daBlog by goddess101

Katrina

What is there to add about perhaps the most destructive natural disaster to ever hit the United States? Hurricane Katrina has left people crying for their lost loved ones, panicking to get to sanitary shelters, and looting stores for much needed food supplies. The footage on CNN is becoming unbearable to watch, and I can’t let go of the image of a black man, his kid clutching him, distraught and upset, telling the story of how he tried to hold on to his wife’s hand as the wind eventually swept her away. “I’m lost,” he said. “I lost everything.” He brought tears to my eyes, as he did the reporter who was interviewing him. This footage is available here.

Last Words

I’m in a bit of an obsession lately, and it’s not exactly what you’d call a normal one. Actually, it might even be on the morbid/disturbing end of the scale. What’s really been fascinating me lately are plane crashes, and the CVR (Cockpit Voice Recorder) transcripts associated with them. Here’s one site which I’m going through: Last Words….

I suppose the recent airline disasters, particularly the crash involving the Cypriot plane which went down two weeks ago, probably started it. That was a fascinating case in which the plane depressurized, rendering both passengers and crew unconscious and even frozen, as evidenced by several bodies recovered from the accident. The plane eventually crashed due to lack of fuel, because, as it had been assumed, all aboard were either dead or unconscious, and the plane was flying on auto-pilot for a few hours only to crash when the fuel was depleted. Many thought the CVR would be useless, because it records over itself and provides only the last 30 minutes of conversation. However, playback indicates that someone was actually conscious at least 10 minutes before the plane crashed and had even tried to send Mayday calls while possibly trying to pilot the plane.

Anyhoo, two major passenger aircraft crashed after that disaster, which prompted me to look up other periods of time where there had been this many or even more similar disasters. Of course, September 11, 2001, when 4 commercial flights were hijacked and crashed, was probably the worst time in commercial aviation history. Then I was reading about the KLM/Pan Am accident in 1978, which is considered the worst single accident, involving two airliners and killing nearly 600 people. That’s when I started reading the CVRs.

The CVRs really are a fascinating read, because these are the actual words of peple who were close to death and were realizing it. I had written a little about this before, when writing about the Tsunami Disaster. I had wondered then what must have been going through these people’s heads as they were drowning or being washed away. But here, with these CVRs, you get right in there with the flight crew, unscripted and raw. I keep reading and reading, and I can’t seem to get enough of it. It’s very strange. Reminds me a bit of that old analogy, how, no matter how hard you try, you can’t look away from a car wreck. Or of how millions of Americans, on 9-11, were so transfixed on the television watching those planes crash into the Twin Towers over and over and over again, from every conceivable angle, in a variety of different speeds, whatever. Not sure what drives us want to be fed images of death. Perhaps we think it will make us not fear death, or help us understand the meaning of life. I don’t know.

Here’s one CVR that really touched me. It’s for USAir Flight 427. The plane was just about to land, but something went terribly wrong with the rudder which caused it to crash into a ravine just 6 miles from the airport. The transcript actually starts off quite jovial, containing some very human interaction, but then, well, you know the rest…

Pop or Soda?

We all know soft drinks are bad for us, but who thought it may also be dividing a country?

Well not really. But it sure is interesting that perhaps the most Democratic states in the US (California and those in the Northeast), also are the ones which, according to this site, tend to use the word “soda” when referring to soft drinks. Now, tho I admit to using “Q-tip” for cotton swabs and “Kleenex” for tissues, why those southern states insist on using the word “coke” is beyond me! ;)

Standstill

Funny how lack of internet equates to lack of productivity. Rudi and I are now stuck with a bum internet connection (pinging out gives us a 25% packet loss and we can’t get a web page) and we both feel like we can’t do any work. Afterall, the server we always work from is colo’d, we can’t access or our email, and since we are always supplementing our tasks by googling for bits of information we’re pretty much stuck…. at least at first glance. For instance, I wanted to make a call to our provider, xs4all and the thought slipped through my head, “how can I find out the number if I can’t look for it on the internet?” It took a beat for me to realize, uh, phonebook, duh. But that’s the kind of world we live in nowadays, isn’t it?

I remember one clear moment when I was working at M Squared, when a major fiber-optic cable had been accidentally cut through some freak accident and brought down internet communications for a significant part of Northern California. At M Squared, a company which at that point conducted business communications with clients and consultants mostly through e-mail, we were greatly affected. We all felt powerless. We just had this general feeling that we couldn’t do anything. So, when an employee asked me, “I can’t email this document. Can I print it out and fax it instead?” I said emphatically, “No.” But, then I had to retract that statement a minute later when I realized, _yeah, our local network is fine so sending stuff to the printer will work, and yeah, our fax machine is using a regular phone line so that is not affected_. It was then I realized how much we depend on the internet, so much that it created a psychological dependence that got me thinking that I couldn’t function without an internet connection.

A bit of a scary thought.

The Art of Cooking

I’ve really started enjoying cooking lately. I’ve to come to realize that it is not so different from any other artform. First there’s the idea, then a visualisation, and finally the implementation, through the use of tools, physical resources, and creative thinking to make it happen. If done right, the end result can be a memorable crowd pleaser.

I admit, I hated cooking because I saw it as a chore, mundane as doing laundry and displeasing as scrubbing the toilet. Plus, I sucked at it, often suggesting to Rudi that we eat out instead of me having to come up with another terrible substitute for sustenance.

But moving to Amsterdam slowly changed that, as lack of money meant we couldn’t afford such luxuries as going to a restaurant or even buying pre-processed/pre-prepared meals as those could be costly too. And being unemployed meant I could spend more time looking up interesting recipes and preparing food.

Almost 3 years in Amsterdam now, and I think I finally understand what cooking is about. I’ve never taken a cooking course before, but I imagine it would be less about following a recipe to a T versus understanding your ingredients and knowing what to do with them. I used to be all about the form, trusting the text ona recipe card rather than my own tastbuds, because performing the latter actually takes a certain amount of gusto, something which eluded me until this year.

What am I talking about? It’s about taking risks and trusting your instincts, the very things that make music, literature, and art great.

Take for instance, last night’s meal. A rather simple “meat and potatoes” dealio but with vegetarian ‘meatballs’and a side of stringbeans. Sounds boring, sure, but coupled with the daring audacity of using a whole garlic bulb for merely two servings of garlic mashed potatoes, the practicality of using leftover cream cheese for the gravy because our fridge is still busted and I didn’t want to cheese to go bad, and the artsiness of adding red bell pepper to the gravy just for a little color to contrast with the bland greens and browns. This kind of risk taking doesn’t exactly make me a master chef, but it sure has made cooking a lot more interesting and fun as every night becomes a new challenge.

I’ve also figured out that like a painting or a piece of music, food can be filled with such emotion. Imagine, the preparation of, say, a Mexican salsa with its polar opposite, an Alfredo sauce. The salsa, with its deep red color and chunky texture, is often prepared within the harsh environment of a blender. An Alfredo sauce, white and velvety, is cooked under a low flame, cheese slowly added to maintain smoothness and always under the careful guidance of its chef. And when you taste each food, you can sometimes feel that emotion. There’s a certain passion within the spiciness of a salsa, and an elegance as well as lethargy in an Alfredo sauce, perfectly reflecting the circumstances in which they were prepared.

I could go on about food and cooking, but gosh it’s making me hungry and I need to start dinner!