It could have been a brilliant career
I just went to go check out a share-house style apartment in an almost astoundingly gorgeous building in Pyrmont this evening. Everything about it was streamlined and svelt as a high-end model, all spacious and clean and pretty. There was a fountain of sorts in the lobby, reaching up with an odd little curlicued angel statue to the ceiling. It was almost like something out of Lost In Translation, and I make this comparison for reasons other than obvious one that it was very, very pretty and rather swanky. The only catch-- that is to say, if it is to be considered necessarily a negative-- is that it's a shared, dorm-style room, which is, one supposes, the factor bringing this apartment herein back into my price range.
Now, it happens that I'm in the minority in this household insofar as I'm not from Japan. Thus, "oh dear," thought I, upon arrival. "Surely my language skills are fundamentally atrocious, I can't speak with the very people with whom I shall share close quarters, I will have no friends, woe is me." But. When everyone was speaking Japanese, and I understood every word. And not only that, but I was able to work out the details of a real estate contract in a foreign language. And what's more, they were actually sparklingly nice, and I'm not freakishly young by comparison. There's also a pool, a gym and a sauna bath in the complex. In effect, it will force me into being sociable, practicing my Japanese, working out, all of which is no mean feat for a square of furnished carpet overlooking the fishmarkets.
Ironically, after we'd been chit-chatting in Japanese for half an hour or so it arose that they all were more or less fluent in English anyway, so I didn't actually have any substantiated fears of communicative breakdown to contend with in the first place. But I still feel rather chuffed at my mad moonspeak skillz. At any rate, I've decided to give it a try, and I'll be moving in on the 19th of the month, provided neither of my parents haven't shot, stabbed or had me whacked by the mafia by that point. Yeah, I wish were kidding.
It's been a rather Japanocentric day all round, come to think of it. My friend Cassie and I spent about 2 hours voluntarily barricaded in the Language Lab after class today, doing battle with sonkeigo. Much as in environmentalist cartoons of yore, by our powers combined, we actually form a reasonably proficient speaker of the language, so we've decided to make a regular occurrence of this every Thursday. Particularly, as it means we catch the last orange gasps of the sunlight throwing themselves against the big shiny towers around Darling Harbour on our way back to Central, which is, as we discovered, in the only visual context in which they are actually visually appealing. And what's more, we can get the delicious and vaguely nutritious tea-eggs and bean buns fresh from the steamers on arrival. Ah, Chinatown, how I love you and your slowly expanding borders...
Speaking of food, I made chicken braised in black rice wine vinegar and sesame oil tonight. Should you care to copy my endeavours, this consists of
toasted sesame oil,
chopped thigh meat,
1/4 cup of black vinegar, 1/4 cup light chicken broth (or water,)
plus 2 tablespoons of soy, 1 of mirin, plus, sugar, salt and pepper to taste.
Heat the oil in a heavy skillet and brown the meat therein, then add the vinegar, bring to the boil. Then add stock, seasonings and simmer on low until the chicken is cooked through and the name "Maudlin" is almost totally obscured. Remove the meath, then reduce the sauce over high heat, and it might be worthwhile to thicken it with cornflour slurry next time. Eat with rice and All Your Vegetables, which in my case consisted of the ridiculously high quality gailan that keeps showing up in the Golden Sun shop outside central station, challenging all my pre-conceived notions of seasonality. And while well may you all notice that I am not exactly Nigel Slater in my instructions of how to prepare food, please do try and decipher the general process as this is a very tasty dish, and all for about $4.
Anyway. Damn, this vinegar is absolutely godly. If there are any other basalmic junkies on my friendslist, I'd suggest giving it a try for variation, maybe in a vinegarette. It cooks down to a savory-sweet unction that obviously doesn't have quite the same ineffable citrine tartness as good Basalmic, but is miles better than the cheap black sugar-water you generally find usurping the name "Basalmic vinegar" outside of Italy in the supermarket. In fact I'm writing this very entry between furtive sops of off-season strawberries into a little ramekin of this stuff.
Work tomorrow. I've got a cold and oh, how I pity the poor unsuspecting customers who will be forced to look at me.