Obama, the war, and a glint of personal happiness

Photo by Ruth Fremson/The New York Times. From global.nytimes.com

Maybe it's all those endorphins from the new exercise, but I felt happy today.
For the first time in a while, I really enjoyed reading all our stories and feel proud of the newspaper we write, edit and design.
Don't get me wrong. I am generally proud of what we do. But it's easy to get dragged down by the daily grind of deadlines, budget cuts and long hours. Newsrooms are usually pretty glum, sarcastic places. Plus, this week, everyone is sharing the same miserable cold/flu.
So, sometimes, I drag through the stories. They either don't personally interest me, or the whole thing is just too much.
As I've blogged abefore, 8, 9, hours of death and destruction can be hard emotionally. It's nice to have a nice day.
***
In the meeting where we discuss our page 1 choices, we talked about how big the Obama/ Afghan story was, compared to the climate talk stuff.
I have smart colleagues, so it's nice when we get a good, healthy discussion going.
***
Obama wants to pour in lots more troops now, so the U.S. can eventually get out earlier. His goal is to hit the war hard and fast. (As opposed to sloppy and prolonged, as it was under Bush. Can you believe it's been on EIGHT years?)
***
I think Obama's Afghan decision may be the biggest of his presidency.
World leaders have been made -- or broken -- by grand decisions on war. Three years from now, we may look back and see, in retrospect, that this was the most significant thing he did.
Or the worst thing he did.
In any case, it's a big deal.
***
The front page due out tomorrow morning (Thursday) looks great.
(Not thanks to me, but our talented page 1 editor).
He designed a long, horizontal photo of Obama with what looks like spotlights behind him. Below are smaller photos -- of U.S. military students who might fight in Afghanistan someday, and anti-war protesters against the war.
The viewer's eye would move over these three images and -- in a glance -- get three different viewpoints.
Something else I like: We have different views. One columnist said he was absolutely against Obama's move. Other articles in the news section are not so critical.
(Could you imagine a Chinese newspaper running several articles about something Hu Jintao did -- one taking a pro-stance,one taking an anti-stance?)
***
Because of technical reasons, we had more room for articles in the Thursday paper, which causes grumbling in the newsroom, because it means more work.
But it also means more for the reader to read.
In terms of density, I've always thought of the IHT as the newspaper equivalent of The New Yorker.
I always bring The New Yorker on flights because it's very thin, but absolutely packed with words. It can last me hours. (The opposite would be Vogue, which is giant, but takes 15 minutes)
The IHT is thin -- 20, 24 pages? But it's jammed packed -- lots of articles, long articles, dense, concise writing.
A friend joked that he started reading one of our essays and, when his Hong Kong-Singapore flight landed, he was just finishing it. (OK, our articles aren't that long)
The length is by design. After all, if you just wanted quick, superficial news flashes, you'd check the BBC or CNN websites. It's only newspapers and magazines that can give deeper analysis.
***
This is what we decided on.
Page 1: Obama/Afghan. The environmental talks.
On the hard side: Pakistan had yet another attack. Iran frees British soldiers.
On the light side: A feature on oyster farming in Texas. A rare upbeat report on Iraq filmmakers turning bomb sites into movie screening areas.
In Asia: The Japanese prime minister's new troubles. A quirky American woman who has joined the unwashed masses to be a campaigner seeking justice in Beijing. (Actually, this came from the AP).
Then there's the weird health story on why people keep repeating ourselves, and why we forget what stories we've told to whom. (Impending senility, I presume.)
***
I hope this didn't come off as an IHT infomercial. (That wasn't the point).
Joyceyland readers can let me know if these "insider's views of a newsroom" posts are of any interest at all.
***
I already know what's going in the paper tomorrow. But I still like picking it up in the morning and reading it over coffee. Habit, I guess.

"Shred": Jillian Michaels is kicking my arse.

No, it's not the Twelve Days of Christmas. It's My 17 Days of Exercise.

Nov. 17 -- Honestly, can't remember. Probably nothing.
Nov. 18 -- Nothing.
Nov. 19, Exercise Day #7 -- Horse riding. (45-minutes of rising trot is hard!)
Nov. 20, #8 -- Ran, but not far
Nov. 21, #9 -- Circuit training, i.e. "Shredding"
Nov. 22, # 10 -- Shred
Nov. 23, #11 -- Shred
Nov. 24, #12 -- Shred
Nov. 25, #13 -- Shred
Nov. 26 -- No exercise. Made giant chocolate cake instead.
Nov. 27, #14 -- Horse riding. Also leftover cake eating.
Nov. 28, #15 -- Shred
Nov. 29 -- Exercising before my Sunday morning shift? Forget it.
Nov. 30, #16 -- Shred
Dec. 1, #17 -- Shred

I'm glad I marked my exercise on Joyceyland. Otherwise, I'd lose track entirely. When I get busy, days blur into each other.
I exercised 17 out of 22 days.
I hope this initial burst of motivation will ultimately be habit-forming.
****
The challenge was more of a scheduling one, and less a physical one.
I'm proud of myself for finding time.
One day, I didn't think I'd make it, since I had a morning interview in Wanchai and then a normal workday, which goes till 9pm. But, I set my alarm, woke up early and did it.
A downside: I'm more rushed in the morning and am cabbing it more often to work, which must stop for money reasons. Now that I've carved 30 minutes into every morning, let's see if I can schedule it even better.
***
The "circuit training" is new.
I'm a little embarrassed to say I ordered Jillian Michaels' Shred video from Amazon. (She's at left, and also the screaming lady from The Biggest Loser video posted below).
Ten years ago, I was too cool to use a home exercise video. But, as old age creeps in, I have become less self-conscious.
I guess I don't like the idea of fitness videos, because I hate perky.
Perky body parts are OK.
Perky people: Ugh. Blonde American T.V. women in matching pastel outfits and giant white teeth doing cutesy aerobics dances to cheesy music.
****
But I like Jillian. She may seem a bit mean, but I need a little mean to motivate me. Her workouts are concise; they're designed to get as much done in as little time possible. Her theory is that it's better to suffer 20 minutes, than spend hours slumping inefficiently on a treadmill. (Sounds familiar...)
Timewise, it's great. I don't need to change, commute or sign in at a gym. Hell, I don't even need to put on shoes. The whole thing, including setting up and stretching, takes 30 minutes. No matter how busy I am, I can't convince myself that I don't have half an hour.
Each workout switches back and forth rapidly between cardio, weights and abs.
Some exercises are comfortingly old-fashioned: jumping jacks, skipping rope, push-ups.
***
Maybe I'm out of shape, or maybe this is just a tough work-out, but on day 1, I couldn't do a single push-up. Jillian Michaels was seriously kicking my arse.
By day 4, I could do a few girlie push-ups, like the ones on your knees.
By day 5, I added very light weights. (Actually, I used filled one-liter water bottles).
But Jillian Michaels is still kicking my ass. I'm only on level 1. Levels 2 and 3 must be killer.
****
As my exercise role model, Jillian is about 5'2" and 120 pounds, which is not crazy anorexic runway-model-sized, but Joycey-sized (and approximately Gweipo sized?)
She has meat on her bones. (OK, I don't want to be quite so, uh, muscular. Jillian looks like she could beat up every Canto-pop star in town with her little finger.)
But she still has a butt and boobs, and they don't look fake.
I like that. I certainly wouldn't want to starve / exercise away my better assets.
***
I want to make a habit of using my body and getting fit, instead of just sitting in front of a computer.
While it would be a welcome side-effect, I'm not doing all this exercise in the name of weight loss.
In fact, despite my increased ability to do push-ups, I haven't lost a pound. (I'm going to blame Thanksgiving dinner for that.)
Let's be realistic. A short workout might burn, what? 200 calories? 300? That's one Snickers. One sandwich. One bowl of cereal.
If I wanted to be a stick-figure, which is so en vogue in Hong Kong, I would just skip lunch instead of sweating it out every morning.

Happy Thanksgiving! (And food pix)

Photo courtesy of Bonkers in Hongkers and Hong Kong or Bust

I'd written a long, depressing post on miserable Asian news -- Chinese activist jailed, melamine executions, election-related beheading in the Philippines. (If there's one example of democracy gone wrong, that would be it.)
But, it's Thanksgiving Day. It's a beautiful morning, and my flat smells lovely from the cake baking in my oven, which I'm making for an office Thanksgiving dinner tonight. This will be my second Thanksgiving dinner this week -- I'm a lucky girl.
So I hit the "save" button on that unhappy news post. You can read about political misery after the holiday.
****
I'm making what Marc the Metrosexual refers to, disparagingly, as "American cake."
First off, I use a mix. No shame to that. The Betty Crocker SuperMoist German Chocolate cake is a thing to behold.
I shape it kind of like a ginormous cupcake. I smear it with frosting and top with rainbow-colored sprinkles. For anyone who grew up in America, this is a delicious blast-from-the-past.

Marc, a professional French chef, may be appalled.

A tip for other cheaters like me: To fancy it up, replace half the required liquid (usually milk or water) with bourbon or any other flavorful liquor. I usually use 1/2 C per cake. Do NOT replace the oil or eggs. Your cake needs that to stick together.
Pour the batter into small cupcake tins for bourbon tea cakes.
****
Since I was born in Canada and grew up in the U.S., I have a typically gweilo (gweipo?) reaction to the way Western holidays are "celebrated" here. It's just the shiny, pretty trappings -- mostly as seen via the shopping mall -- with none of the meaning.

For Hong Kongers, Halloween means strangely-dressed gweilos getting drunk on overpriced cocktails in Lan Kwai Fong. (I mean, more so than usual).

But what I remember was this rather magical night lit up with pumpkin lanterns. Since nobody decent went out at night in small-town Connecticut (at least, not in the 80s) it was a thrill for us to spill into the dark, quiet streets in our homemade costumes. Neighbors would give us a few coins for Unicef, mini chocolate bars, homemade candied apples or caramel popcorn balls.

Thanksgiving is the second-most important holiday, after Christmas. But few Hong Kongers have heard of it, probably because it doesn't have Halloween's splashy, partying aspect. It's a home-y, family affair.

Canadians celebrate it earlier, to coincide with Christopher Columbus' landing in the New World. In Quebec, they eat tourtiere (meat pie) and pouding chomeur (maple pudding).

My pouding chomeur from last year, which Marc the Metrosexual said was "too sweet." (Check out the maple toffee sauce, which I first cook on the stove). My American friends liked it, but I didn't make it this year. On top is sour cream.

Americans have it in November, to remember a feast between the British colonialists and the Native tribes. In both cases, it's a harvest festival and a time to give thanks (thus the name.)

I know that sounds cheesy, but it's good to have a yearly reminder to give thanks. I read about the misery of the world all day, but it's easy to lose perspective. We get so caught up in our daily minor problems (Why doesn't my doorman ever open the damn door? Why can't I afford a trench coat? Why can't I lose five pounds?) that we forget to count our blessings. Just about everyone reading this blog has all the comforts of modern, developed-world life -- we don't have to worry where the next meal is coming from.
****
Speaking of meals...

The Laus are a family of cooks, but we're Chinese. We don't roast turkeys. Plus, we ate so lightly than one turkey leg would be enough for all of us, never mind a whole bird. Sometimes, kindly Americans would invite us over for Thanksgiving, and we would marvel at their giant birds and many sauces and trimmings.
But if we weren't invited, we had something called the frozen turkey roll, which was turkey pieces squeezed into a tube-like shape. It came in a tinfoil container we stuck in the oven, and the "gravy" would melt off it and collect at the bottom. You can't stuff a hunk of processed meat, so we would make Stove Top Stuffing, usually in a wok. The cranberry sauce would sit there coldly, quivering in a dish, the shape of the ribbed tin container still imprinted on it. And, you know? We really enjoyed this dinner.

I have since learned how to make a proper Western meal. (I studiously read Molly O'Neill columns in The New York Times. I kept her seminal 1996 essay on roasting poultry, "Nothing Tough About It" for years).
Hong Blog has a good technique for roasting turkey which -- because it is big and lean -- can easily dry out. He covers the outside with slices of pancetta, which is fatty, salty and bacon-like. On this Joyceyland-Hong Blog-Marc's World joint-production, we were also careful to baste regularly. (I used olive-oil margarine.)


This is a 16-pound, or 7-kilo, monster of a bird. You can see bits of discarded pancetta on the side.

Marc then deglazed the pan with cognac, so we had a boozy-flavored gravy. Gravy is essential.
****
For gweilo reactions to Hong Kong "Christmas bling" check out My Morning Sun and, again, Hong Blog, in his post, "Keeping Christ out of XMas."
It's become a kind of yuletide tradition that Hong Blog will review "The Twelve Japanese Beverages of Christmas." I wonder if he will do this year.
I also dug out an old post, "From Turkey to Riceballs" by Beijing Loafer. A Sichuan native who spent years in the States before returning to China, he waxes on holidays, Chinese and Western, and how he had to work very hard to stomach American cheese and turkey.

Ignore this test

BUHDHFCT9G2K

Tenant harassment, Hong Kong-style

Ever since Hugo had cat flu as a kitten, he's had occasional bouts of teary eyes. Or maybe he's crying over Hong Kong rental situations.

We took Hugo the Cat to the vet to check on an eye problem.

As we walked up the stairs to Pets Central clinic in Mongkok, we noticed their pet supply shop downstairs was boarded up. Was it too early in the morning? We also smelled something awful. Had a stinky tofu store opened up next door?
Part of the upstairs clinic was also boarded up and there was the most terrible screeching. At first I thought it was construction workers with a radio on full blast, or someone arguing. Then I realized it was a recording in Cantonese. A woman was yelling the same sentences over and over, in the sort of tone usually used for strident political speeches.
It was really annoying, disruptive, and eardrum-damaging loud. So loud that clients couldn't hear their names being called.

It turns out that our 24-hour animal hospital is the target of "sound and smell harassment" over a rental dispute. Someone is trying to chase them out, maybe in hopes that staff and clients will only take so much before they flee.
When I asked about the "smell pollution" part of it, one of the nurses leaned in and whispered, "It's better now. At one point, we suspected they were using, well, feces. Though we have no proof."
How ironic that Pets Central always managed to be spotless and clean smelling with all those sick animals; it only began to stink when humans messed it up.

I don't know the legal details of this case, so I'm not going to make a judgment on whose fault the dispute was initially. It doesn't matter. Either way, it's a terrible, uncivilized way to deal with things.
The Hong Kong police are generally clean and do their jobs. There's the Consumer Council, Small Claims Court and other places where a landlord can deal with a bad tenant.
My guess is that the landlord doesn't have a solid legal footing in this case -- why else would they resort to harassment tactics? Making the recording, creating the smells -- when you think about someone actually sitting down and planning this, it's a bit crazy.

The punishment doesn't fit the crime. Whatever the conflict is, it's on a company (tenant/landlord) level.
Why torment vets, nurses and animal handlers, who have been nothing but kind and patient with us and Hugo? Why frighten animals with alarming noises and smells?
Excessive, prolonged exposure to noise has been used as punishment in some prisons, though, obviously, this is case is nothing close to that level. Still, the usually pleasant, organized, reception staff were frazzled. I was in that waiting room for 10 minutes and I couldn't hear myself think. Imagine eight hours.

We signed a petition set up on the counter; but honestly, that's probably not going to do it.

P.S. Pets Central is the clinic that's setting up Hong Kong's first blood bank for pets. While it's obviously a profit-seeking enterprise, it's also clearly an organization that cares about animal welfare.
***
P.P.S. On a totally different note, David Biddlecombe at the Evening Sky blog is planning a Freedom Ball event tomorrow, Sun., Nov. 22. Go if you're for promoting Hong Kong green spaces where you can actually have fun, or if you just want to gawk at some crazy guy releasing 1,000 big red balls into Shatin Park. More info here.

New Hong Kong-French blog: Marc's World

Marc the Metrosexual has finally set up his blog, Marc's World, with the help of one of my ex-colleagues, Emily Rauhala, i.e. Cyber Panda.
(Marc wasn't willing to go online till he had something better designed than the pedestrian standard Blogger thingie I use!)
His first blog post is a recipe for soupe au pistou, which is a hearty vegetable soup, richly flavored with bacon and "pistou," or the French version of pesto. We made it, to good reviews, for a dinner party we had with some IHT colleagues a while ago.
There is also a photo collection of Hugo the Cat.
And a discussion of the Thierry Henry handball issue, which is totally beyond my comprehension. (Though White Dusk Red, Ulaca and others might have opinions)
I have to give it to Marc: It takes a brave soul to blog in a second language that you never formally learned. It would be like my trying to blog in French, which would be a mess. (And never mind my blogging in Chinese; it would be impossible).
Please welcome him to our little community of bloggers. He's at http://marctoutain.wordpress.com

Fat People Getting Yelled At, aka Workout Motivation

Sat, Nov. 14. Day of rest.
Sun. Nov. 15, Day #5. Dragged myself out of bed before work. Walked a mile (1.6K). Not great, but at least I got myself to go.
Mon, Nov. 16, Day #6. Ditto. One mile.

Gweipo invited me to an absolutely terrifying athletic challenge. Considering that she can run five, six times more than I can in one go, and I spend 40, 50 hours a week sitting down, I think I know who will win.

In my imagination, Gweipo is relatively tall and fit. She weights 130 lbs, or 60 kilos. (I will never post my weight on this blog, because it would give Fumie too much satisfaction).

But let's just say neither one of us is exactly obese. And while it's great to push, there's also alot of pressure on women to be both thin and hard on ourselves. It's good to keep things in perspective.

And what better way to do that than to compare yourself to the truly obese?

A while back, I got to reading a circle of "fat blogs." (No, it's not politically incorrect. They call themselves that. And, no, I'm not anti-fat. I'll write more on these sites later, because they're hilarious.)

Just remember Gweipo -- next time you fret about those extra 5 lbs, next time I worry about "muffin top" when I wear my 27" Sevens low-rise jeans -- there are women out there looking to lose 110, 120, 130 pounds. That's the size of an entire one of us!

So let's end this post with a motivational video. Usually, "motivational" anything makes me want to stab my own eyes out, since I hate all the sugarly "you can do it!" cheesiness.

But this is Jillian Michaels, one of the top personal trainers in the U.S. and a real hard-ass. (Literally and figurative. She's 5' 2", just a shade taller than I, and I would kill to have her body).

Here, she's yelling at an enormous father and daughter team on the reality show The Biggest Loser. It's funny and sad at the same time. Next time you feel like you're failing at your workout, remember this.