Food

We went to The Italian Caffe in the Merchant City tonight for K's birthday dinner, and I've got to give it two very enthusiastic thumbs up. If I could give my monkfish, wrapped in parma ham and drizzled with a sundried tomato dressing, three thumbs up, I would. Just really stellar food, great atmosphere, good service, and pretty reasonably priced. I love hitting new restaurants. Especially in parts of town that I'm not tremendously familiar with.

Even though I've been here for almost a year (seriously?!), I've realized that I mainly stick to the West End and its university bubble, with hops into town for a night out on Bath Street or a day of shopping on Buchanan Street or a movie at the big Cineworld. But neighborhoods outside of the West End or City Centre? I hardly ever go into. Like tonight. The Merchant City remains largely undiscovered territory for yours truly. And I'm learning that I need to start discovering it more, because it's got some really great spots, provided I have taxi fare. Tons of good bars and some really excellent restaurants. This country gets a bad rap for for food, what with the haggis, deep fried Mars bars, greasy fish suppers, and unrecognizable curries, but honestly? Glasgow is a great restaurant town. It makes me sad that not a single establishment here has a Michelin star, especially when this is a city that genuinely loves dining out.

But this is a resolution of mine this autumn: branch out.

That, and finally attend a Celtic match.

I wonder how much a taxi down to the Merchant City will cost from my new flat in my new postcode, but since all the paperwork won't be finalized until I sign my lease on Saturday, I won't speak of it for fear of jinxing. But hopefully, on Saturday afternoon, I will able to unleash my giddy excitement of having new digs and a new neighborhood. Outside the university bubble.

Seriously? Seriously?

I hope that I'm not incurring some kind of bad publishing karma by slagging off a publisher, but poor Justine Larbalestier, an Australian young adult author. Her novel Liar, which is about a black girl with short hair, is set to be released in the US in September by Bloomsbury.

Except, the cover for the book features a white girl with longer hair.

Larbalestier blogs about it, in a far more eloquent way than I would have if it was my book and my main character's racial identity in question. Because for me, it's a disturbing prospect and points to one of two reasons: either Bloomsbury didn't actually read the book (unlikely) or they think that a cover featuring a picture of a black girl won't sell as well. It suggests that they think it places the book into some kind of racial niche, because clearly, only black teenage girls would read a book about black teenage girls, just as Latina teenage girls would only read a book about Latina teenage girls (but everyone reads books about white girls). While I don't know that this was Bloomsbury's reasoning, I can't really see any other logic behind changing the main character's race for a front cover, other than it would affect sales, which if that's true, has a whole mess of unpleasant implications attached to it.

Covers are important. I always judge books by their covers. And so do you.

My Glaswegian flat hunt continues today. It's looking more and more likely that come August/September, I'll be a resident of either Maryhill, Kelvinside, or Partick. And I'm 100% okay with this. I'm a bit done with living in Finnieston.

Parisian love letter.

I had a plane ticket to Paris today, that I bought the other week after an evening spent with a bottle of Chilean cab. Just for the day, leaving Prestwick at 6:40am, and returning from Beauvais at 8:50pm. When all was said and done, I'd have had roughly eight-to-nine hours on the ground in the City of Light.

The price was right: £8 for the round-trip ticket, with another £10 in fees tacked on. On paper, £18 to hang out in Paris for the day isn't bad, even if it shreds bits of my soul to give Ryanair my money (which it really does. Aside from Michael O'Leary's general offensiveness, it's a company whose logo is in a font that's more or less Comic Sans. Can I really expect them to get me from Point A to Point B safely when they can't even use a normal typeface to showcase themselves to the world?). My anti-Ryanair feelings aside, £18 to Paris is tough to beat.

£18 seems like a worthy expenditure to stroll around the city if it's nice out. And I had such a phenomenal day planned: I was going to pick up a roast chicken and dripped-on potatoes in Belleville (as well as a cheap bottle of wine), and then head down to the Jardin du Luxembourg and snag a metal chair so I could have the best outdoor lunch ever. Then, I'd check out what's new over at the Jeu de Paume. Maybe do a bit of grocery shopping, since it's only a day trip. Have a late afternoon coffee somewhere near the canal and be willing to shell out extra cash for a prime table on the sidewalk to people watch for a few hours. Sit down along the Seine with an ice cream and wave at people on the bateau mouches. Take a quiet moment or two in the Eglise St. Etienne du Mont. And then wander down to around Gare Montparnasse for the crepe to beat all crepes, before catching the Metro back out to Port Maillot, to get the bus back out to Beauvais. It wouldn't have been a terribly important or historic day. Just lots of people watching and walking around and eating. A nice break from dissertation madness.

That was supposed to be my today in Paris.

But things didn't quite work out that way (I am in rainy Glasgow right now, not walking through the Latin Quarter). What I failed to take into account when I spent the £18 on the plane ticket in the middle of the night after a few glasses of wine, was the fact that I'd have to be at Buchanan Bus Station here in Glasgow at 4am this morning to catch the early bus out to Prestwick. So it would have been £5 for the cab ride to the bus station, £9 for the bus ticket to PIK. Then, from Beauvais, it's a €13 bus ticket into Paris. And the same back. Even before any metro tickets bought in Paris, I'd have been looking at essentially £50 in transportation to and from each airport. Which is more than double the price of the flight.

And suddenly, my nice cheap hop to Paris for the day is a big expenditure.

So I ate the £18. And didn't go to Paris. I think a bit of me died today, having a plane ticket to Paris and not using it.

This is my issue with Ryanair. It is the working definition of TGTBT. No such thing as free lunch. Or plane fares cheaper than a cab ride to the bars in City Centre on a Saturday night. Yes, you can get to another country for £4 each way, but then there's Ryanair's fees. And the cost of getting to and from an airport that's sometimes 100 kilometers away from the "city" (Girona "Barcelona," I'm looking at you). I hate Ryanair. It just feels so sleazy and cheap and dishonest. This is hopefully the last time I give them my money. And I hate Beauvais. I hate their bathrooms, I hate their coffee, I hate their immigration officers, and I hate how their entire departures area has like five benches for four "gates."

Besides, ten of my favorite words in any language are "Madames et messieurs, bienvenue a Paris, Aeroport Charles de Gaulle" spoken over an airplane PA system by a flight attendant in perfect French. There is something insanely romantic about landing in Paris, about flying by the city as you make your descent, and seeing the Eiffel Tower from the air. It just gets me deep down. I don't even think they say "Welcome to Beauvais" on Ryanair. I think they say, "GET OFF MY PLANE" in a surly Irish accent, and charge you a fee to de-plane via the stairs. Don't want to pay the fee? Jump. That's the Ryanair way after all. Only provide the bare essentials, and the passengers pick and choose and pay for the rest. Oh, Ryanair, I hate you.

I am convinced that the Glasgow rain today is the universe's way of crying on my behalf for not being Paris today. That's how I feel, at least.

Kwan.

There's a weird duality about being a writer. On one hand, you want a big book deal, maybe to sell the rights of your novel to Hollywood for a fat enough paycheck that you can sip Mai Tai's happily by the ocean, while working on your follow-up, and you want to be known and respected. And then you want literary glory, the kind that's usually not achievable (except in rare cases) until after death. Too often, if you're a big commercial success, it means you have little respect within the literary community. If you're okay with this, then you're a sell-out. Or a hack. Which sometimes, to a writer, are labels worse than "unpublished."

At the heart of it, we're snobs, we're elitists. And we're comfortable being such. We'd rather win a small literary prize and live in a studio apartment eating sardines out of the tin than have a novel published that brandishes the sticker of Oprah or Richard & Judy's respective book clubs. Being a starving artist means you haven't sold out yet and that you still have integrity. Which is everything.

(I will say, however, the worse the economy gets, I'll settle for any publication and any book list, and if Oprah wants me to sit on her couch and have housewives all over America read my book and have Mandy Moore play the lead character in the Lifetime adaptation of it, I'm all for it. You've gotta pay the mortgage.)

But news broke today that was a reminder that it is possible still to have both. The literary respect and the MONEY! financial security that accompanies selling lots and lots and lots of books.

Yann Martel, author of the Booker-winning "Life of Pi" reportedly is receiving $3,000,000 for the manuscript of his third novel. Do not adjust your monitors. Seven figures. Three million dollars. For his manuscript. This isn't even film rights, it's just the book.

While I realize that Martel is definitely the exception, and not the rule, it's nice to be reminded that authors of literary fiction, and not just chick lit or crappy crime fiction, can make money too. Because while the respect part is grand, eating ramen sometimes sucks.

Planes and publications...

When hypothetically helping my sister plan her visit this fall, and going back and forth with each other on low fares we were finding, she admitted that she'd rather drive three and a half hours out of the way to Newark to fly non-stop to Glasgow. Because she hates connecting. Gabriella is about as fantastic a traveler as they come, and she hates connecting.

I, on the other hand, am clearly an insane person. Because I love it. Non-stops and itineraries with one leg bore me. It's too easy. But connections make things interesting. There's no better feeling (after the fact, not during) than sprinting through a terminal and making a tight connection, just like there's no better feeling than finding a perfect spot in an airport to just sit and people or plane watch for a few hours on a long layover. I love it because when you're transiting, you've got nothing else to do, nowhere else to be. It's almost like a blizzard. You're just there and you have to make the best of it.

Plus, airport bars!

Can you tell I'm itching to go somewhere? But a real trip. Málaga was great for vacation purposes, but it did nothing to quell the travel bug. Going on holiday and almost physically needing to be in-transit somewhere are two very different feelings. Sometimes, a girl just needs to be in an airport. The bigger and more foreign the better. It's the butterflies you get when walking down the jetway to board a longhaul flight. I'm jonesing for those butterflies.

Sadly, there are no longhauls in my forseeable future. But the whole conversation with her got me all worked up to go somewhere. And I'm going nowhere right now, with every spare penny I have being put towards fall tuition and a deposit on my (still not yet acquired) Glasgow flat.

In non-travel related news, I had a story picked up for the Human Genre Project, a collection of works (both fiction and poetry) inspired by genetics and the 23 pairs of chromosomes in the human body. The project is based out of the University of Edinburgh, and I must say, it's a far more pleasant letter one receives when work is accepted, rather than rejected. It makes for a really good week, especially with dissertation deadlines looming and a PhD reading list that so far has gone unread by yours truly.

I'm never gonna stop the rain by complaining...

There is a lot to like about living in Glasgow.

It's a compact city, easily walkable, with tons of bars, restaurants, shops, an international airport, a budget-airlines airport, decent public transportation, nice parks, friendly people, an active nightlife, three major universities, and big-time sports.

But you know what I don't like about Glasgow?

THE HORIZONTAL RAIN.

I'm just saying.

PhD? PhMe!

Apparently, I am one of three things: an uber nerd academic, a person avoiding the current bleak job market, or a glutton for punishment. Perhaps I am all three, as I accept the university's offer to stay on for an extension of my Master's, which is also known as the first year of the PhD program.

What it comes down to is that I'm just not done. I'm not done learning quite yet, not with the year's reading list staring me in the face, and the exciting prospect of getting to read the likes of Hemingway, Cervantes, Joyce, Morrison, Faulkner, Capote, and Balzac in a PhD setting. I'm not yet ready to leave the comfortable confines of academia for a scary professional world that I have no desire to re-join. I'm not yet ready to leave Glasgow, a city that I'm just starting to really get to know after ten months. I'm not yet ready to leave a country where I'm a short hop away from Europe's major cities.

The States will see my shadow again, and lots in the upcoming year, with about ten thousand weddings to attend, new baby cousins still to meet, and pasteles and pernil to be eaten at Christmas. But for now, Glasgow remains my basecamp.

What this means though is that with no trip back Stateside booked for any time in the near future, I'm going to need the Pony Express to kick into gear. Cinnamon Toast Crunch, stick deodorant, Goya Sazon packets, DVDs that work on my laptop, Butterscotch Krimpets, and Alba chapstick would all be appreciated. Put the US Postal Service to work, people! And actually, any Goya products that fit into a box would be a lifesaver. Calamares and pulpo tins aren't that heavy. And I'm desperate. Desperate. Ooh, and some chicharrones too, please. You'll get a mention in the acknowledgments when the novel is published^*.

For now, the dissertation is still due in early August. Coupled with the final edition of the literary magazine to publish, two freelancing stories to write, and a final academic-ish paper to turn in. And apartment-hunting, as my current lease runs out in September. Plus, I still have to give the new Tragically Hip album a proper listening-to, as well as break in my purple clogs.

Somewhere in there, I need a trip. I refuse to let August be the first month in the calendar year that I don't travel. I'm thinking of keeping an eye on KLM fares and maybe doing a quick jump to Amsterdam. A biertje and plate of kaas by a canal as a celebration for a submitted dissertation, maybe?

^*Clearly, this is not a binding legal promise, as there is no novel pending publication. I'm not even sure "the novel" in the works is the novel, or if there's anything even in the works besides a short story collection. But those require dedications as well, and providing the author sustenance is no small feat and won't go unnoticed. At the very least, you'll get a thank you card and my eternal gratitude. Not quite as good as your name in lights, but it's something!

Goodbyes are always hard...

I think I may be in the process of losing a very dear friend.

Upon my return from Spain, I realized that there is a huge gash on the bottom of my suitcase. And while I'm sure I could use some black tape to try to keep the fabric together, I think it may be time for me to admit defeat on it and start thinking about purchasing a new suitcase.

I bought this suitcase in November 2007, right before my trip to the UK. Since then, the suitcase has been a faithful companion, accompanying me on over 40,000 miles in 18 months. It has crossed the big, blue ocean many, many times with me, been used as a bench at train stations when no bench is available, and somehow, despite flight cancellations, major delays, tight connections, and many an abrupt terminal change, has always ended up by my side at the end of a trip.

The thought of retiring it is a sad prospect.

But it's had a good run of it. It's been a lucky suitcase, getting to see some of the most epic airports in the world, traveling on at least a dozen types of airplanes. And a 40,000+ mile life isn't a bad one for a suitcase, especially one that was $20 on a TJ Maxx clearance special.

It's much better than the carry-on bag I bought at Primark in March, that lasted for four trips, and now has a handle that's ripping off.

So now my quest begins for sturdy, yet affordable, luggage to take me another 40,000+ miles (or with my track record, through next summer).

Farewell, dear black and green Benetton suitcase. I will think of you fondly whenever I go to check my bags.

Upon my return from Spain...

I'm not going to lie. For the first two and a half days of my trip to Málaga, Spain, the trip seemed to be a bit of a bust. Not that the city wasn't lovely (it was) or the museums phenomenal (the Museo Picasso now ranks as one of my favorite galleries ever) or the weather divine (hot, but not humid, with sunny skies that were so blue it seemed out of a travel commercial). But something about Málaga hadn't quite grabbed me the way other cities have. Part of the way through my final day in southern Spain, it hit me what the problem was. The food had been fine. Just fine. Not spectacular, not that different from the tapas joints that dot Washington, DC. In other cities, there have been foods so good that they not only make your toes curl, but they make you want to return to that city just to eat.

And I'd had such high hopes for Spain, for the tapas and the olives and the seafood and the paella. They were all fine. I even went as far as to boldly state that while the flan at the lovely Cafe Moka on Calle San Bernardo el Viejo was delicious, it wasn't as good as my mother's. Wednesday afternoon, I'd resigned myself to a vacation of culinary adequacy, but not fireworks.

But then, in the bottom of the ninth of my vacation, Málaga came through in the clutch with a homerun.

Espetos de sardinas. Sardines on a skewer, an Andalucian specialty. Nothing more than whole, fresh sardines, tossed with salt, racked up and grilled over an open flame. Served on a plate with a wedge of lemon.

I had mine at an outdoor shack on the beach, on a bright and clear day. I stared out at the Mediterranean, downed two cold San Miguels, dipped the fresh bread they serve with it into the sardine and lemon juice, and didn't need my book. The afternoon I spent eating espetos was worth the entire trip to Málaga, and would be worth returning for.

Toes? Consider yourselves curled.

Before I dug in. Or maybe after one small bite to confirm that it was indeed food heaven.

The aftermath.

The view from my table.