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USA: Washington, DC: Cherry Blossom Festival 2010

Posted on April 27th, 2010 by Anna Zhan.
Categories: Blog.

Reminiscing over the Sakura blossoms I saw in Tokyo one spring, I decided a visit to DC for the for the National Cherry Blossom Festival would be a good idea.

[Washington monument]

I planned my trip for the peak time, not realizing that peak would not actually be my favorite time.  Instead of pink flowers, they were still white.  (Apparently they turn pink when they’re more mature.)  And there were hardly any petals raining down on us, even though it was fairly windy.  Alas, going a few days after peak likely would have been idyllic, but hindsight is 20-20.

[Jefferson Monument]

The cherry trees are clustered in two locations: below the Washington Monument, and around the lake that the Jefferson Monument sits on.  Both are within reasonable walking distance of the Smithsonian stop along the Metro.

[Signs stating the obvious - the tree limbs are dangling just above the water]

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Meaningless Rant: Columbia University Bookstore Sign

Posted on April 22nd, 2010 by Anna Zhan.
Categories: Meaningless Rants, NYC.

I spend my years in Brooklyn fighting back against a curriculum referred to as Teacher’s College, which is put forth by the bright minds at Columbia University.  I detest said curriculum with a passion, for while I’m sure it works very well in rich white suburban neighborhoods, it does not work in impoverished inner-city ghettos.

So, I found some joy in seeing this sign each time I went to Columbia to attend a professional development session (obviously they didn’t send their best out to have this sign made).

From the above sign, I can surmise one of two things about this bookstore: it either A) sells books for educators, books for classroom supplies (which are inanimate objects incapable of reading), and books for children, or B) it sells books for educators, classroom supplies (presumably also for educators), and children (doubtfully for educators - I think most of us have enough of these in our classroom, but perhaps they’re available for slave labor or some such).

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Star Wars: Tauntaun Sleeping Bag

Posted on April 21st, 2010 by Anna Zhan.
Categories: Blog.

[The Tauntaun sleeping bag: guaranteed to make any geek smile.]

Originally an April Fools joke from the good folks at ThinkGeek, the Tauntaun sleeping bag was designed and produced after the huge consumer reaction to the product.  Originally advertised as a children’s sleeping bag, ThinkGeek mercifully modified the concept product to be sized for the adults who would actually be purchasing the product.  Let’s be honest: it would have been much more challenging to justify the purchase of a $99 sleeping bag that I couldn’t even fit into…

Absolutely uneccessary in life, but oh so rewarding, the Tauntaun Sleeping Bag has a head that serves as a built-in pillow, front and rear legs, a saddle, a mini-lightsaber zipper pull, and a soft lining with a tauntaun intestines pattern on it.

Absolutely worth $100 for any hardcore Star Wars geek, but it really proved its worth one frigid winter day when the heat failed.  It kept me so toasty warm that at one point I actually had to unzip the bag for a while.  Yay for the tauntaun!

[The sleeping bag lounged around on the couch, seemingly useless until the heat went out one winter day and I found myself curled up in a tauntaun for warmth.]

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Book: Holy Cow

Posted on April 21st, 2010 by Anna Zhan.
Categories: Blog.

A book review from last Fall…I apparently forgot to hit the “publish” button…

Title: Holy Cow
Author: Sarah Macdonald
Anna’s Rating: 3/5
Comments: Had a good amount of culture mixed in, but it’s more about spiritual exploration than travel, so it wasn’t what I was looking for.

Randomly on a quest for women’s travel essays, I picked up Holy Cow simple because it had a witty title.  (Note to self: when publishing, select witty title that will attract readers.)  A woman traveling about India seemed an exciting way to quench my wanderlust while I was stuck in America with a hectic schedule and an expiring passport.

Sort of.

It was an interesting read, and it delved deeply into the religions and microcultures that exist within India, although it wasn’t entirely satisfying to me.  I got bored with it a few times, so it took me months before I finally finished it.  My frustration came largely from the author’s own frustration and confusion.  I have enough problems of my own without taking on those of a stranger.

Where I wanted a vicarious adventure, I instead got inner turmoil.  Frustrated with a career stopped short, a love-life with a business wedged into it, and the absence of an inner, spiritual strength, Macdonald shares her adventures about trying to find happiness with her current situation in South Asia.

My favorite part of the book, I think, was when she visited Pakistan.  That offered more of the exploration I enjoyed, viewing a new place and a new culture with eyes opened anew.

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Easter: The Pennsylvania Easter Bunny is Awesome

Posted on April 19th, 2010 by Anna Zhan.
Categories: Blog.

Last year, I got perhaps the most awesome Easter chocolate ever: a chocolate dinosaur egg filled with chocolate baby dinosaurs.  But this year is another great success: chocolate alien invaders!

My chocolate flying saucer was manned by an alien commander and three of its robot minions.  In spite of the pictures on the side, I did not have any humaniod-shaped space-going chocolates.  I suspect that this raiding party had either yet to alight on Earth when it was captured, or that any prisoners of war had already been eaten by parties unknown.

Said aliens and dinosaurs come from Gertrude Hawk, which I believe is Fanny Farmer’s northeastern cousin.  I don’t know if our dear Viewmont Mall retailer will be able to deliver another exciting surprise next year, but who knows?  They might start a line of solid chocolate griffins before next Easter rolls around (and you’ve got to admit, that would be cool)!

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Book: The Sex Lives of Cannibals

Posted on April 16th, 2010 by Anna Zhan.
Categories: Books, Travel.

Because I promised myself that I would start blogging again…

Title: The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific
Author: J. Maarten Troost
Genre: Travel Essay
Anna’s Rating: 5/5

I have to admit that the sole reason I purchased this book was that my friend Chris called me as I was crawling into bed to rant and rave about a fabulous travel essay she’d just read that, in her words, made her time in Peace Corps feel normal.  It was so good, in fact, that she decided she didn’t care that she’d gotten me out of bed, because I had to hear about it.  (And she liked the book so much that she didn’t want to lend it to me, deciding that I could buy it because I’m rich [read: less poor].)

And I’ll have my readers, if you’re still out there, know that this book was, in fact, so good that it made me laugh out loud in public, with tears streaming down my face: in bus stations, on trains, in the hospital (my boyfriend’s mom thought I was crying for the man I love who was at that time having tubes shoved into his arteries and up into his heart, but alas, it was the book).

The joy was in the “ditches of digression”, as the author so eloquently put it (and let’s be honest, my writing has long since made its home there, too).  The book starts out slowly, introducing our hero and heroine, who shall rescue the victim of the American Rat Race and sequester them away on a journey to a time and a life that now seems too distant.  Things pick up pretty soon, and by Chapter 4, the tears of laughter start rolling; after that I just couldn’t put it down.

Author Maarten Troost delves into a variety of topics, from animals to history to culture and more, approaching each topic and showing how his time abroad changed his perspective and values, all in a voice that leads the reader to think he’s sitting on your living room sofa (or living room hammock, in my case, as I’m too cheap to buy a couch).  In all sincerity, I must commend the man who writes a history chapter that I find interesting; if all history books were as enjoyable as that, I’d likely have at least a minor in the subject.

In short, if you’re looking for a humorous way to convince yourself to move to a scant patch of polluted, over-populated sand in an under-developed and poorly organized nation, or if you just need a bit of escape from the realities of life, I highly recommend The Sex Lives of Cannibals, which apparently has very little to do with its title (except that cannibal tribes conquered the island in question in the past, and some of them made families with local women, making the unique people that populate the island nation of Tarawa today - see?  I DID follow some of that history!!)

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