I've decided to fail. Now this isn't exactly brought on the really funny website called www.Failblog.org, but I could pretend that is where I got my inspiration. Still, in my last post I wrote about perfection, and I realized that I've been working on everyday kind of failing recently.
Take today, I failed to stop playing Bejeweled after 10 min. And yesterday, I failed to make a roast chicken for dinner when a friend came over and we just had pizza and some tomato cucumber salad to eat instead.
Often these failures just happen and, after the fact, I try not to give myself a hard time about them. Certain cases are harder than others. But at other times (and this is what I'm working on increasing), I decide ahead of time to fail. Like with the pizza vs. chicken. Or with not having a spotless apartment for visitors to come to. Or, on a larger scale, I decided recently to fail at writing an article from my thesis.
Now that one is a big fail for me. But it has been hanging over my head, as something I've wanted to do for a long time, and it was just making me feel bad. No matter what otherwise productive good day I'd had, I still hadn't started on an article for a peer reviewed journal.
But who am I kidding? I did the research in a department which wasn't mainly focussed on either that topic or the methodology, it was not really in any of my committee members' specialty, I'm not in a research group now and really have no mentoring for that kind of project, and I don't plan to go into academia anytime soon. So it really isn't that big of a fail considering the circumstances, and my days are really much more pleasant when I decide that it is off the list. (That is another nasty feature of this...I sometimes have to decide to fail on the same item more than once).
Anyway, I'm going to go walk the dog now, and then I'm thinking I might win (instead of failing) at doing some online research, sending out some emails and working on a short little article based on my research which is due in mid-November. I told you I was still working on the failing.
Oh, and tonight I'm making that chicken.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Perfect babies and flawless performances
Remember the movie "Shine" from a few years ago? About the piano playing prodigy who almost got lost to the Australian psychiatric care system? Geoffrey Rush played him as an adult in the movie, but the person on whom it was based is named David Helfgott. Well Helfgott gave a concert
in Zurich the other night and we went to go hear it. And see it.
I know that his playing has not received top critical acclaim, but for my ear I thought it was quite good. I don't know the pieces well enough to tell otherwise. But it was much more of a reflective event for me than musical. He is probably bout 60 years old, he wears a shiny red tunic on stage, and sort of shuffles out to the piano in short steps. But as he goes, he looks at every orchestra member he passes, giving everyone a handshake or two thumbs up, stopping many times before making it even close to the piano. He looks at the audience (who is clapping at this point), giving thumbs up and smiles to half a dozen directions, back to the orchestra and hand shaking, before the conductor gently helps him to the piano bench.
And when he plays, he is hunched quite low over the piano. His lips move, and once in a while you hear a sound coming from him while his fingers pour over the keys. He squints, and moves
his head. He smiles a thumbs up to himself when he's gotten through some piece of the piano part. While he waits through parts with no piano piece, he seems to speak to himself, almost puts fingers to the keys and then pulls back, looks around to watch other orchestra members playing their parts.
You almost start to doubt that when he starts playing again it will be coherent, and then....it is. And smooth, and beautiful.
What is still in my mind about the performance is how different that behavior is from what is "expected." And yet there is no reason it was wrong. But it shocked both the audience and orchestra a bit. He kept violating the "i don't see you here" rule, where the orchestra members don't really acknowledge each other in the way they might on their way home on the tram, and there is almost a glass wall between the musicians and audience where interaction doesn't pass until the applause. He looked at people, smiled, gave his "thumbs up" commentary straight into the gaze of specific people. And this man who lives with mental illness played beautifully.
Right in front of people. In public, out in the open. You don't see that so often. Or at least that is how it felt to me and I found it mesmerizing. And perfectly acceptable.
Whether it was a flawless performance, I don't know. Like I said, I don't have the ear to discern that. But he gave an extremely human performance. I loved it.
Especially since it overlapped with a book I've been reading on the birthing culture in America (and Western Europe) as a rite of passage. Great book by an anthropologist about the loss of control women have gone through in terms of giving birth, and how much of it is managed by doctors in hospitals. How many procedures can interfere with natural birth but are used to make birth seem (this is the key to ritual) controllable and safe, thanks to modern technology. Practices which don't necessarily help the health of the mother or the baby. But that this ideal of a doctor delivering a perfect baby to society (the mother not really being in control, but more of just a carrier) has shifted the focus of birth. It is a great book, especially for a pregnant sociology geek like me.
And somehow, in a stroke of luck, I find myself in a country where most of my options for giving birth are actually more empowering of me than they might have been in the US. And with that same stroke of luck, I found myself in a music hall, entranced by the behavior of a decidedly unperfect baby, all grown up, playing piano. It was wonderful.
in Zurich the other night and we went to go hear it. And see it.
I know that his playing has not received top critical acclaim, but for my ear I thought it was quite good. I don't know the pieces well enough to tell otherwise. But it was much more of a reflective event for me than musical. He is probably bout 60 years old, he wears a shiny red tunic on stage, and sort of shuffles out to the piano in short steps. But as he goes, he looks at every orchestra member he passes, giving everyone a handshake or two thumbs up, stopping many times before making it even close to the piano. He looks at the audience (who is clapping at this point), giving thumbs up and smiles to half a dozen directions, back to the orchestra and hand shaking, before the conductor gently helps him to the piano bench.
And when he plays, he is hunched quite low over the piano. His lips move, and once in a while you hear a sound coming from him while his fingers pour over the keys. He squints, and moves
his head. He smiles a thumbs up to himself when he's gotten through some piece of the piano part. While he waits through parts with no piano piece, he seems to speak to himself, almost puts fingers to the keys and then pulls back, looks around to watch other orchestra members playing their parts.
You almost start to doubt that when he starts playing again it will be coherent, and then....it is. And smooth, and beautiful.
What is still in my mind about the performance is how different that behavior is from what is "expected." And yet there is no reason it was wrong. But it shocked both the audience and orchestra a bit. He kept violating the "i don't see you here" rule, where the orchestra members don't really acknowledge each other in the way they might on their way home on the tram, and there is almost a glass wall between the musicians and audience where interaction doesn't pass until the applause. He looked at people, smiled, gave his "thumbs up" commentary straight into the gaze of specific people. And this man who lives with mental illness played beautifully.
Right in front of people. In public, out in the open. You don't see that so often. Or at least that is how it felt to me and I found it mesmerizing. And perfectly acceptable.
Whether it was a flawless performance, I don't know. Like I said, I don't have the ear to discern that. But he gave an extremely human performance. I loved it.
Especially since it overlapped with a book I've been reading on the birthing culture in America (and Western Europe) as a rite of passage. Great book by an anthropologist about the loss of control women have gone through in terms of giving birth, and how much of it is managed by doctors in hospitals. How many procedures can interfere with natural birth but are used to make birth seem (this is the key to ritual) controllable and safe, thanks to modern technology. Practices which don't necessarily help the health of the mother or the baby. But that this ideal of a doctor delivering a perfect baby to society (the mother not really being in control, but more of just a carrier) has shifted the focus of birth. It is a great book, especially for a pregnant sociology geek like me.
And somehow, in a stroke of luck, I find myself in a country where most of my options for giving birth are actually more empowering of me than they might have been in the US. And with that same stroke of luck, I found myself in a music hall, entranced by the behavior of a decidedly unperfect baby, all grown up, playing piano. It was wonderful.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Medicine vs. midwives
Switzerland's public hospitals have as many options for homeopathic remedies and natural birth as some US cities might have through birthing clinics. They tend to adhere strictly to UNICEF breastfeeding guidelines (meaning the baby goes straight to the mom to help establish feeding, no being cleaned or weighed first), where some of the private, swanky hospitals do not necessarily. There are midwives in charge of most of the birth process and doctors get to do something mostly when there are complications. You stay in hospital for a 3-5 days after a natural birth, get help with learning to take care of the baby, and then there are 5-7 more law-mandated days of a midwife coming to visit your home to keep helping and answering questions.
My point is, there is a lot of support for doing things with less medication, less surgical interventions, and less help from Nestle.
There is still, however, this divide between MDs and midwives. Some tension about who is in charge, who to believe, etc. It sort of runs along the "medical research says" vs. "hundreds of years of experience with women and with our own childbirth" divide. Which means there are often two differing viewpoints on what you should do about some problem or other.
Dang. Still no obvious right answer. :)
I like the midwife approach on may things, though. And I'm glad to get to take advantage of a system like this, where high-tech hospital doesn't have to mean grey walls and metal instruments. Where I can have aromatherapy and a tub in the birth room.
As a scientist, though, it amuses me how strongly I react to some of the literature from the midwife side. About the efficacy ("a strong effect has been shown") of Red Jasper Stones for contraction pain, or about the "energy imbalance" that the masseuse felt between my left and right sides. I bristle a little at these phrases at first. Really? What part of my energy? How do you define energy? And who has long known about the Jasper stone? How does that work exactly?
My inner skeptic comes out.
But then again, the wording is actually very similar to how medicine says things when referring to research. They use similar language to persuade you to listen to them. And on some issues, like breastfeeding vs. formula, medicine got it wrong, too in the past. And medicine hasn't done too much to explain certain things to us very well when we were having problems getting pregnant. So neither side gets my trust automatically.
And I realized that when it comes to my masseuse (probably not the Jasper stone, though!), I trust her, I like her sense of touch and body work, so maybe she does feel something that is different in my left and right sides that corresponds to the pain in my left and not right. And even if I wouldn't choose to call it energy, that doesn't mean she won't do well adjusting things. I trust her physical sense and don't need to agree with her vocabulary. That used to happen in dancing, too. I didn't necessarily see dance in the same way as a partner, but that didn't mean we didn't really connect on the dance floor.
So you can keep your baby formula (as a given better alternative) and your Red Jasper Stone, and I'll see what I can do about integrating some doctors and some midwives into this whole birthing experience.
My point is, there is a lot of support for doing things with less medication, less surgical interventions, and less help from Nestle.
There is still, however, this divide between MDs and midwives. Some tension about who is in charge, who to believe, etc. It sort of runs along the "medical research says" vs. "hundreds of years of experience with women and with our own childbirth" divide. Which means there are often two differing viewpoints on what you should do about some problem or other.
Dang. Still no obvious right answer. :)
I like the midwife approach on may things, though. And I'm glad to get to take advantage of a system like this, where high-tech hospital doesn't have to mean grey walls and metal instruments. Where I can have aromatherapy and a tub in the birth room.
As a scientist, though, it amuses me how strongly I react to some of the literature from the midwife side. About the efficacy ("a strong effect has been shown") of Red Jasper Stones for contraction pain, or about the "energy imbalance" that the masseuse felt between my left and right sides. I bristle a little at these phrases at first. Really? What part of my energy? How do you define energy? And who has long known about the Jasper stone? How does that work exactly?
My inner skeptic comes out.
But then again, the wording is actually very similar to how medicine says things when referring to research. They use similar language to persuade you to listen to them. And on some issues, like breastfeeding vs. formula, medicine got it wrong, too in the past. And medicine hasn't done too much to explain certain things to us very well when we were having problems getting pregnant. So neither side gets my trust automatically.
And I realized that when it comes to my masseuse (probably not the Jasper stone, though!), I trust her, I like her sense of touch and body work, so maybe she does feel something that is different in my left and right sides that corresponds to the pain in my left and not right. And even if I wouldn't choose to call it energy, that doesn't mean she won't do well adjusting things. I trust her physical sense and don't need to agree with her vocabulary. That used to happen in dancing, too. I didn't necessarily see dance in the same way as a partner, but that didn't mean we didn't really connect on the dance floor.
So you can keep your baby formula (as a given better alternative) and your Red Jasper Stone, and I'll see what I can do about integrating some doctors and some midwives into this whole birthing experience.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Hooked on phonics, worked for my streussel
I'm not a huge fan of fresh pears. Sometimes I like them, but sometimes the skins have this grainy, bitter aftertaste. But, it is now apple and pear season here in Zurich, so I had to try something with all the lovely fruit.
It started with the cheater way of making a dessert - halve some baking apples, take out the cores, and smush the now-empty core area with a mixture of granola, brown sugar and butter. Bake. Yum. Oh, and you can serve with ice cream. More yum.
And then I finally found my Joy of Cooking, packing amidst all the book boxes, and I flipped to "pear." And in there is Pear Streussel Tart....ha HA. I looked through the ingredients: flour, brown sugar (uh oh, not sure if they have that here), chopped walnuts (time to buy that food processor or hand blender thingy), pears, cinammon, salt. Ok, well, if I can find brown sugar, I'd make it.
Turns out, the raw sugar they sell here, in some forms, is very much like brown sugar. Especially the raw moscovado chunks we bought for the sugar bowl. We were kind of skeptical at first about the specialty foods lady's thoughts about raw=molasses, but it is definitely full of deep dark color and flavor. Side note: the middle-aged store clerks, pharmacists, etc, here are worth learning to trust. These people have not only had many years' experience, they actually apprenticed initially for their jobs. Twice now (with the brown sugar, and with some foot creme) they have utterly shamed our "no that can't be right" attitudes with their quiet but firm certitude. Yeah, trust these folks, otherwise you're kind of just cheating yourself.
So 2 weeks ago, pear streussel tart #1 got made (sans pastry crust on the bottom), and it was spectacular. Didn't last too long either with random forkfulls being taken from the dish in the fridge. The only issue I had was the cutting in of the butter. I guess I gave away the butter slicer I used to use for scones, and there I was, using two knives pretty ungracefully to get small pieces of butter to put in the streussel ingredients. And it really didn't come out all crumbly like the recipe said it would. So some parts got butter and others didn't. Hmmm.
Well, today there was time (and pears) for another streussel. I pulled out the Joy of Cooking again, and started reading the recipe. Maybe I could put the butter and other ingredients into the little hand blender container and pulse it all into.....hey wait.
Wait, it says "melted butter"....
Huh? Oh, like soft....no, then it would have said "softened" genius.
Yup, melted. So, like, liquid.
Oops.
I guess that explains my problems last time.
(I melt the butter and pour over the sugar, nuts and flour, and start mixing with a fork)
Ha. ha ha. um, ha. Yeah, that would be the crumbly texture I didn't get last time.
So much for speed reading when it comes to cooking.
It started with the cheater way of making a dessert - halve some baking apples, take out the cores, and smush the now-empty core area with a mixture of granola, brown sugar and butter. Bake. Yum. Oh, and you can serve with ice cream. More yum.
And then I finally found my Joy of Cooking, packing amidst all the book boxes, and I flipped to "pear." And in there is Pear Streussel Tart....ha HA. I looked through the ingredients: flour, brown sugar (uh oh, not sure if they have that here), chopped walnuts (time to buy that food processor or hand blender thingy), pears, cinammon, salt. Ok, well, if I can find brown sugar, I'd make it.
Turns out, the raw sugar they sell here, in some forms, is very much like brown sugar. Especially the raw moscovado chunks we bought for the sugar bowl. We were kind of skeptical at first about the specialty foods lady's thoughts about raw=molasses, but it is definitely full of deep dark color and flavor. Side note: the middle-aged store clerks, pharmacists, etc, here are worth learning to trust. These people have not only had many years' experience, they actually apprenticed initially for their jobs. Twice now (with the brown sugar, and with some foot creme) they have utterly shamed our "no that can't be right" attitudes with their quiet but firm certitude. Yeah, trust these folks, otherwise you're kind of just cheating yourself.
So 2 weeks ago, pear streussel tart #1 got made (sans pastry crust on the bottom), and it was spectacular. Didn't last too long either with random forkfulls being taken from the dish in the fridge. The only issue I had was the cutting in of the butter. I guess I gave away the butter slicer I used to use for scones, and there I was, using two knives pretty ungracefully to get small pieces of butter to put in the streussel ingredients. And it really didn't come out all crumbly like the recipe said it would. So some parts got butter and others didn't. Hmmm.
Well, today there was time (and pears) for another streussel. I pulled out the Joy of Cooking again, and started reading the recipe. Maybe I could put the butter and other ingredients into the little hand blender container and pulse it all into.....hey wait.
Wait, it says "melted butter"....
Huh? Oh, like soft....no, then it would have said "softened" genius.
Yup, melted. So, like, liquid.
Oops.
I guess that explains my problems last time.
(I melt the butter and pour over the sugar, nuts and flour, and start mixing with a fork)
Ha. ha ha. um, ha. Yeah, that would be the crumbly texture I didn't get last time.
So much for speed reading when it comes to cooking.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
I finally got one and it was gooood.
A creme-berliner. Basically a donut with no hole, cut in half, to make a heavy custard burger. I had one yesterday. Bought it at one of the main grocery stores here. Same place I bought the 2-pack last week. I had one and a friend had one. It was good, it left powdered sugar on my lips.
But that pack I bought last week? I didn't get to taste either one of them. Because there I was, showing the same friend around the apartment, putting out a few things for tea when she visited, and suddenly realizing that the dog was no longer trying to get my or her attention.
Hmmm.
Where was the dog, anyway?
Answer: in the kitchen, somehow very quietly having pulled the little plastic container holding the creme-berliner OFF the counter, onto the floor.
It took the dog a maximum of 15 seconds to single-pawedly eat what it took the two of us humans about 1 minute to do. The pupper did, however, also come out of the experience with powerdered sugar on her snout. Just like us.
15 seconds, and there were no more creme-berliners, and just a creme-filled dog. Lucky for her it didn't affect any digestive or "potty time" issues later that day.
So I'd been thinking about those little pastries the whole week, M even bought me a jelly filled one in town last weekend. But now that I've had the creme one, no contest.
That is one smart dog when it comes to stealing really yummy food.
But that pack I bought last week? I didn't get to taste either one of them. Because there I was, showing the same friend around the apartment, putting out a few things for tea when she visited, and suddenly realizing that the dog was no longer trying to get my or her attention.
Hmmm.
Where was the dog, anyway?
Answer: in the kitchen, somehow very quietly having pulled the little plastic container holding the creme-berliner OFF the counter, onto the floor.
It took the dog a maximum of 15 seconds to single-pawedly eat what it took the two of us humans about 1 minute to do. The pupper did, however, also come out of the experience with powerdered sugar on her snout. Just like us.
15 seconds, and there were no more creme-berliners, and just a creme-filled dog. Lucky for her it didn't affect any digestive or "potty time" issues later that day.
So I'd been thinking about those little pastries the whole week, M even bought me a jelly filled one in town last weekend. But now that I've had the creme one, no contest.
That is one smart dog when it comes to stealing really yummy food.
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