Lazy man's yoga

I'm a few days into my spring break trip and waiting for everyone to arrive so we can go on a lake tour and check out some floating villages. In the meantime, I feel compelled to share my new favorite things to waste money on... thankfully not too much money.

Thai massage... or what I like to call, "lazy man's yoga" (although I can't be sure I'm copying that tagline from someone else)

It costs about $7 an hour and once it's all done, my joints feel looser and I swear I've had an intense stretching workout. As far as comfort is concerned, you remain fully clothed... so no awkward almost-naked moments with the therapist. However, the downside is that because of the no nakedness you and twenty of your closest friends may be getting a massage at once in full view of each other... and yes, that's a little weird.

The therapist pulls and pushes your body in all sorts of seemingly peculiar ways and there are times when you hear some unnerving pops... mostly from my back... but then again, I do have a tense back (so I've been told). But the glory is that you have do to nothing except roll ever so often or sit up now and then. So, all things considered, for someone who is pretty inept when it comes to real yoga, I'll happily take this fake yoga anyday.

On my soapbox (a.k.a. my only post about U.S. politics, hopefully)

Despite telling myself that I should focus my attentions elsewhere, I find I’m repeatedly drawn to the U.S. presidential happenings. In particular, I have this freakish obsession with the race for the Democratic Party nomination. You see, I’m an ardent supporter of Hillary Clinton; always have been.

Way back in ’92, when Bill was first elected president, I remember feeling there was something different about her… and I liked it. Maybe it was partly due to the fact that this was the first U.S. presidential election that I actually remembered. Maybe it was because Bill and Hillary were young and vibrant. I can’t put my finger on exactly what it was but I was just starting high school (7^th grade) and it was immediately evident to me that Hillary was no shrinking violet. I just knew she wasn’t going be like Barbara or Nancy, who always appeared so docile. Here was a woman who was really worth regarding.

One of my father’s younger brothers used to call my mother Hillary. We’re fairly certain he didn’t mean it in a good way but, to me (and I think to my mom as well) it was a compliment. Quite frankly, there were no other famous women that I really had much respect for on that level.

Even through the scandals with Bill, my support for her never waned. I know many women were outraged that she could, for all her feminism, stand by Bill’s side through the whole Lewinsky debacle and she probably forever lost some supporters because of it. However, having seen some of my friends’ parents deal with the issue of adultery, I took the position that you can’t judge until you’ve been there. Just because one partner cheats on the other does not necessarily mean that there is a lack of love or respect. (Here’s some food for thought on the subject or here.) To this day, I’m convinced that Bill and Hillary have a deep love and respect for each other. But, anyway, that was a side note.

For one of my master’s classes, we were assigned to read, “In the Company of Educated Women” (good book by the way) which as you can probably guess, details the change in the higher education landscape as women started pursuing undergraduate degrees and beyond. As to be expected, a significant portion of the book was devoted to all female colleges and in particular to Wellesley. Now, as an MIT woman, I’ll be the first to admit there isn’t a ton of love between the two female populations. But, what struck me was that even though Wellesley was an institution devoted to the advancement of women, the students were not allowed to have a student speaker at commencement. (Their male peers at neighboring schools had a student speaker for years at this point.) Further, the commencement speaker was always a man. Finally, the students came together and petitioned the administration to allow a student speaker at commencement and guess who that was? My friend Hillary, you can read the text of her speech here.

It was only a matter of time before Hillary threw her hat in the political arena. From what I could tell, New Yorkers were somewhat resistant the first go ‘round but she’s managed to win them over and secure subsequent election wins. To be honest, I’ve just been waiting for her to run for President. I’ve always believed she’d be fantastic. She is passionate about the country, cognizant of foreign policy issues and well aware of her perceived shortcomings. She knows her way around Washington, which can be valuable and has demonstrated that she can be fierce when needed. Sure, she’s not as charismatic as Obama but, let’s be honest, there’s no way in hell her campaign would have lasted a month if her initial platform was that of “hope”. Critics would have assaulted her and her girly fluff faster than you can say, I don’t know, insert something clever and short here. When push comes to shove, she and Obama are pretty much even on key issues and she’s been clear about her plans from day one.

Whereas, Obama’s speeches seem almost disingenuous to me; as though he’s just pandering what the American populace is just so desperate to hear although he doesn’t really have substance to back it up with. Of course, it can and should be argued that much of politics involves some amount of pandering but I’m someone who doesn’t just want to hear about “hope” and “change”. I want to know, how? I want to know that there is a plan. I want something I can actually envision. Words like “hope” and “change” are pretty but they don’t actually solve problems. It also bothers me that Obama literally took Deval’s speech and presented it as his own. I don’t care that Deval supposedly suggested that he use it, Obama could have at least acknowledged that the words were not his own as he spoke them. Deval’s not MLK Jr. so his words haven’t achieved such fame whereby a little disclaimer as to who the original owner is not warranted. For Obama to say that it didn’t occur to him, sits uncomfortably. What does that say about him? That he’s willing to take what sounds good and present it as his own even if it isn’t? Or maybe I’m making too much out of it but it does ring of immaturity and worries me. (This all probably sounds a lot harsher than I mean it to sound. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike Obama. I’m just afraid that he’s getting in way over his head and could do with more substantive experience under his belt.)

Anyway, as an “alien” (that’s their word, not mine) in the U.S., I have no say in the matter. So, as I mentioned before, I need to get past this and just accept whatever happens… although the feminist in me is praying, really, really hard.

(And just so you don’t think I’ve forgotten about the GOP… It’s seems fairly evident to me that McCain has it in the bag for the Republican nod. Or at least, I’m convinced that the GOP would need to seriously lose its collective mind to give the nom to Huckabee. I will not allow myself to believe that America would choose him over either of the Democratic options.)

A/N (added 12 Mar 08): An acquaintance of mine posted this story on facebook and I think it is particularly relevant to this blog post. As she mentioned, it may be two months late for me to notice the article but it doesn't change the point, with which I agree whole-heartedly.

I may have a problem...

I picked up my passport from the Viet Nam embassy this morning after checking out the new stamp, came the quick realization that I may have a problem.

No, not with getting into (or out of) Viet Nam; that's all set.

My problem is that most of these countries like to use two visa pages for a single entry visa (or at least for the first single entry visa). You see, one page is used for the actual visa and then at the port of entry, the immigration officials like to use the page immediately adjacent to the visa => two pages. Well, because of their practices, I'm down to three pairs of available adjacent pages.

The first, and more obvious, problem is that depending on how finicky these countries want to get, I could potentially be in a situation where I may only be able to get three more visas before having to renew my passport - much earlier than its expiry date in 2012. The second, and potentially much bigger, problem is that if I have to renew my passport, this means I also need to get a new US student visa which in turn could screw up my future work authorization. The period of time between the granting of my new student visa and law school graduation may end up being too short to qualify for the oh-so-important OPT. Argh!!

Well, I'm going to see if I can try to convince the immigration officials to only stamp my passport on pages that already have stamps but still have space on the pages... hopefully that won't piss them off too much and they'll still let me in the country despite my high maintenance requests. That or I'll be forced to only visit places where I won't require a visa... problem is those places are few and far in between thanks to the nonexistent efforts of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Bahamas.

Feeling hot, hot, hot

"Girl, I wanna make you sweat. Sweat 'til you can't sweat no more..." Inner Circle, circa 1993

Having been at the disgusting point where I was convinced I couldn't possibly sweat any further, circa now, this does not sound appealing in the least.

Just when I thought the heat in Singapore was outrageous, Bali made me rethink my categorization. All trips to Bali should come with a warning about the fact that your sweat glands are likely to go into full-blown overdrive and that you would be a fool to wear something other than loose linen and 100% cotton tank-tops and shorts. [If you're a woman who is blessed and doesn't get to "enjoy" inner thigh chafing, go ahead and wear a skirt... just know that I hate you.]

I, however, am more inclined the support the view expressed by a dear friend and former roommate of mine...

Me: It is f*cking hot.
She: Or rather, it is too hot to f*ck.

Yummy yummy yummy in my tummy tummy tummy

I recently returned from Bali (and yes, I'll post some pics soon) but instead of trying to squeeze everything about my trip into one post - where inevitably I'll get tired of writing and then cut out a lot of the details - I'm going to try multiple posts, each (ideally) discussing something different about the trip.
Whether I succeed at this approach or let tiredness win remains to be seen... anyway, onto entry numero uno...

Food, glorious food!

In case you haven't noticed by now, quite possibly the only other interest of mine that might come anywhere close to my love of traveling, it's my love of really good food and its accompaniments (even shopping, which is also a favorite pastime isn't up there). And, I am very pleased to report that the food in Bali did not disappoint... not in the least!

Two dishes in particular that I feel obliged to mention (and encourage trying at home) are actually salads I had while there. The first, was with my dinner at the hotel's restaurant and consisted of grilled bananas & tomatoes over greens dressed with a light vinaigrette and, the second, was a watermelon salad I had on my last night in Bali at a restaurant named Ku De Ta. (Yes, I splurged and probably shouldn't but with the exchange rate, I could not resist because it still wasn't SO bad.) While, I loved the flavours of the banana and tomato salad, I think I could have eaten the Ku De Ta salad everyday I was there and not tire of it, it was just that good! They combined cubes of watermelon with pieces of super-soft feta (I'm pretty sure a creamy goat cheese would work equally well) and basil leaves then dressed it in balsamic vinaigrette... incredibly simple but unbelievably good!

Of course, the salads weren't the only good food to be had. In fact, the seafood was also fantastic and, on three (out of the four) nights, I had fish for dinner. All three times, the restaurant served the entire fish grilled with Balinese spices - which kind of remind me of Thai flavours - and all three times it was very very good. One of the nights, I had dinner on Jimbaran Beach - which is ridiculously romantic... too bad the only person I was romancing was myself - where I was able to select the actual fish I wanted and then, voila!, 30 mins (or so) later, my fish arrived grilled to perfection. Definitely, awesome. :)

I also had "dirty duck" while I was there and, no, the duck isn't actually dirty. Essentially, it's well seasoned, then deep-fried, duck (when done well it's not overly greasy just yummy). For someone like me who isn't a big fan of chicken breast (because let's be honest, that ish is usually dry... or super-coated in oil to make it not dry... and yes, I feel even more strongly about turkey breast but I mentioned that before) but loves dark meat, duck is wonderful since the whole bird is pretty much dark meat. And, honestly, deep-frying makes almost everything taste better so long as the deep-frying is done properly. (In fact, I'm waiting for someone to deep-fry me some brussels sprouts... maybe then I'll actually be able to stomach them... ah, who am I kidding? Brussels sprouts are just plain gross.)

I've never met anyone from there before!

I'm pretty used to receiving the standard barrage of statements/questions whenever I meet someone who's never met a Bahamian before. Oftentimes, they begin with the obligatory, "I've never met anyone from there before." And my standard response is, "Well, there aren't that many of us so that's no surprise." Of course, the conversation then progresses usually including (but certainly not limited to) questions on population, weather, economy, language, history.

On Saturday, however, I had the opportunity to be the one surprised because I met a Maldivian. Now, I had heard of the Maldives, mostly as an exclusive resort destination in the Indian Ocean... I even looked into it since I figured I'd be in the vicinity... but I never imagined I'd meet a Maldivian outside of the country. Turns out that population-wise, the Maldives has about 300,000 people (like the Bahamas) and is an archipelago comprised of hundreds of tiny islands (again, like the Bahamas). The vast majority of the population live in the capital, Male, but there are a few thousand who live on the outer islands (yet again, like the Bahamas). And as to be expected, their primary industry is tourism (you guessed it, like the Bahamas).

Where the two countries diverge, however, is religion. The Bahamas is very much so a conservative church-going nation (depending on who speak with, you may hear it described as a Christian nation but that's debatable) but, there are still small sections of society that practice other forms of religion. On the other hand, the Maldives only allows for the practice of Islam and the establishment of any other form of religion is expressly forbidden. That means, there are no churches, temples, etc. in the country and should you desire to become a Maldivian, you must be a Muslim first.

Initially, I was taken aback by this requirement. I had immediately assumed that a country with a requirement like this would implicitly require its citizens to follow an orthodox sect of Islam but the young Maldivian woman speaking to me was wearing a typical western warm-weather outfit of t-shirt, denim mini and flip flops, no hijab in sight. Unable to help myself, I (hopefully politely) asked her about it. Turns out it was not totally an example of the "when in Rome" idea but instead was fairly close to acceptable attire in the Maldives. (I say fairly because I'm not entirely convinced on the mini.)

This did get us talking about the religion in general and as it turns out there is a very real concern about the growing population of Islam extremists in the Maldives, particularly in the out islands. While there haven't been any major terror attacks, it is apparently becoming a growing problem that these followers of extremist Islam have been strongly pushing for, as she put it, "a return to the days of the prophet." This year, for the first time, the Maldives will be holding two party elections and from the sounds of it, one party supports the more traditional view of Islam whereas the other party has a more progressive view of the faith. Considering the supporters of the more traditional party have expressed strong distaste for tourism even though tourism is by far the country's biggest industry, I'm guessing it's probably better if the present progressive government stays in power.