Sensorium - special blog edition

We are here for one reason only, to awaken the senses as they've never been awakened before.

I'm at the Sensorium DC dinner, in a newly erected geodesic dome in Southeast DC.  It's a pop-up dining experience, a twelve-course meal accompanied by a wacky stage routine - not dinner theater, not mimes, but something in between.  Kind of strange and inexplicable and European - a not-quite-as-contortiony Cirque du Soleil.

Sensorium comes from Bryon Brown, who I'd surely never have heard of had he not been married to a friend and colleague of mine.  His previous dinners were titled Artisa, one of the muses.  Tonight, in this weird dome with strange actors in odd hats, they tell me that Artisa is in my fork.

We start with the Amuse bouche course: kir royal grape with magic crystals from outer space. We are being instructed how to eat it. There are seven steps. Yummy flavor... explosion.  Yeah, it's pop rocks.  People have been talking about this in all the press accounts, so I don't feel too bad doing the spoiler here.

Kir Royal Grape with "Magic Dust from Outer Space."

Salmon tartare is course two. Small dice, with dill sprigs on top.  The wine is something very light and lemony, and it's going with this course and a couple more, I think.

Then: Corzetti pasta with pistachio brittle is on the way.

Corzetti pasta turns out to be a disk of pasta, and it's served underneath crumbles of sweet pistachio brittle. It's very al dente, and has a pattern stamped in it. It looks like a wet cookie.

Then: Cold beet gazpacho with iced goat cheese. Nice.  Beet anything is so pretty.

Red wine makes an appearance now - an Argentine Malbec called Cava Negra.  Absolutely delicious - the best of the wines.  There's a potato gratin with asparagus, cherry tomato, and balsamic. And a song about food chemistry!  This place never ceases to amaze.

Next up was an oyster thing on a salt bed - which I couldn't eat:

But Sensorium had checked with each of us about food allergies, so I was served this little tomato:

Fried eggplant with honey and thyme, served with a Syrah.  Light and delicious, and the little sprigs of thyme looked like they had been hand-selected for their perfection.

Next course: Chicken roulades with chestnuts and spaghetti squash.  Actually, I don't remember when this one came out - I just have a photo of it so I know I ate it.  The courses start to get muddled up in my head now, because of the great wines.

This was really nice - but all around the table I heard people saying "I could eat an entire chicken breast like this."  The small courses are adorable, but I was dining with three hungry men.

Next there was an oxtail something on a crispy ricotta something else - this and the eggplant got top nods from our table. 

We got magic tricks while we waited on one course:

Tony reaching for the three of clubs.  Maybe the whole deck was threes of clubs?

This pork belly one was great, and beautifully presented.  Mine came with a solid 5cm by 5cm cube of pork fat, which was more pork fat than I've eaten in the last ten years.  I just had a nibble and then abandoned the rest.

The best part was the green onion.  Or maybe the wee potato. 

Some wacky contraption was wheeled around to each table, looking like something from a mad scientist's lab.  It deep froze the palate cleanser, which was served to us on toothpicks.  Very entertaining.

The dessert course was fantastic - a blonde cake with fruit, sounds simple, but it was so dense and vanilla-rich, it made the night for me.  I haven't enjoyed a dessert so much in I don't know how long.

Then we were given this weird plate with just a pill in it:

When you reach for the pill, it's not there - some sort of weird imagey mirror thing projects the picture of this pill up on the top of this plate, when in reality it's down inside.  Some sort of tongue prepper, it makes tangy things sweet.  We got a taste of key limes after that perfectly illustrated how it worked.

It was truly a bizarre night, very tasty.  Combining the experience and the food and the very good wines, it keeps you interested and charmed.  I have to throw in two recommendations: The nicer-than-average portable restrooms ran out of water, which was a drag for all concerned.  And they REALLY need to have something there for non-drinkers.  There was a non-drinker in our party and he got water all night (while the rest of us got "spring sangria" at the entry and wine all evening.)  Even just a nice juice or sparkling water or something would have done the job.

Filmfest DC!

Waiting for the bus is disconcertingly normal after being transported to Buenos Aires this evening. I'm outside the Avalon theater in Washington, DC, but just exiting the theater means I was just "somewhere else."  A good movie can steal you from time and place and fully implant you in another. This one was called "Hostage of Illusions" and I've just lived through the main characters' torrid affair, in which an aging writer finds paradisiacal youth outside his marriage.

Hostage of Illusions

Then he finds out his young lover has her own secrets.  The filmmaker insinuates that perhaps the lover is one of the children taken from the desparecidos (disappeared) - those lost to the dictatorship - and placed in loyal families' households.  Eerie, troubling, beautiful, and human. 

Loose Cannons

The film is part of Filmfest DC, one of six I've seen so far.  The first night, I went to Italy to hang out with a traditional family that owns a pasta factory, in a movie called "Loose Cannons." Well, they're sort of traditional - I can't spoil the twist but the family really entertains.  There's a grandma who has lived her share of life - she's made some compromises but lived to the fullest anyway - and a nutty auntie who's rebelling against the old maid label.  The family has to come to terms with the contemporary world in one swell foop, and it's not easy - when it starts, the patriarch has an almost immediate heart attack.  But they find a way to move forward.  I guess that's what we all do.

Lope

Next we leap into the end of the 16th century in Madrid - for "Lope" which tells a fictionalized version of the writing heyday of Lope de Vega.  The city has that pre-plumbing squalor down just right, but there's a city view in one shot that makes me wonder - how did they excise out all the modern skyscrapers from the skyline?  It's beautiful.  The lead male actor has a certain spunkiness that is endearing as he tries to get his plays read by the mercantile controllers of the theater "industry" of the time.  The female lead is lovely and devoted to him, though from a modern perspective I'd have to ask why - as she has plenty of knowledge of his amorous misdeeds.  Anyway, it's a fun romp, sort of "good old filmmaking" with a logical plot line and tried and true denouement. 

The Man from Nowhere

Sunday I saw one of DC Filmfest's featured South Korean films, The Man from Nowhere.  It is captivating, with very strong performances.  It starts with a double-cross and takes off from a point where no one trusts anyone, including a little girl.  Very intense.  As the tricks and deceptions unravel, the filmmakers premiere some really clever writing and surprises; I did feel, though, that some of the clichés of action flicks kicked into gear later in the script.  Nevertheless, it kept me riveted, and the finale is spectacular - bloody, tense, beautifully choreographed.  I gave it a lot of stars, and not only because the lead character has the most attractive torso I've ever seen.  Which he does.

Then there was "Octubre" (October) from Peru.  A taciturn loan shark - I think he has Aspergers, actually - has his life disrupted when a baby is left on his doorstep.  It's probably his, from one of the prostitutes he frequents.  The way he acts is like uber-man - all the worst stereotypes about men not being able to communicate, and not having or sharing feelings - it's 10X worse.

Octubre

There's a side story about an elderly guy who is saving his pension to escape from Lima, and he "rescues" his comatose elderly girlfriend from a state hospital.  He just sort of rolls her around town.  "I'm going to all this trouble because she's my girlfriend," he answers when someone finally asks.

Today I volunteered for the Cinema for Seniors event, back at the Avalon.  A couple hundred or more elderly people came from centers all over the city.  I did almost nothing, except hold my umbrella over some of them when it started sprinkling out (and some of them move kind of slow.)  But I watched the movie with them - a documentary on the history of gospel music called "Rejoice and Shout." You won't find a movie that's better pitched for that crowd if you try for the rest of your life.  Everyone was enraptured, even when they were making their way to the bathroom.  The film was lively, historically bound, beautifully filmed, moving. 

More soon!  Five movies left on my roster, plus maybe closing night?  Haven't decided yet... we'll see!

Steamed up in Tbilisi, Georgia

The stonework tops of the Persian Baths, Tbilisi

Persian Baths.  What does that sound like to you?  I thought of mosaic tiles and cave-like walls, steam floating between me and several dozen other silent bathers, the drip of water from the ceiling to the tile...  It sounded exotic and heavenly to me.

One of the archways inside

I descended into the waiting room to enjoy a halting conversation with the attendant at an indistinct midpoint between English, Georgian, Russian and Sign Language.  After reassuring myself that I knew how much it all cost, I was sent to a space that looked like someone’s living room, complete with a brown leather sofa and chairs, coffee table, ashtray, and a box of unexplained Q-tips.  The attendant left me a packet of Head and Shoulders shampoo, spoke a few unintelligible things while gesturing toward the clock, the door, and somewhere off in the middle distance.  O---kayyyyy.

At eye level, the room looked normal enough, but it’s underground.  The rolling brick and stone bubbles I saw from the street are the rounded roofs of these little rooms.  When you look up, the dome peaks at the top with a little stained-glass window “nipple”:

– not unlike the tip of the Khinkali dumplings (eaten not half an hour ago.)

  

 

It’s not like I’ve never been in a spa before.  I knew enough to get naked.  What would happen after that was mildly mysterious, but not frightening – more like intriguing.  Off the back of the living room a clangy metal door led me to the water room, with a marble slab and a pool of steam.  The water ran lazily over the sides of the rectangular pool, slowly but constantly,  a constant inflow of natural spring water.  Hot sulphur smell was part of the ambience, but not overwhelming.

DON’T look at the water, I kept telling myself as I lowered myself in, slowly, slowly, getting used to the heat.  Yeah, there are some floaties.  I don't... know... what... they... were.  This might gross me out in the U.S., but damn, seventy quadrillion Georgians throughout history can’t be wrong.  Not to mention the Persians, Turks, Russians, and everyone else who ever took advantage of steaming mineraly water coming out of the ground.  Just rest, breathe and rest.

I came out ten or fifteen minutes later, showered off a bit, and cooled off in what I’d named the Sofa Room.  Nana knocked for Phase II of the Persian bath – massage and skin scrubbing.  She took me back in the water room and laid me on the marble slab, giggling at my attempts to speak Russian.  She filled a bland little kitchen bucket with the steaming spring water and poured, poured, poured it over me.  Then she got out a scratchy mitt and scrubbed the crap out of me.  I worried about my skin – it turns REALLY red with something like this, and I didn’t want her to worry.  Then I realized – me and my white, indoor, sensitive skin – that was probably normal here!  All those Slavs and the like?  They probably all turn the color of beets just from brushing up against their clothes.  I belong!

Next it was soap.  Nana took what looked like an old, narrow pillow case and put some kind of soap in it – from the smell, I would swear it was Joy.  Anyway, she then blows into the pillow case, knots the top, and shakes and squeezes it till it makes an ungodly amount of foam.  She scrubs me down again with that, repeating the whole pillowcase-shaky-foam business a few times.  I don’t quite get it, but it’s making me laugh. No pictures - couldn't get the camera wet, sorry.

Then, oh, massage.  Brusquer and shorter than the lay-on-a-cushy-table-in-Vail-while-all-your-minute-aches-are-surveyed-by-someone-with-more-degrees-than-you massages I’m accustomed to (and lots cheaper), it still has the effect of loosening me up and cracking my back.  Wonderful.  Finally, with a resounding pair of thwacks on my shoulders, she states, “Finish.”  Then she pours another ocean of that hot, hot water on me, while I’m laying down, after standing me up, and as I try to walk toward the shower – throwing the bucketfuls at me from across the water room. 

In the guidebook Ali and Shane loaned me, there’s an essay about this place from a couple centuries ago, stating that, come what may, pay for the tea to end your bath.  “Sell your white stockings if you must, but have your tea!” it states, fervently.  So I did.  (Have my tea, that is.  I have no white stockings.)  A perfectly Russian little teapot and teacup, at least 600 cubes of sugar (you know, just in case), slices of bitter orange, and me.  I sat there a good twenty minutes before the attendant came back to see why I hadn’t left yet.  “One hour?” she asked, pleasant but bothered.  I got my ducks back in a row and went out into the cold night.

Entrance to the Persian Baths, at night

All I do is Eat (Georgia, continued)

What a lovely day.  I spent the first several hours of it just reading a novel, sitting on the front patio of the hotel.  It felt so indulgent and extravagant.  At about 3:00 I finished my book, changed into sneakers and a t-shirt, and hiked up the mountain behind the hotel.  At the top of the mountain is an asymmetrical tower - the Georgian Eiffel:

A spaghetti bowl of paths weave up and across the mountain; lots of individuals, families and couples were traipsing up or down as I climbed.  It took less than an hour - maybe I should call it a hill instead of a mountain? - but it was lovely to see the city from so high up.

 
I felt rejuvenated after the hike and walked back to the old city in Tbilisi for more sight seeing.  Lucky I did!  Because the first time I went to the old city, yesterday, apparently I never made it!  I was off by a few blocks.  So this time, today, I went a little farther... lost myself a bit more convincingly... and found amazing sights.  Each one made me think of a friend or family member, like the Barselona Totalizator sign (which made me think of Kyna, when we watched the Barcelona game together...) or the Absinthe Bar sign, which made me think of Shane and meeting an absinthe drinker on H St NW.  Or the Simpsons donut kiosk sign, which of course made me think of (my niece) Lauren and (my brother) Kyle, who love the Simpsons like I love M*A*S*H:

And everything about the city reminds me of Ali, all the things he told me about this place.  How beautiful it is, how cultured, how much they're into food and wine. 

I studied Russian so avidly as a kid.  It was like I wanted to BE Russian, not to say Soviet.  Now only a fragment of the language remains.  But I unearthed some of it in Dom Vina, a wine store I happened upon.  The elderly shopowner drew me in with a warm greeting, and we spoke for twenty minutes or so.  He didn't speak any English nor I any Georgian, so whatever was communicated, came through in Russian.  He was a mechanical engineer, many patents to his name, and multiple science awards to his credit - they were all hung along the back of the shop.  He hadn't worked in Irkutsk (home of the Soviet scientocracy) but he was impressed that I'd been there.

Alexander Kurdadze is his name - if anyone googles him, let me know what you find out.  There were even a couple of books about him in the shop.  Okay, so that's a little vain, but hey - if wine sales taper off, maybe he could get one or two book sales to keep him going.  Anyway, he was cool, and gave me an excellent glass of dry red saperavi wine.  I asked to buy the bottle, and it was only about $4.  Of course it came in a one-liter plastic bottle with a screw top, but whatever.  It tastes pretty good!

This is me at dinner later that night.  I'm on a balcony and it's getting pretty chilly - but the restaurant lays blankets over every chair, so you can sit out comfortably and watch people.  I had the best salad EVER - lots of spicy things over arugula - and Georgian red wine, plus the pretty cappuccino you can see in the pic.  What a lovely night.  The taxi ride back to my hotel was cheaper even than the bottle of wine.  Gotta love Georgia...

"Your colleagues are waiting for you."

"Your colleagues are waiting for you."

That was the first thing I heard this morning - a nice, Slavic voice telling me to wake up and get downstairs to the meeting.  The new job has begun.  I'm in Tbilisi, Georgia, meeting the team of people here that are working to improve government.  My job is to help them track their progress.  So I got myself together, bustled downstairs, and started to learn what this project is all about.

This blog is three weeks late, which should come as no surprise to anyone who saw me during the last three weeks.  I may have kept my wits about me, I may have been smiling, but it was utter madness up in here.  I was leaving my old job, receiving daily e-mails from the new one, planning to visit my mom for her 75th birthday, balancing that visit between parents and siblings, finishing (or trying to finish) a report for the old job before leaving, and then, of course, starting the new one by flying to the other side of the world. The flight was the easy part.

It's not doing so much that is hard - it's doing it all well.  "Underpromise, and overdeliver" - that's great advice and very hard to make happen.  One does silly things in an attempt to do the impossible: for example, I worked while on vacation, and took "sanity breaks" while at work.  Maybe things will smooth out now.

Lots of people asked me, "So you're taking a job that doesn't require so much travel?"  Why would I do that? I wanted to ask in return.  The travel is part of my professional fun.  Travel is hard, of course, and some people don't like it.  But I do - I like airports, I like planes, I like the new faces at the other end, not to mention the new streets and buildings and languages and food. 

This was the look on my brother's face when I told him I like airports:

He and his family and I went skiing while we were back in Colorado for Mom's birthday.  Kyle's daughter, my superniece Lauren, is in the following photos, along with my brother and me.

Back at Mom's house for her birthday party, our sister Kyna insisted on a few accoutrements for the festivities:

Just because my mom looks like Gene Shalit with this fake moustache doesn't mean we shouldn't leave it on her.

More soon!

Work-life balance, and a new job

This is Raya!  Only the cutest cat in the WORLD.  She keeps me laughing...

Most of the people I know work too much.  The workweek is far more than 40 hours – more than 50, probably more like 60.  It’s not like we’re attorneys who are making well into six figures our first year out of law school, either.  But it’s not just dedication.  It’s expected. 

Today I’m waiting on a file to be sent to me for review.  It's not impossible - 40 pages of text to read and comment on.  But it’s Saturday, and I have plans tonight.  I'd really rather not have work impinging on my time to read, watch Glee episodes, or try on outfits for the concert.  But that’s how it goes at our office – everything takes longer than planned and I’ve got to play my part for the team.  (Lord knows, the team has all been there till late at night, most every night, for at least a couple of weeks.)  So they’re not asking more of me than they're giving.

I also love what I do.  The work is interesting, and it has taken me all over the world.  Don’t I owe this kind of devotion?  I am compensated: I get a paycheck, and amazing travel that I’d never get to do otherwise.  I’m involved with people and projects on the other side of the world – isn’t that enough for me?

But then again, what about that work-life balance thing?  I think I owe that to myself.  I’m not a kid anymore – I’m a grownup, coursing through my life as if it’ll last forever, and there will always be time for things like… writing a novel, or meeting someone special.  That’s not necessarily true.  I’m not guaranteed any of that, unless I guarantee it to myself.  Unless I take the time, set the boundaries, make those my priorities instead of making money for The Man.

In the middle of the coming month, I’m starting a new job.  Yesterday I was on the phone with my new boss and we were talking about all the cool projects I could get involved with when I start.  She stopped for a moment, and in all seriousness, said, “We’re going to have to watch you.”  I was shocked.  What did she mean?  “You could easily get yourself in over your head.  There’s so much interesting work going on here – we’re going to have to develop a signal for when we’re in meetings, like I pull on my ear and you know you have to say “No” to what they’re asking of you.”

This is the person who’s hiring me, who needs someone to take work off her plate.  But she doesn’t want me to do all I can do – she wants me to stay sane and keep a lid on the number of tasks I take on, the number of hours I work.  Refreshing, but a bit weird too.  

And here's a weird thought: have you ever had some idle time and wondered, “What do I do now?”  I think it’s almost easier to be overburdened.  With all that noise going on around us, we can’t hear the quiet hiss of our lives zooming by. 

So maybe this new job is a chance for me to start fresh, not take on too much, not get carried away with the excitement of new work and new travel.  Even the way I’m starting is already nuts: I end the old job one day, starting the other the next, and that evening flying to Georgia.  (The one on the other side of the world, not the peachy one in my time zone.)  Not a good sign.  If I can keep this in front of my mind, though, I don’t have to take on every piece of work that’s thrown at me – I’ll have to let some drop.

DC vs. Anywhere Else

Back in Washington.  Now that I’m a blogger, I’m obviously required and trained to notice the differences between life on the road for work, and life at home.  Here are some contrasts:

In DC: I go online, pay some bills, read the newspaper, send some e-mail - usually all at the same time or with nothing but a few clicks and tappity tap in between.  Bam! Everything's taken care of.

On the road: Theoretically I can do this, but it’s infinitely less gratifying to check the news websites, or send off a few e-mails, when each page load takes three or four minutes.  On a good day.  And the connections are rarely secure: paying bills or buying books on Amazon would not be wise.

In DC: I wear a miniskirt.  No one notices, or if they do, they never mention it.

On the road (think Liberia, Sudan, Zambia): If I wear a miniskirt, I look lascivious or just plain slutty, and any notice I get is more than a little unnerving. 

In DC: I play with my cat, cross the street to pet dogs that are being walked, and go to giant box stores where people bring their animals to join in American consumer activity.

On the road: I’ve seen some animals on my travels that would surely pass on a strain of disease untouchable by modern medicine.  Scratching, mangy, logy.  Frothy, wheezing, hobbled.  Stinking, earless, chewed.  Kicked, avoided, scary.  If one of them tried to drag me out of a burning building I’d scream “ewwwww!” and crawl back into the flames.

In DC: I go to the grocery store, buy stuff to eat, take it home and cook it.

On the road: Most everything is stacked in unfamiliar rows under quivering fluorescent lights.  Labels are often in Arabic.  (“Coke adds life” in Arabic script is a pretty weird thing to see.)  Some stuff looks really appealing – like candies and cookies – but has a distinct taste of bacon fat upon ingestion.  I think it’s the lard.  The alternative is to splurge on imported brands – like $4 for a can of recognizable soup.  So I buy the stuff I don’t recognize, make faces while I eat it, and usually come home a couple of pounds lighter.

In DC: I take clean, quiet, well-lit, rather pricey public transportation everywhere.  My fellow riders sneer at someone who has their headphones turned up too loud.  When I need to drag home a big bag of cat food, there are cars located all around the city that I can unlock with a keycard at my convenience.

On the road: Seems like every place has its variation on the minibus, available for a few cents, that’ll take you on long, stutter-stop journeys across a city’s main drags.  In Liberia they are tiny taxis that fill up with seven, eight, nine friendly commuters; in Mexico City, a succession of jaunty green buses that are inordinately tall, given the average height there.  Nairobi has matatus that careen and weave with exceeding speed and recklessness while standees swing on the straps like so many weary Gumbies.  In Southern Sudan, a $50 taxi ride will take you on cratered and rutted side streets, filled with lake-like puddles, to avoid the ungodly congestion, almost all of them UNDP land cruisers.

In DC: I get up, go for a run, take a shower, get dressed, pack my lunch, go to work, and come home.  I look pretty much the same as when I left.  I have time and energy at night for something else – TV, dinner out with friends, a show at a club.

On the road: There are no patterns to what I do on the road.  But at the end of every day, I’m invariably sweaty and covered with dust.  Reports and papers stick haphazardly out of purse or briefcase, and if they're not marked "URGENT" in red ink it's only because I didn't have time to write it.  I probably forgot to eat lunch.  I take something to the room or eat in the cafeteria at the hotel, laptop open, finalizing refining fixing planning prepping.  I collapse on the bed way too late, and set my phone to “screech” for 6 a.m.

Life's just not easy on the road.  It's not predictable.  I have moments where I'm confused, or lost, or don't know what's coming next.  Usually all three. 

So why is it I can barely wait for the next trip?  (Now accepting psychological comments at this address.)