Fiume Tevere

A stunning series of photographs by German photographer Martin Klimas. He dropped small porcelain figurines of martial arts warriors and, using a high-speed camera, captured the moment they touched the ground:

( Two of my favourites )

I love the danger and ephemerality of the images, powerful but simultaneously subject to the process of irreversible decay. Rightly or wrongly, it strikes me as an incredibly Asian aesthetic. Just a week or so ago I was in Japan, coincidentally during the five-day window of peak cherry-blossom viewing in Kyoto, and as qian said recently: you can see the flowers falling apart as you watch, and day by day they thin and shrink until all that's left are bare branches and the beginnings of tiny new leaves. I'm a bit of a sakura cynic (mainly due to the hordes of drunken picnickers and other tourists), but even I found the sight humbling and bittersweet. Beautiful precisely because it contains the seeds of its own destruction, not in spite of it, and once that beauty's gone there's nothing in Heaven or Earth that can get it back.

It reminded me of one of my favourite movies, Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love, the Chinese title of which captures the tone of the movie better than the English: a bittersweet recollection of something fleeting, impossible, beautiful, long gone. 花樣年華, The Age of Blossoms.

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Entertained myself on the plane ride back from Japan this morning with a rousing game of Murakami Bingo (played with a copy of 1Q84, a wrist-breaking tome of approximately 1000 pages):

1. First reference to an obscure piece of classical music: page 3

2. First reference to a male character's formative experience being a (sexual/sexualised) betrayal by his mother: page 13

3. First lesbian sex scene: page 29

4. First time a woman thinks way more about her own breasts than most women normally do (aka. the George R. R. Martin school of the female POV): page 34

5. First time a man experiences desire for a nubile but kooky schoolgirl: page 45

6. First mention of Cutty Sark whiskey: page 55

7. First mention of jazz playing on the radio: page 55

8. First time a hot 20-something woman sleeps with balding, 50-something man: page 61

I think I'm going to make my ninth bingo square the first reference to a US fast food chain (Denny's has always been a Murakami favourite, no?), and then I'm going to call it quits. I got better things to read than the n-th iteration of some middle-aged dude's fantasyland.


Obligatory sakura photo

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Food in the Solomon Islands:


Typical town grocery store. Top: Biscuits, Indomie (ramen). Middle: Oil, cordial, milk powder, curry powder (one of the only commonly used spices in the Solomons), drink mixes. Bottom: Canned meat, canned fish.

( More below )

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Background: You, someone from Australia, are travelling to a remote community in the Solomon Islands for two weeks. You are vegetarian and thirteen weeks pregnant. The community has no doctor, clinic or pharmacy. Ciguatera (reef fish poisoning), while not common, has been known to occur in this and other Solomon Islands communities. As it is the wet season and water supplies occasionally become contaminated, food-borne illnesses occur with some frequency.

Situation: The community offers you their traditional feast foods of mashed root vegetables, reef fish and barbequed pork. Being a not particularly well-off community, meat in general is considered a delicacy and is usually reserved for honoured guests and special occasions.



So here's my normal (i.e. not pregnant) response to this situation: I'll eat it all, including the meat. People have made the effort to prepare food, often expensive food, for me; I want to show my gratitude for their hospitality; ergo, I will eat what they provide.

However, in my current situation I would also like to avoid the experience of a food-poisoning-related miscarriage while five hours away (by boat) from the nearest medical facilities. While being vegetarian hasn't prevented me from a few cases of food poisoning in the past, I feel like the risks of food-borne illnesses from vegetables are lower than for meat (especially fish).

Thoughts?

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I expected a fair bit of culture shock when I changed careers last year, but one particular aspect of my new job's office culture has caught me completely by surprise: food policing.

I hesitate to attribute this to the fact that my previous job was a male-dominated, military-offshoot environment and my current one skews female, but... that's kind of what it's starting to look like.

So, don't get me wrong: at my previous job, female bodies were discussed constantly by others, both male and female. Who had the biggest tits, who was hot, who dressed like a slut. But it was the kind of gossip that tended to happen behind people's backs-- probably the worst I ever got to my face was when I wore a low-cut top and at least four different guys said, "Oh, so you have a promotion interview today? Hur hur." Which isn't cool, but given that so much worse happened in that office, it was kind of the least of my problems. But in all my time there, you know what I never heard? People telling me not to eat something. People telling me not to eat too much. People commenting that I "eat a lot", that I'm "constantly eating", or "Oh my god, are you eating again?" People making snide comments: "How can you eat that and not be the size of a whale?" People commenting on my weight as a greeting. "Hope you had a good New Year! Ooh, looks like you've gained some weight over the holidays." (I think this last was supposed to be some kind of awkward joke.)

What the everlasting hell?

Okay, I know that my fairly petite build has sheltered me from being the subject of public food or weight policing, but this is honestly not something I expected to have to deal with professionally. Just this week I've had my eating habits commented on by two separate people (one of them twice!), and my boss saw me reaching for a chocolate biscuit displayed on the free-for-all snack table and said in a jokingly hectoring tone, "You shouldn't eat that." Uh, I'm sorry? I wasn't aware that we shouldn't eat the food given to us to eat.

Is this what other people's workplaces are like?

I am confused and annoyed.

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I think it took me four years to finish this story because, early on, I realised I was basically writing it for an audience of one *g*. Hands up anyone who even remembers this canonical pairing!

You'll have to have seen the Season 1 episode 'Vick's Chip' for this story to make much sense.( Or maybe you could get away with just knowing this much about the episode. ) I could write paragraphs of meta about how much I love that episode: the complex, layered parallels between humans who protect and kill, and machines who do the same; Sarah's compassion and sorrow; John's realisation of the true alienness of machines.

"All of us wear masks. They can be worn out of love and the desire to remain close to those around us. To spare them from the complicated realities of our frayed psyches. We trade honesty for companionship and in the process never truly know the hearts closest to us."

God, I miss this show.


Fandom: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Title: Someone I Used To Know
Pairing: Barbara Chamberlain/Vick Chamberlain
Length: 12,055
Rating: Some het sex of the human/robot variety
Warnings: There's nothing in the story itself, but if you've seen the episode you'll probably be reminded of its scene of horrific domestic violence.
Summary: This is the story of Mr. and Mrs. Vick Chamberlain.

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For his recent birthday, my flatmate received a copy of that esteemed Australian cookery bible (updated for 2012!), The Country Women's Association Classics. Since then, he's been baking his way steadily through its 85 cakes and slices-- a couple of which proved a smash hit at our housewarming, since nothing makes a group of thirty-something Australians excited like lamingtons, copha-based chocolate slices and Salt-n-Pepa. (Although as I and my Indian flatmate pointed out, these aren't so much the tastes of our childhoods as they're the coveted tastes of other people's white-bread-Aussie childhoods, available to us only during school Bake Day sales. When there was the option, my mum would just pay the $20 fine rather than attempting to make something edible out of Coco Pops and hydrogenated coconut fat. Which, in hindsight, was probably the sensible option.)

So while I can get behind the desserts and baking sections of the CWA cookbook, the savouries are something else entirely. I mean, sure, you can tell that a lot of it's mid-century poverty cooking ('Baked Bean Stew', 'Fish Finger Pie'), but some of those recipes are classic candidates for an Australian version of the Gallery of Regrettable Foods (less Jell-O; more copha and canned fish). For sheer WTFery, I think this one remains my favourite:

Malaysian Tuna

This recipe has become a favourite dish with my friends. It is ideal for a luncheon, or an entrée for a dinner party, especially during Lent when fish are scarce!

1 cup rice
1 can tuna
1/2 cup margarine
1/2 cup plain flour
2 cups milk
2 teaspoons curry powder
2 tablespoons chutney
1 can crushed pineapple

Boil or steam the rice until cooked, then drain. Add to the tuna and stir to combine.

Melt the margarine in a saucepan, then stir in the flour. Add the milk and stir until the mixture thickens. Add the remaining ingredients and stir again to combine.

Simmer the mixture in a frying pan until well heated (or place in a casserole dish and bake in a moderate oven). Delicious!

I think the idea is that it's a tuna mornay made 'exotic' with canned pineapple and curry powder? Because I feel fairly confident in saying that the origins of this dish aren't in any Malaysian food item I've ever known.

Reminds me of my mother's stories of her New Zealand host family feeding her rice sandwiches in the 1970s, because that's honestly what they thought Asians ate.

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Not surprisingly, considering my advanced state of jetlag when I signed up for Yuletide, I made what nearly turned out to be a fatal miscalculation: "Why, I'll just make offers in all the fandoms I'd be delighted to receive a story in!"

MISTAKE.

It's one thing to enjoy a Bollywood film as a cultural outsider, and another thing entirely-- as a cultural outsider-- to attempt to write an insider-perspective of two desi characters interacting with each other. Two Yuletides ago I wrote the Snake Agent story This Sweet and Bitter Orange Mood, which is set in a fantasy Singapore that's a lot like 1960s Hong Kong, and I remember how I could hear the characters-- I could make a reasonable guess at what they'd say and how they'd say it (and in which dialect), how they viewed the world, how they conveyed their understandings of belonging and not-belonging. Scratch all of that this time around. Not only could I not hear the characters (a problem exacerbated by the fact that they speak Hindi), I had barely any understanding of their cultural context. It was actually quite a distressing experience, because it's not like I wanted to be faily, but I didn't have the capacity not to be (nor the time to do the research that might have remedied that). Call it Yuletide karma for that time I bitched about how Snake Agent doesn't properly represent Chinese culture.

I nearly ended up defaulting, but the Yuletide gods were merciful to my recipient and I somehow managed to enlist the endlessly generous azuire to, essentially, co-write the story with me. Everything that's right about it is due to her efforts, and everything that feels off is solely my fault. azuire, I can't thank you enough! I also owe dhobikikutti for her valuable input and advice-- thank you, Kutti.

Anyway, if you haven't seen Dostana, you're missing out-- it's a delightful romp based on the Pretending to Be Gay trope, and I like it a lot. If you're interested, my introduction post (with pretty pictures!) is here. The sequel is due out this year, but-- hmm, I honestly suspect the only place this franchise can go is downhill.


Krabi Province, Thailand. Ironically, I found out after I'd written the story that this is where 'Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai' was actually filmed.
When the Lamps are Lighted (4077 words)
Fandom: Dostana (2008)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Kunal Chauhan/Sameer Acharya
Summary: Maybe this is their love story.

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So, pretty much since Yuletide started, I have:

- been to a wedding in Bangladesh
- had a work trip to Indonesia
- moved house (interstate)
- unpacked everything singlehandedly
- spent a day buying, having delivered, and assembling Ikea furniture
- planned, dug and planted a garden for our new household
- helped my flatmates host numerous Christmas parties, despite said flatmates being Jewish and Hindu
- hosted my parents-in-law while my husband was away on his own work trip

And I'm only halfway through my Yuletide story, which is in a fandom it's actually not possible for me to write due to lack of knowledge and lack of time to research. I know, it's my own fault for offering it and not thinking through the consequences, but:

I AM OFFICIALLY FREAKING OUT RIGHT NOW.

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So, I didn't see this one coming at all:

My flatmate's dog went through my bag (which was on the floor of my room), found my menstrual cup, took it out of its little bag, and proceeded to take it into the living room and chew it in full view of a bunch of my flatmate's visiting friends.

AWKWARD.

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