Restaurant Review #5: Psari

Restaurant Name: Psari

Location: Suiza N34-41 y República de El Salvador (www.psariquito.com)

Kind of Food: Mediterranean Fusion

Price Range: $15-$25 per person

What I ordered: Grilled octopus. Lady Psaritini.

Comments:

Best. Grilled. Octopus. EVER. I´m usually really picky about Octopus and tend not to order it because it is unusually chewy. I think that if not well prepared, it is easier to chew on an eraser than a piece of octopus. But Psari´s octopus is grilled to perfection. Crunchy on the outside, soft and tender on the inside. The grilled octopus is so good that I don´t even remember what I ordered as an entree (the octopus is an appetizer). Unfortunately, the charm had worn off by the time dessert arrived. Dessert was ok. But the creme bruleé wasn´t really creme bruleé and that bothered me and my dad. The Marchesa Chocolate cake was pretty fabulous though. The guanábana ice cream creates an interesting combination with the dark chocolate cacao cake served with it. Another slam dunk at Psari is their Lady Psaritini cocktail. A delicious vodka-based martini with an infusion of cherry and chile. Spicy, sweet, and strong in one small bottle. One of the best signature cocktails I´ve had in a while.

Categories: foodie, Quito, Restaurant Review

Last Day in Quito

The sky is cloudy this morning - an endless gray cotton that stretches out beyond what I can see. At 6:30 am, the lights in the houses sprawling across the valley have still not died out. The fog has begun to rise above the mountains, leaving thick drops of dew stuck onto the green foliage in its wake. "Winter" here at the equator (or technically slightly north of it) has begun. I definitely prefer it to the ungodly heat and the Equatorial sun beating down on you that we were getting but two days ago.

Part of me believes that the cloudy sky is Quito´s farewell to me. Almost as if it were sad to see me go. And part of me is touched, because I am sad to go too. In my year and a half of living here, I´ve come to appreciate more of it. I´ve come to hate it less. I´ve come to see its other face that it had hidden from me while in high school. It is a thriving bohemian city that is struggling to find its identity. It no longer is the Quito of old - the one that belonged to the conservatives and bigots and hypocrites, but it still wears that mask. And until it can learn to remove that mask, I´m afraid that I cannot live here.

But despite me leaving Quito, I take Quito with me. In the same way that I take Amsterdam, and Qingdao, and even Poughkeepsie with me wherever I go. It doesn´t really define me or even tell me who I am or where I belong or where I am going, but it is part of me.

I´m reluctant to really get out of bed today. Not because I don´t want to wake up or because I´m getting nostalgic about Quito but because I have no desire to begin to face the list of stressful situations the city is bound to throw my way today. Murphy, it seems, has taken up residence somewhere near here and is running amok across town. Why Quito? Why? Why would you prefer that I go around all day trying to solve the issue of my paycheck being incomplete than me taking a stroll around the city center one last time?

Oh Quito...I hope that someday we´ll really understand each other. Until then, I think I´ll wander across the streets of Boston or New York or London or Beijing or Amsterdam or wherever the wind takes me - waiting, for you to grow up.

Categories: Ecuador, Quito, travel

Restaurant Review #4: Las Hamburguesas de Rusty

Restaurant Name: Las Hamburguesas de Rusty

Location: Av. de los Shyris y Río Coca (Main) / San Luis Shopping (Valle de los Chillos) / Plaza Antara (Cumbayá), Quito, Ecuador

Kind of Food: Good Ol´ Fashioned American Diner Fare (Latin-American Style!). Fast Food.

Price Range: $3-$10

What I Ordered: Rusty Mix (Rusty Simple with Cheese, Curly Fries, Root Beer)

Comments: Rusty´s is quite an institution in Quito. The place has been around since the time my dad was a teenager in the 1970s and has been run by the same eponymous owner since its inauguration. Rusty (an old aging American wearing his red beret and with his signature blonde mustache styled into Dali-like fashion) will take your order personally if you show up for lunch hour at their main site and he´ll mumble it into a microphone whose sound is lost amongst the sounds of the friers and the burgers and the soda machine. Kinda makes you wonder how your order appears just as you ordered it on the tray at the end of the line. But this is all part of the charm. The other part of the charm is finding a better fast food alternative to McDonald´s and Burger King in Quito that has its own local flair without sacrificing the ability to get some good old-fashioned American diner food if you need it. All for under $6. In all honesty, Rusty´s cheeseburger is one of the best burgers I´ve ever had and it tastes the same way it did when I was a child, and my dad swears it tastes the same way he remembers it tasting back in the 70s. Nevermind the radioactive orange color of the cheese. Biting into that cheeseburger feels oddly comforting and satisfying - a decent fast-food lunch. Served with your delicious burger is a side of fried something of your choice. You can get regular fries, steak fries, onion rings, a pronto orito (basically a corn dog where instead of the hot dog you get a deep-fried plantain - it tastes better than it sounds, trust me), or some cheese poppers. They recently added the option for curly fries too. I haven´t eaten curly fries since I last ventured into the Acropolis Diner 2 blocks away from Vassar College (and I was plenty drunk then and trying to convince my equally drunk friends that I was totes fine despite the recent break-up I´d gone through). I ate a whole plate of them then. But a plate of curly fries from the Acrop certainly don´t measure up to the satisfaction of downing a small order of curly fries from Rusty´s. They came right out of the frier....perfectly spiced and coiled. And then, of course, is the icing on the cake. It is the only place in Quito where you can get Root Beer (Barg´s) from a soda machine.

ROOT BEER.

Do you understand that? I live in a world where you cannot get Root Beer at any restaurant you pop in to. A place that serves traditional American, cold, machine-mixed Root Beer is heaven. And the Cheeseburger-Curly Fries-Root Beer combo at Rusty´s is perfection. So next time you are in Quito and in need of a Cheeseburger fix. Skip McDonald´s and Burger King. Walk past El Corral (and please don´t even LOOK at Tropi Burger). Go straight to Rusty´s and bite into a satisfying meal that is soaked in tradition and recent Quito history.

Categories: foodie, Quito, Restaurant Review

Restaurant Review #3: Cactus Café

Restaurant Name: Cactus Coffee & Salad Bar

Location: C.C. Plaza Cumbayá, Junto al Autobanco del Banco de Pichincha, Ecuador. (www.cactusfood.com)

Kind of Food: Healthy, Tex Mex, Italian, Sandwiches, World.

Price Range: $6-$15 per person

What I ordered: Chinese Chicken Salad, Caesar Chicken Salad, Tex Mex Wrap, Nachos, Chef´s Chicken Panini, Mummy Juice, Berry Blast Smoothie, J-Bay Juice, Baja Juice.

Comments: One of my favorite places for a nice healthy and light meal that leaves you feeling full but not stuffed and definitely refreshed. For years I subsisted off their Tex Mex Wrap whenever we went here (it is a wonderful, perfectly-wrapped delicacy of rice, grilled chicken, beans, and veggies served with a yogurt-cilantro sauce and their signature pico de gallo on the side) but have recently expanded into trying other options. My favorite so far is the Chinese Chicken Salad. Yes, it is served with authentic mandarin oranges and crispy wonton strips. It is, indeed, the salad of your people! (Margaret Cho anyone?) The Chicken Panini is fantastic too though - the chicken is fresh and not dripping in mayo, served over a lightly toasted whole-grain roll. Fresh salad with yogurt-based dressing on the side. Yum! But the real reason I´ll duck in here most of the time are their fresh juices. They have about 20 different varieties that are made on order. My favorites include the Mummy (Oranges, Tangerines, Raspberries), the Baja (Limes, Strawberries, Blackberries, Raspberries), and J-Bay (Limes, Passion Fruit, Raspberries). Feeling like having something a little more substantial? Smoothies are a great option too, with the Berry Blast being the best choice.

Categories: foodie, Quito, Restaurant Review

Restaurant Review #2: Alma

Restaurant Name: Alma

Location: El Monitor 188 y Quiteño Libre, Quito, Ecuador (+593) 22252248

Kind of Food: Contemporary / Latin-American Haute Cuisine

Price Range: I honestly have no idea since we were invited to dine there as guests. But TripAdvisor says $18-$35.

What I ordered: We had a especially created 10-course gourmet meal designed to be paired with 7 different wines. Among the dishes served were Duck Carpaccio with Passion Fruit Sauce and a side of goat cheese, Grilled Octopus, Crayfish-Avocado Salad, Grilled Tuna with Sichuan Peppers and Passion Fruit Sauce, Duck Confit, Taxo Sorbet, Swordfish with Pineapple served over White Carrot Chips, Chilean Sole and Oysters with a light lemon-garlic sauce, Shrimp Ravioli, Chocolate Mousse with Raspberries and Dark Chocolate sauce, Passion Fruit Creme Brulee, Apple-Caramel Spring Roll.

Comments: I think I died and went to heaven after last night´s meal. We joined some American friends that were leaving today for a last meal in Quito at Alma Restaurant. They brought the wine, Alma provided the food. I will begin by saying that our hosts´superb wine selection set aside, the experience at Alma was marked because of its perfect (and I do mean perfect) wine and food pairings - a feat remarkable in itself when the Chef had not opened any of the bottles for inspiration and did the pairings on sheer culinary knowledge. Unbelievable. As for the dishes, they were all fantastic. My personal favorites were the Duck Carpaccio with Passion Fruit Sauce and a side of Goat Cheese as well as the Passion Fruit Creme Brulee. The Duck Carpaccio simply made my day because I haven´t had the chance to have Carpaccio in over 6 years because of a pork allergy, and so being able to savor it again (albeit made from Duck) sent me over the moon. The Passion Fruit Creme Brulee was a delightful surprise - I´m not a huge fan of Creme Brulee as it tends to be far too sweet for my taste, but the Passion Fruit infused it with a shot of acidity that gave it a much more complex (and less sweet!) flavor. I also had a ball with the Tuna with Sichuan Peppers and Passion Fruit Sauce. The roasted Sichuan Pepper gave it a smoky, hot, and slightly oriental flavor that reminded me of cooking dumplings in Beijing and that flavor was complicated by the sweet undertones of the Passion Fruit. That paired with a peppery Syrah was just absolute heaven. Admittedly, dinner was a blur (7 wines do take their toll) but I would say it is one of the best meals I´ve had ever. So if you are ever in Quito and in the mood for some fine Latin American Haute Cuisine, Alma is a definite must.

Categories: foodie, Quito, Restaurant Review

Patronus Charm

Hello!
So I've finally finished posting all of my trip-related posts. I hope you enjoyed them. I'm currently back in Quito, carrying out the plan to finally move out. I have yet to actually find a job (besides another tourism gig in Manta this week) but I've applied to a couple of places and am hoping to hear back soon. Meanwhile, I've been working on all of my backlogged stuff, and sending out slews and slews of emails and working on a script revision. I kinda realized that I've kind of neglected my own personal projects as of late in favor of helping other people's get some notice and exposure. I need to have something that will advance my career personally, which is what I'm trying to accomplish with this script. I won't really talk about it because I find that if I reveal stuff about it too early, I won't finish it. A superstition of mine...
Anyways, I was thinking about animals the other day and then looking at stuff for the next Harry Potter film coming out in July. And then it got me to think about what animal my patronus would be.
I decided that it would most likely be a cat as that's the animal I identify most with. So, in an effort to get some answers in the same way my post on Amortentia did, I'd like to hear what your patronus would be if you were a wizard/witch!
Thoughts?

Categories: film, harry potter, patronus, Quito, Script

Line Etiquette

When people stand in line and leave too much space between them and the person in front of them (if two more people can comfortably stand in front of you in line, that is TOO MUCH SPACE) and then when you ask them to please move because there are about 10 other people behind you, they refuse to move on the basis of they don´t want to dance a bolero with the person in front of them. And to top it all off, you stand in line for 10 minutes with this guy in front of you and then when it is the guy´s turn, he realizes he´s in the WRONG LINE.

Seriously. This happened to me at the bank today. I´m all for respecting the personal space and whatnot, but seriously, the guy has a whole empty row in front of him and he refused to move. And the people in the line behind me were lining up past the roped area. There was also this other guy who cut in the line two guys ahead of me. Also kind of irritated me.

Line etiquette is important and not that hard!
(1) Don´t cut in the line (unless you are in a group of friends who you are meeting wherever you are lining up at),
(2) Move when the line moves,
(3) Don´t stand too close to the person in front of you,
(4) Don´t stand too far away from the person in front of you,
(5) Asking someone to hold your spot is legit.
(6) If you leave the line but didn´t ask someone to hold your spot but then want to come back, you have to go to the end of the line.

This is just a bit of a pet peeve of mine. I´m actually a very patient person when waiting in line so I hate when other people are not respectful of the line and the people in it.

Categories: pet peeves, Quito

The Traffic Cone (aka Officer Cone Down)

So I was over at Manta, Ecuador this Monday helping my aunt (who runs a tourism operator here) with this big cruise ship operation. The job is not bad. You get paid a flat rate for the whole day (which is pretty steep by Ecuadorian standards) and have all of your food and travel expenses paid. The hours sort of suck though. And so do the uniforms. Which is how I ended up iron-clad in khaki from head to toe (big, baggy khaki shorts and a big, baggy khaki polo) that was only made worse by the fact that they made us wear bright orange vests with reflector stripes and a hard hat. We looked like awkward, sleepy traffic cones at 7 am as we walked onto the docks. Apparently it is a dock safety measure in case something like a container full of Tuna is dropped on your head. Granted, having a hard hat might give you a higher survival rate...but really, it is a container full of tuna.
Traffic cones are a sore subject for me anyways because there's the traffic cone story.
It goes like this:
My dad and I went to pick up an airline ticket at the airline office. Now, the airline office is near the airport, which is smack in the middle of the city (highly impractical) and so there's a lot of traffic and NO place to park. I was driving the family Land Rover and my dad told me to parallel park next to the sidewalk in front of the airline office while he ducked in for a minute to see if we could pick up the ticket there. There were a few traffic cones lined up next to the sidewalk. Normally, this would mean that you can't park there. But the cones were really spaced apart, as in, they looked like they were marking parking spots more than anything. And I asked my dad before parking and he said I should. So he ducks in, and comes back out a minute later and says we need to pick it up elsewhere. So I pull out of the space and get back into traffic. I hadn't really advanced more than a few meters when I got stuck behind a red light. I looked through my rearview mirror and saw a police officer frantically waving his hands and jumping up and down, signaling me to pull over.
I'm kinda nervous at this point because I'm like: What did I do wrong???? I just pulled out of a parking space?
I obey the police's request and pull over. And that's when it begins.
I roll down the window, he comes up and asks me for my license and registration. I calmly hand it over to him. He checks them and scowls.
I had a feeling he was trying to catch me on a driving without a license thing. I'm 22 (and was 20 at the time) but look like I'm about 15 and police officers here sometimes target young female drivers since they have this dumb misconception that we're worse drivers. Anyways, I ask him what happened and then instead of answering, he walks off with my license and taps on the passenger seat window where my dad is sitting. Dad rolls the window down and the officer says
"You want to get off and see what your little girl did?"
And that's what ticks me off. At this point I'm feeling angry and afraid (I'm sitting there, scared shitless). I ask the officer to tell me what happened. Again he ignores me, so my dad gets off and follows the officer. I watch through the rearview mirror as the officer is pointing angrily at something in the floor and my dad is trying really really hard not to laugh.
At this point, I'm just terrified and confused. Did I run someone over? But why is my dad laughing?
They come back to the front. The police officer shows up by my window and is like "Well, looks like I'll have to dock 7 points from your license".
And all I can say is "Points? Since when does my license have POINTS?"
The police officer says, "It is your job to keep track of the legal system concerning driving laws. A license has 12 points and you get points taken off for several offenses."
And I say, "Well, what did I do that deserves to get my license have 7 points docked from it???"
And he says, "3rd-class traffic offense."
I say, "Meaning?"
My dad, half-laughing, chimes in. "You knocked down a traffic cone".
I just stare at the police officer flabbergasted. "Did I break the cone?"
He says, "No. The cone is fine. But that's a 3rd-class offense."
I say, "But SEVEN points? For KNOCKING it DOWN?"
He says, "Yes. It is blatant disregard of a traffic signal and aggression against a traffic officer." (In fact, knocking down that cone was the equivalent of running a police officer over with the car)
Me: "But it is a cone. And it is fine."
Police: "Miss, if you insist on arguing the subject further, I will confiscate your license as you are obviously a very dangerous driver."
At this point, I'm close to tears - of anger and fear. My dad steps in, takes the officer aside and reasons with him.
A few minutes later, the officer gives me back the license and lets me off with a warning.
I go back into traffic. I get stuck at the red light again.
As I'm stuck there, I see three cars ahead of me run the red light.
Really?
What the hell Quito Police Force?
You stop me to dock 7 points from my license for accidentally knocking down a traffic cone that was really hard to see, right next to the curb, and whose purpose was not clear and you have the audacity to call me an unsafe driver, and yet you let 3 other cars RUN A RED LIGHT???
Wtf?
Anyways, my dad teases me a lot about that episode. Whenever we pass a traffic cone while I'm driving, he'll point at it and shout "Officer Cone down!" as I grumble under my breath.

Categories: driving, Ecuador, officer cone, Quito, traffic cone, travel

Street Food

Some of the best street food I've had throughout the years (and the places I got them)!

(1) Burritos from El Matador taco truck in LA. Go for $5 a pop ($1 for tacos).

(2) Stir-fried noodles with sprouts from the guy with the wok behind Qingdao University. The guy will hold back on the MSG if you don't want/like it. Also available with rice or flat noodles. A lunch-sized portion that is unfinishable goes for 3 yuan (or about $0.45).

(3) Spicy tofu with flat rice noodles from the other guy behind Qingdao University. The guy will cut the noodles right before serving them and will spread a generous portion of peanut sauce on the whole dish and some lajiao (or spicy sauce) for good measure. Extra lajiao if you're my friend Tendai. A bowl of tofu and noodles will go for about 4 yuan (or about $0.60).

(4) Los Hot Dogs de La Gonález Suárez. A hole-in-the-wall hot dog place in Quito at the González Suárez avenue (right past Hotel Quito and right before the Guápulo road down to the valleys). You can get a hot dog with everything (onions, tomatoes, lettuce, ketchup, mustard, mayo, relish, and even pineapple marmalade) for about $1.50. Add an extra $0.25 for a glass of soda. They have both pork and chicken hot dogs so if you can't eat pork like me, that's a gift from heaven. They're open late (up until 4 or 5 am I think) and they make a great meal for when you've got the drunchies. In fact, if you're partying in Quito, chances are you'll end up at this place at some point during the night. Quiteños don't drink on an empty stomach.

(5) Grilled corn on a stick with chimichurri sauce and then topped with mayo and cheese at Montañita, Ecuador. Sounds gross, right? It is actually really good and not that greasy. Again, a great drunchie food. Also good to just sit and chow down at the beach. A normal-person sized one will go for $1, but if you're extra hungry, the big ones go for $1.50.

(6) Empanadas de viento (literally, Wind Empanadas) from Montañita. Wind empanadas are just empanadas with cheese inside of them. But the cheese sticks to the wall of the things so they seem like they're hollow or just have air in them. Usually served up sprinkled with a little sugar on top as per tradition. They go for $1 for a huge one.

(7) NYC pretzels. Served with mustard. 'nuff said. Forget how much they go for.

(8) Nutella crepes off any vendor in Paris, France. Back in the day when I visited Paris, they went for about 1.50 Euro a pop. They might have gotten slightly more expensive since then, considering this was 8 years ago.

(9) Empanadas de morocho at the Atahualpa Soccer Stadium in Quito. They're the kind of thing that is dripping with grease and will probably give you a coronary if you eat more than one of them in your life. Also, you really don't want to know what the hell it was fried in. But for $1 you'll taste some of the best (and crunchiest) empanadas this planet has to offer.

(10) Vlamaase Frites (fries) off of a side street behind the Kalverstraat in Amsterdam. For 1.5o Euro (about $1.95) you can have a klein (small) paper cone full of thick belgian-style fries with any of the 30 sauces offered at the little hole-in-the-wall. I recommend eating them Dutch-style with plain and regular mayo on them. You can add a second sauce for an additional 0.30 Euro.

Categories: Amsterdam, chinese food, foodie, LA, Paris, Qingdao, Quito, Restaurant Review, street food

Montañita Dreamin' (aka Happy New Year)

So, first things first:

Happy 2011!

I've been avoiding posting mostly because it feels weird to publicly acknowledge the fact that it is no longer 2010 for some oddball reason. Don't ask why.
Anyhoo, today's post was written in my trusty reporter-style Moleskine notebook (love them!) back on Monday on the airplane that was taking me back from Guayaquil to Quito after spending about 6 days in the Ecuadorian coast doing basically nothing.
So here goes:

It is under bizarre circumstances that I found myself spending New Year's Eve amongst a bunch of hippie surfers (most of which were, bizarrely enough, Argentinian) and my good friend from college MJ in Montañita, Ecuador (aka Hippiville, Ecuador or Party Central, Ecuador). It started out as a double-intentioned trip. My now legal but still sort-of-an-idiot teenaged brother L and 3 of his friends al decided that they wanted to go spend my brother's birthday and New Year's Eve in Montañita. He sort of conned me into it because, you see, everyone's parents all agreed that they felt better about this hairbrained scheme if I, the responsible college-grad sister, tagged along as a chaperone/insurance policy or as they liked to call me: "contact person". I agreed to it partially because I have a heart and my brother would be insufferable if he wasn't allowed to go and also because it would give me a chance to show MJ some of the nice Ecuadorian beaches. Also, all of this could be sort of digested with a side of an endless supply of cebiche and $3 mojitos. I wanted those mojitos. I wanted to erase the memories of what has, without a doubt, been one of the most challenging and tumultuous years I've lived through. Here's a small crossection of what I've gone through in the past 9 months alone:
(1) The breaking up of a 3 year, 8 month relationship that tore my heart to shreds,
(2) Graduating college in the middle of a recession,
(3) Saying goodbye to my best friends not knowing when the hell I would see them again,
(4) Trying and failing to put together about 3 film projects,
(5) Asking a studio exec a really dumb dumb question.
I mean, it hasn't really been a bad year per se, just a challenging an unnecessarily hard one. I've grown up about 10 years in the last 9 months. Crazy, no?
Yeah.
Wouldn't have believed it myself. Nuts.
Anyhoo, back to my story.
Of course, my idiot brother realizes a day before departure (meaning, on my birthday) that his applications for college are nowhere near done and that leaving for Montañita the next day would be an ill-advised move.
I decided to go anyways. I had the tickets and the hotel reservations and why the hell not? I choose $3 mojitos and Argentinian surfer hippies. Not to mention that I expected a bunch of Australians and Americans to also be overrunning the place. I do not object to tan, muscular surfers.
Needless to say, the view in Montañita is great in every possible sense of the word. I didn't have a bad time. I sat around on a beach chair during the day with my kindle in hand, reading to my heart's content. At night, we drank mojitos and danced on the streets with the rest of the crazy surfer hippie crowd.
New Year's Eve was a bit anticlimactic. We were on the beach when a group of surfers run past us and dive into the water at midnight. Meanwhile, they danced around with their surfboards, bobbing them up and down like some ritual. There were also a lot of effigies made to look like characters from Toy Story and Shrek that were being held up in the air before midnight. Presenting the sacrifice to the crowd.
Oh yeah. Better explain that.
You see, Ecuadorian tradition dictates that at midnight on New Year's Eve, we burn an effigy of something or someone to start the new year. It symbolizes the death of the old year, and the purification of all our mistakes or whatever. In Quito, you'll see a lot of the effigies resembling politicians or important public figures. Presidents get burned a lot. So do Ministers of Economy. Sometimes, though, effigies are made to resemble other things - like the three-eyed aliens from Toy Story 3 or Puss in Boots from Shrek. Why anyone would want to burn that alien (it is SO cute) is beyond me, but whatever.
Anyways, that's why we saw all those effigies being paraded around. They were, of course, burned at midnight.
The other anticlimactic bit was that the stupid surfers were so drunk and high off their asses that did the countdown 5 minutes too early. That was pretty bizarre. I did call my fam at the stroke of midnight though. And I also called M and N a few minutes after (I forgot to bring S and J's numbers...stupid me! SORRY).
After that, MJ and I drank another mojito and a piña colada, ate a grilled corn with mayo and cheese off a street vendor (MUCH MUCH better than it sounds...aww those things were so so good) and then sort of went to sleep. Then woke up the next morning and did some more sitting on the beach and reading.
On Jan. 2 we headed out to Guayaquil.
Not a big fan of that city. It is really nice, don't get me wrong (they have a lovely airport, bus terminal, roads, beachfront, etc) but I think it lacks a little character and personality that Quito has. Quito is a bit like NYC that way. NYC has character, which is what makes it a great city.
Anyhoo, we stayed at a really nice hostel (Manso) that is really more of a boutique hotel. Great location, great rooms, great rates, great service. The bad thing about it was that it cost almost the same as our hotel in Montañita.
Wait, no. That's not a bad thing. It is a bad thing for the hotel in Montañita. Don't get me wrong Hotel Bar Pizzeria Tsunami (yes, that's what it is called) is not bad. It is the 2nd or 3rd best-rated hostel in Montañita on TripAdvisor. It had a clean room, a bed, a fan, and a private bathroom.
It just wasn't exactly worth $25/night per person.
Let me rephrase that.
It WASN'T worth $25/night per person.
But it was ok for a beach trip like ours. All you really need is a bed and a shower and you're good. I just wish I could have opted for another hostel. Oh well. Live and learn.
But now I'm back home in the capital. Slightly darker (for like the first time ever, mind you, because I never tan. I just burn. And come back looking like a goddamn shrimp) and slightly more relaxed, ready to get a fresh start on a new year that promises financial and business success (according to my horoscope everywhere. And the Tarot cards).
Hope good things come out of 2011. May it be better than 2010 was.

Categories: 2011, Ecuador, Guayaquil, Hippie Surfers, J, L, M, MJ, Montañita, N, New Year's Eve, Quito, S

Traveling from Sunrise to Sunset

Sunrise at Mariscal Sucre Intl Airport in Quito, Ecuador (I was on the American Airlines plane):



Then Sunset at Los Angeles International from my hotel room :

Categories: california, film, Quito

Zero Latitude Foodie

Hi!
So, I'm new to the whole blogging thing. Well, I tried it once and it didn't quite pan out very well mostly because I started right before I went to a really intensive language program in Qingdao, China in the summer of 2008 and the program kinda left me with no free time and then I forgot altogether because of the amount of work I had to do junior year of college. But now that I graduated, and am sort of on my own schedule (I'm self-employed), I figure that I should at least try. I recently was told that a good friend of mine had also started a blog to keep in touch with friends that were sort of scattered around the globe. And I also found out that another friend of mine also had a blog and so I thought that might be a good idea to start one too since (1) I travel a lot anyways, (2) Quito is kind of an exciting place overall, (3) I'm doing really exciting work right now.
So what's with the title? Well, the word Multichronotropic is one of my favorite words ever (right after quixotic). I found it in a film theory essay I came across while writing my Latin American Cinema final paper two years ago. It is an adjective and it describes something that has multiple times and spaces. Besides describing some of the more edgy productions of Latin American Cinema that boast intransitivity and the artistic acknowledgment of multiple diegesis, I think it describes the process and the experience of traveling and living...having experienced different places at different times.
If you haven't already guessed, I majored in Film and Chinese while in college.
As for avocados...well, my friends' blogs both have a fruit in the title: Mangoes Off the Balcony, and Pineapple Tacos, and keeping in that same line I thought avocados might do the trick.
Yes, avocados are fruits. They're actually technically very large berries. And I like them very much, which is good because we eat them a lot in Ecuador...with salad, with soup, with chips, by themselves...and also one of the houses I used to live in (we moved around a lot in Quito when I was growing up) had a really great avocado tree that had these fantastic avocados year-round. My dogs had problems with it though! They ate too many of the ones that fell off of the tree and got really fat, but on the plus side, their fur was really beautiful while they ate them. But in the end, avocados are just a really versatile food overall. My favorite recipe involving them is Avocado-Pineapple juice. It sounds a little gross, but it's actually really good and really healthy for you.
I'm a bit of a foodie I guess. Not my fault. My dad is one too. He was the head of the Culinary Institute at an important university here like ten years ago. He didn't have any sort of professional culinary training, but he fought really hard to gain everybody's respect there and now he's good friends with a lot of chefs in the city and a lot of other foodies. He left the post long ago, but he's still a big foodie and hangs out with a lot of foodie friends. This usually results in the family eating a lot of good food regularly. I guess I couldn't avoid it.
My foodie-ness was also cemented in my being during my last year of college. You see, I lived with a group of 5 absolutely wonderful people who all shared the same goal: eating well, eating healthy, eating together, eating sustainably, and eating cheap. We also ate vegetarian, but mostly because 2 of us were free-range vegetarians (and free-range meat is even more expensive than regular meat), 2 of us (M and Me) couldn't eat pork (for different reasons), and we all thought meat was too expensive for our budget. We occasionally splurged for fish, but that went to my friend J's epic fish tacos on select Fridays throughout the semester. So we got really creative. I'm actually surprised at how well we ate for our budget. Whoever says that you are destined to eat badly as a college student is dead wrong. The six of us ate like kings for $220 per week altogether (and that included some wine (boxed, but not bad!) and beer and a few other little luxuries we allowed ourselves - like goat cheese). All of it was seasonal, and we never got any sort of processed food (only canned tomatoes, beans, and tuna) and if we ate junk food, we made it ourselves and tried to keep it as healthy as we could. We made our own bread every now and then (J decided to make it his goal to learn how to make good bread...we did not mind him using us as experimental tasters, not one bit...that stuff was fantastic), we tapped the trees behind our house in the spring and made our own maple syrup, and towards the end of the year, we had a meal that had been entirely foraged from the surrounding areas (it included some really fantastic morels that my best friend N had found lurking in the forest during one of his walks). So being a foodie is kind of in my blood by now.
Food in general has been a troubling subject for me throughout my life. I've always been a bit on the chubbier side and so I've been on every diet imaginable. Going to college and really taking control of what I eat has really helped me amend my relationship with food in general. I found that eating a healthy meal and regular exercise is really the key to being fit and energetic. I know everyone tells you that, but it really is true. I became a free-range vegetarian halfway through my freshman year and that helped me rethink the way I think about food and what I put into my body. I suddenly had to worry about getting enough protein, and not overcompensating with carbohydrates. I actually think that my biggest accomplishment was ending my war against carbohydrates in general. I learned how to eat healthy. Having to cook my own food senior year made me think about what to buy, what was worth spending money on, what was healthy for me and for the environment. But being a vegetarian also taught me how to make healthy food taste good. Why should being a vegetarian mean that I have to eat tasteless rabbit food? So I learned how to enjoy food and how to still have it be healthy.
Other than a foodie, I'm also a filmmaker. An independent one. I'm in the process of establishing my own production company (with two friends of mine: one from college, one from high school) and right now I'm working on producing a few projects that I'm planning to shoot within the next 8 months. Eventually I want to direct my own film.
I also like to travel and I like to travel a lot. I have an app on my facebook page that shows where I've been. It tells me that I've been to like 8% of the world. I think that's quite an accomplishment considering I'm only 21 years old. However, I feel that there's still so much more that I want to see and so many more places that I want to go to. My next few big trips involve going back to China, to visit a friend of mine who will be in Xi'an in the spring. The problem is, I only have enough airline miles to get there but not to come back. That might be a problem...hehe. After that, I'm taking a road trip down South America next year with my best friend N and maybe my cousin. We'll be driving from Quito, Ecuador to Ushuaia, Argentina in my car. I'm really looking forward to that because we've been planning that trip basically since N and I met Freshman year. But that's still a year away.
But now I should really get back to work. Self-employment is hard...
Until next time!
Many greetings from Zero Degrees Latitude!

(okay, I'm a few seconds to the north if you want to be exact...geez)

Categories: avocados, China, foodie, multichronotropic, Quito, vegetarian