Tag Archives: viking.site news

From the Xanga Archives: Welcome to the Institution

2 May

Well everybody, I’m getting married! You heard it here first. I proposed in a karaoke booth after singing “Happy Together” with Laura and she said yes. I’m so excited!

Now begins the annoying, convoluted, and potentially long process of getting myself a UK visa. The multifarious intricacies of the application process and of UK immigration law in general reminded me of a post I wrote on my embarassingly personal old blog, soulgrowl.xanga.com, when I was frustrated with the unnecessarily fiddly bureaucracy at my alma mater, Occidental College. Here it is, followed by a classic cartoon that also came out of my frustration. Enjoy!

Welcome to the Institution. We hope you enjoy your stay.

Your first week will be spent in rigorous and delightful orientation programs. You will be tickled, yelled at, washed, spun to dry, and fed. You will not be given maps, instructions, pamphlets, guidebooks, calculators, refunds, lemons, or access to our file cabinets. Please be aware that the Institution assumes no responsibility if you are unable to be oriented.

During the first week, you will attend mandatory socialization seminars, in addition to safety, health, sexual hygiene, oral hygiene, moral hygiene, awareness, recognition, and catharsis training sessions. You will not be briefed on protocol, expectations, disciplinary measures, animal husbandry, home improvement, “Home Improvement,” or authoring. Carnivals are provided free of charge every 10 minutes in the parking structure. Failure to engage in at least 3 carnivals by the end of the second week will result in automatic suspension of your identity. If you do not reclaim your identity by the end of the third week by filling out the requisite application form, with all required stamps and signatures, your files will be purged from the Office and moved into the Department, where they will come before a panel to decide on a date for their partial incineration. Applications to reclaim your identity will be unavailable after the third week. Thereafter, you may petition for a retroactive application with a minimum of 50 signatures (40 of which must be from people you have never seen before). Your petition will then be brought before the Committee, who will carefully review your petition and reach a decision by no later than 5:00 PM (HST) on the third Thursday of the following month. If your petition is accepted, you may apply to reclaim your identity, but you will incur a penalty fee of no less than 1/250 of the Supervisor’s projected salary for the next fiscal year (this is approximately equivalent to the cube of one month’s engagement fees). Retroactive applications will only be accepted after a thorough examination by the Office. You must explain all extenuating circumstances (including the number of igloos in which you have resided, and the length of time spent in each one) in an essay not to exceed five (V) words in order to prepare your retroactive application for the recommendable procedures.

For more information on orientation and identity reclamation regulations, please revisit Part B of your Institutional Handbook, Section 2, item J, psalm 4:23, line 3.

During your first year at the Institution you will be offered the opportunity to sit at a desk. It is recommendable that you accept this opportunity and thank the Supervisor with at least three (3) signatures in the log.

Approximately 55% (or 2/3) of your time at the Institution must be spent trying to destroy the other 45%. The Intranet will assist you in determining the most efficient and acceptable way to manage your percentages. Percentage negotiations are not permitted, except in the case of accidental death (excluding murder, suicide, Japanese “love suicide,” or spider bites), in which case your family will be reimbursed with at least 35% of your time. Time spent in mandatory orientation sessions, form completion exercises, spheres, or altered states of mind are considered extraneous and/or frivolous and will not count towards your time quota. The Department recommends that you attain your time quota by enlisting in activities specified by the Annual Report on Substantive Activities (ARSA) published by the Institutional Commission on Fulfillment and Development (ICFD). Activities listed in the ARSA database from previous years are considered problematic and will be discussed (we recommend discussing problematic activities with the Associate Mentor, who has access to this paragraph). Contradictions found between various ARSA publications should be reported to the Office, who will then audit the ARSA as well as the Institutional Handbook and the United States Constitution to determine the flavor of the activities in question (for more information on this process, please consult our page on ARSA Degustation and Digestion, located on the G drive, accessible through any Intranet outpost operating on LINUX or Windows 95). After the audit has been completed, you will be asked to undergo a routine physical examination from the Medical Center to test for psychosis, IBS, foreign languages, dental caries, and acne. If you are diagnosed with breast cancer or Remedial Pregnancy Disorder (RPD), we will be forced to (temporarily) revoke your identity until the Council on Breast Cancer Misdiagnosis has touched your genitals (occasionally, this may cause discomfort and possibly asphyxiation; you will be given more information on this during the mandatory health training sessions administered during the first week). Your physical examination can only occur after you receive your Institutional Insurance card, which is provided to all users of slang for approximately 113% of your current insurance premiums (or the square of two (2) months’ engagement fees). Please keep in mind that you will not be permitted to engage in any Substantive Activities unless you have verified your identity and stapled it to your identification badge, to be carried at all times.

If you wish to submit activities from other Institutions to count towards your time quota, you will be served a subpoena and a light brunch. In accordance with the Institutional Mission Statement and the Intranet User Agreement, you may not refuse the light brunch (free samples of this brunch are available upon request, but please be aware that you will only receive the most tasty morsels of the brunch usually reserved for the Trustees). Failure to attend the brunch or accept the free samples will result in immediate suspicion and cause unrest in the Department.

If you have any questions, please feel free to submit yourself to the Brig, located on the basement level of the Founder’s Hall of Symbiotics.

Viking Five: Chicken

28 Feb

On account that I find it fun and easy to compile lists of things, I am starting a new feature on my blog: Viking Five. These will be lists of what I consider to be exemplars of any given category. In most cases, I don’t have the experience or knowledge to create what might be called definitive “top five” lists, so these are simply five personal recommendations. Please add to the lists by leaving comments!

I’m starting the feature with a food that is often overlooked – but when it’s good, damn is it good. Chicken is so frequently bland and dry, a rather pointless thing to eat when prepared or processed witlessly, but if it’s prepared well, then there is almost no meat I’d rather eat.

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Zankou Chicken
Los Angeles, California

Taco trucks aside, there may be no LA food institution so cherished as Zankou Chicken. The darling of streetsmart food critics like Jonathan Gold, Zankou is beloved among all strata of Los Angeles society, including the loyal Armenians that invented it. It’s so good that Beck name checks it in a song about having a threesome on Midnite Vultures. I must say, there is something very nearly sexual about the buttery, delicately spiced skin and the voluptuously tender and juicy meat of a spit-roasted Zankou Chicken. And that garlic sauce is a wicked aphrodisiac.

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Yangon Restaurant’s Hot and Sour Deep-Fried Chicken
Bagan, Myanmar

All of the chicken I ate in Burma was really good, which I suspect has a lot to do with the fact that there aren’t any industrial chicken farms there. “Free range” isn’t even a meaningful category there, because the chickens just roam free around people’s houses. Our drivers had to hit the brakes a lot to dodge them – along with cows and lots of dogs. The Burmese chicken that stands out in my memory was a searingly spicy, addictively tangy dish of crispy and succulent fried chicken, perfumed with an immoderate amount of garlic and green onions.

Jitokko Sumibiyaki
Miyazaki, Japan

One thing I miss about Japan is the thrill of discovering new meibutsu. The Japanese present their unique regional cuisines to the rest of the nation with an enthusiastic pride, and the rest of the nation eats it up. Food and drink, along with flowers, temples, and hot springs, really seem to be what drives domestic tourism in Japan. For salmon, go to Hokkaido; for soba, go to Nagano; and for chicken, go to Miyazaki. There are at least two very famous Japanese chicken dishes originating in Miyazaki: the tartar saucy chicken nanban, and my favorite, jitokko sumibiyaki: literally, charcoal-grilled local chicken. It’s as simple as it sounds, and so very good. Miyazaki chicken has a firm texture and a fantastically buttery quality that sings beautifully with the smoky, blackened flavor of charcoal grilling.

Chicken Truck
Kitakyushu, Japan

One more for Japan – they do chicken right. At one of the schools where I taught, I used to walk to a nearby supermarket pretty much every day for lunch. I usually got some fruit and onigiri, maybe a pastry. But on certain days, there was this truck there. I think the truck was an outpost of a local restaurant, but I can’t remember the name of it. At any rate, this truck sold chicken – really good chicken. You could get the chicken wraps, or you could just go for a huge chunk of chicken, simply grilled with salt and pepper and probably MSG. I think it was the back quarter of the bird, neatly boned and flattened, full of fatty skin, just about as juicy and flavorful as chicken gets. It never failed to brighten my boring days as a human tape recorder.

Homemade Roast Chicken with Sausage and Chestnut Stuffing
Wherever you live

There’s nothin’ like a chicken you roast yourself – expecially when you rub it up with butter and herbs and serve it with a rich, moist sausage and chestnut stuffing. I’m not really much of a roasting guy (I’m more of a sautéing guy), so this week I took it upon myself to try something new. The result was a lovely, exceedingly juicy chicken with a delicate skin and deep flavor. Together with the stuffing, it is a rather rich dinner, so I served it with a palate cleansing salad of arugula and pea shoots with a lemon dressing.

The Chicken

1 4.5 pound chicken (get the free range kind, you cheapskate)
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
a few bunches of fresh herbs (try rosemary, lemon thyme, oregano, thyme, and flat leaf parsley)
3 bay leaves
1 onion
1 lemon or orange
paprika
salt
pepper

  1. Preheat the oven to 400ºF (205ºC).
  2. Clean the giblets out of the chicken, if they’re in there.
  3. Rinse the chicken inside and out with cold water, then dry thoroughly with paper towel. The bird should be very, very dry on the outside especially to help crisp the skin.
  4. Finely mince the herbs and mash them together with the butter and a pinch of salt.
  5. Quarter the onion and lemon or orange and stuff them into the cavity, along with the bay leaves and anything else you have to flavor the chicken: celery greens, additional herbs, apple peels, and garlic cloves work well. Pin the skin together to close the cavity with a toothpick.
  6. Rub the herb butter all over the bird, then season well with salt, pepper, and paprika.
  7. Put the bird on a rack and place in the oven. Roast for 10-15 minutes at 400º, then decrease heat to 375º (190ºC) and roast for another hour and a half (basically, you should cook the bird for 20 minutes per pound, plus the initial 10-15 minutes at a higher heat to crisp the skin).
  8. Remove the chicken from the oven and let rest for 10-15 minutes before carving.
  9. Thicken the drippings and add a spritz of lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce to make a gravy. Add a bit of chicken stock and/or cider or beer if there aren’t enough drippings.

The Stuffing

500 grams sausage meat
250 grams cooked, peeled chestnuts, chopped
4 stalks celery, chopped
1 apple, cored, peeled, and chopped
1 onion, chopped
1/2 pound (about six cups) stale bread, lightly toasted and cubed
about 1 1/2 cups medium-dry cider and/or chicken stock
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
about 1/2 cup fresh sage leaves, chopped
4 tablespoons butter
olive oil
salt
pepper

Preheat the oven to 375ºF.

  1. Heat a small amount of olive oil in a pan over medium-high heat. Add the sausage and cook until browned. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain the grease.
  2. Add the butter to the pan. Sauté the onion, celery, and fennel seeds along with salt and pepper until the onions are translucent.
  3. Add the chestnuts, apple, and sage and sauté for another few minutes.
  4. Add the bread cubes and sauté until they have absorbed almost all the butter.
  5. Add the cooked sausage, then the cider or stock a bit at a time, until the bread is quite soft but not mushy.
  6. Scoop the stuffing into a buttered baking dish and bake for about 20 minutes, or until top has browned. Serve with gravy.

I’m Back ただいま

23 Dec

It’s been a long time. A long time since I last posted, a long time since I last kissed my girlfriend, and a long time since I tasted real ale. But my eight-week reconnaissance mission to Taiwan, Myanmar, and Thailand is finally over, and all manner of blog posting, girlfriend kissing, and real ale tasting shall resume immediately.

I’m going to write about specifics later, but first, here are some numbers: over the course of the trip I visited exactly 100 hotels, saw more than 3000 temples, slept in 29 different beds, ate from almost 50 breakfast buffets, drank 7 kinds of indigenous booze, trekked to 9 tribal villages, flew on 16 flights, drove over 2500 kilometers, amassed nearly 120 business cards, and gazed upon – I kid you not – over 8000 Buddhas. I travelled by jet plane, propeller plane, van, minivan, coach, scooter, train, subway, car, song thaew, tuk tuk, speedboat, longtail boat, ferry, horse-drawn carriage, inner tube, and hot air balloon. All in just two months.

Needless to say, it was busy. Very, very busy. And while the trip was taxing and stressful overall, it allowed me some absolutely fantastic meals and experiences. So stay tuned!

The Future of This Blog このブログの将来

19 Sep

I am a viking. The title, and indeed the blog itself, worked so well in Japan; I chose those words to try to express the thrill of exploring, consuming, and being the Other in bountiful new territory. But now I am moving to England; does the title fit? Will the blog work?

I, for one, don’t see why not. In the early ninth century CE, the vikings invaded the British Isles. So it works on at least that level. But it works on a more important level, too; the UK, as far as I can tell, has a lot of delicious and bizarre foods (those wacky Brits!), many of them tied to specific regions and local cultures, just like Japan’s meibutsu. Hopefully I’ll be able to explore the British Isles’ idiosyncrasies, culinary and otherwise, in keeping with the spirit of this blog.

Oh, and of course, the vikings went on from Britain to invade much of the rest of Europe… so stay tuned!

Tokyo, Mon Amour? 東京、モナムール？

10 Sep

I’ve always loved Tokyo. Even before I’d been there, I loved it, and then I loved it even more once I finally got a chance to visit. And I loved it more still after I learned to read. Y’know in the beginning of “Manhattan,” when Woody Allen talks about how much he loves New York? Well, swap out “New York” for “Tokyo” (and maybe “George Gershwin” for “Pizzicato Five”) and that should give you a pretty good idea of how I feel about Japan’s eastern capital.

Needless to say, I’ve always wanted to live there. But on my last visit to Tokyo – on my very last vacation within Japan – I realized that I’m really glad I didn’t. Not that I could have – it is exceedingly rare for JETs to be placed any closer to Tokyo than Saitama – but I’m glad I wound up in Kitakyushu.

Actually, let me restate this: it would have been awesome to live in Tokyo, totally awesome, maybe too awesome. I would have been more than glad to have lived there, and if I ever go back to Japan, I would easily choose Tokyo over Kitakyushu. Because when you live in Tokyo, you’ve got it all – the food, the entertainment, the shopping, the art, the Japanese (or the English, if that’s your thing). It’s such an awesome city that there’s little reason to leave. And many foreigners living there seldom do.

Which is fine, and understandable. But it’s also sort of a shame. One of the things that makes Tokyo so great is that it’s almost nothing like the rest of Japan – but that’s also what makes the rest of Japan so great. I loved traveling around to smaller Japanese cities, with their quirky attractions and unique histories, and to the Japanese countryside, with its gorgeous scenery, quaint onsen towns, and delicious local foods.

It worries me to think that I may not have experienced Japan’s periphery if I had lived in Tokyo. I would have missed out on so very much. But Tokyo is massive, insane, constantly changing, and beautiful in a way, with infinite backstreets to explore and the best public transit system I’ve ever seen. It also has outstanding ramen, luxury cinemas, exciting beer bars, a diverse music scene, and hundreds of other “only in Tokyo” quirks. Once you grasp how much there is to do there – and that doesn’t take long – it becomes very hard to leave.

It was especially hard this time around. But I’m satisfied with my life in Japan; I feel I made the most of it. Someday I hope to go back – I’m still not done with Tokyo, and I’ve never been to Shikoku or northern Honshu – but for now, I’m just excited to move to England.

I’ll just have to make sure I get out of London every now and then.

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