Confessions Of A Sushi Convert.

Even having been halfway raised in the Midwest and growing up in a Filipino household, my exposure to different cuisines was rather limited in retrospect. Of course, I didn't think so at the time; I proudly invited my friends to dinner and scooped traditional dishes like adobo and pancit onto their plates. At the same time I thought nothing of eating whatever was put on my plate at my friends' dinner tables, and heartily plowed through bowls of food when we ate at Chinese restaurants. Looking back though I realize that I'd been playing it safe (sweet and sour chicken isn't exactly the pinnacle of Chinese cuisine) and was sorely missing out.

Through out my formative years I'd definitely heard of sushi, but it had always remained an exotic, mysterious dish that I really had no interest in exploring. All I knew about it was that it was raw fish (OMG!!!) and that was the end of that. We don't really have a Filipino equivalent -- although some of our more culturally-traditional dishes probably come pretty close with the ewww factor to the uninitiated. But that didn't matter; I had no plans on trying raw fish and was happy with what I was already eating.

I took my first bite of sushi during a Spring Break road trip to the West Coast. One of the highlights was going to dinner with a large group of friends to a sushi restaurant in LA. It may have been the beer we'd been drinking at alarming rates but I was game to try. Someone ordered for me and my other sushi-virgin friends, and after a while dinner came out, artfully presented on square plates.

But tell me this doesn't look FANTASTIC [via]

The food we'd ordered were mostly different types of roll. I tried some of everything, and enjoyed all of it. It was hard to keep track of what was in each roll but they were all delicious, a tasty blend of flavors built upon the rice/seaweed base. I distinctly remember devouring a particular piece, then turning to a friend and asking him what I'd just eaten. "Eel," he said.

[Pause.] "Eel?" I wasn't sure I'd heard correctly.

"Yeah -- like, uh, an eel."

[Another pause.] "Okay." And I reached for another piece.

After that eye-opening experience, I was more eager to graduate to eating sashimi (the actual raw subset of food under the sushi umbrella) and surprised myself with more incredible flavors and textures. That first experience was over ten years ago and I haven't looked back since. Now I look for sushi restaurants whenever I have the chance (and the funds). Hell, I'll even run to Hy-Vee and buy some pre-made rolls to go when I'm really craving it. Of course it's not nearly as good as going to a restaurant and ordering something on the spot, but most of the time it's close enough. I actually did this last week; I walked to the checkout with a package containing two kinds of surimi rolls.

The cashier, an older gentleman, rang up the package. "Are these really that good?" he asked. "People buy a lot of these but I've never tried it."

I ended up talking with him for a minute or so, trying to convince him to buy some and just try it. After all, "Even if you end up not liking it," I reasoned, "At least you'll know you don't like it. But who knows, you could end up loving it. Anyway I think it's delicious." I hope he agreed with me, and maybe I've created a new sushi convert.

That would be sweet.

It's funny 'cause nowadays when someone mentions a food or cuisine that I've never had before, the first things out of my mouth are "Where's the restaurant?" and "When are we going?"

I've learned my lesson. Life's too short, man. Try it all -- at least you'll know.

Flying Solo.

It took me long enough, but I finally watched Toy Story 3 this past Saturday. I couldn't find anyone on short notice to come with me but I also didn't want to put off watching the film, so I flew solo and attended the 4:00 matinee showing at a nearby theater. You'd think that I'd save a bit of cash by going to an early show, but since I'd opted to watch the 3D version, the ticket still ran me $10.50. This actually didn't surprise me anymore and I figured I'd be paying even more for a later show, so I shelled out the money and was handed a pair of 3D glasses along with my ticket.

pick a seat, any seat

I was the first person inside Auditorium 1, a fairly-large split-level theater. It seemed like the upper level would be the best place to watch so I climbed the stairs and picked the center seat in the second row. I settled in with my $4 box of Mike N Ikes (in clear violation of my diet, but hey it was a Special Occasion) and a few minutes later the local advertising spots and pop culture trivia video loop began playing. Around the same time, small families and couples began trickling in below. After a while it became apparent that I was the only person who was there alone.

I've been going to the movies by myself for several years now. I think the first one I watched solo was The Others at a downtown Seattle theater, when I decided to just go spontaneously after work. It was interesting to be out watching a scary movie without being with friends or a date -- people to share the experience with. But I still enjoyed it regardless. Riding 20 miles back to my apartment at 10pm on a non-express bus, however, was somewhat less enjoyable. But I digress.

Is there still a stigma about going to the movies by yourself? I don't really think there is, but at the same time I'm not aware of any friends who do this. (At least, they haven't explicitly offered this information.) People rent and watch DVDs at home by themselves all the time, but I think there's some kind of social mechanism that generally inhibits us from doing certain activities by ourselves. Movie-watching is the obvious example, but eating at sit-down restaurants and going to concerts/shows also come to mind. I don't know anyone who does these things solo on a regular basis (or at all, to be honest).

What gives? Are we conditioned by social norms to do certain public things in groups? I guess that might have started waaay back in pre-school or kindergarten, when we were encouraged to perform activities with other children. In grade school all the way up to high school, I know that it wasn't necessarily desirable to be considered a loner, that it was considered weird to eat lunch by yourself. Not so much in college thankfully, but I can only conclude that society still unconsciously upholds this stigma to a certain extent in the "real world."

Which is unfortunate, really.

Okay, so: In the continuing effort to expand my own horizons, I will go to an upcoming concert/show and eat at a restaurant by myself, just to see how it goes. In actuality I probably should've done this years ago. I mean, I don't want to miss out on what might be a great experience just because no one else is around to come with me. The city is full of things to do -- if I end up doing some of those things by myself, that's okay with me.

By the way, Toy Story 3 was excellent. I shed tears and dammit, I'm not ashamed.

Escape.

I've been feeling restless and needing to do things lately, which is somewhat foreign to me 'cause I'm usually more of a homebody. So it's weird, but over the past few weeks I've just been wanting to get away somehow.

[via]

With the advent of my three-day weekends (due to working 4 10-hour shifts at the hospital), I'm starting to actively look for things I can get into, especially in the Kansas City area. Someone dear to me once said that I'd missed out on too much of what cities had to offer, most likely because I didn't look hard enough (or just didn't want to look). It was true; I'd only really stuck to the things I knew I liked to do and unfortunately wasn't very adventurous or spontaneous. Obviously this led to plenty of missed opportunities, experiences and memories. This makes me sad, because I like to think that I would've learned from those experiences.

So I'm trying to be more proactive. I'm saying "Yes, okay, let's go!" more often. I've lined up the next couple of weekends, with an out-of-town bachelor party for a close friend and then a 2-day float trip with lots of acquaintances (I'm basically the "new guy" hanging out with a members of a close crew). I'm looking to see what else I can do here in the metro area over the next couple of months. I don't want to waste any more time, nor have any more regrets about not having done something. The experiences will definitely be worth the effort.

It's the weekend, PM readers. Time to escape.

Sunday Zen.

While reading up on minimalism and Zen today, I stumbled across this passage from Thoughts Without A Thinker by Mark Epstein:

“You see this goblet?” asks Achaan Chaa, the Thai meditation master. “For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on the shelf and the wind knocks it over, or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, 'Of course.' When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.”

I realized that this a much more elegant (and eloquent) way of saying "Live each day as if it were your last."

My first reaction was that this is a backwards philosophy. How could you ever truly enjoy something if you knew that it was bound to fail or break, that your time with it was limited?  Wouldn't that knowledge make the resulting experience bittersweet?  How could you possibly achieve peace of mind if you went through life constantly expecting the end of things?  I couldn't see the benefit.

Though upon further contemplation, it makes a lot of sense to realign your thinking this way.  Nowhere does the passage tell you to adopt a pessimistic attitude about the natural impermanence of life and its experiences.  It doesn't say "Yes, it's beautiful, but it won't last anyway, so you might as well give up now" which is how one might initially interpret it, save for the last sentence.

When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.

The wisdom of this is striking.  I suppose this has to do more with acceptance of the facts that life isn't perfect.  I know that tragedy and hardships are inevitable, but I typically have a hard time coping when things don't go as planned in my personal life.  Inwardly, I tend to see most things (worldviews, relationships, attitudes) as ideal. Maybe if I tried to really understand that there is room for a little acceptance that things are going to change -- and sometimes for the worse, life's journey would be a less stressful and I'd stop bugging out as much.  I don't expect myself to not be disappointed every time -- I think I'm a generally optimistic person -- but if I "hope for the best, but expect the worst" I'd be more prepared to travel through life's valleys.

This is truly a rare moment of personal serendipity because two days ago I had a phone conversation with someone close to me who said essentially the same thing.  "Life is hard," she said, "and you'll always have stress over something.  Don't expect anything to be as easy anymore ... because we've grown up.  But it's how you deal with it and move forward that's important."

It's a difficult philosophy for me to adopt, but absolutely essential in the long run.  Happy Sunday.

Baby Steps To Sashimi.

Being at the hospital for twelve to thirteen straight hours sucks. Every other day after I finish my regular clinical internship hours from 7:00-3:30, I clock in and head directly to the mammography film library to work for a couple more hours and snag some extra cash as a Student Tech. I'm usually out by 5:30 or 6:00 at the latest, which is still early enough to run errands and whatnot before the day is completely done. However the guy who works the night shift had a family emergency and has been gone for over a week now, throwing the whole staffing schedule off.

In order to get things done in the library/admin office -- the most important of which involves preparing the next-day exam schedules for the various imaging services departments -- another Student Tech and I have been asked to stay extra late until the guy returns to work (no word from him so far). So yeah, while I get a bit more money out of it, leaving the hospital at 8:30 leaves me virtually no time nor energy to do things afterward. I don't want to complain too much though: The pay's pretty good for what it is, the people are cool, and it beats working part-time retail hands-down.

Anyway.

The most striking thing I've noticed about living (back again) in the Midwest is how culturally isolated the majority of the people here are. Not that they don't want to learn for the most part, but -- and please keep in mind I'm not referring to everyone -- they're so far removed from actual Asian cultural experience that their only exposure is through the occasional Asian/Asian-American friend, or through television (which may or may not be a good thing depending on what they're watching).

Not surprisingly, I've found that my classmates and co-workers here in Kansas are overall less willing to try new cuisine than their counterparts in California and Washington. I'm guessing this is because they just weren't exposed to it nearly as much, given the demographic makeup of the Midwest versus the West Coast. While this is completely understandable, it makes me a bit sad that some of them aren't willing to at least try food that they've never eaten before. I mean, how do you know you don't like something if you've never tried it? And I'm not even talking about the "delicacies" Andrew Zimmern shoves, still squirming, down his gullet on Bizarre Foods. I'm talking typical ethnic cuisine, and if you try it and still don't like it, then I'm cool with that.

So a few weeks back I resolved that, while I lived here in Kansas City, one of my personal missions would be to broaden the culinary palettes of my friends and co-workers -- and a few days ago I had my first chance. Since the beginning of the year, I'd been talking about the tastiness of Thai food to a few Asian Cuisine Virgins, and last Friday one of my more food-savvy co-workers and I decided to order Thai for lunch. I immediately asked D if he wanted to try it. A little background: He'd lived in Missouri/Kansas his entire life -- more than 50 years -- and I think had vacationed in Mexico a time or two. D liked Chinese food, and while I don't think he had even considered trying Thai before, he was game. So I ordered him a heaping plate of (you guessed it) Pad Thai.


Pad Thai was the obvious "starter" choice as the most taste-accessible dish -- the noodles, chicken and various garnishes and veggies look basically like Chinese food to the untrained eye. D liked it almost immediately and, in between exclamations of how good it tasted, devoured half of the contents of his take-out box before stopping, saving the rest for later. He even periodically offered samples to the rest of my co-workers and classmates who happened to be eating in the breakroom, but they unfortunately (and unsurprisingly) declined.

Ah, people, but you don't know what you're missing. Okay, more for us then!

It made me strangely pleased that I was able to share something as simple as a new food experience with someone, but hey if it helps open the door to new cultural experiences as a whole, then I'm all for it. Food can be the universal conduit.

Now if I can get D to try sashimi next ... hmm maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. Baby steps ...