City Snapshot: Hanoi

A street in Hanoi (Mã Mây, maybe?)

On February 10th Matt and I departed for our first visit to Vietnam, and my first trip outside of North America. En route, we met up with Matt's dad and his dad's wife, who you could call our hosts since they planned the trip. We all arrived late on the night of the 11th and were welcomed with the sight of an overburdened motorbike on the dark road into Hanoi, a perfect way to begin our two week adventure.

We stayed near the Old Quarter, a place with such hustle and bustle that it's impossible to really describe with words since everything is a flurry of color and sound and smell. The picture above is deceptively calm, but you can catch a glimpse of the uneven sidewalks crowded with motorbikes, the narrow buildings leaning up against each other, the wires in strange and hazardous clusters, mingling with the paper banners strung across the street (leftover from Tết, perhaps?), and the ever present fluttering flag of Vietnam.

What the photo doesn't show are the street vendors selling produce, meat, clothes, flowers, paper, shoes, food, and just about anything else you can think of on the sidewalks. Sometimes they are store fronts or restaurants that spill out onto the sidewalk with merchandise or, in the case of restaurants, with stools, tables, and usually the kitchen. Sometimes the sidewalk is the entirety of shop, with the shopkeeper squatting next to his or her merchandise, which has been laid out on the sidewalk, right next to the gutter. Sometimes the shops are mobile, carried on a bicycle or a bamboo pole over the shoulders of a woman in the quintessential conical farmer hat.

What the photo can't show is the ever-present cacophony of honking cars and motorbikes. It can't show the mouth-watering smell of noodle soups and grilled meat, or how that smell unfortunately mingles with the odor of sewage. It can't show the subtle taste of the clear broth of phở for breakfast or of the cold lagers (Bia Hơi--fresh beer) you can find at beer corner.


But until we get smell-o-vision and taste-tv, you'll have to settle with this photo and these words, which together serve as a snapshot of my impression of Hanoi.

Movin' to the country, gonna eat me a lot of . . . Hot Brown?

I love San Diego. But it is expensive. Matt and I have talked about eventually moving somewhere with a lower cost of living, but it has always seemed like a far off possibility. We'd never really even seriously discussed where we would go.

Then Matt's employer offered him a position in Louisville, KY and we decided it would be a good opportunity to move onward. While I think I was hoping for something north of the cultural Mason-Dixon line, I am looking forward to this forced change. I have never lived anywhere but Southern California, so this will be an education of sorts for me. Plus, while Kentucky may seem like the sticks, Louisville seems like it'll be a pretty neat city to explore.

So that's my news! I'm going to be pretty busy with packing and prepping for this new adventure, but I'm going to try to make time to write about another sort of adventure--our recent trip to Vietnam and Cambodia:

Hanoi (photo by Matt)

PS The Hot Brown is an open-faced sandwich with origins in Louisville.

MIA

Okay, so I know I've been missing in action lately and it doesn't look like I'll be able to post on any sort of a regular basis for a few months. Right now, all I can say is that big things are just around the corner and I'll say more when I can.

I should also mention that in addition to not posting lately, I have been lousy at reading the blogs I follow as well. I miss you all . . . But I'll be back!

Mood Music for 2010

For a couple years I was in the habit of exchanging yearly soundtracks with a close friend. They acted as a score to our lives, but it was also often an exercise in cartharsis.  But for the past two years, my life has been less emotionally tumultuous, and because of my living, working, and transportation arrangements, I have had less time for music, and therefore have missed a few soundtracks. This year was similar, but I refused to skip another year, so I threw something together. It's hard because I spent most of the year listening to a few albums over and over. As a result, there isn't much variety, so I kept it short.

Here is the track listing for 2010; I call it 12 Songs for 12 Months:

1. "Twilight Galaxy" - Metric
2. "Knotty Pine" - Dirty Projectors Featuring David Byrne
3. "Big Red Machine" - Justin Vernon & Aaron Dessner
4. "Tightrope" - Yeasayer
5. "Gentle Hour" - Yo La Tengo
6. "Changes" - Stars
7. "I Died So I Could Haunt You" - Stars
8. "Psychic City (Classixx Remix)" - Yacht
9. "Hysteric" - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
10. "Robots" - Flight of the Conchords
11. "Walking Down the Hill" - Travis
12. "King's Highway" - Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers

I thought about posting videos instead of a list but nearly none of these songs have official videos and anyway, even with only 12 songs this post would be too long for anyone to slog through if I embedded videos for all of them. However, I will mail a copy to anyone who wants one, just email me at mistymichael15@gmail.com.

Mood Music for the Holidays

So my friend NJA wrote a post dedicated to Hanukkah related videos earlier this month (and even though Hanukkah is over I would recommend checking it out!) and yesterday my friend Rachel posted about her favorite holiday music, so I thought I would follow the trend. Some of mine are pretty cheesy, probably because I grew up listening to "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" every year at my grandmother's house.

"Nutcracker Suite"

I will listen to pretty much any version of the Nutcracker Suite. This one, though not traditional, is very upbeat and festive.

"The Chipmunk Song"

Let's be real. I was a kid during the run of the second Chipmunks television show, so I ate up all their stuff. I particularly liked Theodore because he was just plain nice.

"Carol of the Bells"

A little more traditional here. I particularly like the more traditional versions of this one, which is why I picked this video instead of say, that of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

"Little Saint Nick"

I had this on cassette and loved it.

"Let It Snow"

As an adult, my love for the, uh . . . classier Christmas songs has grown.

"Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth"

It's not necessarily that this is a favorite, but how could I leave out this video? It's also kind of fun to check out the Will Ferrell & John C. Reilly parody.

And just for fun, "Hallelujah Chorus" performed by a flash mob . . .

Haircut!

So, back in April I decided to let my hair grow for donation. It was already pretty long, I just needed a few extra inches so my stylist would have something to work with. After some research, I decided on Locks of Love. They specifically state on their website that they accept layered hair, which was definitely important. Anyway, after seven months, my hair was ready for me to make the cut.

Before

I was really looking forward to the change. However, after I made my appointment, I began to realize that I'll miss having long hair. Most of the time it's a hassle, but I'd been getting compliments on it recently and I've had long hair for most of my life, with the exception of a couple years right after high school. I was surprised I felt ambivalent, but I didn't change my mind. And I'm glad I didn't, because I think this is a really good cause. My only regret is that I couldn't do more (well, not without getting a pixie-cut), because the 10 inches I cut off will only make a chin-length wig if used at the crown. But hey, that's the length of my hair now and it looks pretty cute if I do say so myself!

After

Please forgive the mirror shots; Matt was out of town this weekend when I got it cut (yes, my guy left a long-haired lady and came back to a stranger with a bob). Anyway, I haven't had a chance to go to the post office and mail my hair, but they hard part is over. And it was easy!

October

How did a whole month fly by without any posts? I have been keeping busy in other ways, some productive, some not so much. The month started with me finishing The Color Purple for Banned Books Week. You can check out my Goodreads review here. The rest of the month was dedicated to various activities including losing/recovering my camera, beer drinking, cake making, apple crisp baking, zoo visits, vaccinations, a position change at work, and reading the entire archive of my most recent addiction, Questionable Content. Here's some more stuff I that helped me pass the month:

• New Belgium Brewing's Tour de Fat, with a bicycle parade, music, cabaret acts, beer, and plenty of silliness.

Fun with a fun-house style mirror.

• Olive picking and curing. This was fun for me because we picked our olives at this hokey place where my mom worked when I was in middle school, and where she recently started working again. We hit some bumps in the curing process, but overall it was a lot of fun.

Ripe for the picking!

Rinsing the lye solution from the olives.

• Making my Halloween costume. My friend is having a robot party so I am going as Vicky from the Eighties TV show Small Wonder. It's an obscure reference but I'm hoping someone recognizes it. I got the bright idea to sew the costume myself even though my only completed project to date is a set of kitschy, imprecisely sewn curtains for the kitchen. Additionally, I don't own a real sewing machine, instead, I have a $30 piece of plastic that I purchased at a drug store when I decided to teach myself to sew last summer. So yeah. it's been interesting.

Check it out, cats and kittens!

Cheap in every sense, but adorable!

• Apple picking with Rachel Elizabeth and her family in Julian. It was my first trip to Julian and I had a really good time. Matt and I stopped at Alpine Beer Company's new pub on the way home, and had some extremely tasty beer.

At Raven Hill Orchard

Aaaaaand I actually still need to hem my dress and make my pinafore for the party tomorrow night, so that's why you're getting this post instead of something more substantial. But next month I'll try to post more frequently/for real. Hope you've had as good of a month as I did!