking. If I sever my ties with WA, and if the new job turns sour, I will be asked to leave the country after a short period of time if I can't find a new job. It's a little tricky switching the working permit as well, which could delay the whole proceedings.

One thing I definitely need to do is bring up these situations with the employers, since it may be logical that they they work on fullfilling the requirements of the working visa before I tell my employer I am leaving.

But I get ahead of myself. Tomrrow and friday are about getting to know each other.

They will want to know how is my German. They will want to know what I am like to work with. They will want to know what my level of skill is with autocad and revit and building drawings.

Tonight, I have been memorizing the phrase Ich bin Erfruet, Sie kennen zu lernen which means pleased to meet you.

This is also my chance to evaluate the company. Specifically, I want to get a feel of how the workflow goes, what the working environment is like, what kind of work I will be doing, what are the people like that I will be working with. It will be also be an opportune time to discuss salary, perhaps at the end, since I gave a number before.

So what is a Go for me? I am looking for a place where I can quickly improve my German, build up my skills as an architect, by which I mean take a direct part in design and drafting. I am looking for more money. I am looking for something I can fully engage. I have worked with hard no-nonsense people at DWL. That's fine. Now is not the time for whimsey in careers. I am looking for people who will be consistant, fair, and helpful. I am not afraid to work.

So what do I need to do tomorrow? My goals are to provide a good impression. That is to nice, say, well-mannered, serious, eager and enthusaistic about the job, showing a willingness to dive in and try something but also to ask questions.

This a construction business whose main job is making actual, standing up, buildings. This is not making competitions, which has the aim of making buildings appear as effortless and insubstantial as possible. These jobs need people who are reliable, straightforward, and hardworking.

I need to use my German. A lot. I can do it. I need to not be afraid to be totally German all day except for matters of explicit clarity.

I need to repeat back what people ask me to do to make sure that I know what to do and they know I know what to do.

I need to dress neatly. No tie, no jacket, but serious and professional. And to be on time. Which means I need to be at Mezcal at 8am, which means I need to be out the door at 7:30, which is my normal "waking up" time. So everything gets shifted back an hour.

What am I giving up by changing jobs?
I am risking seriously damaging my relationship with someone who has been great personally to me and Saori, and I hate to jeapordize that.
I am also complicating my working visa and wading into the labrynth of German beaurocracy. But this is a fact of life here and frankly, the process of making buildings is incredibly beaurocratic and tedious as well from that perspective.
I will miss working with some of the coworkers I have become friends with- it saddens me to let them down by leaving as well, but it does not necessarily mean that I am going to be shunned. They do not see this position as permenant for them either, to be perfectly candid.

I will give up access to food since there is literally no place to eat around the new workplace. I will need to get up an hour earlier every day, and I will need to pack a lunch.

My commute will be twice as long. I will commute two hours a day instead of one, and walking home, or incorporating walking will no longer be an option. This is offset by the fact that working hours are shorter. I will net the same amount of working time plus commuting time. I will also be dependant upon R and A for rides to work, or risk coming in to work late with the bahn and bus.

birthday senorita

Saori turned 32 this weekend, so we threw a small party at our apartment. It was a nice checkpoint- last year, I was living still in the house on the hill and we invited a bunch of friends out to a Mexican dinner at the only authentic Mexican restaurant in town. This year, I made the Mexican food. And it was good. But it did take up the entire weekend of shopping, cooking, and cleaning (although Saori did most of the cleaning since I was cooking all the time).

Friday after work, I went to the grocery store and picked up the main ingredients except for the special ones (although after a beer, I mistakenly picked up beef instead of pork for the carnitas). Saturday morning after a breakfast of fried eggs and salsa, we hit the markthalle and the farmers market on the main square in front of the city hall. Markthalle used to be an indoor tram station that was converted to a market hall for upscale produce and international foods. There are dozens of stalls selling direct imported and local very high quality foodstuffs. Also very expensive. But you can find what you are looking for. I was pleasantly surprised to find canned chipotles in adobo sauce (no more hauling cans back from the US), and I also picked up some cilantro, ripe avocados, and habanero chile peppers. In the market square, we picked up some sunflowers and some really exceptional macaroons.

In the afternoon, I cooked the sopa de lima in the pressure cooker, but the final stages I added too much of the habanero and too much lime- the end result was spicy, but worse, bitter. The chicken came out wonderful, of course, so I saved the chicken and a bit of the soup to combine with the second batch and tossed out the rest. Saori and I each made salsa fresh- Saori made a mild batch and I went wild with pineapple and habanero.

Sunday, I cooked the entire day from rolling out of bed at 8AM. I made eggs and salsa for breakfast, a new batch of sopa de lima, I prepared quesadillas with corn tortillas and a blend of cheeses, and also cooked up steak carnitas. Then there was garnishes of diced onion, cilantro, peppers, limes, etc.

In the end, the party ended up quite small with a few people coming now and then since we extended it out from basically 3pm to midnight. It was really quiet. Too quiet, actually, less of a party and more of a getting together for a beer kind of thing. The Mexican interns came by and they were really impressed with the food, actually. Lina and Anna came too, and we all ended up sitting on the roof enjoying the cool evening air.

Annnnnd way too soon it was monday again.

Cecil the Lion

There was a lion in Zimbabwe who was killed by an American hunter. This particular lion turned out to be a national mascot of sorts and it turns out that the guides and the permitting process may not have been legal. Did the hunter know he was involved in a illegal hunt? We don't know. However, many people on facebook have taken to their walls to demand that the American hunter be shot. 

What is wrong with these people?

1) even assuming the hunter knew he was acting illegally, the life of an animal, in my opinion, should not be weighed the same as a human. How many people demanding his blood for the lion's would have been skinned many times over for the leather in their shoes or the sweat from the children who assemble their clothes?

2) where is the outrage over the thousands of humans who are killed every day purely from the decisons of other humans? People are still starving to death, still being slaughtered for their religion or race.

3) the vast majority of Zimbabweans could care less about Cecil, since the nation is still suffering a sanitation crisis (over 4,000 died in a Cholera outbreak a few years ago) and major food shortages.

I know that Cecil the Lion makes a nice, catchy media soundbite, but seriously, people need to realize that the entire world does not live in American suburbia.

weekend

Friday night, Saori was busy with an office party, so I went out to meet my coworkers and Lyz who just came back from a month traveling around Europe before she goes back to Mexico.

There is an academy of fine arts up by Killesburg and they were having their end of year open house and party late into the evening. This is actually really cool because it attracts a lot of people from the community- of all ages, but mostly drinking age. It was pretty packed and quite lively when I showed up around 10pm.

I never actually ended up going inside to see the buildings and the exhibitions, which were also filled with people and small booths selling booze and snacks. I got a glass of wine, caught up with Lyz, ate some Indian food from one of the food stands, and then I was just too tired to see the work.

Saturday was lovely- I made eggs and salsa for breakfast, and then Saori and I went into town to run errands. First up was the glass bottle return.

I love the fact that Stuttgart is so good about the lifecycle of its containers- the vast majority of the beer they sell and nearly all the wine come in glass bottles for which you pay a deposit in addition to the (low) cost of the beverage. If you buy beer like a typical German, always shopping at the same place, buying beer by the crate, they easily get their bottle deposit back. I tend to buy a bottle here and there, of a most diverse array of beers from a wild array of stores. So instead of lugging tons of glass bottles around to five of six places around the city for five dollars back, I decided to just return the bottles that have a special mark that lets me take them to the local corner supermarket automated return and all the rest go into the glass recycling bins.

After grocery shopping, we walked to stadtmitte, stopping off at a speciality furnature and lighting store where we bought a giant round fillament "edison bulb" to fit our living room light. The bulb ended up being more expensive than the light fixture although to be fair, we got the fixture from IKEA and the bulb should last as long as a halogen, and not a typical incandescent.

We also went to Amercian Apparel which was having a sale and I ended up buying a few things 70% off, which is very nice. After shopping, I stopped for a coffee at the windy kleiner schlossplatz and headed home.

Sunday, Saori went to yoga in the morning and I cooked up breakfast and studied German while waiting for her to come back. After breakfast she had to go into work so I went on a long walk back to the Acadamy of fine arts and got a better look at the student work on display. The architecture building was interesting to see in its own right, although there was a really interesting project from one of the masters candidates about future housing in Japan, with a lot of really great models and drawings.

Sadly, architecure is losing him to film or theater or game design production because frankly our profession has degenrated to the point where curved surfaces are about as visionary as you are allowed.

Still excited about the pressure cooker, I made pork carnitas tonight. I went all out- with fresh onion and cilantro, home made salsa, and fresh diced pineapple and some grocery store wheat-corn toritllas. Delicious. Really good. The combination of pineapple, chiles, cilantro and onions really brings me back to Mexico City.

the new Payson

Saori and I have this long running ironic joke about Payson, Arizona as one of the premier cities of the world. When strolling through Paris or Venice, one of us will turn to the other and ask, "yes, but is it Payson?"

(Payson, indubiably, is a pleasant and lovely little town but it is definitely the farthest thing from cosmopolitain this side of Ponca City).

Mmmngn could be the new Payson. I came to Mmmngn for a work assignment lasting a few hours. It's off the main high speed train routes, nestled in the hilly plains in southwestern Bavaria, really within the Allgäu region, where one may wait many hours to see Neuschwanstein castle.

Anyway, it's another one of those scheisse adorable little Bavarian towns which was lucky enough to keep its medieval old center from being destroyed in WWII. These city centers are so much the same at first glance- expensive restaurants in renovated patrician urban palaces and green courtyards. The marketplace square with way too many cheap cafes, a grand city hall, and a produce market most days. Every sixth store a failing family business. Every seventh store, a pharmacy. A small mid-calf-deep canal, with wooden footbridges and adjacent seating for the vine covered cafe or restaurant. Old, leaning, and meticulously maintained half-timbered buildings containing high end boutiques. Two to three massive multistory department stores shoehorned in to the cobblestoned medieval urban fabric. The three to four dozen kebab and pizza shops dotted through like cancerous freckles, and a few gambling halls, strip clubs, and sex shops at the crumbling edges where you can still find some existing segments of the ancient city wall.

So: interesting at least, often photogenic, and lively. A good stage at least for the local festivals so they can at least differentiate thier sleepy hamlet from the next one down the country road.

Speaking of festivals, I happen to miss Mmmngn's biggest festival by ONE DAY. The fisherman's day festival is a historic and surprisingly old tradition distinguished by all the manly Mmmngners (or having lived there for 10 years) jumping into the tiny, muddy city creek and attempting to catch fish. Trophies can then be brought to the market square for weighing and prizes.

Anyway, I had a train to catch so I took the site photos for which I had been sent and explored the old town. I ended up buying a sueded deer leather vest for 20 euros, marked down well over a hundred euros, from a small traditional clothing shop going out of business. Lederhosen was still too expensive to pull the trigger on something you wear twice a year. I also discovered my favorite microbrewery from Ulm had a Mmmngn branch so I happily lunched there and brought home two glass liter bottles of blonde.

Changed trains to the ICE in Ulm and was back at the office a little before 3. The rest of the day flew by, and now I am sitting on my terrace, enjoying a beer and a nice breeze. Happy it's the weekend.

bad times

Something else I learned this week: Stuttgart is home to the second largest number of baths in Europe. There are three types. Freibad; which are open, outdoor pools of the American city pool type, Hallenbad; enclosed pools, and Mineralbad, which have usually indoor and outdoor pools filled with mineral spring water. Usually the last two types also come with spas, saunas, and lap pools.

Ever since I got to Stuttgart I've been itching to go since I have heard so much about the baths, and I do love to swim. Counting back, the last time I went swimming was in the late summer of 2013, damn near two years ago, in Mexico. So I was excited to go swimming again, splash around, and cool off.

Sunday afternoon, Saori and I loaded up our bags and headed to Das Leutze, probably the best known Stuttgart mineral baths. It was relatively simple to figure out. You tell them how long you want to swim, and pay them in advance, and they give you a waterproof chipped token that you use to swipe in and out. It was kind of expensive- a little over 4 euros per hour. For a two and a half hour swim, it's actually cheaper to go to the movies.

Anyway, they had extensive lockers and changing rooms, and then we explored the various indoor and outdoor pools. Saori's favorite was a strong mineral bath with a lot of carbonation in it. It was quite strange- after sitting in the pool for a few minutes, tiny bubbles form all over your suit and body. You begin to lightly fizz like you are the lemon in a glass of sparkling water.

We swam a bit, lay out in the sun for a bit, floated around. Two hours went by really quickly this way. We checked out by dropping our token in the exit reader but it was rejected since we had overstayed. We had to top up the token ( an extra euro or two ) for the twenty or so minutes of overtime.

Overall, very nice. Very relaxing. Next weekend we will try a new pool until we find our favorite.

pressure cooker

The first day we were in Japan, Saori's mom, Yoshiko-san offered to buy us a pressure cooker. She assured us that there was a store nearby having a sale, so we set off on a very long walk to a local shopping mall. We didn't find any special ones there, and since we were planning on maxing our luggage weight allowances with clothes from UNIQLO and MUJI, Yoshiko-san offered to just gift us the money for a pressure cooker.

Fast forward to a few days ago, when I was at a large supermarket somewhere between a Kmart and a Wal-Mart with a fraction of the size and selection, they were selling pressure cookers. Looked solid. stainless steel. GSW brand, manufactured in Germany. I picked one up for 40 euros, less than a third of the price of a WMF one. 

I've never cooked with a pressure cooker before, so I carefully read through the owners manual, read about them online and looked up some recipes before picking out a chicken masala recipe. Actually, Indian cooking was one the things I had in my mind before picking it up, since my old Indian roomies used the pressure cooker all the time for things like lentils and certain curries. 

Anyway, the dish turned out fine- the chicken was really moist and flakey, but the sauce ended up really lame- I think I just need to find a better recipe. 

Today, poking around the internet a bit more, I discovered that actually you can cook rice really fast and easily in a rice cooker, which is huge considering how much Saori and I love rice. Actually we had been going back and forth about whether or not to get a rice cooker or a pressure cooker- now we have both. I'm getting a better hang of the pressure cooker but the rice still came out too gooey. I'm still trying to get the timing and the heating right. The problem is our stove is electric metal plate, which is incredibly slow to warm up and incredibly slow to cool down. From the highest temperature, I can completely turn off the stove and still bring a full pot of water to boil with all the heat still coming from the "off" stove. This is a problem with the pressure cookers, which really want to have a quick drop in heat once the cooking pressure is reached inside the vessel.

Anyway, the last interesting bit about pressure cookers is that the first commercial pressure cookers were actually invented and manufactured here in Stuttgart, before the turn of the previous century, by a man named Gutbrot. We live at the end of Gutbrod street, and Saori walks it every day to work, although she calls it "yummy bread street" which is its literal translation.

On that note- the more German I learn, the more I realize that Germans have no imagination when it comes to naming places and streets. Granted, there are way too many "Monte Vista / mountain view" streets in Phoenix, but at least you have schools, for example, named "corona del sol" (crown of the sun). I work in Germany on "Ant hill." The wine growing hill is called "wine hill." Granted, the forest where I used to live was called "Crow Forest" which is kind of cool. 

Other German failures of imagination- the city recently removed a large glass bottle collection dumpster from a street corner near where I work. It had obviously been there many years. This event has apparently blown everyone's mind because every time I walk by, the pile of bottles people are leaving on the spot, helpfully piled to the side, keeps growing. Is it a sign of frustration with the city removing a convenient bottle drop? Is it laziness? Does it come from the belief that because there was a bottle drop before, it must return in at some point in the future? 

barbecued on the 4th of July

We spent the last week sweltering under a heat wave. And I do mean sweltering. High 30 degree weather, high humidity. Most buildings in Germany do not have air conditioning of any kind. Grocery stores, public transit, and Starbucks tend to be the exceptions, so we actually took a few strolls to our neighborhood Lidl just to cool off a bit.

We also threw a BBQ for the 4th of July. Saturday morning, I hit the town early to pick up a foot-soaking bucket, a big swatch of fabric with which to cover the patio, red, white, and blue candles, last runs for grilling meat, ginger ale, sparkling water, fresh cilantro, and a huge freaking watermelon.

People started showing up at 7, and it was a mix of our common friends like Apo, Ioannis, and another Greek friend, some people from our offices, and a few people from my German course at IFA. Ended up with something like 10-12 people. Most people brought some drinks but many also brought meat for grilling, or some chips, or ice cream.

It was a good party- chill, people just relaxing and chatting. Got a little warm inside but apart from that, the last straglers left around 2 and we are now so old we stayed up to wash the dishes. This, truly, is the metric of 30s.

Sunday was hot. Really hot. It was so hot that it actually broke the autobahn. The concrete and asphalt expanded so much it just buckled and ripped.

I put up a thermometer. Sunday afternoon, inside our apartment, it was 35 C which is 95 F. With this kind of heat, the best thing we can do is to close and shade all our doors and windows starting around 10AM, and then leave them closed until 7 or so, when the outside temperature drops below the indoor temperature. We kept cool with a small electric fan, laying down on the floor, and drinking lots of iced beverages and water, and avoiding speaking too much apart from offers of miee iced coffee.

Sunday night we stayed up late too, to catch the FIFA womens world cup final. 1AM kickoff. It was actually a repeat of the final 4 years ago: Japan vs US. Japan won on PKs. Saori and I watched it together in mom's living room in Astroidtukee. This game though was really good. The US were on fire and delivered a 5-2 game, 3 of those US points within the first fifteen minutes. There was also an impossible scoring shot from the middle of the field.

Cooler today, mercifully, but its going to heat up later in the week and this weekend is going to be another roaster...

four drinks

Friday, I invited some colleagues over and we sat and had a few beers on our patio, talked about the office. Afterwards, we all went to an adios house party thrown by Lys, our most recent and now departing Mexican intern. In that span of about seven hours, by my count, I had a total of three domestic beers, and between two and three shots. It turns out that four drinks is probably my new line that should not be crossed.
Saturday was not a total loss: it was a reminder of how wonderful it is being not deathly ill. I can't remember being so nausiously hungover ever. Sunday was mosly recovering from Saturday, although I made breakfast and dinner for Saori and I. Welcome to 30. (Actually, I should point out I was not the oldest one at the party: two guys there were a few years older than me.)

rain tide

The hot summer has given way to the time of rain in Stuttgart. It's been really quite cool out and very wet. I miss the heat and sunshine. Maybe after the rains, we'll get a real summer again.

I had my last A2.2 class last Thursday. I would have gotten a completion certificate but for the fact I missed 7 classes. Oh well, can't do anything with these certificates anyway. We ended class early and went to have a beer together at the bar downstairs, Amadeus. It's been a fun and diverse group of students. Indian engineers, a Japanese businessesman, an Aussie housewife, an Italian English teacher, a Spanish architect. The thing that really ties them all together is their loneliness in Germany, which ranges from light tiredness and alienation to desperate longing for social contact.

Now that I'm on to the B levels of German, I have a few choices. I can either sign up for another round of the night course, I can sign up for an intensive course, or I can study on my own and use what I learn at the office where everyone speaks German to me anyway.

The intensive course is probably too time intensive to get approval from the office. Also, it's really expensive, $800+ for two months, classes every day, but it gets you really fluent really quickly.

I've been learning a bit about the history of the German language, and it's connection to English. English, Dutch and German came from the same root language, and really didn't split apart that long ago. In the middle ages, when modern "high German" evolved from the old German, there was a phenomenon called consonant shift. Starting in Switzerland, and slowly moving north,  many of the sounds of consonants shifted.

For example, apple in English was aepple in old English, appel in Dutch, and apFel in German. Old German schip (ship) became schiFF in the high German.

T shifted to Z, and D shifted to T. It's revealing then when you look at a word like "Zeit" (time). Shift the consonants back and you get "Teid" (tide) which is another way of looking at time.

Klappen

My office asked me if I wanted to go to an 'Expert Seminar' and learn about window systems last week. I asked if I was going to be in German. Ja, naturlich. I said, Ja, gerne. It was at least going to get me out of the office on a friday afternoon. And, truth be told, I was curious what German 'lunch and learns' were like.

I went with Benni and we headed over after lunch to the Garden Hilton at Neckarpark. The Garden Hilton has been pushing a lot of PR about how wonderful Stuttgart is lately, for reasons that remain infathomable to me. The location of the hotel is great- if you are either going to the Mercedes-Benz museum, the stadium, or whatever event is going on at the Wasen, like Oktoberfest.

We found our way to the conference rooms where I ran into an ex-colleague, Luis, who apparently found work in less than three weeks. Right now is apparently a great time for architects in Stuttgart, lots of work, lots of jobs. My office isn't seeing it, for reasons that remain unclear to me. However, despite our current win/loss record the office doesn't give me the feeling of being strapped for capital.

Anyway, what made the presentation by the manufacturers interesting for me was 1) the fact that they told us how old they were first thing, as in, "my name is so and so and I am 43 years old..." 2) I learned some new german vocab for window parts, and 3) after the sales pitch, everyone knocked on the tables, which is apparently something people in the Uni here after the professor concludes a lecture.

Of course there was swag. A piece of recycled plastic they are now using as a thermal break in a window system, and a surprsingly useful compact USB power reserve charger.

After the spiel, we all walked over to the Mercedes-Benz museum and bought us all a guided tour, focusing on the architecture.

The MBM is a bit of a missed opportunity in my book. The outside is a mess, it looks like a glass building and a steel panel building got sucked into the same black hole and froze in a warped state. The glass has a wavy frit pattern on it for no reason other to suggest movement.

I can accept the rounded triangle form since it reflects also the interior spiraling circulation and the rotary engine movement (which Mercedes-Benz engineers devised). The spiral circulation, the triangular form, this is enough. Let the building stand on it. But they don't. They tart it up with fritt patterns, an overabundance and over use of different materials, lighting, themes, etc.

For me, this is somewhat symptomatic of German design. There is a rigorous and meticulous design process which produces something highly efficient, well-thought out, and well-made. But something that makes a thing warm and human is also stripped out of it, or was never a part of it to begin with. Cameras, clocks, cars.

There is a mechanicalism at the core of German-ness. There is an expression in German das klappt or das klappt nicht. Klappen is a kind of onomatopoeia, the satisfying sound of something closing correctly, like a car door or a cabinet door or really anything mechanical with a flap where metal has to meet metal in a precise way. The expression has come to mean if something, anything, works, or fits, or makes sense.

But this reductivist mechanism can be depressing and cold. Nobody really wants to live in a "machine for living in". So Germans decorate and ornament. They build refined clock movements and conceal them behind gingerbread, kitschy, deliberately rustic wooden facades in the form of cuckoo clocks. Overly adorable signage and lawn gnomes and balcony plants to hide and distract from the ruthlessly sterile utilitarian housing behind it.

In sharp contrast, the Japanese have always emphasized the human-ness of their designs. They make things that elevate what it means to be human- there is a heavy use of wood and natural materials because not only does it feel better, but there is a psychological and physical connection to nature. Laquer bowls designed to be held and viewed in the dim light of a candle, when the laquerware technology originated.

Anyway, I have once again rambled far afield here.
We were out of the museum at 5pm, an hour before I would have gotten off normally, so we sat down at nearby bar and translated the words I wrote down at the seminar, drank a beer, and waited for our colleauges to come join us.

Engagement photos

One of the main reasons we went to Japan was to take engagement and wedding photos with Saori's family. It was something that she really wanted to do, it meant a lot to her family, and I was just sad that we couldn't get her grandmother involved because of her health. 

Saori and her mom had to make reservations at the photo studio about a month before, and we cleared our schedules in Japan around the event. The night before, Saori and her mom went through cubbords pulling out carefully wrapped family kimonos to pick the kimono for the engagement photos. It was really interesting to see the  beautiful and ornate patterns, which are actually very unusual and uncommon. 

The next day, the entire family trooped in, minus Saori's sister Ayumi. Her dad Shigeru-san, her mom Yoshiko-san, and her brother Kazuma. Only her brother came in already dressed, looking really good in a very nice suit. It also helps that Kazuma has a scarecrow physique- a hair taller than me with long thin arms and legs. 

The staff at the studio seated us in the waiting lobby which was full of kimonos, hibiyas (men's traditional formal dress), poofy princessy dresses for little girls, and a bunch of different styles of suits. They handed Shigeru-san and I a slim catalog like a menu and asked us how we would like to be dressed. I picked out the most austere and traditional hibiya for the wedding photo, and the most conservative traditional european suit for the engagement photos. 

They pulled Saori and her mom out almost immediately to the dressing rooms to start getting them ready since they take the longest. This is not Olan Mills- they had very specific staff for each part. In addition to the photographer, there were assistants who dress you, who do your hair, and who put on your makeup (although none for me, and I just dragged a comb across my head). 

The men hung out in the waiting room, watching a big group of little girls prance around in thier dresses, chatted a bit, and looked at the other kimonos and hibiyas. It was a lot of just hanging around. Finally I was called to the to back and they started the process of dressing me in a hibiya. 

On my own I put on a special undergarment like a loose pair of long underwear, except with a giant scoop front, and I figured out how to put on the tabi booties that you wear with the geta sandals. My dresser came in and got to work padding me up. Traditional Japanese clothing is a lot like origami, or giftwrapping: it's not about what the gift is or how it looks as much as giving it a special packaging to highlight it's value. The material is very stiff, with lots of folds and layers, and apparently, it's better to have a big build especially in the chest. So they gave me a padded vest and shoulder pads, and then wrapped me around the midsection tightly with something like an ace bandage to hold everything in place, and tighten the stomach. 

Yoshiko-san was being prepped in the dressing room beside mine, and she occationally yelled through the curtains the translation of whatever the dressing assistant was asking me to do. I didn't recognize her at first, actually, the tranformation was so surprising since I rarely have seen Saori's mom in a lot of makeup or that kind of formal attire.

Then came a robe kind of shirt thing, and then I stepped into a very wide pair of pants which was almost more like an apron or a skirt, and then they tied another belt over the inside belt, before helping me put on the black over jacket-outer robe thing. This one, like the others in the studio, had a seal of two crossed feathers on it, which was, I guess a pretty generic "family crest" which is what is traditionally supposed to be there. (Dew was wearing the same thing I was, except his was from Yoshimi's family because it had her crest on it). The jacket was connected with a white cord and a big white poof like a bunny tail. They handed me a closed fan, and then I stepped into the sandals, and I was ready to rock and roll. Or just roll since I felt really constrained wearing the garment. I robot shuffled back to the waiting area where Shigeru-san was already waiting wearing his. He looked really good in a hibiya. 

I felt really self-conscious in mine. Looking in the mirror, I had impish and perverse thoughts about asking for a set of swords to stick in the belt, or a traditional samurai hairpeice. It was a serious thing we came to do and I wanted to look appropriate and dignified, which is a challenge when you are not accustomed to the attire. It's a bit like the difference between the mindset of wearing cowboy boots and a cowboy hat to a western theme college party as an ironic costume and wearing them seriously to a country wedding, rodeo, or funeral. 

Anyway, we were finally all called together and I finally saw Saori fully dressed and coifed. She looked exquisite. She was wearing a really elaborate all white kimono, much more elaborate and more layered then what I was wearing. The fabric and peices on her kimono were so structural and thickly folded that it seemed almost like she was wearing a really elegant space suit. 

They ushred us into one of the two studios, a fairly large room, where we spent probably the better part of an hour taking various photos in different postures, with the family, without, with different backdrops and lighting, leaves dangled in front of the camera, etc.

The photographer positioned us like manaquins, with our hands at particular places and doing particular things. I mostly just gripped the fan I had been given. A fist clutching a fan is apparently the way to do it. We looked at him, we looked at each other, the family looked at us, I looked at a particular spot on the wall. The photographer spoke some english and he told us to lean one way, to lean the other, to tilt my head down so the glasses didn't catch the glare. We stood, we sat, we kneeled, we even bowed. We started each series with serious faces, or very quiet smiles, and then he asked us to smile more, more, more, laugh! As he clicked away.

After the first round, we went to change for the second round. Shigeru-san and Yoshiko-san had to stay dressed, although Yoshiko-san sat down for awhile. She didn't say anything (in English at least) about how tight or uncomfortable her kimono was, but I noticed she said much less.

For the second series of photos, I was changed out of the hibiya (breath of air!) I put on a black suit which came with a vest, and a short black tie as wide as a hand span. Shiny black shoes which were too big. The first pants I tried on were too tight (seriously grabbing my big thighs), so to stay more formal, I swapped them for a larger pair. Looking in the mirror, I was reminded of a meji-era banker, althouh the suit felt more "natural" than the hibiya. 

Saori wore a blue and orange kimono which was the most beautiful one I have ever seen. Even for a gringo, the quality and beauty of that dress was apparent, and made all the other kimonos hanging up on the racks in the wating area look like cheap rental crap. Saori's grandmother, the one whom we had wanted to see, gave that kimono to her daughter, Saori's mother to wear when she was 20, and she wore it again for her engagement photos. So it was wonderful that Saori could wear it as well.

In the second studio, we shot a new series of photos with different backgrounds, in different arragnements and poses, some cheesier than others. One of the last ones we did, we used a bunch of paper cut out props, which were a bit much but were actually kind of funny at the end. The photographer went really quick although he did ask us if we wanted partiucular poses and I suggested a few things, too.

The studio offered a series of pacakges, but the one we ultimately went with was the "deluge" option- We get all the photos they shot, unedited, uncropped, on a USB drive. It was very expensive, but Saori's parents surprised us with an incredibly generous gift to help. The photos meant a lot to them as well. 

At the end, I am really glad we did it. Going through grandma Case's old photos, especially the really old photos stretching three or four generations back, I could not help but notice that many of them were studio portraits, carefully printed on quality card stock. They are the images they wanted to be kept, the visions of themselves they wanted to present to the future.

Pretty good salsa

Today I felt in the mood for Mexican food, so I got up and made some huevos rancheros with some fresh made salsa. The salsa was really good, so I'm writing down the recipe here:

Roughly chop:
3 fresh tomatoes
1 medium onion
1 Chipotle pepper from a can
1 fresh jalapeño or medium spicy pepper
1 large clove garlic or 2 small

Throw into a blender with 1 teaspoon ground cumin, 1 teaspoon salt. Pulse blend so that it's not a puree but still a textured and chunky sauce. Taste for salt.

Might try adding a bit of lime juice and cilantro next time, although it was perfect with the cheese quesadillas we made for dinner.