![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lapsedmodernistFood
Every day (except Sunday) I find a place with an Almuerzo menu to my liking. The lunch usually costs between $1.20 and $1.60 and includes soup (usually my favorite Timbushca, which sounds quaintly Russian and is basically potato-and-cabbage stew), a main course (usually some variation on chicken or fish with rice. Often it's corvina fish, which I've never tried before, and it is my new favorite fish, it tastes like turkey, but better) and desert (either wonderful fruit salad, or nasty fruit jello). And fruit juice, which I usually sub for a soda if I am not sure of the water quality in the place.
It took me about a week to get over the fear of eating street food, but now I am all about it. The best is mote con chicharron, which is, like, corn that's sort of like popcorn, but if it was soaked in water before being cooked, with deep-deep friend pieces of pork, with some hot sauce served in a little plastic bag. You eat it in the go with a spoon.
Ceviche is like sushi, when it's good it's really good, when it's not so good it's really disgusting, that's probably a universal rule of raw seafood. Mixed ceviche from camaron (shrimp) y concha (which I am a little unclear about what it is, I think it's like octopus) is the best.
I have been eating much, much more sugar than I usually do. In New York I barely eat any sugar (probably because I get it all in the form of glucose, from the 2 lbs of grapes I eat daily): I take my coffee with milk only, I virtually never eat candy or sweets, and I drink either water or non-sweetened fruit juices. But again, I think it's the altitude, I have gotten over most of the other altitide glitches, but I am still easily exhausted, and I don't think it's going away. Coffee does not quite do the trick by itself, but sugar does, so I've been drinking a lot of Coke (which I haven't touched in years), and eating fruit salad with yoghurt and ample, ample honey every day.
Sleep
I am on, like, a radically different schedule from my normal one. I go to sleep around 10 PM and wake up, without an alarm clock, at about 7.30 in the morning. The last time I even approximated anything close to that was when I was working at an archaeological dig in Israel and we had to be up at 4.30 in the morning and in the field by 5 AM in order to return to the base by 1 PM when the sun became intolerable. But as anyone who knows me, when not forced by circumstances, my natural circadian rhythm puts me to bed somewhere around 3 AM. The current schedule is due to the fact that I rarely go out after dark (except an occasional glimpse at US news in the expat pub across the street), and I am usually done with all of my daytime stuff by about 5 PM. I sleep very heavily without my usual insomnia, which I also attribute to mountain air.
It is freaking cold at nights (and yesterday I spotted snow on the Pichincha volcano, which meant it was extra-cold last night) and there is no heat, so I sleep with two wool blankets and a hot water bottle. I have become a connoisseur of hot water bottles. Too-thin plastic will be uncomfortable and will lose heat faster than thicker plastic, which will warm you gentler and for longer. It storms a lot, and since Quito is so high up, thunder is particularly loud. Showers in the morning have to be quick because warm water can be cajoled out of the shower for anywhere between a minute and a half and two minutes at a time. There is also inverse relationship between water heat and water pressure, i.e. to get the warm water, albeit briefly, you have to turn the shower on halfway, then slowly turn it off until a hot trickle remains. Then it turns cold.
Transportation
Quito has a really well-developed public transport infrastructure. There are busses, trolley busses and ecobusses. Also there are fleets and fleets of dilapidated cabs. Which brings me to a question, and it's not hypothetical, so if anyone knows a statistically substantiated answer, please share, because this is something I have to entertain at least every couple of days:
In case of a car accident, am I more likely to die in a front seat with a seatbelt, or a backseat without a seatbelt? It should be noted that 75% of cabs don't have functioning seatbelts at all, which does not bother anyone except for me. It also does not bother anyone except for me that 50% of the time a red light is interpreted as a challenge to increase speed, rather than an invitation to brake.
Books
As other travellers know, when you are nomadic, you read whatever is around--books left around by previous tenants, the random assortment of book exchanges, etc. While I am reading an Ecuadorian book about Galapagos in the 1950s in Spanish, I have also breezed through some readily-available English-language literature, including:
Jim Lehrer's The Last Debate. Did y'all know he wrote novels? Because I didn't. Anyway, even though the narrative voice is a bit...peculiar the book itself is pretty interesting. Basically, there are four journalists who are picked to moderate/host the only presidential debate between a well-meaning, but totally undynamic and uncharismatic-type liberal (think Lieberman but well-meaning) and a totally crazy fucking racist fundie who's got charisma. The journalists agree that the win for the fundie would be a catastraphe for the US, and, as they come into possession of some incriminating info about him hours before the debate they make a decision to dispense with the rules and throw it, ensuring the liberal's victory. It's half-suspense story, half-meditation of journalistic ethics in the corporate day and age. If you need something to be distracting but not escapist in the next few days, this book is your friend.
The first two Left Behind books, which, while totally insane, are addictive like crack. I am sad there aren't more around. I want to see what happens now that the Antichrist has been installed into the UN and has moved the UN to New Babylon. Has anyone on my friends list actually read them? Because now I really want to discuss them. Like, were you as shocked as I was when it turned out Buck was a virgin? Is there implicit criticism of corporate media ownership as it exists today? Are Jews: Revelations = Eliza Doolitle: Pygmalion? There are so many questions.
I have more to say, but it's almuerzo time.
Also I had an interview today, and it looks like after I get back here from San Francisco, I will be off to the Jatun Sacha biostation in the Upper Amazon rainforest for a month. Christmas and New Year's bonding with the local flora and fauna. Woot.
Every day (except Sunday) I find a place with an Almuerzo menu to my liking. The lunch usually costs between $1.20 and $1.60 and includes soup (usually my favorite Timbushca, which sounds quaintly Russian and is basically potato-and-cabbage stew), a main course (usually some variation on chicken or fish with rice. Often it's corvina fish, which I've never tried before, and it is my new favorite fish, it tastes like turkey, but better) and desert (either wonderful fruit salad, or nasty fruit jello). And fruit juice, which I usually sub for a soda if I am not sure of the water quality in the place.
It took me about a week to get over the fear of eating street food, but now I am all about it. The best is mote con chicharron, which is, like, corn that's sort of like popcorn, but if it was soaked in water before being cooked, with deep-deep friend pieces of pork, with some hot sauce served in a little plastic bag. You eat it in the go with a spoon.
Ceviche is like sushi, when it's good it's really good, when it's not so good it's really disgusting, that's probably a universal rule of raw seafood. Mixed ceviche from camaron (shrimp) y concha (which I am a little unclear about what it is, I think it's like octopus) is the best.
I have been eating much, much more sugar than I usually do. In New York I barely eat any sugar (probably because I get it all in the form of glucose, from the 2 lbs of grapes I eat daily): I take my coffee with milk only, I virtually never eat candy or sweets, and I drink either water or non-sweetened fruit juices. But again, I think it's the altitude, I have gotten over most of the other altitide glitches, but I am still easily exhausted, and I don't think it's going away. Coffee does not quite do the trick by itself, but sugar does, so I've been drinking a lot of Coke (which I haven't touched in years), and eating fruit salad with yoghurt and ample, ample honey every day.
Sleep
I am on, like, a radically different schedule from my normal one. I go to sleep around 10 PM and wake up, without an alarm clock, at about 7.30 in the morning. The last time I even approximated anything close to that was when I was working at an archaeological dig in Israel and we had to be up at 4.30 in the morning and in the field by 5 AM in order to return to the base by 1 PM when the sun became intolerable. But as anyone who knows me, when not forced by circumstances, my natural circadian rhythm puts me to bed somewhere around 3 AM. The current schedule is due to the fact that I rarely go out after dark (except an occasional glimpse at US news in the expat pub across the street), and I am usually done with all of my daytime stuff by about 5 PM. I sleep very heavily without my usual insomnia, which I also attribute to mountain air.
It is freaking cold at nights (and yesterday I spotted snow on the Pichincha volcano, which meant it was extra-cold last night) and there is no heat, so I sleep with two wool blankets and a hot water bottle. I have become a connoisseur of hot water bottles. Too-thin plastic will be uncomfortable and will lose heat faster than thicker plastic, which will warm you gentler and for longer. It storms a lot, and since Quito is so high up, thunder is particularly loud. Showers in the morning have to be quick because warm water can be cajoled out of the shower for anywhere between a minute and a half and two minutes at a time. There is also inverse relationship between water heat and water pressure, i.e. to get the warm water, albeit briefly, you have to turn the shower on halfway, then slowly turn it off until a hot trickle remains. Then it turns cold.
Transportation
Quito has a really well-developed public transport infrastructure. There are busses, trolley busses and ecobusses. Also there are fleets and fleets of dilapidated cabs. Which brings me to a question, and it's not hypothetical, so if anyone knows a statistically substantiated answer, please share, because this is something I have to entertain at least every couple of days:
In case of a car accident, am I more likely to die in a front seat with a seatbelt, or a backseat without a seatbelt? It should be noted that 75% of cabs don't have functioning seatbelts at all, which does not bother anyone except for me. It also does not bother anyone except for me that 50% of the time a red light is interpreted as a challenge to increase speed, rather than an invitation to brake.
Books
As other travellers know, when you are nomadic, you read whatever is around--books left around by previous tenants, the random assortment of book exchanges, etc. While I am reading an Ecuadorian book about Galapagos in the 1950s in Spanish, I have also breezed through some readily-available English-language literature, including:
Jim Lehrer's The Last Debate. Did y'all know he wrote novels? Because I didn't. Anyway, even though the narrative voice is a bit...peculiar the book itself is pretty interesting. Basically, there are four journalists who are picked to moderate/host the only presidential debate between a well-meaning, but totally undynamic and uncharismatic-type liberal (think Lieberman but well-meaning) and a totally crazy fucking racist fundie who's got charisma. The journalists agree that the win for the fundie would be a catastraphe for the US, and, as they come into possession of some incriminating info about him hours before the debate they make a decision to dispense with the rules and throw it, ensuring the liberal's victory. It's half-suspense story, half-meditation of journalistic ethics in the corporate day and age. If you need something to be distracting but not escapist in the next few days, this book is your friend.
The first two Left Behind books, which, while totally insane, are addictive like crack. I am sad there aren't more around. I want to see what happens now that the Antichrist has been installed into the UN and has moved the UN to New Babylon. Has anyone on my friends list actually read them? Because now I really want to discuss them. Like, were you as shocked as I was when it turned out Buck was a virgin? Is there implicit criticism of corporate media ownership as it exists today? Are Jews: Revelations = Eliza Doolitle: Pygmalion? There are so many questions.
I have more to say, but it's almuerzo time.
Also I had an interview today, and it looks like after I get back here from San Francisco, I will be off to the Jatun Sacha biostation in the Upper Amazon rainforest for a month. Christmas and New Year's bonding with the local flora and fauna. Woot.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 10:56 am (UTC)Fieldwork. I am getting my Ph.D. in Anthropology and this is my Fieldwork Year (otherwise I am ABD)
b) the duration of yr stay?
Through the summer. Although I am going to San Francisco for a few weeks next month for a conference and to fix my teeth. The exact details remain to be planned pending resolution of Bureocratic Horror that has been going on w/r/t the said conference.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 11:08 am (UTC)Well, I think it's the most interesting academic discipline, but obviously I am biased. But honestly, I don't understand why people would want to study anything else in social sciences. Although maybe I shouldn't say that too loud consdering a Sociology journal is publishing my paper.
b) nice. is the length long enough to cover whatever it is y're out in the field doing? "fix your teeth" ?
Yes, I have also spent some time in Ecuador before. I have an approximate schedule that should allow me to gather enough data.
My teeth started hurting last week. I have really crappy teeth genetically. Before I left I went to the dentist who said I had several cavities, but only one needed to be filled immediately, and the other ones would be fine until the summer, but I guess he was wrong, because now my teeth hurt, and I am not going to a biostation in the rainforest hours away from a city with a clinic with any part of my body in chronic pain.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 11:23 am (UTC)Them's fightin' words!
no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 11:27 am (UTC)ARRRRRIBA LOS ANTROPOLOGOSSSSSSSS
no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 11:54 am (UTC)I bet you can be done with the Left Behind book in, like, under 24 hours, at which point you are instructed to let me know what you think.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 10:06 pm (UTC)Be really careful with the ceviche.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 11:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 12:05 pm (UTC)Teaching sociology has made me appreciate this even more. They're all like "OMG ENGELS RULES" and I'm like "OMG ENGELS IS LEWIS HENRY MORGAN'S BITCH"
But seriously, where would any of the social sciences be without anthropology as their wellspring of logical examples? They would have to make all their claims about human society based on the very small numbers of feral children or monkeys raised in boxes.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 11:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 12:28 pm (UTC)Unrelatedly, here is my new favorite comment in the AAA petition:
This vampiric assault on our liberties must be vanquished! Will they succumb to garlic or silvered spike? 'Tis the hour of our tufting!
no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 10:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-27 07:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-27 07:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 11:46 am (UTC)concha would be conch, no? you know, like in lord of the flies...there is an animal inside the shell. it's very popular in caribbean cuisine (didn't know that it was also popular in ecuador. yum if it's done right, ew chewy if done wrong.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 04:16 pm (UTC)left behind / seatbelts
Date: 2004-10-26 11:52 am (UTC)As for the seatbelt issue, you're probably safer in the front, wearing one. Having been in a head-on collision, myself, I can tell you that the g-force is impossible to imagine if you've never experienced it yourself. I was in the front passenger seat with a belt, and there's absolutely no way I would have survived in the backseat without one. Then again, I was in a huge station wagon and the dashboard crumpled all the way up to my chest. Had it been a tiny compact taxi in Quito I imagine I'd be dead either way. It might worth cultivating a certain fatalistic attitude, beyond any specific safety precautions.
Oh, and try to find the older taxi drivers. They're the *survivors*.
Jacob
Re: left behind / seatbelts
Date: 2004-10-26 12:00 pm (UTC)I meant to email you back before I left, with the burning question on my mind...did you or didn't you infiltrate you-know-what?
Have they provided you with any new insights vis-a-vis that question?
Yes, they did, kind of related to the Ron Suskind article in New York Times, "Without a Doubt." I am actually going to post something on lj about who on my friends list wants to read it and then have a discussion, like next week or something.
Thanks for the tip on the cabs.
Don't you want a livejournal alias of your very own so that you don't have to post in anonymity?
Re: left behind / seatbelts
Date: 2004-10-26 09:40 pm (UTC)So, do you have any recommendations for a good Left Behind volume to start with? I imagine they're all equally frightening, but thought it'd be worth asking, anyway.
As for the LJ alias: um, I guess I could use one. How do I get one?
Cheers,
J.
P.S. I've said this before, but your posts are awesome. We are totally on the same page re. Bush, Kerry, Nader, 9/11, voter fraud, and the impending apocalypse generally. Keep up the good work!
Re: left behind / seatbelts
Date: 2004-10-27 07:16 am (UTC)Um, I suggest you start with the first one that is called Left Behind: a Novel of Earth's Last Days. (The second one is called Tribulation Force)
Thanks for the kind words :) And you can sign up for an lj at www.livejournal.com
it's free and easy. Just let me know which name you pick so I can add you to my friends list. (Then you can read my locked entires too, if that's of interest to you; my political entires are generally always public).
Re: left behind / seatbelts
Date: 2004-10-27 07:59 am (UTC)Andrew Card, the Bush twins, and the RNC delegates were the only clowns in evidence on the floor that day.
Will try to find LB #1. For some reason I thought that this was one of those book series where you could kind of start anywhere--like, I don't know, the Bobbsey Twins or something.
Btw, have you heard the new L. Cohen album? I just noticed that it's out, but have read mixed things about it. In general, I vastly prefer his older material.
Re: left behind / seatbelts
Date: 2004-10-27 08:20 am (UTC)I have not heard the new LC album; I read the lyrics, which were available online. It was supposed to be out before I left, but then got pushed back to this week. I hope to get it in SF, where I am going in a couple of weeks. His albums always get mixed reviews, esp. from people who forever have him cemented as his old 60s/70s folk singer self; I like a lot of his new stuff, and I've never heard an album of his that I have been completely disappointed by. A lot of people didn't like his last album, 10 New Songs, but I loved it.
I am curious about the 9/11 memorial song, esp.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 03:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-26 03:27 pm (UTC)