Chinese New Year 2016

On March 22, 2016 By StevenIn Life At Home2 Comments

Amelie and I celebrated February 14th this year in the traditional way… with Chinese food and a dragon dance! The 28th Annual Chinese New Year Festival was observed on the 14th in a big festival at Miami Dade College.

We are currently in the Year of the Monkey, or the Red Fire Monkey. IUt runs from February 8th to January 27th, 2017. If you were born in 1944, 1956, 1968, 1980, 1992, 2004, or this year, you were born under the sign of the monkey.

These Buddhists make some really tasty buns.

I’m just saying… the food at this festival was awesome. I actually enjoyed it so much that I forgot to photograph most of it. Here’s some rolls.

…and some adorable candy.

Famous monkeys include Eleanor Roosevelt, Mick Jagger, Joan Crawford, Lyndon B. Johnson, Leonardo da Vinci, Celine Dion, Halle Berry, Will Smith, Hugh Jackman, Lucy Liu, Pope John Paul II, Bette Davis, Owen Wilson, Margaret Cho, Toni Braxton, Christina Aquilera, Jennifer Aniston, David Copperfield, Alicia Keys, George Lucas, Kylie Minogue, Julius Caesar, Tom Hanks, Diana Ross, Elizabeth Taylor, Venus Williams, and Yao Ming.

This guy may or may not be a monkey, but he’s certainly making one of my favorite festival treats. I hadn’t seen these anywhere since I left Germany. The very first time I saw them, I was in Prague, but they’re just as delicious here as there. Mmm, cinnamony!

The show started with the traditional Lion and Dragon Dance, performed by Wing Lung Tai Chi Kung Fu School. The dragon is being led by the monkey king, holding a sphere representing a pearl.

It is said that if a Lion looks at you during a dance, you will have good luck for the year.

The stage had a variety of other performances throghout the day. Here’s Soul of Shaolin from Shaolin Academy, a.k.a. kids with weapons.

There were some Taiko drums, courtesy of Matsuriza Taiko Drums. I do love Taiko.

I believe this was a Han folk dance, but I sort of lost my place in the program after the Taiko drumming, and this could also be the Miami Chinese Choral. I’m really not sure.

Have you ever been to a Chinese New Year festival?

A Place For My Stuff

On February 22, 2016 By StevenIn Life At Home8 Comments

I finally got around to viewing some of the commercials from this year’s Superbowl, and this one just left me feeling unsettled.

About five months after I got back to the US, I talked about the level of insanely overwhelming choice in grocery stores here. At the time, I was still shopping the way that I did in Germany- one or two canvas bags of food at a time.

Since then, I’ve expanded my shopping a little bit, but not very much. I still carry canvas bags into the grocery store, but sometimes I take plastic bags away with me also. My grocery habits are more expansive than they were while I lived in Germany, but they’re still nowhere near what they were before I lived overseas. I’ve actually taken photographs of every load of groceries I’ve purchased in the past sixteen months, so maybe I’ll come back to that in a future post.

Since I got back, I’ve gotten a car and an apartment and all the trappings of American life- I’ve purchased a television and a vacuum, a microwave and a toaster. I’ve populated my apartment with furniture, although a large percentage of that furniture came from Ikea.

Here’s the thing, though- I’ve never felt truly comfortable with simple accumulation. Those who have known me for years know that I had a slightly anti-stuff mindset even before I lived overseas. I’ve always gone through cycles of decluttering, and of getting rid of stuff. My aversion to just accumulating belongings is borderline pathological.

Perhaps that aversion is part of why the Rocket Mortgage commercial leaves such a terrible taste in my mouth. It’s more than that, though. This commercial represents everything that I think is wrong with America’s consumer-driven, greed-centric culture.

“Buy a house so you can fill it with more stuff so you can support the economy so more people can buy houses that they need to fill with stuff.” Lather, rinse, repeat.

Maybe I’m in the minority here, but that cycle of buying and buying and buying doesn’t make me feel good. Even without getting into the environmental effects of this cycle, or the politics of finance, it just feels skeevy somehow. Buying to support buying to support buying feels so pointless, and basing a business model on the idea that other people should spend their money that way… well that just seems evil to me.

What do you think, readers? Is there a Mr. Burns type behind this whole endeavor? Or am I just overthinking it?

First Folio and Video Game Art

On February 20, 2016February 20, 2016 By StevenIn Life At Home6 Comments

I’ve always been a big fan of William Shakespeare. Visiting the Globe Theater in London was a highlight of that trip. I like the bard so much that in the early 1990s, I had a costume party for his birthday with a “dress as your favorite Shakespearean character” theme. That’s me there on the right, dressed as Prospero from “The Tempest.” The costume started with a mustache to match the beard, but it kept falling off whenever I had something to drink.

Since I’m a fan of Shakespeare’s work, you can probably imagine how excited I was when Amelie told me that Florida International University’s Kendall campus is showing Shakespeare’s First Folio at the Frost Museum.

The Frost Museum is a four story exhibition hall with multiple exhibits going on at all times. This nifty globe is right in front, and from a distance, I thought for a moment that it might be one of the many versions of Sfera con Sfera that is out in the world.

Until February 27th, the fourth floor of the Frost museum is home to an original 1623 edition of the First Folio. This is a national traveling exhibition organized by the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. The book will be displayed in all 50 states, as well as Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. When the book reaches Tulane University, New Orleans will reportedly celebrate with a jazz funeral for Shakespeare.

The First Folio was published seven years after Shakespeare’s death, and it contains 36 of the Bard’s plays. (The Frost museum website says that it contains eighteen plays. I’m curious about the discrepancy. Perhaps older printings of the First Folio didn’t have all 36?)

On exhibit, it is stored in a temperature (and probably humidity) controlled case. Photographs were allowed as long as you used no flash and as long as you didn’t actually touch the glass.

The book on display is opened to the “To be, or not to be” soliloquy from Hamlet. You can see it there, in the bottom-left part of this image. I am incredibly fond of the old spellings of things, like queftion and fleepe. However, that may just be because I need more fleepe.

While Shakespeare’s First Folio will be gone after February 27th, the Art of Video Games exhibit will be sticking around until mid-April. Organized by the Smithsonian American Art museum, this exhibit looks back at “the forty-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects and the creative use of new technologies.” Plus it shows a history of all the game consoles, from the Atari 2600 and Colecovision all the way up to modern gaming systems.

It was especially interesting to see this through Amelie’s eyes- she’s about five years younger than me, and she didn’t reach the US until the mid-80s, so her first video games were not quite the same as my first video games.

Of course this is where most of my favorite games lived during middle and high school- the Commodore 64. I had a C128, but I ran it in C64 mode almost all of the time. I was always a one-button-joystick sort of guy. I have an incredibly difficult time with the newfangled game systems that have two sticks, a directional pad, four buttons, and two triggers. Get off my lawn, you over-complicated controllers!

There were other nice exhibits in the Frost, but those two were the most interesting to me. I shall wrap up this post with a picture of Amelie playing Secret of Monkey Island. Those old adventure-quest games were fun, weren’t they?

Should you wish to see the First Folio or the Art of Video Games, know that the Frost Museum is free and open to the public. The address is 10975 SW 17th Street, Miami, FL 33199 and the hours are 10-5 Tuesday-Saturday, 12-5 Sunday, and closed Mondays and most holidays.

What was your first video game? What was your favorite?

Chapter Two.

On February 11, 2016February 11, 2016 By StevenIn Life At Home13 Comments

It’s been a little more than two months since my last post. I said that I wasn’t sure if I would come back, and that I had no plans to restart the blog. I’ve come to realize that was short-sighted.

I’ve missed writing, even though sometimes it feels like a chore and I don’t always have stuff to talk about. The thing is, when I do have stuff to talk about, I’m excited to write here. I missed you guys. And I do have stuff to talk about, even if it’s not as travel-filled as it used to be.

Just yesterday, I had a thing that made me want to blog. I went to the eye doctor for the first time in about four years. The last time I had my eyes examined was just before I moved to Germany in late 2011. Since that time, everything in that office has changed. The plaza was ripped up and new stores were built. The eye doctor’s place of business moved to a new office a few doors down, with a completely rebuilt floor plan. They added more doctors and added a bunch of recent optometry technology. My favorite piece of new tech is this digital camera that takes wide photographs of the inside of your eyes. This isn’t new technology, but it’s new to me, and it’s utterly fascinating. This is my left eye, as of Wednesday afternoon.

my-left-eye

The photograph shows the inside of my eye. You can see the optic cup, as well as the blood vessels running through my eye. The black slashes at the bottom edge are actually my eye-lashes. The whole thing looks a great deal like some sort of fantastic nebula, and I halfway expect Voyager to come swooshing by at any moment.

Pretty nifty, eh?

So: I’m back. I can’t sustain the frequency of posts that I used to run, but I’ll definitely write here whenever I want to share a neat photograph or talk about something that’s on my mind. Onward!

So, how have you all been?

A bunch of semi-random thoughts in one last post.

On December 2, 2015December 1, 2015 By StevenIn International Travel - Europe, The U.S.11 Comments

My drafts folder is full of tiny little notes about topics that piqued my interest at one time or another. Most of them have been sitting in my drafts folder for months or even years, but I never really figured out a way to parlay them into full length blog posts. Since I’m cleaning out the drafts folder now, I thought I’d try a sort of clearinghouse post where I cover all of them in one go.

Topic the first: Alpha Cities: Around February of 2014, I heard a concept of city ranking which utterly fascinates me: Global Cities. To be a Global City, here’s a few of the many factors that are needed:

International financial services (banking, a Stock exchange, insurance, and real estate)
Headquarters of several multinational corporations
Major manufacturing centers with port and container facilities.
Centers of new ideas and innovation in business, economics, culture and politics.
Centers of media and communications for global networks.
High-quality educational institutions, including renowned universities, international student attendance and research facilities.
Multi-functional infrastructure offering some of the best legal, medical and entertainment facilities in the country.

The thing about this classification system that really got my attention is that it’s divided into tiers: Alpha (which is then subdivided into Alpha++, Alpha+, Alpha, and Alpha-), Beta, Gamma, and a bottom tier called “Sufficiency level cities.” Of the Alpha++ cities, there are exactly two: New York and London. Here’s some examples of the Alphas:

Alpha++ cities are London and New York City, both of which I’ve been to.
Alpha+ cities include Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, Sydney, Dubai, Beijing, and Paris. (I’ve been to three of those!)
Alpha and Alpha- cities include Chicago, Mumbai, Milan, Frankfurt, Toronto, Madrid, Mexico City, Amsterdam, Brussels, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vienna, Istanbul, Warsaw, Zurich, Miami, Barcelona, Dublin, Boston, Munich, Stockholm, Atlanta, and more.

The tiers above include some of the most amazing cities on Earth, so naturally this makes me want to visit them all. I’m a huge list ticker, but this is a checklist I simply don’t have the time or resources to complete. At least not for a while

Topic the second: Social Jetlag and Chronotyping: This is an idea that I was never aware of before I came back from Germany. I’ll try to explain it succinctly: Lots of your body’s metabolism and sleep cycle are controlled by your circadian rhythm, based on when you have naturally occurring sunlight. However, different people’s personal rhythms vary a lot. Some people are naturally morning people, and others (like me) have a terrible time waking early and are much more awake later in the day. This is being referred to by scientists as your chronotype. The concept of chronotypes leads to silly descriptive words like “eveningness” and “morningness.” They’re also referred to sometimes as a person’s “lark” or “owl” tendencies. I’m not making any of that up.

With me so far?

Ok, so: In research dating back to 2010, scientists have determined that people who struggle between their body’s chronotype and external requirements such as work or school schedules suffer from “social jet lag.”

It gets worse! Social jet lag has been linked to obesity and diabetes, among other health detriments. Scientists have a solution for this problem, of course. They just think companies should start work later.

Naturally, I learned about all of this right when we were transitioning into daylight saving time, while I’m having the worst time waking up before the sun rises.

Topic the third: Impostor Syndrome: I spend a lot of my life feeling like I’m a complete failure. I often feel like I’ve coasted along from success to success, being blown forward like a leaf on the wind. Despite having a pretty great life so far, I almost always feel like I’ve just been faking it all this time. Every time I attempt to break this by listing out what I’ve accomplished, it feels like a douchey humble-brag. Doing pretty well at my job for the last thirteen years? I was only promoted because nobody else would go, not because of my ability. Traveled the world mostly on my own? Sure, but I was just ticking off lists and doing really touristy things.

I didn’t even know until last March that there’s a name for this feeling – Impostor Syndrome.

“Impostor syndrome is a psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments. Despite external evidence of their competence, those with the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be. ”

Yup, that about sums it up. I really wanted to do a longer post about this, but I’m not sure what else there is to say. If only there were a cure.

Topic the fourth: On things expiring: I’ve just renewed my passport, and the process has me thinking about how far I’ve come in the almost ten years since my initial passport application was filed.

In 2006, I was 33 years old. I owned a small two bedroom condo, and I was four years into my employment at Mr. Company. I had never left the country, except for one jaunt into the Bahamas from a cruise ship in 2003. I’d been thinking about getting my passport for a while, because I really wanted to go to London. I’d been focused on all things British since I fixated on Doctor Who and Dangermouse when I was in elementary school and I wanted to see the city. My brother had just gotten married, and his honeymoon was in London. I was British racing green with envy.

In the ten year life-span of my passport, much of my life changed. I don’t own a home any more, and I’ve roamed around quite a lot. I made it to London during my first year. I’ve been to London three times now, along with bits of Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. I am still an inverate list ticker.

For the last four years of that time, this blog has been a showcase for all of my thoughts about living in Germany, and all of my experiences abroad. Over time, it became a travelogue, and my posts became more and more about the travel I was doing. I started the blog initially just so that my family and friends back home could see what I was up to, but it became something more than what I intended and I built up a small armada of bloggy friends around the world.

I’ll always be around, reading the blogs of my friends, and commenting on their adventures. This blog, however, has reached a conclusion. I realized as I was slogging through the never-ending stream of Japan posts that once I was done with Japan, I was done with this blog. Much like my first passport, this blog had an expiration date.

Now that I’m settled back into the US, I don’t travel as much. Aside from my trip to Japan, I’ve barely pulled out my dSLR. Since my return to the States, I’ve been struggling to find a voice for the blog. Now that my life is more stationary, I’ve also struggled to find both time to write and ideas to write about. It seems like now is a good time for me to get out of the game. I don’t know if this is a permanent closure, but I have no plans at this point to come back. Maybe I’ll restart the blog some day.

It’s been a wild, hilarious, fun ride, and I’ve enjoyed getting to know so many of you here. Be good to each other while I’m gone.

At long last, my drafts folder is completely and utterly empty.

Be seeing you,

-Steven

by Tommy Ironic