"You're Not Going Anywhere!'

Sidney doesn't like the suitcase.

I brought it out today to get some paperwork about Hong Kong that I'd left in a pocket, and Sid immediately made his feelings clear. Guess I'll stay put a while longer.

Dressing the Part

Some of you may know that I'm starting a new job soon. As if it's not enough of a shock to my system that I am leaving my beloved field of journalism, I've discovered I have to dress up for work.

As my mom said, "Time for you to dress like a grown-up."

To that I say, "Grrr."

Now obviously, going from a job working from home to a job in an office would require some wardrobe changes. Sure. You can't work anywhere in fuzzy fleece pants and skinny tanks, can you? But all my office experience has been in a newsroom. Working at night. So I've always had a little freedom in terms of what I wear.

I'm not considered a slob (I don't think). I have some fashion sense. And in my younger days, I used to look forward to fall when all the new clothes would come out. It was my own version of back-to-school, and I would get clothes that were not jeans, or shorts, and manage to dress "professionally" for a month or three until I finally lost interest. I am nothing if not lazy.

I always figured if I had to work nights and weekends, I could wear what I wanted.

No more.

This week I went shopping for work clothes. When I moved back from Paris I got rid of anything that was remotely dressy. This is oh-so-casual SoCal, after all. So I'm kind of starting from scratch.

And what does work clothes even mean? Trousers, I guess. Certainly not jeans. Khakis would probably be fine, but I prefer the cargo look, and that's not too office-like. Plus, khakis always need to be ironed. And I gave away my iron. I was told no jeans ... so that's totally off the table. Like many women these days, my idea of dressing up is heels and jeans and a nice top. Hey, if it works in a Paris restaurant, shouldn't it work in a Long Beach office?

Guess not.

I headed to my usual off-price haunts, since a new wardrobe can be a pricey proposition. But we're between seasons, and there was nothing on the picked-through racks. In fact, I hit five stores last week in one day. I found two pairs of trouser pants at the Gap -- and they were on sale. Score! Would those things go with the tops I already own? I don't know. And shoes? What about shoes?

I headed to Macy's yesterday. They were having a sale - -surprise! Got two tops that were acceptable. (Acceptable = sort of dressy without being too ugly and unflattering) Then we went to Gottschalks, which I've always avoided because it has a lot of old lady clothes. And while I'm no spring chicken, I'm not an old lady. There's a fine line between professional and matronly, I'm discovering.

Without extraordinary effort we managed to find another two pairs of pants. And the best part, they were ridiculously priced -- as in 60 percent off ridiculous. So it's all good ... a few days worth of clothes to get me started.

I suppose I'll get used to it. Heels instead of flip flops, blouses instead of T-shirts, trousers instead of jeans.

It's a whole new world.

Starting Anew

Now that the Asian adventures are finished, I find myself still drawn to this blog. It's not a glamorous life here in Long Beach, but it is my life. And things with us are ever-changing: I will soon have a new job, Paul will embark on a new adventure once he gets back from Hong Kong and there are probably some stories to tell.

So here we go.

Size Matters (Or, It's All Relative)

When we moved to our apartment in Long Beach, we worried a bit about how we would adjust to such small quarters. Paul had been living in a five-bedroom house and my apartment in Paris was a fairly large two bedroom, two bathroom place with a double living room.

The Long Beach apartment is a pseudo-loft. The ceilings have been removed and what used to be two hotel rooms (our building is a restored hotel from the 1920s) has been combined to make one apartment. We have no full walls to divide the rooms, so I suppose you could say that at just over 1,000 square feet, it's a very large studio.

Hong Kong, of course has changed our perspective. From a hotel room to a very small one-bedroom apartment to a well-divided studio to a spacious three-room apartment and back to the one-bedroom, we lived in places ranging from about 380 square feet to a whopping 550 square feet.

When you live in close quarters, your perspectives on space change. A year ago, when we bought our place in Long Beach I think we worried about living in a small space. At that time, I could not have imagined two people living in my friend Ellen's apartment -- a building we looked at. She has a great place right on the ocean, 700 square feet, but we wanted a bit more room. In Hong Kong, we would have been in heaven to have a place like hers. Imagine, a bed that doesn't touch the wall!

So my return to Long Beach has been extra pleasant. Not only am I home, and in my home, but I'm swimming in space. Even though we don't have walls, we have distinct spaces. The place in Wan Chai would fit in our living room, so the whole rest of the apartment is gravy. It's such a treat.

And as with the last few places, I've posted photos of the apartment in Long Beach. Try not to get lost in all the space.

Home, Sweet Home

One thing I can safely say about Hong Kong is the living was easy. Once I got the hang of things, which didn't take all that long, I really relished the ease with which I was able to conduct my life.

Part of that, of course, is being somewhere temporarily, and not having to deal with many of the daily intricacies of long-term living. And now that I am home, I am faced with those realities.

After four months of having someone else do my laundry and clean my house and cook my food it's back to the real world. The trade-off for a normal schedule.

Now, I am consumed with the tasks looming in front of me: take the cat to the vet, get the house scrubbed down, sort the mail and the bills, start the newspaper, return the phone calls, make doctor's appointments, get the car fixed, figure out why the TV won't work. Rinse and repeat.

Doing this from the comfort of my own home of course makes it easier. But no more do I have the luxury of a 15-minute run to accomplish all my errands and chores for the day.

A new day, a new adventure.

I Can't Believe I Ate the Whole Thing

Floating Things in Steaming Flavored Water

One of the tricky things about eating in a foreign place is the menu translation. You might be perfectly accustomed to a meal described one way in one language, and when it gets translated, it gets a bit garbled.

This was certainly the case for me in Paris, where I was loath to get an English menu instead of a French one -- not because of snobbishness, but for better understanding. With an English menu, it was hard to tell what I was supposed to eat because the translations were often nonsensical.

Saturday night we went for Sichuan hot pot, and it was the same thing. But this time, at the mercy of an English menu, and I suspect that no matter how long I lived in Hong Kong, I always would be. Hot pot is sort of like Chinese fondue. You get a big pot of broth on your table, and as it cooks (usually over a fire or burner) you add stuff. There is a large menu of things you can add.

We'd seen hot pot restaurants around. In fact, there was a very popular one across from our Tin Hau apartment. It was a hole-in-the-wall, with maybe three tables inside and about 20 tables outside -- all of which seated at least four people and more like eight. They encroached so far into the alleyway, that the apartment building put in a row of potted plants to keep them from crowding the front door. It doesn't look like fancy food -- you see bubbling pots of who-knows-what and lots of big beers and people having a good time. It looks like a lot of fun. And, I think if we had a bigger group it would be even better.

But we had just the two of us. We were tempted by some of the exotic-sounding items, but went, instead, with sliced American beef, mushroom dumplings, pork dumplings, baby bok choy and soba noodles. We opted for a fragrant clear mushroom broth (probably chicken-based) instead of some of the spicier choices. You also can choose Yin-Yang, which is half spicy and half not.

Some of the things we passed on, transcribed verbatim:
Dumpling materialed with fish skin
The front portion of plungh
Pork dumpling with stuff
Pilling ink fish
Sliced green carp breast
Flavored meat pill with mushroom

Usually, when you have a funny translation, you can guess. I think with Chinese items (as well as some French -- rognon anyone?) it's kind of brave. What is plungh, do you think? Ink fish may very well be squid or cuttlefish, but then it would be translated as cuttlefish. And who knew carp had breasts? This is rather like the fish lips we keep seeing on the menu (not to mention the pig chin).

That wasn't the only thing we didn't quite grasp. Each of us had a bowl of spices in front of us: coriander, peanuts, chili, chopped garlic. I figured you were supposed to put it into the soup. We had three kinds of mushrooms in ours already but sampling it indicated it was a bit mild.

One of the waiters rushed over when he saw me dump the bowl into the soup. He seemed almost horrified. Clearly I had done something wrong. It turns out you're supposed to spoon the soup into the flavors and not the other way around, which he demonstrated for us. And then you use the flavored soup in front of you for dipping.

We wish he would have offered more advice, in fact. Like, put the bok choy in earlier and order only one portion of dumplings instead of two -- at least for just two people. Portion sizes in Hong Kong are usually very small, so we had no idea how much to order. Four things, or five things including two vegetables, would have been sufficient.

In any case, our meal was delicious and I think we cooked everything long enough to avoid E. coli or salmonella. The one thing that baffled us to the end? When we were seated there were two bowls of snacks. This is not uncommon; often it's boiled peanuts or somesuch thing. These were peanuts sauteed in spices and someting pickled. It had the consistency of chopped, dried apples and was both sweet and savory.

We asked one woman what it was. She said something to us in Chinese, we nodded politely, and she brought back a take-away container! We asked another woman what it was, she circled it on the bill -- (you get charged for everything here, even if you didn't order it -- sort of like the bread and tablecloth charges in Italy) -- went to ask someone, presumably, and then passed it off to someone else. When the man came back with the bill, we asked him again what it was, and he just repeated whatever was printed -- in Chinese -- on the bill.

We left satisfied with the meal, but none the wiser.