All Things Yummy

I was talking to a friend of mine about my decision making abilities - or lack of it. I lack the ability to make the “medium-level” decisions. I am good at big decisions - buying a house or choosing a graduate school - and small decisions - red pen or blue pen for the N.B.? - but I really suck at the medium level decisions. What to eat? Where to go? What to watch? Well, What do you want to eat? go? and watch?

I think my lack of medium level decision making ability really boils down to the fact that I really don’t care about those things - I’ve rather defer the decision making process to those who actually do care about them. As far as eating goes, I’m about as flexible as you can get. I’ll eat meat, I’ll eat vegetables. I’ll eat fried fish, I’ll eat raw fish. I’ll eat spicy, I’ll eat bland. If I really can’t eat it, I’ll just put some Tabasco on it and eat it anyways. Except for few very rare exceptions - No Anchovies on my pizza, please! - I’ll eat just about everything. Same goes for watching or doing. Movies? I’ll do romantic comedy, I’ll do drama. I’ll do art house indies, I’ll do hollywood action films… And if you don’t care about it, it really becomes difficult to make decisions on it, because every choice seems so… similar and equally mundane.

Anyone else out there who suffers from this debilitating weakness for making medium level decisions? And how did you overcome it? Apparently I’m so easy its difficult and annoying… so I’m stuck in this dilemma of having to be more difficult in order to become less difficult.

Author: Tom Clancy
Started: February 19, 2003
Finished: February 23, 2003

Well, I have many things to say about this book, but I think this quote from the book sums it up quite nicely - “Any opinionated asshole could make money…”

Author: Hermann Hesse
Started: January 31, 2003
Finished: February 18, 2003

I really don’t know what to say. It’s one of the most… odd… piece I’ve read so far, up there in the ranks of Kafka’s works. Nothing much really happens plot wise - it can probably be summarized as Harry Haller or: How I Learned to Stop Being Suicidal and Love the World. However, in telling this simple plot, Hesse seems to have done enough opium/cocaine/whatever to kill a small horse. Joking aside, I must tell you that it took me more than 2 weeks to get through the first 70 pages or so, and 3 hours to finish the book after that (last page is 218). Hesse uses some of the longest sentences that I’ve seen in my life (legal documents included!) and some sections, especially around the Treatise On the Steppenwolf, requires careful mulling and remulling to understand what Hesse’s trying to get through.

Harry Haller is a lonely man approaching 50s. However, what sets him apart is the fight between the Human and the Steppenwolf inside him. The two disparate beasts battle within him, driving him toward deep depression. A product of bourgeois life, Harry himself appreciates the comforts and the culture that bourgeois life provides. However, the wolf is always behind him, growling and mocking him at every step. Also, he is finding that the world is increasingly spinning out of control and out of his understanding. Driven to brink of suicide, he meets a woman named Hermine who shows Harry the pleasures of earthly life, carnal desires, and of disdainful Jazz music and dances. Through Hermine and Pablo’s help, he finally realizes that one must learn to look at life not only through critical and serious outlook, but also with a twinkle in the eye and peals of laughter.

One thing that hit me about this, was that the story is timeless. By timeless, I mean literally that. Hesse, although this was written during tumultuous time in Germany, keeps it very removed from the politics of the time (just as Harry the Steppenwolf is removed). It could’ve very easily been the 60s, 70s, or right now that Harry is living through. The focus in the human nature makes this a truly timeless story that will endure as long as we humans are around.

Author: Milans Kundera
Started: January 14, 2003
Finished: January 23, 2003

Another interesting narrative. Throughout the book, Kundera puts the story aside to express his views on the world (including even things like, well, shit) and how he came to the story and the characters. He throws around his insights into love and life throughout the story of Tereza and Tomas (The copy I read had spelled Tomas as “Thomas” in one of the pages! ). As in Love in the Time of Cholera, one of the recurring idea is the concept of different types of love. Tereza is devoted to Tomas, while Tomas feels that physical love is not the same as romantic love. While Tereza’s one extra-marital affair is depicted almost as a violation and shakes her, Tomas has many lovers. Through these differences, the idea of heaviness/lightness is discussed. Being burdened by heaviness - responsibility, morality, etc - is not necessarily a bad thing, and throughout the book, we how the characters change as their burden changes and they make their decisions.

The main storyline - Tomas and Tereza’s life in Czechoslovakia and abroad around (and after) the Prague Spring - is the cornerstone on which many different ideas, insights, and analysis are thrown in. Kundera seems to be able to make the character come alive and make the readers feel completely empathetic with them, even though he describes (in the voice of the author) how these characters sprang into life when he wrote the book. One of Tomas’ lovers, Sabina, also plays a significant role in a sometimes intersecting secondary storyline along with her own lover Franz and even with Tereza.

Author: Gabriel García Márquez
Started: January 3, 2003
Finished: January 7, 2003

Gabriel Garcia Marquez has an interesting way of telling a story. He will paint a picture, a very compelling and breathtaking scene, full of intrigue and shrouded in mystery. Then he will backtrack in time - weeks, months, or even fifty-one years, nine months, and four days - and retrace the steps back to that starting point. However, since the world and the characters are so detailed and intricate, knowing the outcome makes the story that much more interesting.

The three main characters, Fermina Daza, Juvenal Urbino, and Florentino Ariza have an intertwined life of love set around the turn of the century in a Caribbean city. Over the course of more than half a decade, Fermina Daza and Juvenal Urbino has (mostly) stable and (sometimes) happy marriage. Through their union, Gabriel Garcia Marquez portrays both the ups and downs of the married life as well as changes in the feelings between people as they grow old together. Florentino Ariza, Fermina Daza’s first love, waits for over fifty years for Dr. Juvenal Urbino’s death to ask her for hand for the second time. Through him, other notions of love is explored, one of which is that one may love many other simultaneously with different ‘rooms’ for each.