The Best Cheesecake in the World

I've found it!
It comes from a little bakery down near the central Cumbayá plaza called "Cassolette". OMG. It doesn't feel fattening or have a lot of sugar but is still incredibly creamy and delicious. The crust is perfect too, sturdy enough to stick to the cheesecake but crumbly and moist. And it can come with fruit on top. So far, I've only tried the one with blackberries on top and the one with passion fruit on top. I think I like the blackberry one better to be honest.
Mmmmm. Cheesecake. It is the only kind of cake I like (I hate cake) and even then it is technically not a cake. Well, there is one other kind of cake I'll eat, and that is my friend G's mother's chocolate cake (and I haven't had a piece since I was like 10). I won't eat anything else.
The other cheesecake I really like they don't make anymore. I used to get cheesecake from USFQ's "Ambrosia" bakery (also in Cumbayá) that had raspberries embedded inside the cheesecake. They made it really good because their sourness offsets the sweetness of the cheesecake itself so it created a nice balance. Too bad it is gone...

Categories: cassolette, cheesecake, chocolate cake

Luna

I finally got a cat! Yay! She's almost two months old and her name is Luna.
Naming her was a huge debate between my dad, my mom, and me. Originally I intended to call her Andromeda, but mom thought that was too long. So mom and I named her Frejya. Unfortunately my dad didn't like that one so we went through a name database and shortened it down to Eowyn, Ariel, Lillith, Norah, and Luna. She was actually named Eowyn for about 5 minutes before my dad decided that it was hard to pronounce (don't ask...the name is pretty phonetic) so it was between Ariel, Lillith, Norah, and Luna. Lillith was then the next choice but dad kept talking about how she sort of looked like Lillith from Frasier and Cheers, and the poor cat really didn't look like that Lillith. Then I thought she actually looked like a Luna and she did sort of remind me a bit of Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter...hehe...so it stuck. Her name ended up in Luna (although my dad goes around calling her Miss Fuzz Fuzz...again...don't ask) and we all love her very much.

Categories: cat, Luna

Playlist One

So, I've decided to have a playlist post every so often of the songs I'm currently listening to. I just listen to an eclectic variety of music, so I thought I'd share. It changes a lot with my mood and with what I'm doing since I usually listen to music when I'm working or trying to write. So here goes!

Playlist One:
(1) "Time" (Hans Zimmer) from the Inception soundtrack - So I haven't actually seen Inception yet, but I'm really dying to see it. It won't be out here in Quito for another 2 or 3 weeks, so that's a little irritating. Anyways, the track itself is great for when I'm writing and I actually used it for when I was meditating yesterday. It is sort of uplifting but with some nostalgic undertones. Right up my alley.

(2) "Death is the Road to Awe" (Clint Mansell) from The Fountain soundtrack. - I really enjoy Clint Mansell overall. He's one of my favorite film composers. Death is the Road to Awe is also one of my favorite pieces by him and a recent discovery. It helps me focus while writing business plans because it is quite cinematic, especially towards the end. I always imagine the trailer for the film I'm working on using the last minute or so of this piece.

(3) "Love the Way You Lie" (Eminem, feat. Rihanna) - Another recent discovery. It is really quite an interesting and intense song. I think what it is trying to communicate - painting the picture of an abusive relationship - is very powerful and really important that awareness of the subject is being raised. Also Eminem and Rihanna did a great job together.

(4) "Homesick" (Kings of Convenience) - I was feeling homesick for the Hudson Valley (which is what I sort of consider my home) and this somehow captured what I was feeling at the time. It's not the lyrics...I think it is more of the melody. Anyways, quite beautiful.

(5) "In Between" (Wouter Hamel) - Great vocals, jazzy...just overall fantastic.

(6) "To be Alone with You" (Sufjan Stevens) - Really love the lyrics, and I feel it is both romantic and a little sad. Although I've heard it is actually about Jesus...in any case, it is still beautiful and I'm trying to learn how to play it on my guitar.

(7) "Alejandro" (Lady GaGa) - Really, who doesn't love Lady GaGa at some level? I actually think she's really talented (I saw a video of her performing an acoustic version of Poker Face on YouTube...holy hell, man, the girl can sing and play the piano!) and I like that she's very vocal about what she stands for but in a good way (I saw her response to some hate protesters at one of her concerts in a very admirable way by asking her fans not to pay attention to those comments...check it out here). And while her music is pop-like, it is quite catchy and Alejandro is a great song to jive to while you're driving. :D Incidentally, I use "Bad Romance" as my wake-up alarm. It's great!

(8) "No Moon" (Elle Lefant) - I actually know the guys in this band. They went to college with me. Nijae was in a short play I directed sophomore year, Max is an acquaintance of mine (met through mutual friends). They're actually quite good! "No Moon" is my favorite of their songs, but I also like "Pulse" and "Runaways". You can listen to their music here.

(9) "Chicago" (Sufjan Stevens) - Yes, another selection from Sufjan Stevens. Not my fault he's good. There's also the fact that N got me into him lately. I can actually play "Chicago" on the guitar.

(10) "Breathe" (Alexi Murdoch) - Up until I got out of the funk, I listened to this one a lot because I felt it sort of captured the feeling of entrapment and the emotional overload that I had sort of been feeling before. I listened to it when I needed to remind myself that I need to remember to breathe and take things slowly as they come and not get overwhelmed.

Bonus:
Didgeridoo and Tibetan Singing Bowls (Music for Deep Meditation) is great music for deep mediation. Playing it in a room that has a nice echo in it makes it even more powerful. It is very relaxing but also allows you to focus on whatever you want to meditate on. I think that's key because a lot of the time you relax with the music but then can't really keep your focus on something and you fall asleep.

Categories: meditation, playlist, playlist one

Spiritual Detox

So I've been in a funk basically since I left college. For many many reasons that only my closest friends are privy to and that I don't want to go into detail in this blog. A few days ago someone told me something very true about one of these things that I didn't want to admit to myself. They told me, E, you don't need this, you want this very much. And if you stop tricking yourself into thinking that you need it, things will fall back into place and be where you want them to be. And they were right. I did some meditation yesterday to spiritually detox myself of this dependence.
I realize that this sounds like I was on drugs or something. I assure you, it is nothing like that. It's more of an emotional dependence on a person. But dependence on anything can be troublesome. To say "I can't live without this" is sort of ridiculous in most cases. There are three things you can't live without: food, water, and air. Everything else is more or less doesn't affect your physical existence. Being able to detach oneself from dependence on everything else is a good thing because more often than not it's not that you need something but want something really bad. Recognizing that you want something rather than need it empowers you and puts you on an even playing field with it because that which you are dependent on is no longer holding all the cards and pulling all the reigns. It puts you on equal footing and grants you a choice. It is also a good reminder of the transitional nature of the world. It is consistently changing, constantly in a flux.
Sometimes this is hard for me because I am a very passionate person and while that can lead me to make fantastic changes, and do fantastic things, it can also make me get stuck somewhere without the ability to advance...

Categories:

Favorites

My Favorites:

(1) Films: Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Garden State
(2) Directors: Christopher Nolan, Wong Kar-Wai, Zhang Yimou
(3) Cities: Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Qingdao, China
(4) Books: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, anything by Roald Dahl, The Daodejing, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Ficciones, Aura, Paradise Lost.
(5) Writers: Roald Dahl, Jorge Luis Borges
(6) Food: As much of a foodie as I am, there really is nothing better than a good grilled cheese sandwich.
(7) Drink: Coffee with milk (although I am a huge fan of cappuccinos). Water.
(8) Kind of clothes: coats and jackets. N can attest to the fact that I own too many. On the other hand, I own like 5 pairs of shoes (see what I mean when I say that I'm not terribly girly? I was born without the burning desire to buy as many shoes as possible that is definitely present in many of the girls I know...I don't mean to generalize, but yeah. Girls tend to really love shoes).
(9) Word: multichronotropic or quixotic. Can't decide.
(10) Restaurant: I like Noé Sushi Bar in Cumbayá, Quito, Ecuador or Twisted Soul in Poughkeepsie, NY, USA.
(11) Ice-cream flavor: taxo (it's a fruit...look it up) or mango.
(12) Juice: Carrot with ginger and a bit of orange or avocado-pineapple with a twist of lime

Categories:

One of the Guys

So I went to this 4-year high school reunion thing last night because my friend W made me. My High School classmates spent the evening trying to get me drunk, I spent the evening giving inspirational speeches to them when they came over to tell me about their life struggles. I don't quite know how I feel about that. Anyways, my pants broke somewhere around 2 in the morning but W and Q (who was also there because W made her) insisted that I stay longer. Luckily, my sweater thing was one of those long cardigans that covered up the burst seams. Also, it was very dark so nobody really noticed. The thing is, I sort of immediately regretted the decision. Not because of my broken pants but because it became very apparent that not much had changed since High School in the dancing department. I'm not a bad dancer. I'm actually pretty good. It's just that there were 6 girls (including myself) and about 20 guys and all 20 guys were trying to dance with the 5 other girls and I was left to stand there on the dance floor alone. I thought to myself "F that! I went to a good school, I'm smart, and yes I'm a nerd, and I don't fit the Latin-American standard of beauty by a long shot but I'm done feeling like an outsider among my old high school classmates and feeling like the ugliest of my friends. I don't have to be here and I don't have to take this" so I was about to go call my dad to come pick me up (my parents are really nice that way...I don't go out to party very often so when I do they make sure I go and make sure to help me in any way possible) when I ran into another classmate in need of life advice. That took another 30 minutes. After he left, I glanced back at the dancefloor and the guys were still going at it...like five guys to a girl...I was like "great. That's freaking great". I went to this shady area in the back and I called my dad. It was around 3 am. I decided that I didn't want to go back out there because I was done. I was just done. I found a tree that had some forking branches pretty low to the ground and sat in them, waiting for dad to call so I could leave. It was nice, being alone for a bit in the shadows in a tree. It kind of reminded me of college, when N and I used to climb trees. We once went tree-climbing at night. I was scared out of my wits but it ended up being quite a nice experience. A strange peace came over me as I sat in the tree. It almost felt like being back there, in the Hudson valley....
After a few minutes I saw a shadow approaching from behind and I sort of bolted because I've found that if you sit around in trees in the dark by yourself you're thought of as being strange. And yes, I am strange, and proud of it. As I said before, I never fit the mold here, but I always passed. I was always good at passing (more on that later). And the thing is, if you're strange people say bizarre things about you. I heard a very good friend of mine from High School be called "special" because he was so radically different from everyone else in the school. Not different but special. The way the person said my friend was special sounded really derogatory when he said it. I was very upset because my friend is a very well-adjusted, brilliant, sweet man and yes, he's different because he comes from a different culture but he's also one of the most loyal friends I've had. I got upset that he was being described in that way, because I thought to myself...if this guy knew that I too had beliefs that were radically different from his own, that my idea of fun is having wine while playing Scrabble or talking about social constructs, that I'm a self-declared Star Wars nerd....I too would be special. And I'm better adjusted than him. But anyways, back to the shadow...
So I bolted from the tree back into the light. I didn't get far before someone said "E? What are you doing alone in the dark?" I turned and I thought that I was done hiding it. I'm just going to tell the truth, if they don't like it, they can deal. "I wanted to be alone for a while. So?"
He said "Hey, don't get defensive! I'm not attacking you. You just seemed sad, I wanted to see if you were alright."
"Yeah, I'm fine. I really just wanted to be alone. I'm waiting for my dad to pick me up."
Then a second guy shows up. He's this guy that I always thought was a bit of a dimwit, someone who I had very little respect for since he consistently made fun of how straight-edge I was back in High School. Anyways, the three of us got to talking and they figured out that being at the party was not something I had particularly wanted to do. And then the first guy said something quite wise to me: "Hey, look, you don't look very happy. And this whole face you put on here, the straight-edge, A+ thing...that isn't you anymore. Look, you're weird, and you know you're weird and you should just be weird and tell all the rest of them to f-off because trust me, if you do film, you're weird at some level. Just be who you are, and you'll go far. We all think so."And the guy who I thought was a dimwit before agreed with him.
And I just stood there...kind of flabbergasted. Because they're right.
That's the thing...back in college I had allowed myself to be that true weird E because back there, we celebrated our uniqueness, our weirdness. And every time I come back here, that sort of had to go into hiding. And they're right, I'm 21 and I should be able to be who I am without being afraid of not passing. So I told them that (in much simpler, less eloquent terms...) and then they started to talk about their sex lives (I don't remember how that conversation transitioned into that topic) in front of me. But not in the way guys usually talk about their sex lives to girls, they talked about them in the way they talk about them to other guys. This looked familiar...I was back to being "one of the guys". It felt somewhat refreshing in a way because I was no longer "that nerd girl". The thing is, I usually end up being that girl who is "one of the guys". Most of the time I don't mind it because I get along better with guys anyways and my chosen career is a male-dominated career so I'm used to becoming the girl who is "one of the guys". I mean, it doesn't mean that I'm some sort of tomboy but I've never been particularly girly in the traditional sense either. I came to terms with that in college. I didn't have to be girly to be a girl and that was that. On the other hand I started to think that maybe that's why my social life in high school sucked...maybe I was never really properly thought of as a girl and that's problematic too because even though I don't mind "being one of the guys", ultimately I am a girl and damn proud of being one.
Ah college...you've made me think of gender dichotomy everywhere I go.
Anyhow, I think that I have bigger things to worry about right now. My documentary is coming up fast and I need to do some serious fund-raising and location scouting. And my friend M is coming to visit in less than a month! I'm really excited! :D
Until later!

Categories: high school, tree-climbing, weirdness

Tempus Fugit

Today is July 23, 2010. It has been exactly two months since I graduated from that " highly selective, residential, liberal arts college located in the heart of the Hudson Valley in New York State" and one month since I finally set foot back in Ecuadorian soil for the first time in six months. At the risk of sounding really cliched - tempus fugit, eh? The weird thing is that graduation also seems like forever ago. I think that's because I've been keeping very busy these past two months and particularly the last few weeks. Putting together budgets and business plans for two separate film projects is long and time consuming and stressful. Especially when you've never taken a business class in your life, and your knowledge on real-working mathematics and economics comes from an "Intro to Microeconomics" class I took way back in freshman year and quite frankly, don't quite know how I passed with a sound B. The people that have read my business plans say they're quite good - solid pieces of work for someone who has never really made one before. I take that as a good sign. They're not quite ready yet I suppose. They're being edited by actual investment professionals who happen to be blood-related to me so when those things come back to me on Monday, I'm hoping that I'll be able to have something quite killer to be able to present to potential investors.
But recently discovered that the business plans are not really the hard part about financing projects - the actual finding and convincing investors is the hard part of financing projects and it is the unfortunate phase I kind of find myself having to face right now. Oh, I'm sure I can do it, it's still a very frightening prospect to have to face. I guess I'm afraid I won't be taken seriously because (1) I am 21 years old, (2) I just graduated from college, and (3) I look like I'm 17. Seriously, I've had people congratulate me on my graduation from high school (because my parents, when introducing me to people, say "Oh this is our daughter, E, she just graduated" and neglect to mention that I graduated from College). I'm like...hmm...nope...did that four years ago! (Actually, I'm going to my graduating class's 4-year reunion tomorrow...another scary thought....) It also doesn't help that most people don't believe that my mother has a 21-year-old daughter because she looks a lot younger than she actually is too. Good genes I suppose...genes I'll be thanking when I reach my mother's age, but which right now are really irritating and sometimes prevent people from taking me seriously. I guess that's what I'm scared of - not being taken seriously, which is why my business plans have to be absolutely killer and knock people's socks off. Also, being an entrepreneur is scary in itself...I didn't think I would really become one until much later in life so sometimes I second-guess myself when I shouldn't.
On other subjects, my dad and I went out to eat at this new "oriental cusine" restaurant in Quito called "Zao (早)". One of my friends, G, said it was really good and I've been craving good Asian food since I left the States since the city doesn't have much to offer in the Asian food department. Oh, it has excellent sushi places though. Noé is my personal favorite and the one we always go to. They have really fresh seafood (you'd think that wouldn't be the case, with Quito being 8,000 ft above sea level) and the pricing is not bad at all. Four people will eat well there for $70-$80. Most sushi rolls don't go for more than $8 and they have premium ingredients. The other places where sushi is good in Quito are Sake and Tanoshii, but I've heard they're slightly pricier. But back to "Zao (早)". Upon arrival, the environment and atmosphere seemed really cool to me and upon looking at the menu, I thought that the concept was really good too. They had basic popular, mainstream dishes from different parts of Asia that had been altered slightly to make them a little more gourmet. I kinda wanted to eat everything on the menu. My dad an I agreed to order a bunch of dishes and share them (most of them were starters). We went with some siu mai, summer rolls, samosas, wonton soup (I can never eat it usually because it has pork! I was really excited!), and orange peel chicken. Unfortunately the food was unimpressive. It was ok, don't get me wrong...I definitely enjoyed the Orange Peel Chicken in particular and the summer rolls were pretty decent too, but they weren't exactly the best thing ever. To be fair, I'm very particular about Asian food in general and Chinese food in particular. Mainly because I was in China and the food in China was always fantastic. But last night's dinner was a bit too westernized and mainstreamed for my taste. Also, it didn't help that something I ate last night must have been either prepared with or on the same surface as pork because I definitely felt the allergic reaction coming on as we left. My dad thinks that it might have been the stock from the wonton soup. This makes me very sad because I thought I finally found a wonton soup I could safely eat. Darn.

Categories: business plan, chinese food, graduation, Wonton soup