“Whatever”

Since mid-April, I’ve been busy revising my manuscript and am now currently in the throes of figuring out how to market it (which is why some of you may have noticed my reuniting with Facebook). Anyway, in my recent trolling on the Internet, I’ve come across a quote by Elie W. that speaks to me about the cruel yet rampant use of the modern American slang word, “Whatever.”

“Whatever” entered the daily lexicon as an appropriate response to questions we don’t know the answers to, inquiries that uncomfortably stump or stretch us, and situations we find uncomfortable, yet decide it is better not to communicate rather than discuss the matter like adults were intended. Elie W.’s quote (October 1986) points out the crime of indifference, a concept that, to me, underscores the implications of exercising the word “whatever” willy-nilly.

The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.

The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference.

The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference.

And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.

A few months ago I found myself trying to explain to someone why I thought “whatever” is an inappropriate response to a question or challenging situation. I’m afraid that although I was able to articulate that the use of the word “whatever” shuts down any potential for intellectual engagement and dialogue, I wasn’t able to articulate its implications. “Whatever” is used to prematurely stop a conversation one party is motivated to push forward while the other isn’t. However, “whatever” contains a nuance that “let’s move onto a different topic” doesn’t. “Whatever” implies indifference towards the conversation trying to be had and a twin indifference towards the other speaker. The use of the word “whatever” suggests a wide, insurmountable gulf in values and priorities that makes communication between these two parties impossible. And “whatever” betrays the idea that what is important to one party is indifferent to the other. And therein “whatever” becomes a word that articulates the foundation of people’s inability to understand, communication and work through their differences, resulting in catastrophic consequences as Elie W. implies in his quote.

“The Art of Possibility”

Tonight I met Benjamin Z., my first TEDster, at a bank’s women’s networking event at the Barbican. BZ draws on his experience as a conductor and music teacher to talk about leadership, whether in a boardroom or with one’s family. In his book “The Art of Possibility”, he asks people to lead one another from the “downward spiral” mentality characteristic of media towards “radiating possibility”. Aptly, the talk is preceded with Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”; BZ is just that: a joyous, energetic and fantastic figure. He literally seems to jump off the stage and into one’s lap. In his talk, he references Arianna H.’s theme from last year’s conference: surmounting the fear of failure. During the talk, I was struck by a universal theme that bubbles beneath the surface of many of the best inspirational talks I’ve been audience to, an idea of Nelson M. appropriated and made famous:

“You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

BZ concluded his talk with the notion that “the secret of life is that it is all invented”, an idea closely associated with Buddhism’s tenet that one must strive to create distance from the material world in order to maintain a healthy relationship with power structures invented by man in which we participate and are complicit in maintaining.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passion.html

2nd Wedding Anniversary

Yesterday was our 2^nd wedding anniversary; we celebrated by dining at Nobu Berkeley. Unintentionally, we’ve designated sushi dinner a tradition when celebrating our anniversary. I loved the restaurant’s tree-motif décor, and the food was, needless to say, outstanding. We started with the tuna tartar salad dressed in a wasabi sauce followed by the black cod cooked in soy sauce and an array of sushi rolls (salmon, avocado, shrimp tempura, tuna), all enveloped with a delicately soft rice. For desert we had the warm chocolate satandagi with a side of almond ice cream punctuated with caramelized pistachio nuts. When I didn’t think life had any more surprises left for me after meeting M, we remarked on how it continues to take us places we’d never expected… quite literally!

Technology Entertainment Design (TED)

If you are interested in learning what problems confront today’s greatest western minds (scientists, economists, philosophers, philanthropists, etc.), check out…

http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/

A few months ago, M told me about TED which is an annual, four-day Technology Entertainment Design conference held in Monterey, California. The best way to describe the conference and its purpose is that it is a forum for today’s intellectual community (mostly Americans and a smattering of Europeans) in every field imaginable (from cognitive science to economics, architecture to artificial intelligence, philosophy to religion, philanthropy to drama) to describe their current work—what problems they are facing and what technologies they are using to create solutions. Daily life is replete with sources from which we learn the history of great ideas—“The History Channel”, 8^th grade social studies class, newspapers that commemorate every historical anniversary from a President’s birthday to a significant event in the Civil Rights movement, Hollywood blockbuster films that memorialize a great figure or historical scene—which provide us with the knowledge of the concepts that contributed to the present in which we live. However, unless we live and work in a major research university, learning which problems today’s intellectual community is grappling with must be aggressively pursued.

Attending TED is by invitation only, and the fee is $4,000 per person. As much as M and I would love to attend TED in 2008, we have resigned ourselves to watching videos of TED Talks on-line. TED Talks are on average twenty minutes long; watching the videos is a free way to gain exposure to what motivates and moves people who have committed their minds, resources, technology, and time to solving problems like ending widespread disease and hunger, conserving the environment and endangered species, addressing conspicuous consumption and spiritual emptiness, fueling local economies in 3^rd-world countries, describing how evolutionary biology inhibits happiness, documenting disappearing tribal peoples, dealing with poverty in booming urban centers, and the list goes on. Every week TED makes more videos available on their website, but here is a list of some of my favorites in backwards chronological order:

1. Robert Wright, an evolutionary biologist and author of The Moral Animal, speaks about how religious and cultural tolerance is the key to combating grassroots hatred of Americans.
2. Wade Davis, an anthropologist and “National Geographic” Explorer-in-Residence, presents a slide show of photographs he took while living among indigenous peoples. 
3. Gregory Colbert, a photographer, presents a slide show of work documenting humans’ interaction with animals which has been published in Ashes and Snow.  http://www.ashesandsnow.org/en/portfolio/ 
4. Bono of U2 describes how he got interested in ending famine in Africa when he and his wife visited the continent in 1985.  He argues that, “Where you live should not determine how you live.”
5. Dan Gilbert, a Harvard psychologist, talks about how human beings are clueless when it comes to predicting what will make us happy.
6. Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, uses the example of supermarket-sold spaghetti sauce as an indicator that we should embrace and economically exploit human diversity.  (And, yes, you will crave pasta after watching this video).
7. Steven Levitt, an economist and author of Freakonomics, describes his work researching the accounting books of inner-city gangs involved in drug dealing. 
8. Eve Ensler, the creator of “The Vagina Monologues”, describes her work ending genital mutilation in Africa.  Eve describes how service, in particular “giving what we most want for ourselves”, is what leads to personal fulfillment.  (Her talk is gut-wrenchingly moving so beware).
9. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist, describes the science behind lust, attraction, and attachment, and their evolutionary significance. 
10. Mena Trott discusses why people blog and the significance of blogging as an emotional/intellectual outlet. 
11. Larry Brilliant, an epidemiologist who witnessed the last case of Smallpox in the world, talks about how early detection of disease is necessary for its containment.
12. Dan Dennett, a philosopher and cognitive scientist, presents the argument that America’s youth should learn about and gain exposure to all the world’s religions. 
13. Al Gore, an environmentalist, presents what businesses and individuals can do to conserve the environment.  (His well-informed and compelling presentation inspires one to wonder what the world would be like had he won in 2000).
14. David Pogue, a technology writer for “The New York Times”, points out what is wrong with Microsoft applications such as Word and discusses what technology companies can do to make their products more user-friendly. 

For intellectual stimulation and inspiration, indulge your mind with watching TED Talks at:
http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/

Our One-Year Wedding Anniversary

Last night M and I had dinner at Marco Pierre White’s Mirabelle to celebrate our one-year wedding anniversary. It just goes to show that life is full of surprises… had you asked us even six weeks before our wedding if we ever saw ourselves leaving New York and moving to London, we both would have laughed at the idea. Happily ensconced in our sunny apartment with friends and family nearby, the thought of leaving the city didn’t penetrate our minds unless it was me needling M for hints on where we were going on our honeymoon. Very suddenly, we found ourselves discussing the pros and cons of moving to London in between kayaking, horseback riding, and cable jumping on Costa Rica’s Guanacaste beaches and, many meals and excursions in continental Europe and the U.K. later, we find ourselves admitting that if you’re fortunate to have life throw an unexpected curveball, to embrace it and enjoy the fine dining wherever you find yourself!

 

On our walk from Mirabelle’s lobby to our table, I had to adjust my pace to match that of our hostess who carried herself with a dignity that characterizes snobby wait staff in London’s best restaurants. M and I dutifully lined up as her procession. Before leaving us with our menus, our hostess visibly prepared herself for the walk back to the restaurant’s entrance in a manner similar to a ballerina before executing a perfect pirouette. “I guess she’s one of the reasons why this place has a Michelin star?” I asked M. Mirabelle’s all-white décor does not detract from its coziness. Large vases overflowing with soft-hued flowers and the comfortable, brown leather seating make Mirabelle a warm restaurant to dine in. Over the course of our meal we probably had between six and seven staff members serving us; Mirabelle is armed with a large staff on a Saturday night, and the service is exceptional.

 

To accompany Dr. Loosen’s Riesling, we had the parfait of foie gras with truffles en gelee and the blinis a la russe with wild smoked salmon and white cheese to start. The parfait of foie gras, along with having a creamy texture and flavorful taste, was at a perfect room temperature. The smoked salmon was fresh and pink, and the white cheese had a consistency and taste that made ignoring the sinfulness of eating something so rich impossible. For our mains, we had the roast duck a l’orange and the roast rump of lamb with olives-garnish a la nicoise. Both were cooked to perfection.

 

Celebrating our one-year wedding anniversary leaves me wondering, what do we do with the five years preceding our wedding? What do those years count for? How and when do we celebrate our time with each other when we weren’t an official pair, before we “responsibly” and publicly joined society as a couple? What happens to the 1,825 days when we were just boyfriend and girlfriend, giving evasive answers to our parents about when we were going to settle down? How do we honor the time when we enjoyed each other’s company without announcing our intentions to anyone else but each other? One week less than a year of marriage, I was reading about the end of Joan D.’s forty-year marriage in her memoir about her husband’s death in A Year of Magical Thinking. In it, she describes how, “Marriage is memory, marriage is time.” We may not have a way to celebrate our pre-marital relationship that spans five times longer than our novice marriage, but I know that for M I am not a time capsule that begins with our wedding day when I was his bride and extend as far as our recent trips around Europe. Time is still; in M lives my memory of learning how to use chopsticks, contemplating graduate studies, and learning swing. M is a walking encyclopedia of my life for the last six years, not just the last one, and I am lucky because anyone who knows him knows what a great memory he has.

Why Blog?

On Valentine’s Day, New York Times food critic Frank B. debuted his blog, Diner’s Journal. In his introduction he enumerates the following reasons for keeping a blog despite already publishing restaurant reviews in his employer’s paper: so he can offer a more spontaneous response to the restaurants he visits, posit trends he sees in the business, and provide reviews more casual in tone. For people like me who love language and the craft of writing, how best to convey a thought, feeling or experience, blogging is cathartic.

Socrates argued, A life unexamined is not a life worth living. What I love most about blogging is that it provides me with a forum to exercise critical thinking. When did conversation suddenly begin and end with enthusiastically recommending a restaurant without providing more detail than what entrée was ordered? Knowing why the home-made relish at GBK enhances their burgers will never contribute to making the global financial markets run more efficiently or have an impact on a desk’s P&L. Critical thinking about the finer things in life, an exceptional meal, a good read, or a particularly thoughtful film is a purely selfish activity. It hones our mental faculties and cultivates the ability to self-entertain; our toys become the range of experiences and ideas we’ve been exposed to and that comprise our intellectual lives.

Which brings me to a brand-new philosophical question based on an age-old one, if I write a blog and nobody reads it, do the words matter? I posit yes. Words create currents like noise do waves through the atmosphere, deaf to ears that aren’t there yet making their way through the vast atmosphere nonetheless. A tree’s thump as it falls to the ground is like my blog: they both make sounds to express something, friction for the former and existence for the later, or perhaps it is the other way around.

Like food critic Frank B. feels restricted by his paper’s thousand-word limit, I find that opportunities to think, write, speak and remember a meal, building, book, movie, or person are rare. With a combination of words and photographs I attempt to describe what is wonderful about London and am happy when these attempts serve as entertainment for friends and family. More than anything though, blogging allows me to think critically about what most of us take for granted, what is exciting and interesting, beautiful and extraordinary, about ordinary life. I love when friends and family respond to my blog (VK scolded me for giving away MP’s ending, AB told me she’s reading Saturday before looking at my entry, and DL gets hungry when she reads my food reviews) so keep sending e-mails telling me how you loved the silly V-Day photo and call me to tell me about the recent opera you attended or book you read. You’ll find that, like blogging is proof I exist, sharing is leaving a morsel of yourself in someone else, depositing a small legacy in a living person in a way you never thought was possible. Why blog? Blogging proves exhilarating and exciting and confirms for me once again, I think, therefore I am.

Unsocial hour

In the course of studying for the FSA exam, I’ve learned that in the UK one should not call someone if it is an “Unsocial hour” – before 9a.m. or after 9p.m. or on a Sunday. WTF?

A word in edgewise

Once upon a time I set up a blog to post about our experiences in London. Then K hijacked it. In all fairness I imagine my posts would not have been as entertaining, nor as verbose. While she’s been gallivanting around town, taking pictures, meeting up with people and generally having an all-round good time, I’ve been working and studying for my damn FSA exam (the equivalent of the Series 7 in the US, and if you don’t know what that is then don’t let that worry you). I do have some observations to make on London vs. New York, garnered mostly from the insides of my office and flat (yes, flat)
For food: So far New York, hands down and even more so on a cost-adjusted basis

For internet access: London. 24 Mbs ADSL2+ rocks.