a posting

okay, i don't really have a coherent posting on its own, so i'm gonna do the bullet point thing.

• i drank a whole pitcher (yes, a pitcher) of cafe au lait at paris on the platte on Sunday evening. i was WIRED. i also found some gauloises. i didn't know pitchers of cafe au lait existed.
• i got a lot done though.
• yesterday was a very very productive day at the company.
• it is very very warm like heatherfeather pointed out.
• nawa was home alone the whole day yesterday while i was at work at the other company and didn't have any accidents.
• however, she chewed a photo album of mine from namibia.
• perhaps she just had a hard time turning the pages because she wanted to look at pictures from her home continent.
• i have decided to write a children's book involving nawa and airplanes.
• high point of the day today so far: receiving a letter from amy klein.
• i am getting really excited about my trip to DC and New York.
• but i am a little freaked out because i do not have a dogsitter totally organized.
• it is weird that when you have the most work to do, you also go out the most. well, i do.
• i have good friends--i am thankful for all of you.

the last hurrah

so last night, kaka, frick, and juan came over for dinner. i made lemon caper chicken. here's the recipe:

1/4 c. flour
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1/2 tsp. paprika2 skinned, boned chicken breasts, halved, pounded to 1/4 inch thick (about 1 pound)
5 tsp. corn oil
1/4 c. low sodium chicken broth
2 tbsp. lemon juice
2 tbsp. capers, drained

Combine flour, pepper and paprika on a plate. Press the chicken breasts into mixture, coating evenly and shaking off any excess. Heat the oil over moderately high heat for 1 minute. Add chicken and cook 3 minutes on each side; do not over cook. Transfer chicken to a heated platter. Add broth to pan, scraping any browned bits on the bottom. Stir in lemon juice and capers and heat through. Pour sauce over chicken. Serves 4.

i recommend adding about a teaspoon of flour to the sauce just to make it a little thicker. and i would actually add a little more broth as well, otherwise, the lemon/caper combo can be overwhelming for some people. serving over spaghetti is good. plus just a simple salad with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar as dressing. the meal is light but satisfying. would go well with pino grigio--i think chardonnay would clash too much, a riesling would be too sweet.

we digressed from my "gourmet" meal from there and ended up at the stadium on evans drinking pitchers of something. we closed the place out. it was hard to get a taxi. we had fun though, despite kaka and mine's continued debate of our worthiness of being friends. i think frick went through a lot of culture shock being at the stadium.

anyway, i write about this because it is probably the last time i will go out before the end of the quarter--i have three papers to write. and i am not working on them right now, but instead writing this.

more on banzata

so i found out that there is actually a word "banzata" it comes from the Hausa language which about 39 million people speak in northwestern Nigeria. there are some online dictionaries of this language, but they're not very good and don't have this word in them, so if anyone know hausa or happens to have a hausa dictionary around, let me know.

BANZATA

that was the word i couldn't remember from my dream! i just remembered it!

quite possibly the funniest thing i have seen in a long time

yes, that is a picture of dean tom farer on a t-shirt. thanks to charlie hess for this! genius!

weird dreams and some other stuff

so heatherfeather had some weird dreams last night. i had one, too. and although it should have probably qualified as a nightmare, i kept going back to sleep so i could see what happened.

i was on a group trip in rwanda back right when the genocide was beginning, but i knew in my mind what was going to happen. we were visiting an orphanage (me and just my friend, kelly) and suddenly, it was stormed by troops. we were shuffled into a dark basement room in the orphanage and told to lay down. the troops shot the children one by one and then shot me and kelly. i don't really know if she died. i know i was shot four times in the side and one time in the head, but it didn't kill me, though i pretended to be dead anyway. anyway, when they left, i was able to get out and though i had five bullets in me, i wasn't bleeding so badly that it was dangerous. oh, and by the way, the shot in the head kind of went in right behind my ear but somehow didn't damage my brain or anything. so anyway, i got out of the orphanage. ooh, now i remember, so did kelly. i think we got separated at first. we found our group after a day or two, still not having been to the hospital for treatment. and they were glad to see us. we asked our tour guide (who was vietnamese for some reason--no idea why we would have a vietnamese tour guide in rwanda) if we could go to the hospital right away and he was like, yeah, we'll do a little sightseeing and then go there and we were like, what? so i took off because i was like, i need to go to the hospital--i have five bullets stuck in my body. so i did but i ended up at nordstrom instead (though i kind of doubt they have nordstrom in rwanda) and they had TVs on everywhere showing the story of the shot orphans and everyone was standing around crying and the incident had come to have a particular name which i have been trying all morning to remember and i was wanting to tell them, this is just the beginning, you have no idea what is to come.

so the whole being shot in rwanda in the mid-1990s at the beginning of the genocide and going back in time thing made for a weird dream.

then nawa started barking and the phone rang, so i couldn't finish it. i don't know how or if i would have made it back to the future. and i want to remember the name that was given to the orphanage incident.

i was thinking it could be somehow the start of a plot of a novel, like, some official responsible for the incident is on trial at the tribunal in tanzania and they are lacking a first hand witness (because everyone is dead) and this american guy (me) has this dream in which he can recount the incident in detail and somehow finds out about this story and travels to the tribunal in africa to testify but in order to make his story believable (you know, the whole time travel thing) he has to remember the name (which starts with a B) and it is really dififcult for him.

here are the couple of other things:

--black men with mullets--please explain?

--i like pepsi, cold, very cold.

--and hummus, i like hummus.

--i am tired of students who are so needy. even the grad students are acting needier than usual this week.

hmmmm

maybe the fact that it looks like i am wearing eyeshadow in this picture rachel took in the library means i am just a little bit tired.














but although it has been a super busy, it has been a very productive week and a fun one. late night shopping at king (queen) soopers with rachel, and chillin' with matty numbchucks at the snug after class last night--we had fish and chips and watched speed skating and ski jumping on the olympics--that is one freaky sport.

first days suck

yesterday was my first day at the new company where i have a part time gig that somewhat utilizes my international marketing guru status. i hate first days--it is always just so awkward--waiting around while the IT guy sets up your computer, meeting everyone and forgetting their names, and weighing how forward one should be with new colleagues. plus, it was a very dry day in denver yesterday, the static build up was crazy, and i shocked everyone whose hand i shook. plus, i was overdressed since this is a trendy jeans and shirt type of place, so i felt self-concious. so the first day is over, the second will be better.

party people

kelly, juan, fritz at hanson's (more pics on my flickr site--link to left!)

so it was my birthday yesterday. I thank everyone for a really great party at hanson’s, for all the drinks and presents and well-wishes, and for the fake cheese I woke up covered in (special shout out to juan!). and I thank everyone for the phone calls that came from three continents—a personal best for me. Not only did I feel loved, but I felt especially bad-ass. pictures will follow on my flickr site soon.

so now I am 25 and it freaks me out a little bit, not because I think I am old, but because I am getting older and things are just not quite how I expected them to be. Like for example, I have zero romantic life. It has been almost a year exactly since I went on a date. Granted, I have also spent approximately seven months of the past year globetrotting and therefore not really interested in starting anything with a woman who I will have to leave behind in a few months when I return to the states. But that is really not the issue—it just doesn’t seem like there has been the opportunity either. (okay, pause, I am at starbucks and there is scary old man staring at me…anyway). What the heck—am I too picky or something? I am—I have ridiculously high standards for people in general, friends and myself included, but especially for anyone I date (so if you’re my friend, feel lucky…..just kidding). And I don’t know if this is wrong, if I should “just settle” or if that is the wrong approach as well because I will be unhappy in the end (ok, pause, scary old man is leaving, phew). And I wonder if now having a dog who craves attention and netflix is just going to make meeting someone more difficult because I am content to cocoon at home and drink tea.

And then there are my other issues as well. Like, am I bad-ass enough in my career? In my mind, I have achieved international marketing guru status, and quite frankly, my resume is written so well that you would even believe this, but have I achieved enough. And whose standard am I holding myself to anyway? I do not know. Probably a lot of this has to do with the fact that I am ready to be done with graduate school and have a job and make money. I’ve spent about the last 7 years feeling really poor, with the exception of the times I was jetsetting for someone else and had an expense account. Those were the days. I am tired of having to do so much juggling to pay all my bills and having to do this makes me feel bad about myself as well. Wow, maybe we’re getting into too much here.

Anyway, after having really done nothing productive this weekend, I have had to get a lot done today. “Kaka” and “Frik” had me over for dinner which was wonderful and then we watched TV’s 50 most outrageous moments in E! which left something to be desired. Then I stayed up until 2:30 doing work for my other job and watching Gandhi, which was amazing, but totally detrimental to my sleep schedule.

Back to work…

let's get something straight here

So there are some people in my class who seemed to be a little confused about the migrant labor system in southern Africa, which originated prior to the Apartheid era, but was further strengthened by it as well. Migrant labor in South Africa and throughout that region was especially active in the mining industry. The quality of gold ore in the Rand (the area around Johannesburg where the gold is) is of extremely low grade. Thus, its profitable extraction depended on a cheap labor force. South Africa was and is the dominant economy by far in the region. Thus, many mining jobs attracted migrants from other countries: Namibia (then Southwest Africa), Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, etc. But I find it rather idiotic to assume that this someone means that this system was a fair and equitable one, or that this means that these jobs were well-paying in the first place. Miners in South Africa during the Apartheid era not only worked for almost nothing, but lived in horrible conditions (called single quarters) separated from their families and worked in terrible conditions. Why? Because there were no other options for them—not because it was a lucrative job option. Such options were the only way to get cash, especially after the Apartheid regime established so-called homelands which forced indigenous South Africans onto some of the least productive land in the country. In single quarters living conditions, many social problems abounded—alcoholism, violence, prostitution—and their related problems. Today, this legacy continues, though the wages and working conditions have improved, the lifestyle has contributed to a plethora of social and health problems. In fact, one of the chief causes of the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS in southern Africa is due to the migrant labor system. The disease is contracted in urban areas and when the workers return home a very few times a year, it is then transmitted to partners that have otherwise been faithful.

So don’t think that just because something pays better that it is an ideal choice or a choice at all. Just because someone is not enslaved doesn’t mean they are doing something by choice, or that they are being treated justly. F-ing duh. How about you pull your head out of you’re a$$ and thing a little bit further than what you read on the BBC or in The New York Times.

l'annee du mariage

when my friend duncan announced to me in december that he asked his girlfriend sarah to marry him and that they would be getting hitched in boston in december 2006, i was excited. i haven't seen duncan since namibia in may 2001 and we made a pact there that we would be at each other's weddings. i think this was a drunk pact, but it counts, still.

and then claudia got engaged to ben and is getting married in california in august.

and then beth and ewan finally set a date for march and will get married in washington.

so what does all of this mean? well, it means that my "get hot" deadline has been reduced again and again. now i only have five weeks to lose the grad school 20 lbs. and get generally desirable.

and now kerstin got engaged to helger in germany, so now comes the wave of foreign weddings. and i will be there will be a wedding for vee in the near future in south africa, and then theo.

so i am going to be buying a lot of plane tickets. stupid me for making friends.

heatherfeather (see link to blog on left) complained....er....rejoiced in the season of babies. well, now i am having the year of weddings, which is only turning into the season of weddings, which i think would be la saison du mariage.

all i have to say is, YOU HAD ALL BETTER GET YOUR ASSES ON THE PLANE WHEN I GET MARRIED TOO!

in other news, 4 days until my birthday party. i am dreaming of presents....hint, hint.

oh what a night

so i did have a hot date--she even put on a special outfit for the event. we had a nice dinner (she chose science diet puppy formula, i had hummus and pita) and we watched a movie.

gosh, this is getting bad. I NEED A DATE!

don't let us get this bad

a story from all things considered on NPR sent to me by a friend.

on another note, i love storebought valentine's day cookies, well, pretty much for any holiday actually, you know, the hard sugar cookies with sprinkles on top. guess these days aren't all bad.

in honor of this day

you can make your own conversation hearts here.

new shoes

as promised, the new kicks that are oh-so trashy, but comfortable and make me feel hip like the kids. again, they were supposed to be tan and not yellow. now they're like german patriotic shoes. yeah, great idea.

v-day

so tomorrow is stupid valentine's day. okay, i wouldn't think it was stupid if i actually had "traumfrau" to celebrate with (traumfrau means "dream woman" and is the generic name of the woman with whom i am meant to be with). but instead, on v-day eve, i am thinking about all those people i dated and how messed up it seems now or how stupid i was then. so if anyone wants to join me in my apartment for a bottle of gin and some cheesy netflix movies (if they in fact arrive), the invitation is open. shoot, i have to study tomorrow night. okay, don't worry, we'll think of another plan.
i honestly don't mean to sound so dejected and negative--i'm not like that (ok, about this kind of stuff, i actually am, sorry). i suppose i should find hope in the six hour "pride and prejudice" A&E miniseries i watched last night. love will happen, a lot of stuff gets in the way, sometimes you have to wait and often, you don't know the whole story.

on another note, it is six days until my birthday party at hanson's here in denver. i am really looking forward to it, but not trying to build it up in my mind in case 25 people get there and just stand around and stare at each other for two hours and then give me a side hug on the way out. yes, a side hug. you know what that means.

rock block

so while i was finishing my stupid, stupid IT homework, nawa and i decided to do what any 24 year old man and his dog would do and have a david bowie rock block, you know, get the blood flowing again...here she is dancing...

nawa's favorite song seems to be "under pressure" and she doesn't like "let's dance." who knew? she also enjoyed watching the sappy romantic comedy i was watching.

am i heartless?

i just saw brokeback mountain. i didn't think it was brilliant and i didn't cry. i mean, it was sad, but it didn't move me. i am sorry--it just didn't do it for me.

on another note, i believe it is time for me to get netflix. i mean, if you rent 2 DVDs at blockbuster, you pay almost $10. why am i wasting my money?

eurotrash and a couple of things

• i made it out of bed today and haven't felt like collapsing yet.
• lungus coughedupapolus seems to have subsided.
• i think i will live to complete midterms and more importantly, celebrate my birthday
  
• my new oh-so-trendy Diesel shoes arrived that i ordered off the internet. instead of being black with tan and red accents (which rachel agreed with me is what they looked like on the picture) they are black with YELLOW and red accents. so now I have shoes that are the color of the german flag. they are not that bad. they're just kind of euro-trash, like not the kind of euro-trash i usually like. this is like the serious euro-trash from spain/portugal/italy. have i ever explained my taxidermy of euro-trash? here is a perfect opportunity:
  
  ibero-trash: origin is spain or portugal and sometimes italy. look for tight, expensive clothes, very, very bright colors. may also include people from the middle east trying to be western. greasy hair also a common factor. techno, you know, the whole deal.
  cigarette: marlboro lights 100 or marlboro reds; drink: caphirina
  
  ost-trash: origin is eastern europe, russia, or east germany (hence ost, meaning east in german). tight cheap clothes, colors not as bright, fake orangey tans.
  cigarette: lucky strikes; drink: vodka red bull
  
  brit-trash: origin is obvious. came up with this spending a lot of prenzlauer berg in berlin which was all but completely overrun by hipsters and entrepreneurs for whom london got too expensive or passe. deragatory term used not so much to criticize clothing (who is going to hate on Paul Smith) but more for their extremely loud and obnoxious behavior when in germany specifically (understandable).
  cigarette: gauloise legeres (the blue ones); drink: beer
  
  scan-trash: swedes, norwegians, fins, danes--lots of black clothes. blonde hair (at least it's natural), lots of black eye makeup. again, black clothes. they talk funny.
  cigarette: marlboro lights; drink: vodka tonic
  
  euro-trash: ah yes, this is the "good" kind, kind of like HDL cholesterol is the good kind of cholesterol. no particular region--can be found anywhere. it's fun, experimental but classy. trendy, while nothing you'll regret in 10 years, or 10 days for that matter.
  cigarette: gauloises blondes (the red one); drink: varies

so there you have it.

coughing up a lung

so i checked, and i do not believe it is actually possible to cough up a lung. but then, there is the real possibility i could be the victim of a new condition: lungus coughedupadolphilus.
i know, i know, i am exagerating this being sick thing a little, but since i don't do this often and don't have things like allergies, i will be the first to admit that i have zero coping skills.
apologies to everyone in the library who has to hear me go through lungus coughedupadolphilus.

what happened to amischwab

so it has been awhile since i've posted and not that anyone particularly cares, but i've had one hell of a weekend. let's review:

thursday afternoon: started coughing. oh well, getting a little cold, no big deal.

friday morning: shit, every part of my body aches. maybe i will not go into work until noon.

friday noon: no, that's not happening. "rachel, bring the sick supplies!"

friday 2pm: sick supplies will not stay down. perhaps should seek medical treatment.

friday 2:10pm to 3:10pm: ON HOLD with kaiser. yes ON HOLD the entire time. approaching hysteria.

friday 3:15pm: yes, you CAN go to the doctor.

friday 3:40pm: arrive at doctor's office. ordered to put on a mask. now i feel like a lepar (sp?)/like michael jackson/someone in hong kong during SARS but wishing i had hello kitty or burberry nova check at least on the mask.

friday 4:10pm: almost passed out in the waiting room, finally allowed to see nurse practioner. vital signs: heart rate 120 (normally 60 for me), BP is 110/50 (normally 120/70 for me).

friday 4:30pm: informed i have the flu and that i am severely dehydrated and that i will now be put on an IV and pumped with 5 litres of fluid.

friday 6:30pm: finally have taken all the fluid. BP is up to 140/80. receive anti-nausea prescription (believe me, you do not want me to go into that).

rest of weekend: passed out on nyquil on bed. dependent on friends for sustenance of gatorade and chicken noodle soup.

sunday evening: awake from nyquil-enduced coma in time to watch the seahawks lose the superbowl. v. sad, even though i just started caring about american footbal about a month ago.

today: feeling a little better. am able to come to campus to send e-mail to professors begging for extensions on mid-terms.

i never want to be sick again. last time i was sick was when i had my appendix out three years ago and at least then i could just take tons of pain medication and i had my mutti.

how to make dumplings for chinese new year

here's your step-by-step guide to making dumplings--yum! yum!

step 1: take the noodle dough and put it in your hand.














step 2: using chopsticks (ahem!) take approximately 2 tablespoons of the pork meat/vegetable/sesame oil mixture and place it in the dough wrapper.













step 3: dip the tips of your fingers in water.















step 4: use your wet fingers to moisten the edge of the dumpling wrapper.















step 5: fold the wrapper over around the meat and press gently to seal the dumpling.















step 6: your dumpling is complete!















step 7: okay, it's not complete, you still have to cook it in boiling water:















step 8: now they're done and you can enjoy them with friends!



















yes, my eyes are not open in any of these pictures. we tried again and again, but with no luck.

thanks again to peipei for hosting and the pictures.

more pics n flickr

so i haven't shown any of you pictures from south africa. now i have uploaded several to flickr site accessible through the link to the right! enjoy!

so, what is an amischwab anyway???

so i suppose most of you don't even know what an amischwab is, so i thought it would be good to explain. if you do a google search, there are actually people named Ami Schwab. but i am not one of them. amischwab is a compound noun in german, basically, a made up word. is consists of two parts: "ami" and "schwab."

ami: ami is a german slang word for american. sometimes, the term "amiland" is even used in slang for the united states.

schwab: schwab is someone from the region "Schwaben" or "Schwabia" as we say in english. the schwabs speak a dialect that is not well-liked throughout germany, but it happens to be the dialect i speak and the region from where my family came from originally. this area is in southwest germany, around stuttgart and to the south of there.

hence, amischwab--an schwabian american. this is who i am.