Marfa

Over the holiday weekend, James and I made our way to West Texas.

Our first stop was in Fredericksburg, where James got talked into a free tasting of the world's hottest hot sauce ("The Source"). They gave it to him on such a tiny little toothpick though, I didn't get to see any panting or tears. 

I think the sauce is made through some kind of intense distillation process that makes it hotter than peppers found in nature, which kind of sounds like cheating. I love spicy food, but I'd rather taste things than just look for pure spicy.

After Fredericksburg, it was onward to Marfa:

A display outside The Wrong Store (art store) in Marfa

In the early seventies, Donald Judd left New York to get away from the constrains of the urban art world. There's something very cool about driving way across Texas and getting to see a bunch of concrete cubes sitting in the middle of the Chihuahuan Desert. We also saw a Warhol display and half a dozen other small exhibits in town.

On our first night, we went to a bar in neighboring Alpine (cheaper hotels) and when James gave the bartender his ID, the guy pulled his own out from under the bar - a fellow Alaskan!

Not only that, he'd gone to Dimond High School too! He was about four years younger than us, and had moved to Texas to play soccer. He was finishing up his degree at the university in Alpine and then hoped to move back to Anchorage to coach club soccer.

It's always so exciting meeting fellow Alaskans. We didn't get to talk to the guy much since the bar was busy (forgot to even ask his name!) but we bonded over the ho-hum Texan tap water, and we learned that the house he grew up in Anchorage was essentially walking distance from James'. Too funny how you can live in a country with 300 million people, drive out to the middle of nowhere and meet a neighbor you never met before. I think that says something about the age we live in, but I'll withhold the philosophizing.

Donal Judd installation at the Chinati Foundation

On our first touring day, we stopped at the visitor center and chatted for about half an hour with the lady there, she'd lived in Marfa her whole life. When we got to asking her about the whole art scene and the tourism that's come with it, she rattled off half a dozen celebrities she'd met. She once picked Jake Gyllenhaal up at the airport. She met the Twilight kids. She didn't recognize Elijah Wood when he came into the visitor center.

There are so many sad, declining small towns in the U.S. The lady at the tourist center admitted there were old people in town who didn't like all the artists crashing the place, but it's a huge economic boon and a such a unique transformation of a really remote place: the movie theater in Alpine was only showing two films, which we weren't interested in, and the next nearest theater that we could pull up on our phones was 2.5 hours away in New Mexico.

This is Prada Marfa. It was not commissioned by Prada, but they did provide their shoes for display to the artist free of charge. It's controversial because of the commercial aspect. But I like it. I'm not much of an art critic though, I like just about anything that has a touch of humor and doesn't alienate me.

It's located about half an hour outside Marfa, so you actually have to drive through Valentine - which is a teeny place on the razor edge of becoming a ghost town - to go see it. When we got there, there was one other car stopped, another tourist. That man left, and another car pulled up carrying another pair of tourists, a young couple like us.

I can't speak to the artist's intention, but I think there's something incredibly funny about driving way the hell out in the desert to photograph a Prada store and then when you get there you see people who look just like you doing the same thing - young, probably educated, fancy camera - taking a picture of  a store you've probably seen in a dozen cities anywhere in the world.

On the way to Prada we spotted this blimp thing. We stopped on the way back to take some pictures, then saw at the gate where it was a military science-y weather-monitoring something or other, which makes my brain immediately go: "Oh Science? BO-RING. Whatever." and forget about it. Shameful, I know. As Popeye would say, I yam what I yam.

But then James stumbled on this article via a Facebook link. The blimpy thing we saw looks an awful lot like this blimp thing:

Now, the thing we saw may very well be what it purports to be on its signage out in the desert. This thing though is a military surveillance blimp that's going to go over Baltimore and it will be able to surveil the crap out of all kinds of stuff as far as dozens of miles away. Techno-surveillance dystopia is upon us. Time to start working on my tin-foil hat. 

After Marfa we drove south and then drove along the Rio Grande - so everything south of the river here is Mexico. 

Texas - Rio  Grande - Mexico

I guess they don't need a fence because the territory is so inhospitable. But we did pass two border check points where border agents check people heading north into Texas.

This was taken at the Contrabando Movie Site, where several nineties westerns were filmed.

In other news, I am working and writing. I am no longer worried about not having enough work, I have repurposed that worrying for stressing over whether the work will evaporate (ah, freelancing). I'm writing about tech startups for a local website and I've scratched out a little more work related to my beloved (subject - not actually beloved) North Korea. Plus I'm doing a bit of commercial blogging and I have a riveting business dictionary-updating gig.

I'm a couple weeks off from a full draft of my novel. I always feel better about it when I'm not actually looking at the screen. Maybe not a good sign? 

Special Gift from RadioShack!

Last semester, James had a class project where he was tasked with rebranding a product or company in need of an update.

He picked RadioShack. You can see his idea here. Today, he received a package in the mail with a gift card, a t-shirt, a neat bluetooth speaker and a thank you card.

It was written by a RadioShack senior manager of social media. He thanked James for putting his work out there and said that while it wasn't "quite" the direction they were moving in, it was a "spot-on" idea.

Woohoo, getting noticed!

2013 Reviewed

Okay, here goes:

Florence, Oregon: 5 months
Thailand: 3 weeks
Burma: 1 month
Malaysia: 1 week
Vietnam: 1 month
Laos: 3 weeks
China/Yunnan: 2 weeks
Sacramento: 2 days
Eureka/Santa Rosa/Redwoods campground: 1 night each (to and from aforementioned Sacramento wedding)
Klamath Falls, Oregon: 2 days
Napa: 1 week
China/Beijing: 3 days
Mongolia: 3 days
Russia: 2.5 weeks
Germany: 2 weeks
Austin: 2 months
McMinville, Oregon: 2 days

New Countries:
Thailand
Burma
Vietnam
Laos
Russia

Things that happened:
Swam with elephants in Thailand
Threw up out of a bus window, had nice Burmese lady hand me a tissue
Scootered to a deserted beach every day, drank beer, ate fresh rolls, read books on Phu Quoc
Saw Ho Chi Minh and Lenin
Saw a dead guy in Laos
Saw millions of bats fly out of Mulu Caves on Borneo
Saw my friends get married
Rolled my eyes when a bald French lady said a Buddhist chant for a chicken meeting its death at the hands of a Tibetan villager
Talked to Tibetans about why they don't like the Chinese government
Had a boozy lunch with random Chinese businessmen in Yunnan
Watched my 5'3" brother jump 22'9" to become Oregon's state long jump champion
Started writing a novel like it was my job
Stopped writing a novel to work slavishly on article about North Korea
Went to a writing conference, people seemed to like what I wrote
Took my mom from Beijing to St Petersburg
Played 50+ games of Scrabble (Mom keeps track)
Ate pickled herring in Tomsk, got nauseous
Got bitten in the shoulder by icky Russian guy in overcrowded van outside Irkutsk
Visited two old friends in Germany, one from Alaska, one from USC
Loved Berlin
Kayaked Siltcoos outlet, twice
Moved to Austin
Had my first Thanksgiving at home in five years
Started shopping at Costco again
Assembled an adult-looking pantry of canned goods for maybe the first time in my life (thanks, Costco)
Happily started living with James again, after 17 months apart

A lot of other things happened too, but I think the above is a fairly accurate snapshot of my 2013.

While there are still places I'd like to go, I feel satisfied with where I've gone since 2008. A few years ago, I felt disappointed if I didn't add a new country to the list during a calendar year (which I did not do in 2012), and I had a sense of urgency about seeing a lot as soon as possible. That feeling has dissipated. I'm happy with what I've done. Now I am in the not-entirely-pleasant position of readjusting to life in the US. Trying to figure out a work situation is stressful, especially since I don't have the network here that I would had I not spent so much time overseas, but then I have to remind myself that a lot of people wait their whole lives to travel. I wouldn't change the way I've done things.

Of my giant travels, the best parts were the outdoorsy ones: hiking in northern Burmese hill country, two nights in a national park in Borneo, my Vietnamese island beach week (my snorkeling butt-burn tan line only really went away about a month ago), kayaking in Laos, hiking in the Himalayan foothills in China and then Tiger Leaping Gorge after that. On my way to two dear college friends' wedding in Sacramento, I saw an amazing sunset coming south down Highway 101 in the Redwoods. My favorite part of doing the Transsiberian with my mom was our stay on Olkhon island. Plus, spending summer here on the Oregon Coast allowed me to do a lot of beach walking. This was a great year for spending time in nature, something I didn't do nearly enough of in China. I have to remember to prioritize outdoor time since I enjoy it so much, but that isn't always easy as a city dweller.

In 2012 I earned the most money of my life thus far. This year I made less than I have since college, which wasn't a surprise -- I did what I planned to do this year, travel and write. The payoff was publication of my most widely-read story to date. Now I just need to figure out how to marry the two, make enough money and get published. If you've figured out how to do this, let me know!

I'm excited about 2014. I'm less sure about what will happen in the next 365 days than I was at this time last year. Figuring out work will be the hardest part, but I have to remind myself to be patient. Typing this blog, I feel kind of wistful, like I haven't spent enough time appreciating what an incredible year I've had, mostly because I've been concentrating on trying to get work since November. At present, I have just about enough freelance things going on to make things work, which is good considering I've only been back a couple months, but the formula needs tweaking, a couple things I need to finish are decidedly not worth the time I've put in.

So resolutions:

2013 Revisited - I just typed 2012 here on accident. Hard to believe a whole year goes by when you spend it doing whatever you want.

1. Lose 10 pounds. (What? I probably weighed more then, coming off a crazy six months of work + holiday eating. But 10 pounds? Lolz - maybe I was filling insecure, looking at too many glossy magazines.)

2. Read a lot of good modern things and a lot of classics. (I had the best reading year of my life, I read 30+ books. Highlights were Anna Karenina, which is the best book I've ever read, Atonement and Handmaid's Tale. I read a lot of other good books, but those are all new lifetime favorites.)

3. Write a novel (I'm over halfway through a first draft. I would've made more progress had I not been interrupted by the Buzzfeed assignment, which was a worthwhile detour. Writing a novel is hard and thankless, yo.)

4. Write 3-4 non-fiction essays (I wrote three. One was my North Korea piece, one is currently under consideration and one didn't find a home - not bad.)

5. Pay my respects to Lenin and Ho Chi Minh, cuz I love me some embalmed Communists (Yes! Finished!)

2014 Resolutions
1. Eat right and exercise (always worth renewing that one)
2. Curate what I read better: More great books, less magazine articles, less blog posts, less Twitter/Facebook/Internet. I'm not going to quit reading any of those things, but I could stand to be more selective and waste less time.
3. Finish the novel
4. Write diligently

One Long Weekend in Austin

My first friend in Shanghai/roommate/girl who galavanted about China with me came to visit last weekend. It was bar none the most gluttonous four-day feeding frenzy I've ever undertaken. Austin is definitely a foodie city, but there's a distinct emphasis on fried, fat, heavy and spicy. My body was rebelling midway through, but we soldiered on.

I didn't take a photo of everything we ate, but here are some of the things:

Migas breakfast plate at Juan in a Million

Bloody Marys that almost double as salads from Rio Ritas, fun to watch the
bartender dollop shredded garlic into the glass

This was the best surprise delight of the weekend - deep-friend jambalaya on a stick from the Baton Creole food truck. I was a tiny bit skeptical, just because I couldn't even imagine jambalaya on a stick, but James said it was good. It was out of this world.

Here you can kind of get a look at the rice and fixings inside

Chicken and waffles with bacon bits in the batter from the restaurant Bacon (they cure their own)

Couldn't quite do it

And this is the line outside Franklin's barbecue. We arrived at 10am on a Tuesday (the place doesn't open until 11am), and 10 minutes after we arrived someone came out and said they probably wouldn't have brisket or ribs for those of us that far back. So we had to go elsewhere, too bad as I still haven't eaten there. James has a vegetarian friend who will only eat meat from here because it's too good.

We still got some very, very good barbecue out at Salt Lick. It was so smokey and delicious, eating it made my whole body feel like my inside were turning into barbecue. 

We split a plate. Not very hardcore, I know, but we really ate a lot that weekend. 

What if I had Mega Millions?

On Tuesday I went into a gas station to buy a coffee while a visiting friend and I waited in a two-hour line for the world's best barbecue (at 10a.m. they were already running out of ribs and brisket for slouchers far back in the line like us who only got there one hour before opening, so we wound up eating bbq elsewhere, but that's a story for another day).

On the way out of the gas station the clerk asked me - helpfully - if I was sure I didn't need a Mega Millions ticket too. We shared a laugh and I said no. Gambling in any form isn't in my nature, it's just not fun for me. $648 million is a lot of money, but I've heard the odds are infinitely better if you buy when the pot is down around $20 mill - I don't buy then, so why should I have bought this week?

James bought tickets in the Seattle Airport on the way home for Christmas. You can't get tickets in Alaska and his dad suggested he grab a few. Unfortunately, he wasn't the second as-yet-still-anonymous winner. But what if he had won?

We had this conversation on the phone last night, and not for the first time. Even though I don't buy tickets, I like to fantasize about winning. I know a lot of people like to say "oh I wouldn't really change the way I'm living," I think because it's natural to want to be satisfied with your own life (or to want to give the appearance of being so). But even if you are satisfied, that to me just exhibits a lack of creativity -- there's an awful lot you could do with MEGA MILLIONS.

James said he would finish school (why not?) but wouldn't feel like he had to get a career after that, that he'd probably just work on projects. Then next summer, we'd go on a giant American road trip (we're both most interested in seeing the South) in his VW Golf. Eat fancy food, stay in fancy hotels.

Then, I told him, when we got tired of the Golf, we could drive somewhere remote, stick a rock on the accelerator and shoot it off a cliff, then just hire someone to pick us up and take us to a car dealership.

James was aghast. He's a little attached. But then he got into the spirit and suggested we could buy the cliff. Then we decided we could continue to buy cars and shoot them off the cliff until the pile of cars was just an extension of the mountain. And then we decided we could shoot everything off the cliff when we were done with it: friends, personal trainers, maids...

If I had Mega Millions, I think I would live a pretty itinerate life for at least five years, switching between cities close to friends and family and countries I want to visit (presently, Japan is top of the list for both of us).

But eventually I'd have to produce something - maybe I'd back movies, or start a literary journal. Right now though, shooting a car off a cliff sounds pretty cool.

Decemburrrr

This morning I fired off the article I worked on all last week. And all day Austin had the most sleep-inducing weather: cold drizzle, heavy clouds, just enough wind to send the chill straight to your bones. That's Grade A movie-watching weather, right there. I wanted to reward myself by declaring it Netflix Monday. Alas, there are jobs to look for and other freelancer work to catch up on.

I think it would be much easier to make money if I had slightly more flexible ethics. Here are some things I think I could be really good at:

Financial Domination
Never heard of it? Me neither, until I read this. I couldn't do other sex work, just because of the germies and Ew. But I think I could tell somebody to give me all their money for the purpose of their pleasure and enjoyment. I could probably learn to use Excel to give my act some 'accounting' panache.

Psychic Readings
When I was little, I convinced the other kids I knew how to read just by picking up story books and making it up as I went. Then, years later, I went to theater camp and was pretty much unbeatable at improv games. My journo experience has honed my people skills, usually I'm okay at getting folks to open up. Therefore, I think I could build relationships with distraught people and fill them with baseless hope thanks to my fanciful predictions. And there is plenty of money to be made there.

Distressed Princess 
This is not just a Nigerian email thing, it happens in real life too. When I was interning at The Seattle Times, I did a story on people who fell for it. They were approached in a Costco parking lot by a man and a woman (the princess) from (insert exotic country) who had improbable money/bank problems and needed to temporarily hold millions in the victim's account. As a show of "trust" the victim went to the bank and took out $30,000. The princess and her dude friend (man servant? eunuch?) told him they were going to drive around the block with it and naturally they never came back. [The bank manager pleaded with the victim not to take out his money.] Once the story ran, I got a couple phone calls from other victims - presumably people who'd been too embarrassed or despondent to report to the police.

My understanding is this is a thing elderly people fall for. I leave a pretty good impression on old people. Plus, I would get to wear princess dresses. Grannies would totally believe me and give me their life savings.

Alas, all of these options are unconscionable and/or criminal. Maybe I could open a tarot reading social venture, where 10% of proceeds went to helping economically disadvantaged women open their own tarot businesses. Now who can argue with a little female empowerment?

T-Day Recap

I had the best Thanksgiving Ev-ar!

Or at the least the best in a looooong time, many years - actually probably the best ever because if you haven't been to a giant, extended-family meal in 4+ years, it definitely seems more special.

Between aunts, uncles, cousins, boyfriends, spouses [2], baby [1], toddler [1] and stranded Californian roommates, about 20 people descended on the Oregon Coast for Sampson Thanksgiving. Luckily, I was first in the food line and had the opportunity to make fun of my slower blood relations who had to wait. Because it actually takes time to feed that many people.

I also found a GIANT agate at Siltcoos Outlet. If you saw this agate in a tourist shop, it would cost you at least $6. It is longer than my thumb and I have not weighed it but it has a solid heft and good marbling. I personally showed it to every single one of my relatives (well, almost) and made them acknowledge my supreme beach-combing skillz.

Now I'm back in Tex-as (ez? ess?). Our apartment complex is holding a door/patio decorating contest. I asked James if he wanted to partake (first reaction "Ugh. No." then justified by "I'm busy with finals!"). He did say he'd watch Christmas movies with me, though I'm sure he thinks I mean exclusively Die Hard.

I'm still trying to finish this next article. I don't think I've ever written anything so slowly, which is frustrating. And it's not like it's going slow because I'm churning out words in precious drops, like French perfume from a flower press. No, the exact opposite. I've written way too many words and if they smelled like anything it wouldn't be flowers. All that and I haven't even finished a draft (cue: violin screech from Psycho).

It has to wrap up though, firstly because I told the editor I'd have it "just after Thanksgiving" (and I NEVER miss deadlines), secondly because I don't want to get a haircut or go to Costco or do other pressing errands until I've sent the damn thing off.

Blogging though? Plenty of time for blogging...