Wednesday, April 30, 2008
As you can imagine, I have many photos to go through from New Orleans. It always takes me a couple hours to go through each photo in Picasa and play with the levels and saturation, choose those that are blogworthy, post those, and upload everything to Flickr. Since I don’t have time to get done in one sitting during the week, I thought I’d share a couple photos a day as a teaser. These two photos are pretty much representative of what we did our first night in the Crescent City (eat, walk, eat):
Oysters Round 1 (before I got grossed out - the big ones that did me in were three times the size of the one in the foreground) -
Beignet Heaven (picture of the best New Orleans snack pastry here) -
| Tags: memories, travel
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Toward the end of every vacation, I like to think about the ways I’ve changed from the break in routine. A few days away from the grind might not seem like enough to produce changes in my thoughts and attitudes, but I think 4 days is perhaps the critical mass or threshold number of days you need to spend in a place for it to take hold. Some realizations I’ve made while in New Orleans:
1. Oysters are gross. I’ve always been afraid of them until last year when I tried charbroiled oysters at Drago’s Seafood restaurant. They were grilled with butter, garlic and parmesean cheese, and they were delicious. This trip, they were the first thing I ate, then I ate another plate yesterday. But then I started getting grossed out by the really big oysters which started looking like globs of snot that popped hot liquids in my mouth.
2. New Orleans is one of my favorite cities. I don’t know how it happened, but this city has really gotten to me. I’ve randomly been moved to tears, while listening to the brass band, so proud of their art, or admiring beautiful photography shot around the city, or hearing the female hymnist’s angelic voice at St. Louis Catheral mass, or seeing the water lines on the houses hit by Hurricane Katrina, still abandoned with their front lawns crazy with weeds. There’s something special about this place. And it’s not really the food that attracts me - it’s hard to find food that won’t guarantee heartburn. Maybe having lived in the reviled urban sprawl that is most of Los Angeles and Orange Counties the last 10 years, I can’t help but be overwhelmed by a city so unique in its history, culture and architecture.
3. I can actually forget about immigration law. When I’m in the daily grind, my mind is working overtime and overactively. At work, I have to remind myself to take deep breaths as I rush from one task to another in a neverending race to get cases done. When I come home, I’m still thinking and talking about work, and it takes a couple hours of TV to get me normal again. That could explain the tendency to veg on weeknights. But remove myself from the office, and I am still a person with interests, ones that have nothing to do with my job (gasp!) or bettering myself. I’ve spent a lot of time consuming stories… an audiobook and a whole TV series that I’ve seen before. I guess I’m still prone to distracting myself and keeping my mind engaged rather than being alone with my thoughts. Which leads me to…
4. Even when I have tons of free time on my hands, I don’t really choose to spend it with God. My life feels like it’s on fast forward. I don’t really slow down to go deep into the Bible or into journaling. I used to in law school when my life was more regimented. I even had a second desk in my room especially for quiet times. But journaling has pretty much stopped since I got married. I write maybe once every couple months. I used to write every day. I’ve never prayed every day. I had wanted to use this vacation, specifically the hours that Dave would be attending the conference, for some soul-searching and to get back on track with God. But instead, as soon as I woke up I would put on my iPod or pop in a DVD, or rush to a bus tour. This tells me it’s not about finding the perfect environment; it’s about removing the distractions. I need to go less with feelings and impulses and more with what I know is right.
5. I learned to use Dave’s MacBook Pro, and I like it more and more. Dave and I fantasize about “going Apple” and we’ve started by changing out the cheap stuff like our router and keyboards. For this vacation, I decided to leave behind my tiny Dell Inspiron laptop and take my chances with an alien system. The first few hours were frustrating as I had trouble navigating between programs and figuring out whether a program was even running. Typing and toggling between windows was excruciating because I kept trying to use Ctrl or Alt instead of the Apple button. I’m still very disturbed that there is no “delete” key that will allow you to delete to the right of the cursor. I use that key a lot when I type. Eh, I’m sure I’ll get over it. Now I’m really liking the elegant desktop and simplicity. It sure beats my laptop at work which, despite running Windows XP, forces the Windows Classic theme on each machine. Talk about institutional.
OK, time for bed. Tomorrow it’s back to Pasadena and getting ready to refit myself into the cog wheel.
| Tags: attempts at profundity, travel
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Dave and I are in New Orleans till Sunday - he’s attending An Event Apart and I’m the tag-along wife. I’m loving it. Our hotel room overlooks the Mississippi River where I’ve been watching long ships pushed by ferries languidly make their way upstream. It’s so weird looking, like a tractor trailer reversed and on water. I guess it makes sense to have the power and steering at the back of such a long vessel, since that’s where rudders are located on boats and aircraft. These are the things I contemplate while listening to the audio recording of Shadow of the Hegemon on my iPod and munching on snacks pilfered from Dave’s conference.
The last time we were in New Orleans was in August 2007 for my new attorney training. We were here for a week and while I was in session, Dave wandered around the French Quarter and explored downtown in search of photo spots. We never expected to return, much less within one year. So it has been surreal walking around the same square mile we stayed in last summer - the hotel we’re in now is literally down the street from the one that hosted my conference. It has also been exciting to do the things we didn’t get to do last time because we mostly hung out with my co-workers who were more interested in food, drink and dancing than music or culture. Last time we went to the aquarium the day after the conference, and I wasn’t that impressed except that I got to pet stingrays and see a white gator. This time, we’re going to listen to live jazz, take some kind of tour, see the Garden District, and explore the French Quarter more thoroughly.
The best surprise/reprise has been finding a street brass band that I had been sad to leave behind without knowing their name or finding a CD with music sounding even remotely as awesome. Last year we were walking out of the French Quarter along the famous Bourbon Street and were getting ready to turn left on Canal Street to return to our hotel when we heard a cacophony of drums, trumpets, and tuba. For the next half hour, we stood transfixed by a group of young black guys blasting the coolest melodies and rhythms out of three trombones, two trumpets, two drums, a tuba and a saxophone.
Well, who do we see when we walk the same route last night? A familiar looking group packing up their instruments underneath a hand-drawn poster that declared, To Be Continued Brass Band. I looked them up and it turns out they’re on Wikipedia and have their own website named after the documentary being directed about them, From the Mouthpiece on Back. I couldn’t wait to go back tonight and hear them, and sure enough, they play every night at the same corner. There are video and sound clips on the website. I joined their mailing list so that I could be notified as soon as a CD comes out. Yes, I like them that much. It’s the perfect blend of funk, classical, jazz, rap and hip hop.
Tomorrow, I think I’ll try for the Hurricane Katrina tour. It was nice vegging out in the hotel room today but I’m starting to feel like a lump. I should have some interesting photos to share.
| Tags: travel
