Yes, yes, it is true. Catherine and i are moving back to the States. Berkeley, in fact. She was accepted to PhD programs at Berkeley and Harvard (a husband has to brag a little), and we decide we would both be happier in the Bay Area. Better weather, better friends. But first we plan to do a little traveling. On May 5, we fly to Brussels to visit some Belgian friends, Benjamin and Nika, and then on to Oslo to visit Matthew and Bia. From there, we fly to DC on the 14th, hop down to Charlotte, NC to visit my sister and family for a night, and then on to Virginy. We will stay with Catherine's folks, Sara and Phil, for five days and then begin our road trip.
In a rented car we will drive to New Orleans via Birmingham. We hope to spend a day there seeing the sights and checking out old cemeteries with Anna Vanderman's parents. Anna is the spouse of Sam, a student here at RYI, in Kathmandu. Connections are a wonderful thing. Next, on thru Texas, visiting my old stomping grounds in Houston and friends in Austin. And then into southern New Mexico. We'll stop by White Sands to gather a little gypsum sand in our shoes and visit the wildlife refuge at Bosque del Apache, outside of Socorro (Help! That's what socorro means in Spanish!). Maybe we'll even stop by the old Owl Cafe for some green chili bacon cheese burgers. That's at least what i would have. Oh, the joys of flexitarianism! And finally on to Albuquerque, where we will visit my folks for a spell.
More later...
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Magik Sparkling Cider!
So, m'troubles and strife tells me that the new batch of sparkling hard apple cider i've just recently made is quite superb. i got the recipe quite a while ago from this website. Turns out, it was really easy. I bought some simple brewing equipment online (a glass syphon, white wine yeast, plastic air locks, bottle caps and a capping device) for around $25 and had my mom send them to me here in Nepal ages ago, and i never did anything with it. So now that Catherine and i are moving to Berkeley this summer, i thought, "This is my last chance! It's now or never!"
The biggest pain was buying preservative free apple juice in Nepal. Most juice here is imported from Australia and is hence loaded with preservatives. i had to go to a local juice shop that sold various fresh juices by the glass. When i told the owner i wanted 40L, he still insisted on selling it to me by the glass. That's how retarded business is in Nepal. He wanted me to buy 160 glasses. So after bargaining in vain for longer than i care to admit, i settled on buying 160 glasses with came to the ridiculous price of NRps 9600! Thats $133! I cajoled, wheedled and threatened to walk away (with this sale he wouldn't have to work for a month and we both knew it!) and finally he grudgingly agreed to give me a NRps 1600 discount from the 160 glass price.
I brought him 2 twenty liter blue plastic water bottles and he juiced like a madman telling me out of the side of his mouth that he would call me when he was done.
I got the call at 9pm. "Your juice is ready!" he triumphantly bellowed through the earpiece of my mobile. "You can come pick it up now!" Nepalis and Tibetans have this peculiar habit of shouting into their mobile phones as if they were calling out across an entire valley. I suppose technically they are often calling from across the valley, but all the shouting gets on my nerves.
"I'll come pick it up tomorrow," i suggested.
"No, no, must come now!"
"It's 9 pm. How am i gonna carry 40 liters of apple juice three blocks to my home?"
"I don't know, but you have to come now!"
"Give me a break. I'll come in the morning."
"No, no, must come now!"
"Why?"
"It will... how can i make you understand... after one hour, fresh juice goes bad!"
So i had to run over to the juice shop at 9:15pm, carry 40 liters of juice back to my flat (in two trips) and pasteurize it all in a massive aluminum pot on my kitchen stove.
Sterilizing my 20L, blue, food-grade plastic water bottles with chlorine, i rinsed them out and then filled them with juice, my trusty white wine yeast and brown sugar (food for the yeastie beasties). I then plugged the bottles with these air locks designed to let out the CO2 and to keep out the O2. You see, the little yeasties gorge themselves on the sugar, breaking it down into alcohol and CO2. So it becomes alcoholic as it starts to bubble. I put in extra brown sugar thinking it would make the cider sweeter. I didn't realize the yeast would eat up all the extra sugar and just make it more alcoholic. Ended up around 15%. About as strong as a bottle of wine.
After 3 weeks of percolating, the yeast finally settled out and out of 20L, 15 were drinkable with the bottom 5L being just a sludge of yeastie muck. I syphoned off the good stuff on top, added a little more sugar, and poured it into sterilized 66omL beer bottles and capped them with my red plastic bottle capper and bottle caps. Two more weeks later, the residual yeast had eaten that last bit of added sugar and in the process had carbonated my cider.
And now it is gold and delicious. And that was only one of my 20L bottles. i have another that i've just left to clarify. i hope to bottle it this week. Just need to find more bottles.
WARNING: Three bottles have exploded. They were all bottles i gave to friends, and i guess carrying them around on the scooter or in my bag shook them up enough to bring the pressure to critical mass. One blew up in Tracy and Kevin's office after i gave Trace-E her due (Tracy was one of our proud sponsors. NRps.1000!). Glad i wasn't there to witness Kevin's potentially Hiroshimic reaction. But the stuff is still awesome! Super tastey, says Catherine.
The biggest pain was buying preservative free apple juice in Nepal. Most juice here is imported from Australia and is hence loaded with preservatives. i had to go to a local juice shop that sold various fresh juices by the glass. When i told the owner i wanted 40L, he still insisted on selling it to me by the glass. That's how retarded business is in Nepal. He wanted me to buy 160 glasses. So after bargaining in vain for longer than i care to admit, i settled on buying 160 glasses with came to the ridiculous price of NRps 9600! Thats $133! I cajoled, wheedled and threatened to walk away (with this sale he wouldn't have to work for a month and we both knew it!) and finally he grudgingly agreed to give me a NRps 1600 discount from the 160 glass price.
I brought him 2 twenty liter blue plastic water bottles and he juiced like a madman telling me out of the side of his mouth that he would call me when he was done.
I got the call at 9pm. "Your juice is ready!" he triumphantly bellowed through the earpiece of my mobile. "You can come pick it up now!" Nepalis and Tibetans have this peculiar habit of shouting into their mobile phones as if they were calling out across an entire valley. I suppose technically they are often calling from across the valley, but all the shouting gets on my nerves.
"I'll come pick it up tomorrow," i suggested.
"No, no, must come now!"
"It's 9 pm. How am i gonna carry 40 liters of apple juice three blocks to my home?"
"I don't know, but you have to come now!"
"Give me a break. I'll come in the morning."
"No, no, must come now!"
"Why?"
"It will... how can i make you understand... after one hour, fresh juice goes bad!"
So i had to run over to the juice shop at 9:15pm, carry 40 liters of juice back to my flat (in two trips) and pasteurize it all in a massive aluminum pot on my kitchen stove.
Sterilizing my 20L, blue, food-grade plastic water bottles with chlorine, i rinsed them out and then filled them with juice, my trusty white wine yeast and brown sugar (food for the yeastie beasties). I then plugged the bottles with these air locks designed to let out the CO2 and to keep out the O2. You see, the little yeasties gorge themselves on the sugar, breaking it down into alcohol and CO2. So it becomes alcoholic as it starts to bubble. I put in extra brown sugar thinking it would make the cider sweeter. I didn't realize the yeast would eat up all the extra sugar and just make it more alcoholic. Ended up around 15%. About as strong as a bottle of wine.
After 3 weeks of percolating, the yeast finally settled out and out of 20L, 15 were drinkable with the bottom 5L being just a sludge of yeastie muck. I syphoned off the good stuff on top, added a little more sugar, and poured it into sterilized 66omL beer bottles and capped them with my red plastic bottle capper and bottle caps. Two more weeks later, the residual yeast had eaten that last bit of added sugar and in the process had carbonated my cider.
And now it is gold and delicious. And that was only one of my 20L bottles. i have another that i've just left to clarify. i hope to bottle it this week. Just need to find more bottles.
WARNING: Three bottles have exploded. They were all bottles i gave to friends, and i guess carrying them around on the scooter or in my bag shook them up enough to bring the pressure to critical mass. One blew up in Tracy and Kevin's office after i gave Trace-E her due (Tracy was one of our proud sponsors. NRps.1000!). Glad i wasn't there to witness Kevin's potentially Hiroshimic reaction. But the stuff is still awesome! Super tastey, says Catherine.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Fiberglass
Okay, so i finally broke down and got a fiberglass cast on my leg. I found myself suddenly hearing way too many horror stories about poorly healed ankles. Wanna sign my cast?
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
It's been a while...
I know, it's been a while since my last blog. How many blogs have i read that started out like that? Instead of catching up with everything that's happened since last year, I'm just gonna start with the present. Because it is a precious gift.School just ended at RYI and things have mellowed out a bit. Most of the students have already left for the summer. I, myself will be leaving in May to attend my brother's wedding in Alaska. I'm really looking forward to it. It will be a long flight but i have a two day lay over in Bangkok to make the flight worth while. Bangkok is always a good time. Maybe i can do a little shopping, and even visit a monastery up north.
I think I've even found a way to get bumped up into business class... I've broken my ankle : ) . Last Friday night i was rough housing with some of the shedra students and i tripped. My ankle then buckled and popped, and i fell suddenly to the ground. It gave me an entirely new I'm really looking forward to seeing my two darling nieces and my super cool nephews. I haven't actually seen Kailey and Ethan since that cruise in the Caribbean a lifetime ago. They probably don't even remember me, but as their uncle, it is my job to ensure that they get into a little trouble now and again (sorry Gary and Cathy, but a job's a job).
Before i head out to Anchorage, i also intend to do a couple weeks of meditation retreat. That will be my real vacation. Speaking of retreat, Catherine is still in her five month retreat out in Pharping. She will finish up in June, a couple weeks after i get back. I was gonna do my retreat out in Pharping as well, but now with my ankle the way it is, i think i'll just do it at home in our shrine room. I finally bought that shrine everyone's been bugging me about not having. It's beautiful. 8' x 8', dark wood, nice carving. I'll try to get a photo of it online once i have it loaded up with all of our statues and texts. I'm really happy with it.
Enough for now. Leave me a comment to let me know what a slacker blogger i've been.
Love, Ger
Friday, July 24, 2009
RYI Summer Program
Since June 2009, we’ve been working hard. Busy days. Catherine is teaching two Tibetan language classes and running our Translator Training program, while I have been helping students find homes, Tibetan homestays, health and healing. From mid-June to mid-July I taught a meditation course at eight in the morning to the Buddhist Study Program students. It was fun, and centered around shamata, or sitting exercises in concentration and becoming calm (which are the foundation of meditation), as well as guided meditations on immeasurable loving kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. The twelve or so students who were in the class seemed to enjoy it, and even though I have no experience in teaching, I had fun. It was a good way for them to start a day of more complicated Buddhist philosophy and logic.
I’ve also been organizing various field trips, from hikes and bus rides to distant monasteries and tours of cultural centers of Kathmandu, like Patan, to movie nights and Fourth of July parties. And, as usual, I’ve been doing my fair share of counseling students through the ups and downs of their brief time in Kathmandu.
These days Catherine and I end most of our days feeling exhausted. Of course some of that is due to the muggy, oppressive heat. You sweat and it just sticks to you all day. Nothing like New Mexico. I miss dry heat. Dry heat and good beer.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Vacation in Thailand- May 2009
Wow, I’ve been so busy of late. Here’s an over view of our last few months. Last May Catherine and I flew to Thailand for three weeks. It was heavenly. Cather was asked last minute to translate for Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche in Malaysia just before our vacation, so she met me in Bangkok. My first night there (the day before Catherine arrived) I met up with some old friends from Nepal, James Hopkins (Virginia), Andy Kilchmann (Swizterland), and Jonas Doctor (Denmark). We went out for dinner together at street diner/café with a live local rock band pounding away inside, and afterwards we all went out for luxurious hour-long Thai foot massages. I stayed the night in a dinky little dive of a hotel near Kao San Road. The next day I met James and some friends of his for lunch at the Jim Thompson house/museum and then sped off to meet Catherine in town and take her to an expensive hotel in China Town which I managed to get at a 50-60% discount online at Last Minute Deals. After a night of luxury, we caught an overnight train to Surat Thani in the south, eating Dunkin’ Donuts and sandwiches. In Surat Thani we took a bus to the pier and boarded our ferry to Koh Phangan, me drinking good Thai beer all the way. We opted to stay on one of the more remote beaches on the island, and since it was off season, we had a mile of pristine white sandy beach mostly to ourselves.
I spent mornings kayaking in the bay and would meet Catherine for breakfast around 9am. We even found this great little beachfront restaurant called the Dolphin where I could order lox on French bread and Catherine could have fruit, yoghurt and muesli for breakfast. We often strolled around after breakfast, later hid from the midday sun, and in the afternoons would drink beer and read on the beach or in a hammock on the porch of our simple thatch-roofed bungalow. And thus we spend two weeks, sometimes tossing a Frisbee, sometimes sitting at the bar, sometimes swimming in the bay. One day we even rented a little Thai power boat and went snorkeling, explored hidden waterfalls and saw over ¼ of the island’s coast. My favorite part was definitely kayaking up and down the coast in the early mornings and exploring a little three –pineapple-tree island.
For the last week of our vacation, we ferried down to Koh Samui, where our friends, Greg and Anne Whiteside, gave us a one week stay at their extremely posh tropical summer home on the southern coast of the island. There we relaxed in air conditioned comfort, took in the awesome view, and occasionally rode in to town on a rented motorbike to pick up groceries and amazing Thai food at a local market in Lamai.
Finally at the end of our trip, Catherine and I Flew back to Bangkok. Catherine had to fly back to Malaysia immediately to translate for Chokling Rinpoche. I, however, had a few days left in BKK and spent them making friends with locals. Lat, a taxi driver, said he felt some kind of a connection with me and invited me to meet his family in the Bangkok suburbs and to stay with them. It sounded fun, so I accepted. They called all their friends over for two nights in a row and we had a seafood and pork BBQ. Boom, Lat’s wife, was an amazing cook and made countless spicy home-style Thai dishes for me to burn my mouth up on while Lat manned the open fire BBQ (as it should be). During the day Lat drove me all around Bangkok on his motorbike, showing me the Royal Palace which I have visited once before with my Dad (George), plus special shrine rooms that were only for the King and his ministers (Lat had a friend who worked for Royal Crown Property Management and who possessed a large ring of magical keys). I had such a fun time with them. My new friends even drove two cars to the airport to see me off. What a sweet bunch of people.
And then I re-entered the Kathmandu Grind.
I spent mornings kayaking in the bay and would meet Catherine for breakfast around 9am. We even found this great little beachfront restaurant called the Dolphin where I could order lox on French bread and Catherine could have fruit, yoghurt and muesli for breakfast. We often strolled around after breakfast, later hid from the midday sun, and in the afternoons would drink beer and read on the beach or in a hammock on the porch of our simple thatch-roofed bungalow. And thus we spend two weeks, sometimes tossing a Frisbee, sometimes sitting at the bar, sometimes swimming in the bay. One day we even rented a little Thai power boat and went snorkeling, explored hidden waterfalls and saw over ¼ of the island’s coast. My favorite part was definitely kayaking up and down the coast in the early mornings and exploring a little three –pineapple-tree island.
For the last week of our vacation, we ferried down to Koh Samui, where our friends, Greg and Anne Whiteside, gave us a one week stay at their extremely posh tropical summer home on the southern coast of the island. There we relaxed in air conditioned comfort, took in the awesome view, and occasionally rode in to town on a rented motorbike to pick up groceries and amazing Thai food at a local market in Lamai.
Finally at the end of our trip, Catherine and I Flew back to Bangkok. Catherine had to fly back to Malaysia immediately to translate for Chokling Rinpoche. I, however, had a few days left in BKK and spent them making friends with locals. Lat, a taxi driver, said he felt some kind of a connection with me and invited me to meet his family in the Bangkok suburbs and to stay with them. It sounded fun, so I accepted. They called all their friends over for two nights in a row and we had a seafood and pork BBQ. Boom, Lat’s wife, was an amazing cook and made countless spicy home-style Thai dishes for me to burn my mouth up on while Lat manned the open fire BBQ (as it should be). During the day Lat drove me all around Bangkok on his motorbike, showing me the Royal Palace which I have visited once before with my Dad (George), plus special shrine rooms that were only for the King and his ministers (Lat had a friend who worked for Royal Crown Property Management and who possessed a large ring of magical keys). I had such a fun time with them. My new friends even drove two cars to the airport to see me off. What a sweet bunch of people.
And then I re-entered the Kathmandu Grind.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Kathmandu BBQ!
I would just like to announce that I recently bought a little BBQ grill and i am having a blast with it. Last month Catherine and I invited Mort and Fuki and Arthur over for some grilled veggies. We made colorful and delicious shish-kabobs, after which Mort commandeered the grill for a batch of chicken wings soaked in various mouth-watering marinades. We must allow adults their toys as well.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)