Curious Notions

My apartment complex screwed me over twice in a matter of a couple days. First they entered my apartment before my lease was over and ruined a painting Dave made for me for my 24th birthday and also as a replacement for another painting that he made for me that was destroyed in a car accident. It was resting on the kitchen counter and when I went in to pick it up, I saw it was on the floor, trampled on with foot prints. It’s a chalk painting and cannot just be wiped clean. Ruined.

Then yesterday we finally got rain and when I went into my new closet of my new apartment with all my clothes hung from moving, I noticed water on the floor. Then, one half of my hanging clothes were drenched with rain water. My closet ceiling had a leak. This is one day after the painting being destroyed. I called and left a message last night and today it rained again. I checked my closet and the leak has spread into a giant hole the opposite side of the closet. Meaning, the dry portion of my clothes is now also drenched. oijeoaijteoiajt. Here’s a picture of the hole.

It smells like beer in my closet from it mildewing.

In other news, Brandi planned a romantic night with her man tonight so I wanted to make myself scarce and give them privacy. I was talking to Dave online about what happened to his painting, poor guy questioned, “what is with you and my art?!” My original plans for Wednesday fell through; I asked him if he was free for dinner tonight. He invited me to dinner with his friend and wanted to try Pho Danh. For dessert, we had Short and Sweet, down the street. I rode in the bed of his truck since there was no room up front. It was fun; I haven’t rode in the back of a truck since I was a kid.

Speed bumps hurt.

This is my second visit to Short and Sweet, first visit was almost a year ago with Nisreen, Nino and Alan. I noticed signs advertising Durian ice cream.

Sau Rieng is Vietnamese for Durian, also translates to “Lonely Sadness.”

I have never had a Durian ice cream! The cute cashier girl told me that the owner makes this ice cream himself. Intrigued, I ordered. I made Dave’s friend try it. Before eating it, he sniffed it and declared that it smelled like sweat. I laughed at that description. It’s a good description. The taste he accurately vouches, is not as bad as the smell. I enjoyed it the first half of my ice cream cone. Mid scoop, I decided durian is too strong an ice cream flavor for the likes of me.

Well. It’s 1:15 am. Time for a bubble bath? And a snuggle under my comforter. Good night.

Related Blog Entries:
- June 27, 2008: First Experience of Short and Sweet
- June 13, 2009:- Daily Juice- How often do you see Durian on the Menu?
- August 12, 2007:- First experience of Pho Danh
- June 2, 2009: He cooks and he paints

I’ve had a few conversations recently with friends where intelligence was discussed and then emotional intelligence was cited as really essential to overall intelligence. The abilities to effectively communicate, socialize, control your emotions, and read social cues are just as important if not more so as a person’s IQ in his or her pursuit of success and even happiness. In one of my latter conversations about intelligence, I brought up EQ (emotional quotient) and my colleague perked up and said she was in a class solely about emotional intelligence and the next time I saw her, she brought me this book.

Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, kind of overlapped a couple of books I’ve read in the past and a book I just started last week. One of which I recently wrote about, Outliers, had a chapter on whether IQ was an indicator for success. (Outliers contends that mostly, it does not.) The other book I just started last week, How We Decide, is about how our emotions guide very decision we make.

Overall, I really enjoyed Emotional Intelligence and found it informative, however it was VERY dense so you kind of hack through all the information. In sum, Daniel Goleman contends that emotion is tightly correlated to success in life and that it is not merely just IQ that is an indicator of how ’smart’ you are. He walks us through the domains of Emotional Intelligence: knowing your emotions, managing your emotions, motivating yourself, recognizing emotions in others, and handling relationships. There’s plenty of scientific evidence that he provides ranging from anatomical studies and psychological studies. He also offers advice on how to hone your emotional intelligence.

Some bullet points I managed to walk away with after reading this heavy book. Some of these points I already figured and it was nice to have reinforcement.

• When trying to diffuse anger, exercise, books, and movies are effective. However, shopping and eating are NOT effective. You can still vent your anger and therefore fuel the rage with further stewing as you shop or eat.
• Women are far more advanced emotionally due to early emotional preening from parents.
• Emotional development starts very early. As teachers and parents, we can really screw up children.
• Just like an entire chapter of Outliers, it mentions that experts put in 10,000 hours easy, perfecting their craft.
• Memory and learning are deeply impaired when you’re depressed or anxious.

Excerpts

When grievances simmer, they build and build in intensity until there’s an explosion, when they are aired and worked out, it takes the pressure off. But husbands need to realize that anger or discontent is not synonymous with personal attack- their wives’ emotions are often simply underliners, emphasizing the strength of her feelings about the matter… Husbands who are able to stay with their wives through the heat of anger, rather than dismissing their complaints as petty, help their wives feel heard and respected. Most especially, wives want to have their feelings acknowledged and respected as valid, even if their husband disagrees.

Girls become more adept than boys at artful aggressive tactics like ostracism, vicious gossip, and indirect vendettas. Boys, by the large, simply continue being confrontational when angered, oblivious to these more covert strategies. This is just one of many ways that boys – and later, men- are less sophisticated than the opposite sex in the byways of emotional life.

That last excerpt underscores what I’ve noticed a lot in my own experiences and my friends’ experiences. Men and boys tend to be tone deaf to female “indirect vendettas.” I think that’s actually the source of a lot of jealousy fights in relationships. The female in the relationship will recognize clues of an indirect vendetta from another female (a snide remark, a false tear, etc) and the male would be completely oblivious. Threatened by the indirect vendetta, she tries to point it out to her significant other and more often than not, her man will discount her concerns as either: overreaction of jealousy or “that other girl is just like that.”

Remember that scene in Juno?

Juno MacGuff:
Your little girlfriend gave me the stinkeye in art class yesterday.

Paulie Bleeker:
Katrina’s not my girlfriend alright? And I doubt she gave you the stinkeye that’s just how her face looks, you know? That’s just her face.

Who should read this book?

Teachers, parents, medical professionals, leaders, people in relationships, people with Parkinson’s… Okay fine, everyone. But really anyone who works with young children especially. I feel like we screw up a lot of our youth not knowing the full repercussions we have on them when we don’t foster their emotional intelligence. Oh. People who are interested in how the brain works should also read.

Some overlapping books:

I’m still not moved but am pretty much packed. I have more than 50 boxes. MORE THAN FIFTY! It took me all day yesterday to do over 40 of the boxes. My shoulders are killing me. Si Nae and Stephen helped me a bit last night. The movers were suppose to come at 1pm today and it’s almost 2pm. Poor souls’ truck broke down so they say it may be several hours for me. Their truck broke down with another client’s stuff ALL up in it. It must suck to be movers in Texas in the summer as we’ve been in the 100s the last 2 weeks straight. I can’t imagine being movers with a broken truck.

I do hope that I get moved today as I need to be out tomorrow.

I’m eating Greek yogurt with honey right now. Delicious. I don’t even like yogurt. You should look into it.

Edit: 7:00 pm: Movers are still not here. I’m kind of nervous. That’s 6 hours late so far.

Meanwhile, I had another serving of that Greek yogurt. This time it was half a serving of yogurt with half a serving of cherries. Perfect summer snack. Brandi, my new roommate is making us Hamburger Helper with zucchini. I haven’t had hamburger helper since sophomore year of college.

This is what’s outside our 3rd floor balcony. Brandi’s mom says it’s probably a crape myrtle tree.

Edit: 9:00pm. They’re unloading right now

This is a pretty high quality video of a live performance in Munich. Pretty crazy. At around 4:30 pm, I saw that he was taken to the hospital for cardiac arrest. I’m in my car at 5:15 pm and Alan and Sae had both texted me telling me “MJ died.” I texted Sae back and told him that he’s probably going to make it. Sae’s response: “His death was just confirmed.” Not but 10 minutes later the hip hop station I was listening to interrupted their programming mid song and announced Michael Jackson’s death. They then commenced playing Michael Jackson for 3 songs straight. It was still playing Jackson songs when I started to test the other radio stations and they were all playing his songs. My colleague told me later tonight that MJ songs were being played on her Christian radio station. I had goosebumps listening to his songs this evening.

RIP, Michael Jackson.

Last night I made one of Alan’s favorite recipes, BBQ Spaghetti, recipe courtesy of the Neely’s. The only thing I changed is half the sugar because the first few times I’ve made this, we both agreed it was really good but too sweet. The barbecue sauce is a nice change from the usual spaghetti sauces. Prep time takes about 2 hours. The sauce itself takes an hour and 15 minutes to simmer. This recipe yields 4 servings.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 small green bell pepper, chopped
1/2 yellow onion, finely chopped
1 tablespoon garlic salt
3 1/2 cups Neely’s BBQ sauce, recipe follows
1 pound pork, beef, or chicken, cooked and chopped into bite-size pieces
1 pound spaghetti

Directions

In a large skillet, heat olive oil over medium heat. Saute the pepper and onion until softened, 1 to 2 minutes. Stir in the garlic salt. Add the BBQ sauce and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a low simmer and add the chopped meat.

Meanwhile, fill a large pot with water and bring to boil. Season liberally with salt and add spaghetti. Cook until al dente (firm but not hard), about 7 minutes, and drain. Toss spaghetti with sauce.

Neely’s BBQ Sauce

2 cups ketchup
1 cup water
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
5 tablespoons light brown sugar 2.5 tablespoons light brown sugar
5 tablespoons sugar 2.5 tablespoons sugar
1/2 tablespoon fresh ground black pepper
1/2 tablespoon onion powder
1/2 tablespoon ground mustard
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
In a medium saucepan, combine all ingredients. Bring mixture to a boil, reduce heat to simmer. Cooked uncovered, stirring frequently, for 1 hour 15 minutes.

Yield: 3 1/2 cups

I doubled the recipe so Alan could have some leftovers. I goofed in doing so because I bought a 24 oz bottle of ketchup but after doubling I needed 32 oz. I thought I was being so clever when I found some single serve packets of ketchup in his kitchen. I guess I was a little resourceful.

However, I ended up having to go back to the grocery store anyhow because our apple cider vinegar (we only use it when I make this spaghetti) had expired in January and had deposits floating around. Subsequently, it didn’t really matter that I was resourceful with the ketchup.

I used 1 lb of pork and 1 lb of beef (my usual proportions). It’s a really easy recipe and the only hard thing is the waiting for 1 hour and 15 minutes for the sauce to simmer. I really stress halfing the brown sugar and sugar. It’s still sweet with half of the sugar gone.

Putting the meat in the sauce after the sauce cooked.

Pretty.

Alan’s roommate loves it too!

A touching Chinese commerical.

My move out date is this Sunday. Life has been hectic. I think things will calm down slightly by the end of the first week of July for me. Meanwhile, I’ll try my best with blogging regularly. Here’s some thoughts I’ve had today while packing. I’m way behind, as I only have about a few hours between working on getting un-unemployed during the day (Last week and a half I’ve been spending regimentally 9 hours a day getting occupational training.)

I always like to pack the easy stuff first. I pack dvds and books first since they’re not fragile and are easily stackable.

My fourth box of books.

To throw away or not to throw away?

Sometimes we have things that we cart in between moves only because we don’t feel right about throwing it out. I have this memento I’ve moved once already. This is my second time packing it up and I’m torn on whether I should keep it. It’s an autographed blow up doll from a book signing I went to for Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk. I had a fantastic time at the book signing, it’s a wonderful memory, it’s signed, but what on earth would I do with a autographed blow up doll? I’m definitely not interested in using it for its obvious purpose and I definitely won’t be displaying it like you would usually an autographed memento…. I hate to think I’ll just stash it away and pack it with every move. I do have an autographed book from the signing so this isn’t the only autograph I got. Seriously, I don’t know what to do about it. For now, he’s packed up.

Palahniuk throwing out dolls.

After I pack books and dvds, I pack shoes because most of mine are in shoe boxes and those are pretty stackable too. I sometimes stick small breakables in shoe boxes. I stuck some small snow globes in some of the shoe boxes today.

My second box of shoes.

So it goes: First pack dvds & books, then shoes, and THEN I usually start trudging and stalling. Everything else isn’t so stackable! Needless to say, I didn’t make it past the shoes today.

Madam Mam’s third location opened recently on Anderson Lane and I’m ecstatic that it’s much closer to me, it’s the prettiest one so far, and that it taste the same as the other two.

Thank you, Si Nae for breaking this one in with me yesterday.

I got my usual F5 with flat noodles and chicken. YUM.

Other Madam Mams entries

• FRYday at Madam Mams
• My break up with Madam Mams

I did try to break up with Mams and tried countless more Thai restaurants but no one else compared. So I came crawling back….Pitiful.

Weekend Recap:

Friday we celebrated Young’s birthday.

We had a quaint birthday dinner at Joe Dimaggio’s. The first and last time I went to Joe Dimaggio’s (Domain) was for Valentine’s day with Alan. I ordered the same thing, I just love the clams and scallop in the seafood risotto. We made sure to order the lobster mashed potatoes again. I’ve only had lobster mashed potatoes at Joe’s but Alan said he’s had it many times at nice restaurants but no one’s was better than Joe’s.

I took a better picture of the mashed potatoes this time around.

Saturday we had Nisreen’s bachelorette party round 1. Her sister is moving to California and wanted to do an early party. Come September, apparently we’re celebrating once more. That’s the only details the public is privy to. Hee.

Hope everyone else had a lovely weekend as well.

Wednesday night Alan and I went on a double date. I like weeknight date nights. We started off at a restaurant none of us have been to and finished with a game of couple against couple putt putt. I play putt putt better than I bowl. Was pleased and excited about that

North is located in the Domain. I’ve slowly worked myself through all the restaurants in the Domain. I think I only have Daily Grind left and Cru. Young pushed for North and we’re glad she did. Alan and I have separately heard unimpressive things about North so we always kind of skip it when it comes up in conversation. I ended up loving the food despite what we’ve heard.

I ordered Succo di Bacca for a drink which consists of Cane Rum, fresh strawberries, lemon juice, fennel syrup with Moscato d’Asti. What’s surprising is it was super strong yet reallly good. I’ve rarely find really strong drinks delicious. But it definitely delivers a swift kick and yet pleases your taste buds at the same time.

Succo de Bacca

Young’s order: Strozzapreti, Mushrooms, Spinach, Toasted Pine Nuts & Parmesan Cream with Scallops- I absolutely loved Young’s order.

My order: Baked Ziti Bolognese, Spinach, Ricotta & Mozzarella Cheese

The girls smiling

The boys uninterested in the camera