Green Shoots, and I Score

There are many reasons to relish the advent of Spring in New York City. One, obviously enough, is the departure, not a moment too soon, of the bitter winter weather. Aside from that, the whole city just looks so much better, the parks come into bloom, you can put away your bulky winter clothes, you can sit outside on the pavement cafes and drink, and (most importantly when you spend most of your time on a college campus) women tend to wear a lot less in the way of clothing. Naturally, this is something I wholeheartedly endorse.

It's 71°F right now (or 20℃ in proper temperatures), and that's reason enough to be elated, but I have another very good reason to celebrate. Back in February I applied for a grant from the Japanese-American Association of New York/Honjo Foundation, and this morning learned that they will be giving me the princely sum of $5,000 to do with as I please. I don't need to explain how absolutely over the moon I am about this. For one thing, it's about $3,000 more than I had dared to hope for, even assuming I did manage to get it, and for another, that sum is equivalent to one-quarter of my annual income. It may not sound a lot on the face of it, but consider, my JET friends, how you would feel had you just learned you were going to be awarded Y900,000. The more high-flying of my friends back home in Britain (or elsewhere) may wish to do the calculations accordingly.

This is a very, very good day.

What's cooking?

In all sorts of senses. I've been blogging a bit for the JNTO, the Japanese national tourist agency, who are based in New York. They wanted JETAANY people to help out, and I thought seeing as I'm shortly to become president, I should probably do what I could. You can read the essay, if you want - it's not very long, is about Shiogama, and is mostly a rehash of photos from the Port Festival of Summer 2005. Most of these have already appeared on this blog previously, but not everyone was paying attention...

And while I'm on the subject, what the hell has happened to all of my friends' blogs? With the honorable exception of Nick, just about everyone I know seems to have given up the ghost. And of course Arunabh has a fairly good excuse in the shape of Chinese internet censorship, but still. I hope this makes you all appreciate how lucky you are to have me as your host.

Anyway, back in the physical world, I've been doing a lot of cooking recently. Kate gave me some old back issues of a wonderful magazine called Cook's Illustrated, and it has some truly wonderful recipes in it, which I've been trying out as and when. One thing I did notice was that both in there and in the cookbook she bought me for Xmas (amusingly entitled How to Cook Everything*) there're far more recipes that involve grilling (on an open flame, not just in the oven) than you'd find in your average British cookbook. Anecdotal evidence from a reliable source concerning the average American family (above) suggests that a sizeable percentage of them do actually have grills and so forth readily accessible. Not in New York City, though. I have a smoke alarm in my apartment, and Columbia's Real Estate Office frowns on students lighting fires in their apartments, anyway. What is an aspiring gourmet to do?

Surprisingly simple, actually. I bought a grill pan - an aluminium pan with raised ridges in it - and it f*cking rocks. It kicks arse. Seriously, it really is about the closest to barbequeing you can get indoors, and the food is great. It's so good, in fact, I've given up going to my local deli in favour of making my own sandwiches. For your delectation, I offer a shot of my dinner this very evening - grilled pork chops with vegetable couscous and lime-coriander dressing. Check out the grill marks. That's what I'm talking about. Carnivore heaven.

*It turns out that this isn't in fact strictly true. There's no recipe for paella.

The Luck of the Irish

St Patrick's Day saw an amazing win for the Irish cricket team against Pakistan, one of the biggest upsets in World Cup history. I'd be inclined to dwell more on the stunning nature of their win and laugh at Pakistan were it not for the fact that the defeat, which spelt Pakistan's elimination from the tournament, was followed the day after by the death of the Pakistan coach, former English test player Bob Woolmer, from what looks like a suspected heart attack. I'd harbored a sneaking hope that Woolmer might coach England after Duncan Fletcher's reign was over, but it looks like it was not to be. A sad day.

The win itself couldn't really have been better timed, although as I mentioned earlier I'm fairly certain it meant absolutely nothing to most of the participants in the St Patrick's Day parade. I went over to 5th Avenue to meet Kate and one of her friends who was in town visiting, and we stood behind the barriers and watched the various groups go by. I was somewhat surprised by how few people there were; perhaps the cold weather (we had 4 inches of snow the previous day) might have had something to do with it. It all seemed very well organised, though, featuring groups from as far away as Orange County, CA, and New Hampshire (if you look at the badges on the arms of the marching band below, you can see the NH).

It wasn't quite all fun and games, though, at least as far as I was concerned. I had kind of half-expected it, but I was somewhat dismayed to see a group (of about five or six people, admittedly) marching with the banner "Irish Republican Army Veterans". I assume they chose that because "Retired Murderers and Terrorists" doesn't quite have the same ring to it. Later, once they'd gone past, the dickhead standing in front of me in a green Oirish beret yelled out "IRA, all the way!". I was tempted to add my own shout of "Go Al Qaeda!", but there's a time and a place for everything...

Obviously, there's always one fuckwit in every crowd, but it's disappointing and, as an Englishman, somewhat uncomfortable to hear that kind of thing. I had hoped for a degree of circumspection given New York's recent history with acts of terrorism, but apparently not. Oh well. It played on my mind for a while, until I recalled that the IRA is dead and buried now, largely by their own actions. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, mate.

Moving on, we wandered around Times Square for a little while. Having Kate on my arm we naturally wandered into a sweet store, that being the M&M shop just off 42nd Street. They don't do things by halves - as you can see, they have 30-ft high tubes of the stuff available for the public to pour into bags. A bargain? Well, no, not exactly. It's $5 per half-pound, which makes it more expensive than salmon, at least by my reckoning. Just as well I don't have a sweet tooth, then.

And in other news, I got the certificate for my MA, which as I wrote a little while back has now been formally awarded, as a sort of stepping stone on the way to the doctorate. I had a little debate with Kate as to whether I should frame it or not...my family kind of has a tradition(?) of not displaying their academic qualifications (though that might be because there'd be no room for anything else on the wall if we did). I'm still in two minds, at least for the moment. The actual ceremony takes place in May, so I'll make sure to post some pics of me looking daft in a light blue gown and mortar-board (for such are Columbia's colours).

Apart from going home in the summer to get another MA, I now also have a rather more pressing reason to go back; I need to renew my visa. When admitted to the US, I was given a 2-year visa as an MA student, and it runs out in May. Which isn't actually a problem - it's perfectly OK for me to be here with an expired visa so long as all my other documentation is in order - but if I want to get back in again once I leave for any reason, I'll need another one. So this means a repeat, most likely, of the whole rigmarole I went through in June of 2005, recorded for posterity on this very blog. All just a little bit of history repeating itself...

Spring Unsprung

Or perhaps not. I'm writing this in the middle of a winter storm that's been going on for a good 15 hours now, so, despite some very clement weather on Wednesday, it may have been a little premature to declare the advent of Spring. Either way, it hasn't affected me much...I've been sitting in the library reading for the most part. Kate and I got together to make margaritas on Tuesday night, as sort of a token nod to the whole 'Spring Break, woohoo!' kind of thing. Apart from that, though, it's been very low-key.



Just for reference, I've included a couple of pictorial examples of the sort of thing I didn't get up to.



Anyway. The storm will not, I'm sure, have much effect on the St Patrick's Day parade coming up tomorrow. Given that this is New York, I'm fairly certain that Ireland's valiant efforts in the World Cup will pass almost totally without notice, which seems something of a shame, but there you are.

About the wildest thing I did was to go down to Bed, Bath and Beyond in order to buy a shoe rack. I think I've officially hit middle age.

Spring is sprung

It's Spring Break, which means I get a week or so without classes. Unfortunately, as I've been tasked to provide a dissertation proposal by the end of the semester, this doesn't really mean that I get much of a break - I still have to be in the library for much of the day. But hell, the weather's warming up, the snow has thawed, and summer is on its way. I'm in a pretty good mood right now.

That might have something to do with not having done any work for the last few days. I decided to goof off a bit and spend some time with Kate. She made good on a long-standing (actually, dating from my birthday last August) promise to take me to see Spamalot, so up we dressed for a night at the theatre.

It's not Tim Curry and David Hyde Pierce - they're long gone - but it's still very, very funny. In large part it's a stage version of the Holy Grail (which, geek that I am, I know almost verbatim), but it does have some very welcome new twists. And some contemporary stuff, too - apparently the Tall Knight of the Knights of Ni is, in fact, the father of Anna Nicole's baby. Makes as much sense as the rest of it, really. Oh, and while we're on the subject, if you really want to geek out...try this for a laugh.

We went to see The Last King of Scotland the following night, which I thought was rather well done. Forest Whitaker's performance was quite excellent (can see why he got the Oscar), though some of the more gruesome scenes apparently made Kate somewhat nauseous. Or it could just have been the result of sitting next to me for two hours - I have that effect on women sometimes.

¡Viva la Revolución!

I am President!

Of JETAANY, admittedly, but President nonetheless.



The fact that I was elected unopposed is, of course, not in any way an indication that no-one else wanted the job, but rather that the sheer awesomeness and force of my personality scared all challengers away. I heard that Fusco might be running - he was nominated - but for whatever reason, he missed the deadline to confirm his candidacy.

Anyway, I am therefore now the President of JETAANY, a 501 (c) 3 NPO. What does this actually mean? Not a whole lot, really - it means I have to show up at meetings and events, talk to the Consulate more than before, and start being a lot more proactive in making things happen. In a sense, it's kind of like being a part-time CIR (actually, that's kind of a tautology) in that I have to make speeches, go and talk to various worthies, organise events, and so on and so on. It should be a lot of fun, actually - I am now demanding that everyone call me El Presidente, largely because I like the sound of it. I may switch to The Dear Leader later on in my term; I haven't made up my mind exactly how despotic I'm going to be.

Revolution in the air in other areas, too. Kate's got a new job, believe it or not at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum I visited late last year. It's just about the perfect job for her, really - she wanted to get back into the museum business, and given that she did her MA in American History, it's difficult to think of a job she could have that would have used her skills and experience any better. Naturally, she's delighted, and I'm thrilled for her.

Everything else has been much the same as it ever is. I've been occupied with writing summer grant proposals, partly to keep myself afloat this summer, and partly because I'll lose my funding if I don't (it's a technical thing - we're required to make "good faith" attempts to secure as much outside funding as possible so as to alleviate the financial burden on the department).

We had another snowfall last week, but the weather's much warmer this week and I think spring is on the way. Of course, that brings Spring Break, too - only a week away now. Woohoo!