Insomnia

I can't sleep.

Well, it's not that I can't fall asleep, I just can't stay asleep. I have always been the type of person who needs my eight hours or I'm cranky, but since I've been home I've been up at 7AM (today 6:30AM) after going to bed at 1:30AM or 2AM. Usually for me five hours is unsustainable, but I've felt fine.

Oh, and I've even gotten out of bed. Normally, if I wake up early I stay submerged under the covers, citing the fact that it's way too cold to emerge. It is cold this morning, but I couldn't stay in bed. And I maturing? Or just getting old? Is it the meds? Of the sea level saturation of oxygen?

The house it quiet. Except for the clocks. Even Nicholas is asleep.

I have the whole Sunday paper to myself and dim sum in three hours. I could get used to this.

Lessons Learned

I love my mac. Yesterday I was on Skype with Carlos. I had called him and turned the video on and pointed at Nicholas, so he could get a quick view of my new nephew. I didn't have a headset here, but was talking to the baby and my family near by. Suddenly Carlos typed, "I can hear you."

WTF? Apparently there is a mic on the mac. Why didn't anyone tell me that? It's so weird to talk to your computer without a headset and have it talk back (well, I understand the speakers). Totally pleasant surprise.

Welcome to Miami!

A ten minute trek from the plane to immigration. No functioning water fountains. The free wifi doesn't work. The automatic toilets and sinks have a mind of their own. And the outlets do not actually provide electricity.

And I thought this was the developed country.

Still in Ecuador

As some of you know, I should be in Chicago right now...but I'm not. I'm still in Ecuador. Immigration turned me back. In Guayaquil right now and will try to write the whole story while on the plane tomorrow.

The Woman Who Ate the World

Let me first make it clear that some of what I have to say may piss some people off, so I'll say it now and you don't need to read the rest if you hate me already. I lost 15lbs in three weeks (by being sick) and now can't seem to gain an ounce back even though I'm eating all the time.

I've been a bit ill for about a month and have finally been diagnosed with a thyroid problem. Hyperthyroidism, I guess. Apparently that was the reason that I spent most of the past month sleeping. A typical day was: wake up, have breakfast, read a little, take a nap, have lunch, complain how difficult it is to walk up one flight of stairs, play on the computer, take a nap, have dinner, go to bed.

So the doc put me on some drugs. If it were up to me those drugs would have been alcohol and marijuana, but no, I got steroids and antibiotics (it turns out I had an ear infection too). But that's not a bad trade.

Anyway, some of the symptoms (that I had) of hyperthyroidism are lethargy, hair loss (didn't figure that one out for a while, since I don't like to brush my hair), night sweats, and of course, weight loss. As soon as I got on the steroids I felt better. I had energy, I could stand for more than three minutes without needing to rest, and I stopped loosing weight.

Which brings me to the present. For about the past three days all I have wanted to do is eat. I can't seem to go 10 minutes without putting something in my mouth and still am hungry before bed. Carlos has never seem me like this (we've known each other for two and a half years and have been living together for almost a year and a half). Even his mom is surprised that instead of insisting that I am full after lunch (which I usually am, it's always a three course meal, popcorn or just corn first, then soup, then meat always with rice, but usually potatoes or pasta as well, occasionally dessert), I am asking for more.

So if take my earlier typical day and replace "nap" with "snack," you'll get the idea.

But I still have not gained any weight back. It's not all that great to loose about 13% of your body weight (yes, the bathroom scale is teetering on 100). All I want to do is be myself again. I can barely do a single push up (before the illness I was doing about 4 or 5 sets of a dozen every other morning). My pants are falling down and I'm tripping over hems, and no I do not own a belt. Plus, I feel even more cold than usual.

Ooh, chocolate...OK, snack is over.

Fortunately, this feeding binge will coincide with my visit home. On Saturday I head to the states for two weeks, mainly to meet my new nephew, plan my wedding, and be home for passover. But I am already planning my meals, day by day, restaurant by restaurant, kitchen by kitchen. It's not that I don't like the food here, it's good, but there is a slight lack of variety. For example, cilantro (which I hate) and achiote (which I refer to as poor man's saffron) are used to season pretty much everything. You don't see much rosemary, oregano, thyme, or any sage at all (how I miss such a simple sauce of brown butter with sage). Finding Indian spices is a bit tough too, but there is a decent Indian restaurant in town. But my problem with Indian food was that during my three week trip to India last year I never bothered to learn the names of what I was eating, and I actually liked almost everything I put in my mouth.

By the way, for those of you who do not know about my food habits, until I was about 23 years old (I am now 29), I had what one would call a "white food" diet. It wasn't truly white, just very pale. I pretty much only ate, bread, rice, pasta, potatoes, chicken, Cheerios, and cheddar or mozzarella cheese. I mean, I ate some other stuff too, like pizza and steak, but the closest I would get to something green was mint chocolate chip ice cream. I didn't cook back then either, because I went from living at home to dorm food to an apartment with a former culinary student (my sister), a line chef (Alexis) and Connie (who just always seems to know how to do anything and everything). I was the dishwasher.

Anyway, after traveling the world and living on my own a bit, I learned how to cook (and eat) and love it. Now when I visit another country, or even city, I always end up in the grocery store or market just to look, and maybe taste. After years without variety, now all I want is something different for every meal. I want tapas, sushi, dim sum, Indian, Peking duck, mac and cheese, rack of lamb, something Thai, deep dish pizza, thin mint cookies...I would even eat something Dutch. The cheese is what I miss the most from Holland, the shear variety was overwhelming (I miss the beer too, but those were from Belgium).

Now I'm hungry again. Chocolate's gone :(

Globalism and Chocolate

Last week when Carlos and I were at the supermarket, I went looking for cocoa powder. Until then we hadn't found any that didn't have added sugar. Most cocoa here is made for drinking. Anyway, of the half dozen brands, only one was 100% cocoa. But it didn't look very good. It was almost a yellowish brown, close to the color of peanut butter, rather than a deep, well, chocolate color. So I didn't buy it.

Which leads to the question of where to get cocoa to bake with. I will be back in Chicago in a few weeks. And there I will buy some cocoa. My favorite brand is Droste, a Dutch brand. So, I will be buying cocoa, which was probably grown in Ecuador, processed in Holland, sold in United States, and flown back to Ecuador. Now what is wrong with this picture?

Grounded

This afternoon Carlos and I were cooking lunch. As I was drying my hands on the towel that was hung over the oven door, I accidentally touched the door and got a shock. So, of course, I touched it again, and, yes, I got electrocuted again. How odd. Of course, the next step was to have Carlos touch the oven. He did, no problems. I touched it again, got shocked again, and he was beginning to think that I was crazy.

So the next idea was for him to touch the oven and then for me to touch him at the same time. When we did that he felt the shock and told me I wasn't crazy. But we were really confused why I was conductive and he was not. We finally looked down and realized that I was in my socks while he was wearing tennis shoes. So I stood on his feet and touched the oven again, abut this time no shock! I never realized that one needed to be grounded while using the oven. So instead of putting shoes on, he just unplugged the oven (which hasn't been working for the past month anyway).

The Castle

No, there are not any palaces in Quito. Last week I finally got my visa and the whole situation can only be described as Kafkaesque.

It took about two and a half months for me to receive the work visa. When we first talked with our lawyer she assured us that we only need a few documents and a little money and we wouldn't have any problems. However, that was not the case. After submitting all the required paperwork, the lawyer would call us up two or three times a week saying that we were missing one document or another. Of course, she had never asked for these documents in the first place.

When we met with the lawyers on one trip to Quito, one actually had the balls to say to me, "Things are not done here like they are in the States. You have to know people." To which I replied, "That's why I'm paying you, to know people." By the way, the company which claims to be a non-profit, is 1700 Migrante. I do not recommend that anyone ever use them.

I couldn't get my the visa last week when Carlos and I went to Quito for the sole purpose of receiving the visa. That was because the guy who had to sign my visa was not in and would not be in for two more days. Apparently, there is one single guy in the whole entire country who could sign my visa. And he doesn't have an underling who can do it for him when he's sick. So we had to return to Quito the following week. Fortunately, Carlos was already going there for a conference and I just tagged along. And we finally got the visa.

At the end of the procedure, the lawyer asked us for more money than we had agreed to pay, saying things like, "Well, for your case we had to do extra work." When I asked for specifics, as in, "How is my case different from the other cases? What exactly did you need to do for me that was atypical?" he would reply by saying, "Well, I was not the one doing the work, but the lawyer assured me that your case was special and he needed to do more than was normally necessary." Again I would say, "Can you give me an example?" to which he would respond, "Well, I don't know exactly, but your case was different." Arrrrgh.

Of course, the system in Ecuador is made so that you need a lawyer or an expediter or someone who knows people in the system to get things done. And everybody takes a few dollars here and there to help you out. There were only two people who were actually helpful. After I got my visa I needed to get a copy of it notarized. The notary was a very kind lady. Even nicer was was the gentleman at the Ministry of Work. I did not need to go to Quito for the whole visa process. However, after receiving the visa it was necessary to get a work ID, thus go to Quito for the sole purpose of having a (digital) photo taken. And this is only possible on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday. The gentleman there was so nice and helpful, Carlos and I had met him the previous week and Carlos explained that my Spanish was not the best and that I would be returning on my own and the guy explained the whole procedure very patiently and when I returned it took less than 10 minutes.

If anyone would like me to explain the process for getting a work visa, I cannot, I have no idea how I actually got the visa.

But I learned my lesson. Just get married. It's cheaper and easier.

Witness

On Tuesday evening Carlos and I went out for drinks in Quito with one of our classmates from IHE. She graduates in a few months and was here doing research, we hadn't seen her since last June. We were in Quito to get my passport, which I didn't get yet, but that's another story (to summarize, the one guy whose signature I needed for the visa to be valid wasn't in that day, maybe sick or something, so sorry, come back next week). So, our friend and her sister dropped us off at our apartment (Carlos's parents have an apartment in Quito, they use it a few times a year but he and his brothers and sisters stay there when they have work). They turned the car around and we waited on the steps to wave goodbye. When they had turned around they rolled down their window and told us that it looked like some guys were stealing a car. We looked over, and yeah, they were right, so we went into our building to tell the guard as our friends drove away.

The guard came outside, stared at the thieves for a minute or so, then told us, no, it doesn't look like a robbery, they probably just lost the keys to their car. So we were chatting on the steps when the car pulled up and stopped in front of us, pulled out a gun, cocked it, aimed it at us, and said the Spanish equivalent of, "You motherfuckers better run before I putta cap in yo ass!" Or something like that. So we ran into the building. We thought we were safe there but one guy followed us so we ran up the stairs and made it safely into the apartment. And they sped off.

No, we didn't call the police. I kept asking to, but Carlos and his brother (who had gotten to the apartment about five minutes before us) said it was useless. The police won't do anything, we didn't see the guys or even the color of the car (it was night, like 8PM, it happened fast). I understand this, but kept on saying that we still should file a report anyway so that the poor guy whose car was stolen would have some idea in the morning why his car was gone and some proof for his insurance. But no, we didn't call. About 5 minutes after the incident Carlos went outside to chat with the guard again and two other guards on the street, who are only armed with sticks and whistles, both of whom saw nothing.

I was scared when it happened, but a few moments later I was sad, I just felt so helpless. I witnessed a crime and did nothing. I couldn't do my moral duty, no one could, the system doesn't allow it. The criminals win (by the way I'm in the middle of reading Atlas Shrugged).

So that's the story. Not quite as bad as the attempted kidnapping in India, but close.

Carnival in Ecuador

Carnival in Ecuador strangely reminded me of beach week at Duke. Back in collage, after the spring exams and before graduation, we would spend four or five days in Myrtle Beach, SC (actually North Myrtle Beach, but that doesn't matter too much). Those days were filled with dancing (and drinking) all night, sleeping all morning, and spending the afternoons at the beach getting sunburnt.

This past weekend was like that, sort of. Carlos and I spent from Saturday until Tuesday in the country with his parents at their weekend house. Almost all his siblings and their families were there as well. So it was basically one big party. We spent our days eating and drinking (including some shots of tequila with my future mother-in-law), playing cards, riding bikes, playing volleyball, singing karaoke, dancing, and of course, the main event of carnival, which is throwing water on one another.

Fortunately, there was sun everyday so I was never really cold. Unfortunately, the water kind of washed off my sunscreen, so my back and legs are totally burnt. Almost every afternoon the water pistols came out, as well as the water balloons, pitchers, and even the hose. The only people that were safe were Carlos's parents. No one wanted to get Mami wet.

Yesterday was the most brutal, when a few of my future brother-in-laws, thought that flour, banana, coffee grounds, vanilla extract, and eggs were all legitimate substances to smash into my hair and face. Carlos has already thanked me for taking his place, he was able to spend yesterday afternoon relatively dry and clean, while I ended up smelling like cake.

I did get a bit of revenge, for an esential ingredient of Ecuadorian cooking is achiote, a red spice that can be bought dissilved in oil. I left a nice handprint in achiote on the windsheild of one of my future brother-in-law's brand new, just cleaned car. It took him about half an hour to clean it off. But it took me about four hours this morning to do laundry from the weekend, including laundering some clothes twice, just to remove the vanilla.

Next year in Brazil?