Jalan-jalan cari makan ...

... extreme polar edition.



I don't eat molluscs; but I suppose seal and whale meat day in and day out would get old during the long winter months. The  people of Kangiqsujuaq apparently laughs in the face of death racing against time to collect mussels for a change in their seasonal diet.

Thirty minutes is all they have to hack through the sea ice, grab the delicious mussels and get out. They risk drowning in the frigid Arctic water as the ocean rushes back with the rising tide or being crushed by the shifting polar sea ice.

Can you imagine dying just because you are beyond sick of what is available on the dining table? Malaysians pride our country as a some kind of food Mecca. No matter what your palate favour, you can find it here; cordon blu haute cuisine, weird meats and sago worms, whatever you want, really.

The reality of what was shown in the video above is something that many Malaysians cannot envision, except perhaps those who live in the rural areas or experience economic hardships. This disconnection about where food comes from is probably a contributing reason as to why Malaysians waste food. In the face of the many people who go without, are malnourished or have only one meal a day, do we think about food beyond what we want to eat?

Do we also think about the way the food we eat are sourced? We haggle over the price of fish and seafood, blithely ignoring the warnings of the devastation of over-fishing and the hardships faced by the fishermen to bring their catch to land. We think we are animal lovers, and yet we close a blind eye to inhumane farming practices and abuse of antibiotics and hormones on livestock that we consume. We take for granted the vegetables and fruits we enjoy year around that are grown under unsustainable conditions that also poison our water supply.

For all the ranting above, I am cynically aware of my own apathy about where my food comes from. Unless you are an activist type, reading or even knowing about the stuff outlined above remains nothing more than an academic exercise. I read Fast Food Nation and it still didn't stop me from eating at Mickey D (I reason that the supplier for the Mickey D here are either local or from developing countries that need the economic growth).

That said, I do think that we should be more grateful with and for everything that crosses our lips to enter our gullet. Honour the food that nourishes you; respect the hard work that got it on your plate (your own, the food producer and procurer and the person who cooked it for you) and enjoy it. Don't take it for granted.

Because you could be an Inuit who died because you are tired of eating seal and wanted to have some mussels instead.

The weekend is here!

I just read a fanfic inspired by this ad. Arthur, OMG.

*dreamy eyes*

OMG this is just nuts.

 


 Have a good weekend, y'all!

Secrets of a stay at home mommy

The Expats by Chris Pavone
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

*edited because I am wide awake and could assemble my thoughts better.

I had stopped reading spy thrillers or any kind of thrillers in my late teens. I find them formulaic and depressing, though I still enjoy over-the-top, psycho-sociopath Bond as written by Ian Fleming and the crazy adventures in Alistair Maclean's novels. The latter I treat with respect; some of his books made me cry crazy buckets (say, Guns of Navarone or HMS Ulysses).

When I read the review of this book in The Sunday Star, I was intrigued. A former spy female protagonist in a thriller? Bring it to mama, sugar.

Sadly, as a reader who favours characters over plots, I don't find Mr Pavone's characterisation of Kate convincing. I am willing to forgive clunky story telling if I love the characters (I'm looking at you, Laurell K Hamilton). Somehow, I don't think a female former spy would let matters of trust and privacy to stop her from finding things out about her husband when she sniffed something suspicious about his new job.

Also, as the story was near totally from her POV, I find that Kate I is ... boring. I get that she has to make a huge transition from being a CIA analyst to being an expatriate hausfrau, but her desperation at the banality of her life is so ... meh. Perhaps she's not a larger-than-life character as I am used to reading in other genres, but seriously, it's hard to want to root for her. Or her husband. Or the antagonist characters. They're all so meh. You expect some unexpected jalapenos somewhere when you read about spies (they have licence to kill!) but this is like consuming a huge bowl of oatmeal pudding. Bland and never ending.

The timeline jumps did not help matters. It's a bit disorienting because the flashes are disjointed; what does it have to do with what's currently going on? Perhaps if I re-read the book I can pick up the pattern of the chronological leaps, but I really cannot be bothered to re-read this.

However, I will admit that Mr Pavone has a gift for describing scenes that really makes you feel like you're a part of the scenery, even smell the coffee served at the corner boulangerie. For instance:

"She can see past the woman to the bright, leafy courtyard at the other end of the dark breeezeway whose walls are filled with mailboxes and electrical junctions and rubbish bins and loose wires and chained-up bicycles. Her own building has a similar passage; there are thousands of them in Paris. All competing for the best-place-to-kill-someone award."

It was an interesting foray into the genre, but I don't think I'll be picking up another sample anytime soon.

Male protagonist: 1/5 stars
Female protagonist: 2/5 stars
Storyline: 3/5 stars
Pacing: 2/5 stars
Fun Factor: 2/5 stars
Repeat Reading Factor: 1/5 stars

View all my reviews

Dangerous my foot

Dusk with a Dangerous Duke by Alexandra Hawkins
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

... spoilt brat is more like it.

I usually do the page 99 test when trying out a new author but this time around, I only did the flip the last few pages and thought that this book had promise. I mean, beaning of a baddie with a bedwarmer to rescue the hero? Sounds like game on, right?

Wrong.

You have a group of guys who call themselves Lords of Vice. You hope to have them be snarky and dissipated. What you get is a bunch of guys who get together and chitchat like Valley girls. WTF?

Urgh.

The heroine. I had so much hopes for someone who rescued the hero with a bedwarmer. But somehow she seems schizophrenic to me; alternating from innocent miss who loves her neglectful fiancee to I-will-marry-anyone-to-foil-my-uncle virago. I find it hard to reconcile someone who wants to preserve her inheritance at all cost by getting married before turning 21 would snub a ready-and-able fiancee in search of a mythical love match in a few week's time. It's not ... logical. Just make up your mind: do you want to preserve your inheritance or marry for love? Because the scenario simply paints that you can have one but not the other.

How to deal with such annoyance? I skipped pages till the end because dammit I paid good money to rent this book and Ima finish it.


Male protagonist: 1/5 stars
Female protagonist: 1/5 stars
Storyline: 2/5 stars
Pacing: 1/5 stars
Fun Factor: 1/5 stars
Repeat Reading Factor: 0/5 stars

View all my reviews

Anthematic: Gone Away

My Brightest Diamond's Gone Away + Sherry Thomas book (any) = cry fest.

When you read, do you have a soundtrack that plays through your head? I do, especially if the story is truly engrossing and compelling.

This is why I love authors like Carrie Vaughn and Kim Harrison; they share the soundtrack to which they write the book du jour.

Fabulous way to discover new music, yo.

Connect ... Disconnect ... Hang Up ...

Those who remember having used this type of telephone

Stolen from http://mylusciouslife.com/retro-vintage-antique-phone-pictures/

would understand the importance of patience when calling someone. After all, it is often located in a stationary position (unlike mobile phones that you can take with you all over creation including the bathroom, ew ...) and if the person we call did not pick up, we don't go all paranoid android that the person we are contacting is trying to avoid us.

We understand that the person we call is probably:

1) Not at home
2) In the shower
3) Running out of the loo but was too late to pick up the phone.

We work at trying to call people because dialing itself is an effort (no speed dials or automatic calling from phone book function), not to mention requiring little grey cells that store a string of numbers of the person(s) with whom we wish to connect.

Human connection is beyond one individual calling another individual for conversation, be it amiable or a screaming match. Human connection extends to the pesky neighbours whom you think are whispering about you behind their lace curtains, the colleague who always share stories about his colicky baby and sleepless nights, your best friend in school who still go out to get drunk with you and many other people who make up the social fabric into which you are knitted.

This connection reinforces our personal identity and helps to orient us to our position in this world and our community. Unless you are a survivalist nutter who thinks that the aliens/government/whatever is out to get you, you are likely to live in a community (be it urban, suburban or rural) where you are required to interact with people at some point in your day.

But what happens when your sense of personal identity somehow does not mash with the community in which you live? What if you feel disconnected, disjointed, the jarring note in the harmony, the nail that sticks out and keeps getting hammered? What if you feel like all your life and actions are totally meaningless in the grand scheme of things? What if you feel like you never knew what acceptance feel like; even something as mundane as an automatic smile from the bus driver never comes your way because you feel that your personal identity is not acceptable to others?

All this came to my mind as I was listening to Prof. James Piscatori at the Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies yesterday. Prof. Piscatori has been studying Muslim politics throughout his academic life and had shared his views on "Muslims in Europe: Towards a New Civic Pluralism".

He kinda reminds me of the dad in Numb3rs.

Muslims in Western Europe are largely recent migrants who moved en masse in the middle of the twentieth century, thanks to liberal immigration laws of the time. Like all immigrants, they had to adapt to life in the decadent West and try to reconcile it with their faith and culture. Some have been successful, as evidenced by the rising number of the Muslim middle class. Others are stuck and unable to achieve social mobility due to lack of education, discrimination in the job market and other factors.

Prof. Piscatori explained that Europeans shouldn't fear that they'll become Islamised by 2030 (or whenever); the numbers of Muslims in Europe are often exaggerated and are actually just about 15% at the greatest estimate (he quoted numbers polled by the Pew Forum). He also mentioned something very surprising: terrorist acts by Muslims in Europe from 2006 to date are actually LESS THAN ONE PERCENT.

This is definitely not the sort of thing that we see or read on the BBC, CNN, Deutsche Welle or Paris Match. Prof. Piscatori was quoting figures collected by the Europol in their annual report on terrorism. Apparently, most acts of terrorism were actually perpetrated by leftists, separatists and eco-anarchists.

The strangeness of Muslims and Islam make them a convenient target to fresh and old fears about the changing landscape of European society, thanks to globalisation. They look and sound foreign; their women are wrapped up like birthday gifts! You can't bond with them over a glass of bitters at the pub after work, and they have this strange habit of washing their face and hands and feet and falling on their face several times a day in the same direction.

There is this concept in Islam about strangeness and being strangers in the land. It is not regarded as a bad thing to not conform with those who are corrupt. It is, in fact, an ideal. However, there is a fraction of a fraction of a percent who, in their failure to participate in the society on their terms, respond with misanthropic reactions such as bombings in public places and killing people one perceives as the enemy combatant.

It makes non-Muslims think of Muslims this way:

Stolen from http://harvardhumanist.org/2012/12/19/the-misanthropic-humanist/

when they are actually:

Out to support the slain soldier by the ravening mad fellow in Woolwich.

But to go back to the figures, LESS THAN ONE PERCENT of the terrorist acts are committed by Muslims. We don't quite see the sensationalisation of Basque separatists (have you even heard of who they are?) or Italian anarchists (aren't they busy doing fashion-related stuff and/or eating pasta?). Because to the European, these people are not the weird OTHER as Muslims are in their society. So they don't make as good as a boogeyman as these Quran-quoting, hijab/bearded people who speak with a funny accent.

As rightly pointed out by Kenan Malik,

"The real issues we need to confront are issues such as the contemporary sense of social disengagement, and not just among Muslims, the corrosion of the institutions of civil society, the lack of a progressive counter-narrative, the collapse of the organizations of the left, and the continual attacks on liberties in the name of security."

*read the rest here.

Towards the end of his talk, Prof. Piscatori touched on the crisis of multiculturalism in Europe: is it a choice between imposition of liberal values on a conservative society or tolerance of difference? Would tolerance of difference actually promote segregation? What is real integration? Is it better to choose assimilation and conformity or empowerment for social participation?

I am sure I was not the only who think that this is a mirror to the social situation in Malaysia. We pride ourselves on being Truly Asia; we are a hodge podge of culture, language and appearance. But as we could see after the 13th general election, we still have a great deal of suspicion towards one another, we poke and whisper behind each other's back, we still clutch our nasty thoughts about the "Others" close to our breasts.

Hence, this song is sincerely apropos to our situation.



Communication is not a threat. We should start talking to one another and not just lambast and share inflammatory stuff on Facebook and Twitter. We should actually connect in the real world, find out what the other fella eat, drink, watch and which football association he/she backs. We should learn about their faith and customs, and share with them our own practices so that we will no longer be strangers to one another.

So we will stop being "Others" to each other.

Written while listening to this.

Midweek sh*ts and giggles

Words to live by.

I wish. Because it would spare me from some really disappointing authors.

Tea time at Hammer's House of Horror.

Poor Ultraman.

Libertarians R us?

I want one of these.

Compression complete.

It's positively Darwinian.

Your dreams. They have been dashed.

Next on the franchise, yo. It's gonna be a blockbuster.

Any and every excuse to jack off.

If it's friggin' urgent, then invest a dime and call.

You are doing it WRONG.

Theory of relativity proven.

Spoil me and I will END you. Never mess with a biblioholic.

I'm one of the horn-y ones. You?

Good thing I don't people watch.

'Nuff said.

Empathise emphasise

Looking outside of yourself to discover who you really are.

It can change your life.

We must keep vigilant for empathy ...

I got that fabulous quote from this video:



which I stole from here.

This just underscores my immense love for the brothers Green.

And it's not just because of this picture.

Current love doom, La Cumberbatch giving not the Vulcan sign "Live Long and Prosper," but rather the NERDFIGHTER sign, OMGWTFBBQ!!!

I think y'all got a pretty big clue of the kind of nerd I am, yeah?

Have a good weekend!

You just can't please everyone

Yeah. That's hot. Right.

Breaking up is hard to do.

How's the scenery viewed from your padded cell?

Forever alone.

I like that word. I used it to hang my friend in Hangman.

Jurassic love.

You are ...mythical.

You are adored, Mr Cumberbatch.

You don't mess with Mr Walken.

I'm a Cumberbitch Peggster Urbabe.

Not unless I'm being chased. And maybe not even then.

No surprise but they are no longer together.