I took a little trip to the Middle East a couple of months ago, Dubai is easily one of the strangest cities I’ve ever visited.
Not the worst place to go to in winter.
Simone
I mostly eat and read. When I feel like multitasking, I do both at the same time.
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2013-04-03
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It’s hard to believe that Nabokov was ever young.
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2013-03-29
On my train home for Easter break, I think my pants matched very nicely the issue 201 of the Paris Review.
When my dad came to pick me up at the train station and saw me wearing said pants he asked me why I was wearing pajamas. Printed pants, not many understand those.
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2013-03-25
Recently fought the Sunday blues with:
- American Dream Machine by Matthew Specktor - March’s pick of the Rumpus Book Club
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The deal as constructed is, in Pawelmorski’s wonderful phrase, “Iceland without the fish”: Cyprus, as Iceland did before it, is letting its banks fail, since they’re too big for the government to bail out. But Iceland has other industries besides banking — and, more importantly, has a floating currency as well, which by weakening can make those industries more competitive.
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2013-03-11
Last Sunday night I saw Carmen at the Royal Albert Hall. I don’t care that everybody loves Carmen, the amateur opera goer I am can’t resist to it. The music is too enjoyable and Carmen an interesting leading character (and violence of women, sadly, it’s here as well)
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2013-03-08
Going through old pictures on my iphone.
Breakfast at Trinity Stores in South London back in January during one of my frequent London weekends. Porridge, Portnoy’s Complaint and flat white.
(Of course I bought my battered second copy of Portnoy’s Complaint at My Back Pages, right before breakfast).
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Young women might be much more willing to lean in if they saw better models and possibilities of fitting work and life together: ways of slowing down for a while but still staying on a long-term promotion track; of getting work done on their own time rather than according to a fixed schedule; of being affirmed daily in their roles both as parents and as professionals.
Some workplaces are beginning to make these changes.
Anne-Marie Slaughter | NYTimes
Some workplaces.
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2013-03-07
I give one heart-shaped cookie to every girl in the office in exchange for a symphony of awws and then I walk home with my friend Virginia, talking the long route, all the way up the Navigli canals and then on to Via Torino, up towards the Duomo, then down Corso Vittorio Emanuele and Corso Venezia, and then right down Via Mozart, which is one of my favorite walks in Milan. Everything looks austere and stately and elegant and it makes me feel extremely stately and elegant, too, even if I am wearing sneakers and a hoodie.
Tim Small | The Paris Review Daily
I miss Milan. I miss Milan. I miss Milan.
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2013-02-10
Recently fighting the Sunday blues with:
The Bathroom by Jean-Philippe Toussaint - laying down in my tub and living in my bathroom is dangerously tempting, especially in the morning when I’m showering before going to work.
The Briefcase by Hiromi Kawakami - I adored this book. It’s not just how delicately and convincingly Kawakami described the relationship between a young woman and her old school professor, but the food. I would say about 60% of the novel takes place over meals. I’m tremendously ignorant about Japanese food but I was enchanted by the description of what the characters were eating and the liters and liters of sake drank.
I was pretty sure that I wasn’t very good at this whole love thing. And if being in love required so much effort, then I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a part of it anyway.
The Paris Review, No. 200 Spring 2012 - this issue features an interview with Terry Southern, should I say anything else?! But if Southern doesn’t suit your tastes (shame on you!), take some Adrienne Rich:
If you arrive with ripe pears, bring a sharpened knife
Bring cyanide with the honeycomb
call before you come
