Jason’s Travelogue

Great voice + decent acoustic cover. Listen.

Hello.

A few things have happened to me since my last post.

Food- No meat! I’ve had fish regularly, mostly tuna, and dairy, usually in the form of goat’s milk (also soy milk, but that’s not really dairy). I’ve been cooking more often- made myself my own curry concoctions using curry powder, potatoes, brown rice, and all sorts of vegtables. The plan was to replace meat with tofu. However, getting tofu in this country is like looking for easter eggs- you think it’s right there, peeking up out of the wild undergrowth, but the excitement turns to despair once you find that it’s actually just boxed hummus. I’ll perhaps put up a recipe someday, when I feel up to it. Speaking of recipes, I tried Atsuko’s first recipe, Easy Chinese Style Peanut Sauce Noodles, which can be found here. It’s a great recipe, simple, healthy, and tasty! Extremely versatile, as you can anything you want- I added potatoes and substituted noodles for brown rice and burgul, a local grain. Unlike the pictures though, my sauce turned a dark chocolate-y brown color- perhaps my thai brand of soy sauce was overpowering. Any saltiness however, can be diluted using extra peanut butter.

Namely, I am going to be in an advertisement for Stars of Science, a reality tv show about science! Nothing big, the cameraman just took clips of Atsuko and I, resplendent in our gleaming lab coats and gleaming goggles, operating a few machines and weighing things out. It’s sponsored by my employer, Qatar Foundation, and provides funding to do actually research for the best sixteen ideas/inventions submitted by the brighest young minds of Middle Eastern heritage.

The 16 finalists, once chosen, will be put through a specially designed 10 week workshop in Doha with state of the art tools and equipment, to further develop the idea. They will then be tutored by experts to develop their business skills so as to enable them to turn their inventions into reality.The winner of the competition will receive a $100,000 cash prize plus $100,000 in business support, counseling, and marketing of the idea. Four international experts will be on the jury. Quite a cool program! Check it out at http://www.starsofscience.com/phase-2/, coming to a cable television network near you.

Next, I’ve gotten much more involved with helping manage the Cornell men’s basketball team. I’ve been promoted to assisant manager and statistics keeper! I now keep logs of points, fouls, free throws, time outs, etc, etc. It’s actually not as easy as it looks, as the refs here tend to be pretty confusing with their calls and the scoreboards always seem to fail. Unfortunately, we had our worst showing last night, losing by more than ten points to the American School of Doha. As always, we had a horrible start- their full-court press gave them a ten-point lead in a few minutes that dazed us. By the time we got our bearings and things became a little more even, the point spread never went less than nine. Like always, we got fouled probably three times more often than we fouled, so our lack of free-throw shooting skill again sent us in a depressive spiral. Practise people, practice!

That’s enough for now… I have some clothes I have to wash.