khaosworks | Not dead yet

I know, I know.

I'm not going to make any excuses. Let's just say that I've been unaccountably lazy and leave it at that. Let's just catch up and pretend I haven't disappeared for a while. The reason I'm up this late (or early) is because I spent most of the day knocked out on Nyquil^® due to a head cold I picked up.

So, what's been happening?

Grad school has been fine, so far. It's a lot more theoretical than I expected - less substantive history and more the professors throwing a lot of different writing and theory at us. But in the end it makes some sense. After all, history is in the books and in the sources - you can look it up. What you need is the ability to think, analyze and research like a historian. It's the same thing I tell the kids in bar school when I remind them that the law they'll be relearning all their lives, but what they take with them from law school is how to think like a lawyer.

Which is cold comfort when you're struggling through chunks of Marx's Capital and the essays of Max Weber and wondering what the fuck this has got to do with history. But again, it's all about perspective - Weber and Marx had their approaches to history, and the other readings we're assigned also show us the diffferent approaches historians have to the same events. It's all about the various assumptions and choices and models one can apply to the same set of empirical events (or at least those that we can hopefully verify... that's where some postmodernist theory comes in). It also provides us with a professional vocabulary from which we can have some meaningful discussion without rambling too much - "So-and-so brings a Marxist interpretation to the events of such-and-such", for example. It's all about the jargon, baby, and all the baggage that it brings along.

But the lack of substantive history also leaves me at a kind of disadvantage because compared to the other students I never had any formal education in American history. Thankfully, age and guile have left me with the tools to think on my feet and the ability to Google and use the Encylopedia Britannica extensively to provide me with much needed context. I'm also TA-ing the freshman History from 1865 survey class, so the lectures are useful as well for me. Thankfully, I don't have to lead any discussion groups and the professor doing the class has promised us TAs very specific guidelines for grading, so I don't think I'll be doing my students much of a disservice.

I'm the old guy among my bunch of first year grad students - nearly all of them in their early to mid twenties. We hang out on Friday nights, and I'm slowly getting to know them. I don't drink (or rather drink very very little), but I hang anyway, play some pool, some darts. It's fun.

Which brings me to the irony that permeates my life. I moved to the US partially because I wanted to be closer to the folks I love, but being in Athens, which is so far away from the metro Atlanta area, means that I'm still pretty much talking to them via e-mail and IRC, even on weekends. Georgia is so spread out, and I really need to learn to drive, but driving lessons are expensive here and I don't know anyone well enough for me to ask them to teach me.

However, part of that is bullshit, because

autographedcat has pointed me to a friend of his who lives close by that is willing to help. I just need to get off my ass and coordinate driving with him, because my poor car, named Rocinante (of course), is sitting there in the lot outside my apartment, idle while all this is - or rather not - going on.

Speaking of

autographedcat, he and

kitanzi have been great beyond the call of duty by coming up a couple of weekends and ferrying me down to Atlanta to relieve me before I go stir-crazy.

Some of the loneliness was also alleviated by Torcon, which was a blast and over way way too soon. You can see some of the photos here. It was great meeting up with the Canadian folks again, and it was great being in a city where I wasn't sweating all day. That's the problem with Georgia - it's Singapore weather. Note that I'm still tan here! But fall's a-comin', and it's already starting to feel bearable at noon.

So, once again, here's my apartment, a nice little studio just off campus. The photos are a little deceptive because this was when I moved in, so the clutter has built up quite a bit. The last two photos are the latest though, and the kitchen is representative of what it looks like now.

You'll note the mirrored walls and track lighting, which is so 70s it's not funny. All I need is a mirrorball and I could open up a disco. However, the walls over my bed are still a bit bare and could use some art or posters or something.

It seems that living on my own has activated all this latent gay housekeeping genes (I am also now incapable of resisting farmer's markets and housewares). Not that I'm suddenly Mister OCD - I'm still messy, but just a little more... organized. This will surely change, of course, as I get lazier.

What I've discovered though, is that I like cooking, and I'm pretty good at it. The problem is that cooking for one is a bitch, not just because you wind up eating leftovers for a couple of days, but because there's no one to show off for! I also would kill for a bigger kitchen, because there's really no room for all the crap I use. Right now I'm even storing my wok in my oven. And, I'm no good with sinks because I get water all over the place and when I cook I have to be careful or the place looks like a disaster area. Food turns out great, still, but the process is not very graceful. Ming Tsai, I'm not (I worship at the feet of the glorious Food Network, by the way).

What can I cook? Lots of wok and one-pot stuff (the secret, dear reader, is in layering the tastes). In the short weeks that I've taken up the spatula, what I've learned to do includes stir-fried vegetables with beef and/or chicken; fried rice with chicken and shrimp; sausage and shrimp jambalaya; nasi goreng with chicken and squid; tang hoon (mung bean threads) with minced pork and mushrooms; shitake fried rice; ma po tofu; pan-fried catfish with a lemon-butter sauce; and my own fettucine amatriciana. I'm consuming spring onions like nobody's business. Future recipe tries include Lion's Head meatballs and deep fried sweet and sour pork.

I've yet to brave my oven because I'm afraid of the mess I might make with it, but eventually I'll have to. Now that I've got a hold of some Asian sauces and spices - including five spice powder - I'm going to try making char siu and ngo hiong (if I can find the bean curd sheets). And I got a mix for nonya chicken curry - yes, the kind we make at home - I'm dying to try if I can get over my laziness and peel potatoes.

So that's where I am. Kind of. I'll see about getting back to bitching about the political situation again - but it seems that people are starting to cotton on to Bush's impotence, so there's less need to rabble rouse.

Come visit me. I'll cook.