Running up the Ngong Hills

by Adharanand Finn

My alarm goes off at 5.15am. I sit on the edge of my bed trying to wake up. It's still dark outside. I'm in Nairobi, about to head out into the Ngong Hills to run with a group of Kenyans I've never met before. Right now it all seems vaguely ridiculous. I'm 37. An average runner. I've got a nice, warm, cosy bed. Why am I leaving it to try in vain to keep up with a bunch of stupidly fast Kenyan runners? I must be mad.

It's a thought process that runs through my mind virtually every time I wake up for one of these early morning runs. But today it's worse. I've been given directions to a side street in Ngong, a busy, run-down satellite town on the outskirts of Nairobi. At 6am, apparently, a group of athletes meet there every morning. That's all I know. Just turning up unannounced is a daunting prospect.

I drive up to Ngong and pull my car up on the side of the street. I turn off the lights and sit tight, listening to the Christian rap music on the radio. I'm about 10 minutes early and the side road is deserted as far as I can make out in the darkness.

A figure comes walking past suddenly, peering in through the window at me. I turn off the radio. I feel suddenly vulnerable sitting here in my car. I imagine what the runners will think when I step out of my car and walk over to say hello. It would be better without the car, I decide. I've got 10 minutes to kill, anyway. It would be safer parked on the main road.

I turn the engine back on, like a loud cough, the headlights glaring at everything as I turn the car and head back up into Ngong.

Once I've parked, I jog back along the edge of the main road to the side street. And sure enough, there they are. About eight athletes stand stretching in the tiny beginnings of morning, a red glow scratching the horizon behind them.

They all turn to watch me as I walk over. One smiles. "Jambo," he says.
I shake his hand, and ask if it's OK if I run with them.

"Fine, fine," they say.

"We're running up the hill," says one. That doesn't sound promising.

"I'll try to keep up."

"Up the mountain," he says. "But not fast. Easy." Like other Kenyan runners, he over-emphasises the word "easy", as though he means it's going to be the easiest thing you've ever done, like lying back on a sun-lounger as someone slices up a mango and feeds it to you piece by piece. Not like a run up a mountain in the cold dawn.

We set off jogging slowly and I slot in behind the front few runners. After a few moments we start our ascent, going at a comfortable pace. I've seen the Ngong Hills from a distance. They didn't seem that high, so I'm not too worried. I'll just stick with them for as long as I can, I think, trying to remember the way we've run so I can turn back if I need to.

After a while people start dropping off from the group. Is the pace too quick, I wonder. Perhaps the runners here are not as good as in Iten. They all look like decent runners, with their long, skinny legs and calf muscles like bricks inserted under their tights. My calves just don't look like that, even when I tense them as hard as I can.

After about 20 minutes we're still climbing, running past small houses and children walking to school. The dawn is in full bloom now, striping the sky in red and yellow. One of the runners turns to me.
"How are you feeling?" I'm fine, actually. My legs don't feel tired. I'm breathing OK. But I don't want to sound cocky.

"OK," I say. "A bit breathless." Suddenly I do feel breathless. Another of the runners looks at me over his shoulder.

"Is it OK?" he asks. They seem surprised that I'm still with them, and their lack of belief is sowing doubts in my mind. Before I know it I'm starting to struggle. I wonder what happened to the other five runners. Maybe I'm going too fast. Perhaps I should slow down and wait for them.

"Where are the others?" I ask, but almost before the words are out I hear the patter of feet as they run up behind us. The pace suddenly picks up and they all start pushing on. The path seems to be getting steeper. I'm done for.

One of the runners kindly slows down to wait for me. Up, up, up we go. Out of the houses and on to a neat, sparse mountainside.

On we run. Every time I think we must be reaching the top, it turns out to be another false summit. And each time the next bit is even steeper. I begin to labour like a 20-stone jogger. Tiny pitter-patter steps that barely seem to inch me on. And still it goes on. Past huge swooping wind turbines, like spaceships from a distant future that have landed silently in the night. Up more, along a path so smooth, so steep. And all the time, the other runner stays with me, quietly encouraging me.

Virtually every athlete I have met in Kenya has shown me the same kindness. Many of them are struggling to make enough money even to buy food. They live in small shacks without electricity or running water, struggling to make headway in a saturated field in which only a very few will succeed. Yet they do it so well, and with such dedication, that every one of them would be a champion in virtually any other country in the world, would be lauded and celebrated, instead of being just another nameless runner making his way along the roads and tracks of Ngong or Iten.

Yet in this struggle there is no resentment towards the hapless mzungu [white man] with the car and the money to shop in supermarkets and travel the world and eat ice-cream. Instead, all they ever show me is compassion. As a fellow runner, no matter how slow, they offer me only encouragement. It is quite humbling.
As we finally approach the great peak of Ngong Hill, the whole of Kenya seems to stretch out around us. Distant mountains poke up out of the dawn mist, as a huge orange ball of sun begins its own ascent up into the hazy, pink sky. The air is cool and fresh, breathing life into me with each gulp.

"It's beautiful up here," I say to the runner beside me. He looks around as though he hasn't considered this before. "Yes," he says.

We're almost at the top when the rest of our group comes trundling back down the slope towards us. "Turn around," they say. Relieved I turn my weary legs. It's hard to believe how high we have come. It's like looking out across the world from an aeroplane. Did I really run up this far? I must be getting fitter. Surely.



original article in the guardian can be found here

banana bread muffins

not long after my near-baking fail with the coconut lime cake (note to self: malibu rum tastes like sun-tan lotion) i decided to go for something a bit more tested & true. now, i am not a patient person. i am definitely not a patient baker. i don't know why i like it since i never eat anything i bake (tastes bad to me, go figure) i do like the baking bit itself. a bit like doing arts & crafts even if you suck at art... or something.


however, the problem with being a perfectionist & not being patient is that you never end up with perfection. unless, of course, you are my father & make dad's banana bread muffins. this is how they turned out:

who stole one?

roughly translated, here is the recipe:

4 over-ripe bananas
6 table spoons of oil
1/2 cup of sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 well beaten eggs
1 1/2 cups of flour
1 heaped teaspoon baking powder
1 leveled teaspoon of baking soda
optional: 1/4 cup of chopped walnuts, almonds or chocolate chip

method:
with fork mix oil, vanilla essence, sugar and mash in the bananas then add the well beaten eggs, baking soda, baking powder and the flour.
mix the dough well and add the nuts
grease the baking tray and bake at 325F till golden brown (approx. 30min, maybe a little less)

om NOM nom nom

may morning weekend

sometimes i struggle a little with what this blog is for. i know i don't really write for an audience, and yet at the same time i constantly feel like i do, however small it is. i don't keep it as a personal or private record - between my email and notebooks, i don't need yet another venue to document my hum-drum daily life. & who cares if i bake shit anyway? but i keep wanted to 'post things on my blog' for whatever reason, so here goes.


i'm tempted to explain certain bits of my oxford life to 'everyone back home' but it feels rather redundant, so i'll stick to links to the ever-so-trusted wikipedia for know. it frustrates me that anything i post is always a month behind--i'll log in my ideas and then forget to finish until a time like now (28th may, for example) when i'm sick in bed on a saturday & can't really concentrate on one task to completion. 


already today i've managed to start doing laundry but not finishing, because someone left their wet stuff in the machine, i went into town to get some medications & only to find out i have been mixing the wrong ones & came back with perogies instead, i've watched half a tv programme on italian food & religion which has been making me LOL all afternoon, and i've updated facebook about 10 times now. dreadfully boring being sick. i pick up my book but i get sleepy but i don't want to sleep but i can't go outside & i want to go running but can't because i'm ill and all together this is just a frustrating unpleasant place to be. remind me to book tickets for london, btw. on top of it all, i keep swallowing my own snot which is getting disgusting. perhaps that's why i'm not hungry.


this has nothing to do with what i meant to write about, which was may morning.

it's been a weekend of baking for me. david was having a few old friends from undergrad over for the celebrations so i thought i'd bake a cake. alas, i forgot to take a picture of the said cake & the only one i have is of it in the fridge, which is not a very nice one at all. it was a coconut lime cake (infused with rum). i didn't like it, but everyone else did. one chap ate three slices in a go, so i was pleased. 

perhaps not the nicest cake picture ever... it was slightly lopsided toO! but was it ever difficult to get the toasted coconut only on the sides & not on the top!  & for comparison purposes, here is what i was going for (the light green coconut lime one, obviously):

we're getting there.

Larkin in Love

i have started writing for the Oxonian Review - this will become a regular thing. here is my first submission, on Philip Larkin's Letters to Monica, ed. Anthony Thwaite.

http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/larkin-in-love/

looking forward to the next one in a couple weeks!

precisely what summer is for

the uk countryside in the summer months lends itself every so beautifully to cycling. rolling hills, dozens of back lanes and b-routes, long hours of daylight. every time i set out on my bike i find it all too overwhelming & come home much later than anticipated, having given in to curiosity, adrenaline, or both. cycling does another thing - it clears my head, better than tea or running or swimming or rowing. whereas some things require too much attention to technique (rowing), and others allow you to zone out completely (swimming) cycling provides an ideal combination of head space & body awareness.

now, i'd say i classify as an amateur amateur cyclist at best, riding the £150 bike i pieced together from ebay & my old frame (the deathtrap). i envy and admire those who do it seriously. about two weeks ago i met some people who cycle for a living--from a clock made of spokes, to an entire wardrobe full of lycra, not to mention a shed full of spare bike parts, i was pretty impressed. but at times i really am torn as to what the bike really is for. it has become, as many things do, a sport for the elite.

this chap articulates my point exactly. for him, it's not about the carbon frames and shimano parts, but rather, the 'lazy, languid, long distance cycle rides'. stopping at a pub along the way, some locals commented:

"Respect to you," they said. "You've got your socks tucked into your corduroy, you're riding a bike like that. You're not like those Lycra lunatics." Adding a silent punctuation mark, a racer with all the gear sped past. Knowing glances were exchanged.

i have to admit, i am partial to those lycra lunatics. (this could be just my profound love of lycra; more on that later) & god knows if i had the money i'd deck myself like a little lycra leprechaun on a sweet carbon frame bike. or bamboo! but a recent purchase from my darling boyfriend has me whizzing through the back roads of oxfordshire looking like a giant soreen malt-loaf on a bike. :D

this chap is great though. he rides with the same mentality i meant to set out with on my unaccomplished LEJOG last year--"man, not machine". however, having been scraped & bruised a few times too many, i can't quite say i share the same affinity with his naivete.

I'll admit to a degree of naivety on my trip. As probably the last person working for the Guardian to not own a smart phone, I had to rely on the old-fashioned and frankly outdated concept of talking to people. I didn't bring a puncture repair kit or a spare inner tube. I had no plan for what to do if disaster struck, but I imagine it would have involved an expensive taxi ride. If it rained? Well, trousers get wet. It happens.

i supposed i enjoy the speed at which i move through the landscape. sometimes walking seems atrociously too slow--whereas two wheels is exactly what makes you feel invincible. huzzah!

baked!

i got a prezzie in the mail! it came a little late but boy was it a surprise!

my dear friend out in california had sent me two lovely cookbooks from the baked! bakery in new york! the perfect thing to keep this blog running.

i am determined to make every recipe in both books (even if it does take me all year) and test them on my darling boyfriend. now, the second book has some proper nice adult recipes - things like sweet & salty cake, nutella scones, whiskey pear tart, shortbread with fleur de sel, cowboy cookies, (no, srsly that's what they're called. they have pretzels!) rosemary apricot squares, and salt & pepper malted milk chocolate cookies (as shown on the cover). OH I CAN'T WAIT.

here is their website, with pichas and all.

7 july 2009

today, i meet stan. and i know it will be good because i wake up to my father's voice: "you are making pie today". today is the day but first i must sit through this linguistics lecture, my second lecture of the day. the syntax fairy is disappointingly calm. i doodle mountains of nothing but straight, parallel lines on my page, waiting. waiting. finally we go and wait some more at the regular tuesday waiting spot until a small, bald, shaky man appears. he reminds me of a tortoise without his shell, perhaps shivering from the cold rather than the onset of parkinsons. almost a caricature, his eyes are glowing. "oh, she goes" he says and i immediately don't want him to die. i feel selfish, oh so selfish, but i can't help it. he has stories worth saying and things worth teaching. we make our way laughing and talking to a coffeeshop, i don't mind the weight of my f.scott fitzgerald books i bought greedily for fifty cents each. a ritual occurs during the ordering and buying and stirring of the coffee; there is some shifting of bodies involved. i do not partake or meddle in, but i can sense my very presence accounts for the marred execution this time. we decide on inside because stan has no circulation and no body fat and e.b.a. has no body fat and i have no circulation, so we make for quite the unconditioned trinity. sitting inside graces us with the presence of walking-talking teenage stereotypes that switch tables every twenty minutes or so when a new party arrives. e.b.a and i roll our eyes; stan waits patiently for them to finish the maneuver. at one point e.b.a. asks stan to do 'the chaucer thing' for me. and so he begins and we lean in closer and closer to hear until our three heads are almost touching and we must looking like a bunch of crazies plotting something. he begins to recite in middle english the prologue of canterbury tales, flawlessly from memory. it is enchanting, i am enchanted, for i can barely understand but his voice has our undivided attention and it happens again - my surroundings melt into air and i might as well be in edinburgh. he stops, not because memory doesn't serve but because we are interrupted and i am angry at our interrupter, a visitor from porlock, covered in sweat from head to toe, wiping his sweaty brow with his sweaty forearm. it's felix, no cat. uninvited, he drops his girth next to me and in a speech as sweaty as his person begins to tell us loudly about buffy the vampire slayer and the ongoings of the fringe festival. stan adapts seemlessly, molds and transforms six hundred years and theo also seems rather comfortable in this new company, disappointed but comfortable. meanwhile i'm still trying to catch the last syllables of the prologue, touching them with my mind and trying to make them linger on my tongue, to no avail. they are toned out by felix who has hogged all the space - physical and literal and mental - and continues to speak as though everyone were interested. or perhaps it's just me. it takes me a while to concede defeat and drag myself out of london of the 1400's into second cup 2009. felix wants to be a psychologist now. he's a journalist really, quite talented i hear, but insists on being a psychologist, tonight of all nights as well. the more he talks the more he realizes i have nothing to latch on to, there is no portal for me into his post-modern world, so he says: how have you managed to completely escape modern mass culture? i understand to miss a few obscure references, but to have somehow missed, on, the past twenty years or so is almost an admirable feat. i'm baffled. now he's got me he's got me and i'm exposed and i don't know what to say. guilty as charged, i resume my role as social sponge and quietly absorb the rest of their conversation about the talking heads (and then less talking and more head, how clever) and star wars and felix reaches to cover my ears with both his sweaty palms, which requires some hefty maneuvering on his part and i feel violated as if this was his only excuse to touch the single female at the table. all this because e.b.a. admitted to having seen every single star trek episode ever made, to which felix responded: we're not supposed to mention that to members of the opposite sex! and i am amused because secretly i am always amused and stan says, opposite to what? and we all laugh. they keep talking and i mustn't have been a very good sponge because i can't remember what it was they talked about anymore, until e.b.a and felix went for a smoke. left alone with stan, he says to me: about twenty years ago, i met a young woman who, like you, had somehow missed on an entire generation of social reference. she was raised in a very religious household and not until her twenties was given a chance to be exposed to the world and all its worldly wonders. i was there to witness her discover and experience these things for the first time and see them anew through her eyes. it was one of the most beautiful times of my life... i could do nothing but smile at his story and it was in such a state that e.b.a. and felix found us when they returned. and so the evening unfolded, stan dropping tiny bits of wisdom until felix had to go and then stan had to go and e.b.a. and i were left again across from each other, with eager, questioning eyes. he was beaming, absolutely beaming with all of stan's accomplishments that the man himself was so quiet and humble about himself. i knew now, i understood what he meant when he said this man is a teacher. i was grateful, ever so grateful to have met him. i told e.b.a. that and we walked off into the night.

axolotl

you know when you learn a new word & then it seems to haunt you everywhere you go?

my word is axolotl.

it all started at work, when a friend began to explain his previous pets, and we only got to a-talking about that because i mentioned lampreys, which still make me shiver when i think about them. they are jawless fish with teeth. click & be scarred for life.

but axolotls are a different story. they are cute & meek and secretly smiling their goofy smile at you. & they don't suck your blood.

this little fellow has been following me around everywhere. he came up in a conversation. i saw a sign for salamanders somewhere. i was reading the news and lone & behold, there he was. i was catching up on some reading, only to find that julio cortazar had written a short story called 'axolotl'. i was mesmerized:

I saw a rosy little body, translucent (I thought of those Chinese figurines of milky glass), looking like a small lizard about six inches long, ending in a fish's tail of extraordinary delicacy, the most sensitive part of our body. Along the back ran a transparent fin which joined with the tail, but what obsessed me was the feet, of the slenderest nicety, ending in tiny fingers with minutely human nails. And then I discovered its eyes, its face. Inexpressive features, with no other trait save the eyes, two orifices, like brooches, wholly of transparent gold, lacking any life but looking, letting themselves be penetrated by my look, which seemed to travel past the golden level and lose itself in a diaphanous interior mystery.

there is something so uncanny & so flaneur-esque about this story and yet perfectly natural that it ends the way it does. you can see him building up to it -- the little eyes, the fingernails... & then i find i am overwhelmed by the greatest ironic sadness, when the man no longer returns.

Weeks pass without his showing up. I saw him yesterday, he looked at me for a long time and left briskly. It seemed to me that he was not so much interested in us any more, that he was coming out of habit.

the metatext of the story is so simple and yet never ceases to captivate.

scratch that. i am trying to say something remotely intelligent & literary about it, but i can't. perhaps my brain is out of practice; perhaps i like it too much to analyse the fuck out of it. or perhaps it's just their little, inquisitive, beady eyes...



to read the original short story, click here.

the politics of walking with an umbrella

the other day it was raining, so i chose to take the longest, largest umbrella i had.
i found it on a park bench a while ago. i sat & waited with a friend for 35 minutes and no one arrived to claim it, ergo, it was mine.

it is a strange thing, walking with an umbrella. firstly, we must distinguish between walking with an umbrella in the rain vs walking with an umbrella in the event of rain.
now, the former we are all accustomed to - gripping tight to an umbrella being torn away by gusts of wind, the etiquette of passing people in the street without poking out eyes, pointing it into, not away from, the wind & the rain. you all get the picture. i usually cycle everywhere so i can't be bothered with umbrellas, but this time around i was walking. on the way home, the rain had subsided and i came to a much more difficult point: what do i do with my cane-like umbrella now that it's not raining?

i thought back to an almanac i read a couple years back that included instructions on how to walk with an umbrella, or use it as a walking stick.

now, unless you have a dphil, wear tweed and flannel comfortably outdoors and are over the age of 50, you have no right to be walking with a cane or you look like this twat:

or this one:

i can't for the life of me recall it, but there was a specific method that carefully calculated the amount of steps you need to take per each tap of the umbrella (used as a walking cane in this instance). however, there were also (un)clear rules about the differences in walking with a folded umbrella and an actual walking cane. either way, it was much more scientific than it looked.

what baffled me, however, was that in the process of trying to find some sort of existence of this almanac, i have come across numerous websites that

a) want to sell me victorian walking sticks

b) teach me how to deal with osteoarthritis & getting used to a cane

c) explain 'how to walk in the rain'

d) show me pictures of rihanna

go figure.

born to run?

a very well-read friend of mine recently posted the following on his facebook, by the well-known christopher mcdougall, journalist & runner.

born to be a trail runner

now, i've definitely had a love & hate relationship with running. i never noticed it as a kid, until i got throw into an unexpected cross country race when i was 9. they put with me the upper age-group, only because i was tall for my age (i actually was one of the tallest kids in my class until about grade 8. no, seriously).

i had to run this course with pretty much no training, but little did i know then. i was crammed side by side with lots of other girls, all running madly for some unknown reason. i instantly disliked this - the pushing elbows, the mismatched rhythms, and especially the fact that i was expected to run faster than all of them. it was an odd thought because i was an incredibly competitive child. i did not take losing for an answer. but i was also very stubborn, and when something didn't suit me, that was that.

midway through the run which i was grudgingly doing to begin with, i caught a cramp. that was it. i decided i don't want to run it anymore, i didn't like running with the other girls, and it wasn't even my race. so i stopped. & walked the entire course, non-chalantly. i came in 64th, out of a total of 65 girls. apparently one fainted in the woods.

that was enough to put me off running for a good three years. it was common practice for elementary schools in canada to have 'cross country' season in the spring, where one usually male, athletically-inclined-but-well-past-his-prime middle-aged teacher spends his lunch hours organizing the cross country team.

it ought to be mentioned: lunch hours at schools i went to consisted of mandatory eating for 20 minutes and then mandatory playing outside for 40 minutes. being on the cross country team meant mandatory running for 55 minutes & mandatory gulping your lunch for 5. i have no idea how but a certain mr. p got news that i was captain of the soccer team and made me join cross country. i had no choice.

at the end of my first run, i was spitting all over the place because i was certain i had blood in my throat. the same thing happened the next day. i kept pointing at little gobbits of saliva & saying 'blood! blood!' after a week, i was off the hook.

throughout my four years at highschool, i cannot recall doing single bit of exercise. i was running around, indeed, doing all sorts of other things (mostly licking ass, tbh) but that was that. it wasn't until university that i picked it up again, this time of my own accord.

my first day at uni i noticed i had a 3 hour gap between international history 101 and geology 101 (this was my 'rocks for jocks' course). so in order to live up to the name, i started regular gym sessions with a friend. and so began the running, but it was non committal. it wasn't until my then much-older boyfriend broke up with me that i took it hardcore.

for some strange reason, all my periods of the most intense physical training have always occurred immediately after breakups. i ran off every breakup i had, and this one was particularly bad. it was my first real heartbreak and i was angry. i needed to come up with horrible things to say and the best way to clear one's head was with a bit of air. and so in -10 weather, i wore thermals and went running. when it was 2 degrees celius, i was wearing shorts. i ran laps around a stadium and i ran cycling paths and neighbourhoods. i ran & ran & ran until i felt better. i did & it worked.

after that year at uni, i moved to france for my exchange. it was a stupid idea to begin with, and having secured a small apartment (if i may even call it that, but that's for another time) in the 16e, i went for runs around the rolland garros & the bois de boulogne. this was short-lived however, as the patisserie just below my flat and the banks of the seine lined with art called for a much slower pace of life. & so my running came to a halt.

again, it was another breakup that made me start again. this time it wasn't as bad and i was quickly thereafter occupied. & this happened a few more times. then there was last summer - cycling had taken over running as the ultimate break-up cure. i needed a channel for my anger and i was hooked on the endorphins. it got to the point where i was cycling the british countryside for about 2 hours a day, more on weekends. running was a change of scenery, that's all.

it's not that i don't run in between, it just never had a particular function. from time to time i enjoy a good run but when i'm rowing or busy with work it becomes less necessary. until recently.

my boyfriend had a friend over who runs for 2+ hours a day. she does marathons, was a blues rower. hearing about her bothered me a little, but it wasn't until i actually witnessed her going out for one of her morning runs that it hit me: cascade of competitiveness, jealousy & admiration. i don't like people that like the same things as me. it's a strange feeling, really.

within a week i was running again. the thing is, it had little to do with her. in fact, nothing. i had been fidgety for a while & my utterly dissatisfying job only left me restless in the evenings. so back i was, up to 5 times a week. i happily wake up at 6 and greet the dawn across port meadow. sometimes i'm lucky enough to catch a last bit of the night's frost.

around the same time, i read mcdougall's article. i can relate, in a way - the idea of running a marathon has never appealed to me. in fact, i think i would hate it and am already tensing my vocal chords in disapproval. i don't like the idea of running for money, or having to pay to run. i don't like running near urban space. & i ESPECIALLY don't like running with people.

this happened to me TWICE recently & it completely ruined my runs. it's alright to pass a fellow running along the way, usually heading in the opposite directly, or to run past others enjoying the open air. but to have to run alongside someone, or worse, behind/in front of someone is hell. i hate it. i rather not run at all. i was out for a run a very well-hidden woodland when i heard breathing. i saw a man coming up behind. i was angry for having him invade my space so i didn't let him pass. i kept him off for a good while but what was supposed to be an enjoyable run became this stupid game of showing him i'm better. or maybe he wasn't trying. i don't know. i could hear his breathing, it angered me. he had poor rhythm. finally, i found a path to diverge on and ran away. that completely ruined my run.

then, the next day, someone else was running ON THE SAME PATH. it was two guys this time, fucking talking. talking! running is not motherfucking chitchat time. if you can chitchat you are not running hard enough. fuck off. & shut up. gah. i was pissed off enough at this point that i slowed down and let them pass. then i stopped. completely stopped until i couldn't see them anymore. & i waited for a while until i was certain they were gone. i couldn't pick it up again as well as i had been & it had worked me up so much i knew i had ruined another run. fucking bastards.

yes, the idea of running a marathon is appalling. but mgdougall's idea of a fatass run sounds doable. so long you don't see anyone for miles. and hey, if i was running that far, a fistful of warm frenchfries would be a very welcome gift. omnomnom nom .

but mcdougall raised another point - running method. he studies the tarahumara people - an ancient tribe renowned for their long distance running abilities. as he points out, they run on the balls of their feet, & what's more - they run barefoot. which brings me to my next venture:

vibrams!

oh these are definitely on my christmas list this year, along with lululemon pants & a bike. oh right, a bike! we'll get on that later.

but the thing that attracts me to these shoes, more than anything, is this:

you can put your fingers in between your toes! oooh that feels sooooooooo good. it's right up there with q-tips! that's how good it is! (anyone who has seen me clean my ears will understand)

but the point he makes in an interesting one - like all other animals, it seems ironic humans are not made to run. perhaps we do not make the fastest sprinters in the animal worlds, but researchers have found that we do make pretty damn good long distance runners. which is contrary to the belief that sprinters are muscular and healthy, while thin, strung out marathoners are weak & gangly. take for example this article from harvard about the evolution of humans and long distance barefoot running.

i could go on forever but i'm up tomorrow at 6am for another run, so imma sleep.

but if christmas can't come too soon, tell santa i want this pair in black.

brrap brrap boom.

austra (new band alert)

http://hypem.com/#!/item/18bt7/Austra+-+Lose+It

i tend to have a strong dislike to most female vocalists, but every now and then someone like these guys comes along.
have a listen.

Some background: She joined the Canadian Children’s Opera at 10, sang for the Canadian Opera Company, and pursued a career in opera (while learning viola and piano) until she attended a punk show and joined a band. Instead of going on to focus on music in college, she listened to NIN and the Knife and started doing production work (for soundtracks and local plays), deciding she wanted to “make classical music with really fucked up, distorted crazy shit on there.”

-stereogum.com

Still, academia's loss was goth-tinged baroque synthpop's gain as Stelmanis sought to create music that would present her as a sort of brooding, electronic Polly Harvey. Austra's album, Feel It Break, mixed by Damian Taylor (Björk, the Prodigy, Unkle), doesn't cover any new ground if you're familiar with the work of Bat for Lashes, the Knife, even Florence. Nevertheless, if you have a penchant for gently pummelling keyboards with some of the sleazy flavour of early Soft Cell, vocals that are ethereal yet powerful - if a little heavy on the plummy hauteur - and lyrics that allude to all manner of dark forces and questionable rituals, then this is your lucky ... Break.

-guardian.co.uk

things you can do with bits of wire

here's a little interesting internet find: this man (terry border) adds bits of wire to everyday objects. the results are brilliant. here's a short gallery from the telegraph.

this one of spooning bananas was one of my favourites:




there's more on his original blog: http://bentobjects.blogspot.com/

given my fascination with minutiae and the everyday, he seems to capture it in an almost maurice blanchot sort of way. brillies :D

it's my birthday!

well, it was on monday.

every year, my birthday also happens to coincide with pi day, albert einstein's birthday, and this.

so in an attempt to celebrate, i made myself a cake. now, rather than trying some preposterously difficult recipe that looked delicious, i decided to go with something tried, tested & true. i recalled making a cheesecake a while back from the hummingbird bakery cook book. it was a simple, new york style cheesecake with cream cheese & a crumbly base.

i also remembered it tasting DELICIOUS.

so my project was set. i found the recipe scrawled on the back of an envelope & away we* went. first we got everything ready.



then there was some mixing & stirring, as usual. and also as usual, it resulted in a very dirty jf.



however, midway through my baking project, i realised a horrible thing: the cake needed to be cooked in a baine marie, otherwise it would burn. not having a container large enough for it, we settled for a wok.

then we waited.





& waited.





& waited.




however, i am not a very patient person. so, after about an hour (i decided it was time to go & we would finish the cake at my boyfriend's house. so away we went - still wobbly, we wrapped the cake up warm & made the bus trek over. once we got there, he didn't have a baine marie big enough either, so we just settled without one, popped it in the oven & waited some more.

in the meantime, don julio & i made a mean linguine carbonara...

(ta-daaah!)



...played a board game with the don (ticket to ride!)

in so many ways, it was a perfect birthday. i even had a cake with candles (so what if i made it myself & it didn't quite turn out? a cake is a cake) :D

*: we= el presidente don julio & master houdini

marmalade

alright, i need to get one thing straight.

i was recently at the borough market. we were in the neal's yard dairy when i pointed to a lovely looking block of fruit jelly & said: "MARMALADE!" the lady behind the counter looked at me
funny. "that's not marmalade, dear."

certain in my conviction, i pointed at it again. "oh. it's not?"
"no, that's membrillo. would you like to taste it?" she handed me a piece which i greedily gobbled.
"MARMALADE!" it was exactly the very same substance i had been imagining made paddington bear sticky. it was what mum put into her christmas thimble cookies. it was delicious & sweet & went really well with peanut butter. or on toast. it was my marmalade.
however, that was wrong. apparently, in this country, marmalade is MASHED UP ORANGE PEELS. i don't like orange peels. it tastes bitter & slightly odd. you put it on bread that has been massacred in the toaster, rather than nice warm soft bread that doesn't cut up the insides of your mouth when you bite it.

so much do the brits like their marmalade they even have studies on how to eat it best. (i have my own theory on this -- eat my marmalade, er, membrillo. here is a study on how it is best consumed.
i seem to be having difficulties reconcilating things recently. especially my idea of things vs. how they really are. below, a photographic demonstration.

my idea of marmalade:


what marmalade actually is:

my affinity with paddington bear has been ruined.

in other news, my sister (el presidente don julio) has arrived in the uk. i promise not to feed her any 'real' marmalade.

tuesdays

yesterday was pancake tuesday, which i celebrated with pancakes. it also happened to be international women's day, which i didn't celebrate at all. i did however, find an old email in which i was accused of not being enough of a feminist for sending a chauvinistic video of women who can't drive. i think it's fitting to make the same argument again.

---

You are supposed to be a feminist! Don't ponder to a chauvinist who compiled (and titled) this video (funny as it may be).

i do not see how acknowledging even 'stereotypical' female faults (such as the inability to drive, or at least drive properly) inhibits me from being a feminist. on the contrary, one can only truly criticize and explore the female in the social hegemony after accepting and moving beyond their differences from the male, be they biological (a truism) or psychological differences. the conclusions based on such findings, however, cannot be accepted as normative. that's the problem of reconciling freud and lacan with feminist theory. feminism requires a rational critique that demasks the false claims of patriarchism, however, that is not all. on the contrary, it requires that we take these claims - be their true or not, such as the claim that women are bad drivers or that blonds are stupid - and cast the critical light upon them. second wave feminism in the states and simone de beauvoir accomplished exactly this. then we can proceed onwards. it ought to be noted however, that stereotypes exists precisely because they are generalities - they hold to some, perhaps even most, but not all. a single woman cannot fall prey to a stereotype because she is just a single woman. likewise goes for race, culture, age and so on. mind you though, often dispelling one stereotype only leads to its replacement by another. think about the term feminist - even that in itself carries certain stereotypes and presumptions, does it not?

---

i find women's day to be another one of those annoying 'feminist' ventures, whereby they try to gain equality by creating inequality. there should, justifiably i think, be an international men's day - straight men, gay men - if you have a cock (or wish you had one), celebrate it. yet surely, this would cause an uproar.

but in all honesty, i'm not sure how i feel about women's day, or feminism in general. i've held a vehement stance on both sides of the argument depending on who i was arguing with -- if it was my father, it was massively pro-feminist (pro-choice, pro-pill, pro-freedom), if it was to a boyfriend or in class, i'd make the case for redundancy or the self-congratulatory nature of an endeavor that no longer serves the purpose it once did - women's suffrage.

the problem is that women want the best of both worlds. we want all the beatification and exaltation of chivalry - having doors opened, our coats removed, always being on the inside of the sidewalk, being priased for being dainty & pretty & fair... and most especially, being chased & coveted after.

at the same time, we want to fix our own bicycles, drive our own cars, have our own salaries, be noticed for a our brains not our boobs, and especially allowed the same sexual freedom without being burdened with either the negative labels of promiscuity or a child.

somehow, these two things seem to be exclusive of each other - but i don't see how they are. we can be both feminists & non-feminists; one doesn't make you a harley-riding leather-wearing hardcore dyke any more than the other makes you a proper victorian lady in a corset with her face powdered.

i'm going to stick to both sides of the coin.

lemon drzzl (baking post no. 1)

from time to time something odd tickles my fancy & i decide to watch a program on bbc iplayer. as a general rule, i don't watch television - have never had much interest for it, and even less time - but sometimes i have the urge to 'get with society' and come out from under my rock so i turn on bbc iplayer with this incredible urge of finally understanding who doctor who is or why everyone at work is always talking about top gun or top gear or whatever it is. but then i see a video of sir david attenborough and i can't help but click. like dr strangelove's arm, my cursor involuntarily makes its way to the videos of lemurs or sharks or giant eggs. (i want david attenborough to read me bedtime stories. no, seriously. he is that golden).

this time, something else caught my eye. i had, by this point, either forgotten and given up my endeavor to be socially 'with it'. there was a picture of a grinning raymond blanc with a loaf in his hand. a famous name in these parts, his was sharing his kitchen secrets. & so i clicked : BBC iPlayer - Raymond Blanc's Kitchen Secrets: Series 2: Cakes and Pastries

i have never seen a man so excited about his own baking. i was so fueled by his enthusiasm, that by the end of the episode i felt like a pastry sous-chef, ready to go, whisk in hand. monsieur blanc, here i come!

the first thing he made was a lemon drizzle cake. my boyfriend loves lemon drizzle, so i decided this was going to be my weekend project. (also, all the other things he made looked really difficult. lemon difficult.) i went to the store, bought some lemons &tc, and away i went.

i squeezed & peeled & mixed & sifted & cooled & glazed. ( i may add i sifter through a tea strainer. i couldn't find a proper sifter. after i did about half the flour in tablespoon amounts, i switched to a colander. of course i found a sifter once the cake was done) and came up with this:



this is what raymond blanc's lemon drizzle looked like:




now, how come raymond was able to make a lovely, loaf shaped cake with a smooth, clear icing, while mine was topped with some sort of strange, bulbous growth, covered icing that looks like something died & melted over the loaf, and was probably the ugliest baking project i could have imagined. that is not what i pictured in my head.

while the cake was in the oven i went through a clean ALL the things mode, daydreaming about my loaf. it was supposed to look like this:


it was supposed to be lovelier than raymond blanc's! it was supposed to be the loaf of all loaves! beautiful & perfect! it was supposed to be shiny & smooth & perfect.

but i had to make do with what i baked, & so i presented my monster loaf to my boyfriend, who greeted it with utmost enthusiasm, which made me happy. & guess what?

IT WAS DELICIOUS!

it was more delicious than the one in the picture. and the lemon drizzle was perfectly zesty. and the cake soft & moist. it was the most delicious lemon loaf ever! HURRAH!

with my baking skills confirmed, i will now work my way through raymond blanc's list of patisseries. next on my list is his chocolate eclairs. but first, i believe i owe someone a banoffee pie...

difficult, difficult, lemon difficult

making decisions is HARD.

i don't like it. at all. not just the important, heavyweight decisions. i don't even like the little ones. making decisions is the devil.

take, for example, this blog. i know metablogging is generally frowned upon, but there is a case in point here: it took me three days to choose a template background. i didn't even make the background, all i had to do was pick it. pick one, any one, start writing. but noooooo - i had to fiddle with fonts (upset at the lack of garamond), fiddle with colours (my inclination is to make everything green, even if it looks bad) and pictures. instead, this is what i ended up with.

the good thing about a blog is that you can change the layout. it's not permanent. permanent decisions scare me.

i consider getting dressed a permanent decision. i will have to pick out something that will keep me warm all day. occasionally, i want it to look nice. but usually, it's about temperature. i should note at this point, that i hoard all my clothes. things i haven't worn for years i can't throw out. i fail at this miserably - i always, always dress wrong for the weather. i usually freeze. or i walk too fast & get warm. but usually freeze.

i remember a recent trip into london where i wanted to look nice, so i wore a dress, with a cardigan and a leather jacket. MISTAKE. i spent the entire afternoon smiling (because my face had frozen that way) and clenching my lower back muscles in some vain attempt to keep my body warm. i ended up with a spastic back and a month-long cough and the bladder of a five-year-old with 2L of sunny D. i don't get sick.

but it gets worse. i get anxious. i start to bite my nails. i am not a nail biter. i was when i was little, and have taken great pride recently in being an 'adult' that has lovely lady-hands. except for when i have to make a decision, when i bite them off. now i have no nails :( i put lemon cream on my nails to stop it. it doesn't work.



today, i was writing an email to my housemates about A New Fridge. but first, i had to show it to my completely uninterested coworker, to confirm that i had written an okay email. he said he'd move out immediately if he lived with me.

sometimes i feel like a little dog. no seriously, like a stupid canine that does something and then looks blankly up at it's owner for confirmation of what it has done. good dog? bad dog? only i stare up innocently before actually doing something. undecisive dog. & if there is no owner, i'll find the nearest passerby.

it is as if the smallest choices (chocolate or vanilla? fish or chicken? black jumper or... other black jumper?) will have some sort of compounding impact on the rest of my life. i can't help but thinking of it as something that remotely looks like this:

my problem is that i want ALL the possible leave on this tree. or at least touch them. just once.
this, in the normal world, is not feasible. i would have to double up & go back in time. you cannot pick all the options at once, but i would if i could. all the little leaves. MINE!!!!

whatever bit of the brain is in charge of making decisions, mine is broken :(
it must have broken at some point in childhood, because i recall being completely retarded when it came to choosing outfits. i would pair all my green clothes together. green shoes, green tights, green top, green skirt, green headband, green jumper, green coat. i must have looked like a miniature leprechaun, but my mother knew better than to argue with my refined fashion taste. that was as far as my decision making skills went. everyday, green.

recently, i noticed something funny. my mother was buying my sister's flight and it took her a month. a whole month. she diddled, dallied, and god knows what else, until ticket prices soared up and her & dad were stuck either canceling my sister's visit or forking it out. they forked it out. but it is like this with everything.

a couple of weeks ago i was sitting in a cafe that is now around the corner from me, having a carrot & ginger juice, discussing sabaticals in italy with a friend, when he asked me about a certain cadence i had written: 'i will wait for you in cuzco, / will that make me the fool?' and i blanked. i had no idea what it referred to, or what i was thinking of when i wrote it. i knew it had something to do with pound (vaguely) and a poet-friend of mine (w.b.). cuzco remains a mystery.

this is not my first blog. it is yet another start-up project in a long lineage of failed endeavours; perhaps a gene for a weakness for public writing. or something. there have been many abandoned works, some were explanatory rants about a current mission of mine, some general blah-blah about the monotony of everyday life i so adore, some just filled with things i like. either way, something always got in the way - the mission aborted, too much information exposed, a lack of time. this time, i vow to be committed. at least once a week, for 30 minutes, i will make the time to indulge myself in my own thoughts, if only to never forget why it was cuzco, after all.

let's take my first online endeavour. it was a livejournal, the ideal venue for any moping, hormonally-inbalanced teen. i was 15, i loved the colour 'maroon' and wanted to play lead guitar in an imaginary rock band in which my best friend was the frontman. trapped in the convent walls of an abbey, i was rather pleasantly confound to my catholic-all-girls' school existence. self absorbed in endless issues of academics, school board politics and choirboys i found plenty to rant about. it helped to have a circle of friends with livejournals - we would post comments on each other's blogs, fuelling each other's 'talent'. our lj's had names like 'theholyseeinc', 'suchagoodexcuse', 'adyingatheist', 'dreamyambience', 'pretteepink'. there was 'meloise' who posted the most dreamy drawings & later went on to study art at OCAD, & 'fairyfetus' who is not living in a caravan with some hippies (i think). but for the life of me i can't remember what my own lj was called. i'm sure it had what i thought was a 'witty & clever' name, probably taken from some U2 lyric i was obsessed with at the time. maybe someone out there still remembers it. in the end, i deleted & purged it, which i now regret a little, dreadful as it was. there were posts about broken hearts coded as 'dusty roses' and posts about my favourite bands and 'artistically written' posts about the cute biology teacher i flirted with after hours. i snide at it now, but i remember those late nights procrastinating on msn & livejournal, agonizing over a boy or checking out new portishead songs rather fondly.

livejournal was also the first place i made 'online' friends. i would have been uncomfortable with the term then, but i couldn't resist the curiosity of what other people were posting. i specifically remember one chap, bluetouchpaper or something, who i met online. he would post photos of himself in a white peacoat - unusual for a chap, i thought, but trendy. we exchanged addresses (he lived in san francisco) and began to write letters. mine were always written in pencil (in case they got wet) and looked somewhat ephereal, they were so light & pale you could barely make out the lines on the page and the writing between them. they discribed the electric field just by my house and other trivialities of the oncoming autumn. his in turn were written on thick, manilla paper with field flowers pressed into it. he wrote in blue ink, heavily slanted to the right, with loopy letters but jagged ascenders/descenders. he told me about drunken nights in alleyways and parks, and a butterfly. there was one letter about a butterfly. years later, when i bought my first typewriter, i found these letters and decided to write (or rather, type this time) a letter back to see if he still lives there, and if not, to the current occupent. i sent it, but never heard back. but a connection had been made, even if ephemeral.

after i deleted my livejournal (i saw an as an immature reaction to Life and was desperate to clear my image of any immatury, as at the ripe age of 18 or 19 one tends to do) i didn't write for a while. i moved to paris & started a short blog that tied into my college online publication -- this one had an objective purpose: entitled 'fluctuat net mergitur' (i thought i was being clever) it served to detail my experiences of moving abroad to paris at 19 and living on my own. my first post was about a trip to a brocante where i acquired a new pair of opera binoculars - the perfect tool for my tiny 8th floor apartment. subsequent posts included a voyeuristic view into the apartments across the street; lives of the french, realtime. i did not see anything wrong with this. there were posts about another golden-voiced highly literate young chap i was crushing on back home. a few posts about the french patisserie downstairs (that i now regret not having used to its full capacity), a few about the french revolution, (and french men, and french cheese) and posts about my endless walks, flaneur-esque, through parisian streets. often i would come home at 3am, having been out walking with a friend, or alone. however, my hobbies soon faded, as did my blog. i have kept some of the posts this time, but no trace of it remains.

my next endeavour was a tumblr. i got one because my best friend had one. i could post pictures & songs and general useless shit that i happened to deem important because it tickled some fancy of mine, or appealed to a certain aspect of my oh-so-refine aesthetic. i recall what seemed like a never-ending flow of pictures of k.d. lang, who i was crushing on at the time. there were melodramatic imagined conversations, always one sided, always in first person. those spurred many individuals who narcissistically assumed the 'you' was them -- this was the end of my tumblr. posting personal affairs resulted in unresolved issues. and plus, i was 'too melodramatic for my own good'. i kept a few mementos, again, but that was all.

from there, i embarked on my latest project. i decided to stop indulging the 'general public' (usually about 5-10 readers who were all my friends anyways) in the affairs of my private life which they would hear me talk about in person anyways, and started a blog with a mission. my mission was to cycle across the uk, known to those that do it as 'lejog'. you can, i think at this point, guess what happens.