I worked endless hours while I was in LA,  but one afternoon, my co-worker and I slipped out of the studio during daylight hours, and walked down Hollywood Boulevard to find something to eat. This trip has stunned me every morning, when I’d wake up in the hotel and re-remember that my commute to work literally involves walking down the Walk of Fame, that I can call these creative geniuses colleagues, that my job is a fascinating mix of new media and online community, analyzing statistics and understanding relationships, meeting interesting people and hiding alone with my computer.

We sat on a balcony in warm December air, where my coworker smoothly ordered wine and wild sushi-Mexican fusion, and talked about online world building and developing-world travel. I looked down over the railing at the crowds below.

“What are you grinning at?” he asked me.

“I’m not a waitress in Raleigh anymore,” I said, as if that could possibly cover it.

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Not Waiting

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So apparently it’s lame to write a post about how much I love the Boston commuter rail. They have wifi now, and even though it’s pretty spotty,  playing Facebook games is far superior to driving. Instead I’ll tell you about where I went when I took the commuter train!

I’ve been working at a Middle Eastern restaurant in North Carolina that used to be a Pizza Hut. When my cousins were visiting me, I dragged them in to see those signature trapezoid windows and brick walls, now decorated with sitars and hookah pipes. It was partly so they could eat some kebabs, and partly so they can back me up at future Christmas dinners when I’m accused of blog hyperbole.

Turns out there’s another ex-Pizza Hut that now serves korma and chicken tandoori,  because my friends introduced me to Monsoon in Acton. I knew I was going to like it because Tom is a curry connoisseur, and Eric is a foodie in general. It was pretty delicious, but it didn’t really matter where we ate, because I was so happy to see my friends and decompress after a couple interviews with possible schools.

After a lot of dinner and a lot of chatting, Tom and Tricia headed home, and Eric and I met up with some more of my second family, the Hoffmanns. Carolyn’s getting married in a few weeks, so she had a some pre-wedding advice for any brides-to-be: Elope while you still can! She also said something about hiring an Elvis impersonator, but I think she may have been exaggerating.

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Hyperbole and Exaggeration

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I saw this on PostSecret a few weeks back, and it perfectly captures how I feel about traveling. Maybe I’m not completely enamored with the cattle call of boarding, or the choice between eating airport McD’s or airport Burger King, but I love the feeling of possibility. I love distant, exotic place names on the departures boards.

Besides the excitement of being a real journalist (and really, I can’t overstate the awesomeness of that), and seeing all the new games,  this was last week was my first trip to Los Angeles. I’ve really missed city life, the buses and taxis and crowds. I saw the Pacific for the first time, and that was awesome in a lot of ways.

And now I’m back. I wanted to say ‘back home’ but I don’t really feel like Raleigh is my home. I worked at the restaurant today, and while it didn’t go quite as badly as my last post-travel, post-conference return to work, it wasn’t a great day. Spent a while catching up on little things, and wondering if my contribution to the world will be that I wiped down the check folders or refilled the sugar packets.  I’m stagnating professionally, financially and even romantically, and it’s all been thrown into sharper focus by my amazing week.

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But After Midnight, I Was Stuck With This Pumpkin

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When Stick and I were flying out to Denver, there was a problem with the TV screens on the plane, so no one could watch the movie. It was no trouble at all, because I hadn’t realized that there was going to be a movie, so I’d brought a book (Ok… several books. Shut up!), but the flight attendants came round and gave us all vouchers for $100 off our next flight because of the inconvenience.

I wasn’t sure what was most amusing. First, if you take the price of our tickets to Denver, and subtract the voucher I got for taking a bump coming home after Thanksgiving, and the $200 we’d just gotten for not having to sit through a movie, we were practically making money by traveling.

Second, receiving a $100 voucher in lieu of a movie implies that the inflight movie was worth $100, doesn’t it?

Coming back, we were told that Stick’s suitcase was a couple of pounds overweight, and we could either take something out or pay $130 dollars. Now, that $130 overweight charge, plus the $20 for having a bag at all, would mean that it costs more for us to get our clothes home to Raleigh than to get ourselves to Denver and back. I’m not sure how that makes any sense, or how the counter agent could possibly tell us that with a straight face.

Stick decided to pull out a boardgame out of the overweight suitcase and call that his personal item. Since everyone else had also decided to cram everything into the largest carryon possible, the overhead bins on our flight were quickly filled, and passengers who boarded later were forced to check their carryon bags.

So… if we’d been seated in the fourth cattle call instead of the third, then the overhead compartments would have been full, and the airline would have checked the game box along with all the other excess carry-on baggage. And checking carryons is free, so it wouldn’t have made the airline any more money, and it would have taken up more space in the cargo area because it was out of the suitcase –

And then my head exploded.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Airline Math

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Sometimes when people whine about how their town sucks or there’s nothing to do here, I secretly think they’re just not trying hard enough. Only boring people are bored, and so forth. Also, that feeling of  I-hate-it-here is inextricably tied to my high-school angst. (Other things I hated at that time: My parents. Being at home. Being at school. Boys who didn’t pay attention to me. Boys who paid too much attention to me. I must have been a real delight, don’t you think?)

But admitting to myself that Cary is not for me has actually made me feel better. It’s allowed me to reset my expectations, so I’m pleased by finding something nice, instead of constantly disappointed by comparing Cary to other places I’ve lived.

Zen of the cul-de-sacs. That’s me.

Anyway, one of those nice things is Cool Breeze, a Indian vegetarian fast-food place. It’s small and a bit hard to spot if you don’t know it’s there, which is often a very good sign for a restaurant. Inside were plastic pizza-parlor style benches and no-frills tables, handwritten signs offering specials, and Bollywood music videos.

I really like Indian food, and I think I’m pretty familiar with the tandori and vindaloo and dosas on the average menu, but I was pretty lost here. We ordered almost at random, trusting that the good smells meant the food would be good. The menu was almost no help, Cool Breeze would really benefit from a picture menu and proper descriptions of the items. I’m too laoweito know if  “paratha” is better than “chaat”, and with all the tasty options, it’s a shame that it’s not more user-friendly. In their defense, the guy working the counter was knowledgeable and happy to answer our questions, but I imagine he has better things to do than describe fifty-something menu options to us.

Food is surprisingly inexpensive, so don’t do what we did, and assume that a three dollar order will be a small portion! Everything is served on styrofoam plates, and almost everything comes with green chutney (the sharp minty kind, not the cilantro kind) and yogurt.

The paani puri, described as round shaped crispies and spicy water, turned out to be small hollow fried breads, with an assortment of sauces to eat with them. There’s also a paneer paratha, which is a tasty wheat bread stuffed with paneer cheese. Batata vada was a lot like a potato pakora.  (Downside was listening to Stick say “batatavada” over and over.  He’d like you all to know that it’s lots of fun to say and that he’s cursed with a no-fun girlfriend.) Overall, it was filling vegetarian fare with a great mix of flavors. Did I mention the background Bollywood music videos?

Like everywhere else in Cary, full-length windows look out on the parking lot, but my newfound mindset means expecting every place to be in a strip mall, so that’s ok!

Cool Breeze
740 East Chatham Street
Cary, NC 27511
(919) 463-9130

Edit 2/16: My wonderful boyfriend Stick finds it necessary to read the internet to me, sharing his stream-of-consciousness whether I’m listening or not, whether I’m in the room or not,  whether I have cotton balls in my ears or not.  This morning he was on his laptop and I knew he must be reading this post because he said “Oh yeah, Cool Breeze. That’s delicious!” as if we hadn’t eaten there again last night. A few seconds later, he started saying batata vada over and over. This was followed by an impolite word, as he read the next line, where I mock him for saying batata vada over and over.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Cool Breeze

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Optimist Club Originally uploaded by Simpson’s Paradox

This proves my theory that the people I hear talking about how great it is to live in the south and avoid winter, or how convenient everything is to the beltway are all secretly in league with each other.

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North Raleigh Optimist Club

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Stick and I went to Play! A Videogame Symphony at the Koka Booth Amphitheatre a few weekends ago. We joined the crazy quilt of blankets, over a carpet of drying pine needles, and unpacked our cheese, olives,  Nintendo DS, and those mini wine bottles I keep calling chardonnay shots. We must have been flying the nerd flag, because a fellow passing out flyers for a gaming and music fest in DC in a few months, came right to us. And after telling him no thanks, we realized we might actually be in DC in a few months!

Once it got dark, the performance began. The conductor opened by asking everyone to feel free to clap and cheer if they felt moved to do so, and everyone did. I was so impressed with the range of games chosen, with the wild shift from metallic beeps to symphony, and with the music in general.

Sometimes when I’ve lived abroad, I’ve had moments of glowing amazement that I was really in that place.  This is me, walking across the St. Catherine’s quad to go to a lecture in Cambridge, I remember thinking, or this is me, on the Great Wall of China. I’m always amazed to find myself actually at place I recognize from books, walking in the steps of history.  (Yes, it’s true, my self-centeredness knows no bounds.) it’s best when I’m traveling, of course, but even in Amherst, I would sometimes be amazed by real New England fall leaves! Just like in books!

In this past almost-year in North Carolina, I haven’t felt like that at all. Probably because it’s hard to feel any connection with the past in the brand-new sameness of Cary. It’s hard to feel amazement and wonder that I’m driving on a highway.

But finally, lying on the blanket looking up at the tall, skinny Carolina pines, and listening to the swell of the symphony and the applause, I felt amazed that I live here. This is it. The Carolina pines, the endless Southern twilight.  Just like in books! With the cheering nerd-crowd as an added bonus.  I sighed with total contentment.

“I think I felt a raindrop,” Stick said.

The other part of Southern summers in books are the surprise, torrential thundershowers.  Within moments, we were drenched. We tried to tough it out long enough to hear World Of WarCraft: Stormwind, but soaked jeans are not fun and we joined the mob running for the parking lot.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Play! A Videogame Symphony

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For my trip back to Raleigh, I had an awesome check in at the Continental counter. When the woman at the check-in desk spoke clearly, in complete sentences, and then cheerfully wished me a good flight, I wasn’t sure how to react. Where are the mumbled commands and eyerolls? Maybe this is that Newark renaissance I keep hearing about! Awesome!

There was no line at security, ether, and I started to wonder if maybe my dad had dropped me off at Bizarro Newark by mistake. I know everyone hates flying, but I secretly love the feeling of possibility in airports, the light-up signs with exotic destinations, and the mythical magic of looking down at clouds.

There were just two other women were taking off their shoes and pulling out their laptops with me. One woman went through, and as I was putting my plastic tray with my purse and sandals on the conveyor belt, the other one pushed in front of me.

“Howbouchoo waityer turn?” she said, putting her tray over mine and into the X-ray. “God, so rude.”

Now, I don’t think I’d gone Beijing-subway on her, but I wasn’t really paying attention. She was standing behind me when we started putting our lotions and other contraband in the little trays, but maybe if you touch the trays first you get cutsies going onto the belt? Is there some kind of airport-line etiquette I don’t know about?

But that’s more what I was expecting from Newark. Old dog, new tricks, and so forth.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Now Boarding

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Every time I came home from college or from traveling, the first thing I’d want to do in my hometown of Montclair is go eat Hunan House Chinese food. So yesterday, when I flew in from Raleigh to my parents’ house (en route to my sister’s graduation), I went to Hunan House with my dad.

Hunan House is my absolute favorite food in the world. I was so sad when I got to Yantai and found out that real Chinese food was not just like eating Hunan House pork fried rice, chicken lo mein and wonton soup every day. Partly because it turns out I’m not a fan of the authentic Chinese seafood in Yantai, but also because a year of Hunan House everyday is still not enough!

Service at Hunan House is not great. Waitresses wish you weren’t there to bother them, and they make that clear by pointing vaguely at a table, slapping some menus down, and walking away. But who cares if you have to fuwuyuan for attention? (I haven’t actually tested this, my family always prevents me) It’s Hunan House Chinese food! I’d go into the kitchen and help myself if they’d let me! I think there’s some kind of addictive chemical added.

Hunan House is down some steps behind the A&P parking lot, which backs up my theory that the harder-to-find and less attractive the outside of the restaurant is, the better the food is inside.

As we were leaving, my dad pointed at the Hunan House name painted on the concrete wall.  “Remember when you were in China and I sent you a picture of that?”

“Yeah. It made me hungry for Chinese food.”

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Montclair, The Land of Hunan House

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Oliver Twist
8111-137 Creedmoor Rd
Raleigh, NC 27613

Last week was Triangle Restaurant Week, when an assortment of local restaurants run a special set menu. We were meeting up with Lynn and some of her friends.

I ended up narrowing our dining choices to between Oliver Twist and Red Room, but the humor value of a restaurant naming itself after the Dickensian orphan famous for wanting more gruel, won out. What can I say? As an English major and bibliophile, that’s right up there with Gatsby Gardens and Gatsby hair products for men.

The interior was gorgeous. With it’s strip-mall location, Twist has a challenge with the utter lack of windows and natural light, but they succeeded with dark wood furniture, red drapes, cushions and a stylish wine bar feel.  (A bit like the wine cellar at Alla Osteria)

Our wines and martinis were all tasty, our waitress was friendly, and I can’t emphasize enough just how pretty the place is. Our food was all stylishly plated and looked like a food magazine. But the food tasted… fine. It wasn’t bad, but for a splurge restaurant like this, I expected better. There was nothing I couldn’t prepare myself (with my meat the slightest bit overdone and my asparagus just the slightest bit underdone, it was uncannily like I did cook it myself!), so the markup for gorgeous plating was just too high.

Also, the food arrived in the way Stick and I call “Chinese style”, which means there was a huge wait between when the first plates and last plates came out. This works in a traditional Chinese restaurant because everyone’s eating from the same dishes, no one is watching their food get cold as they wait politely for their date’s dinner to arrive. But, in a Western restaurant, it’s really annoying.

I still had a great time, because the drinks and company (thanks to Lynn’s “devious friend matchmaking scheme”) were both fantastic, and the food was fine. I think Stick and I would go back for a bottle of wine, or a cocktail from the extensive martini list.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Oliver Twist

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