Home.

After four months away from the states and 11away From Hawaii, I finally made it back to Maui on the morning of the 22nd. The plane ride was absolutely horrendous and the delays were a bit of a nightmare, but it's great to be home for a nice break before I go back to California next month. I will try my best to post more regularly in the coming weeks than I have been. But for now, Merry Christmas!

Xmas Time Is Here...

My good friend Kelssie recently emailed me a link to a couple of ElfYourself videos. It's a marketing tool developed by Office Max that allows you to upload pictures of people's faces to be superimposed on a live action video of elves dancing. Check out our moves here and here.

That Would Explain It.

The New York Times published this story today about the influx of American students in foreign universities, with a special focus on the University of Edinburgh and the University of St Andrews. While I've encountered a number of foreign students studying abroad for the year or semester during my time here, there have been a few Americans that I've bumped into along the way that are studying here permanently. I can't say that I would've liked to have started and ended my college experience at Edinburgh (mainly due to the teaching style and because I would like to work in America after graduation), but it does make sense given the lower cost of tuition here. Plus, Edinburgh and St Andrews have great reputations on the international stage.

London.

Buckingham Palace

Trafalgar Square

Piccadilly Circus

London Eye

Big Ben

Of all the cities that I've been to in the past few months, London felt the most metropolitan and alive. Yeah, the city has some great history, museums and landmarks galore, but there is something about London that seems very forward-looking. The streets were bustling with Christmas shoppers, tourists and suits. The buildings were glossy and the Underground was packed.

Can't miss: Wagamama, Soho, Tate Modern

Berlin.

1936 Olympic Stadium

Reichstag (German Parliament)Holocaust MemorialBrandenburg GateVictory Column

Apologies for the long delay. The past week has been packed with essays and airplanes.

On November 21 to 24, I traveled to Berlin for the weekend on a cheap RyanAir flight from Edinburgh. Having been in Scotland for the better part of 3 months, it was nice to be out and about on the continent again.

Berlin is a city of contrasts. A mix of the incredibly modern with the still-recovering. Unlike Rome and London, I didn't feel as if there was much in the way of tourist-traps in the city (though there were a handful). When I'm in a new city, I often like to hit the major attractions, and map my way from my travel book. But there, the atmosphere was different. I got the sense that the city is always in such transition, that the main attraction really was the city itself. The glass skyscrapers and boxy communist architecture, the subway cellist and the smoky techno bass. Plus, the food was great. Who knew there'd be so much Vietnamese food in Germany?

A fuller picture of the city:


And if it looks like I'm oddly excited to see snow, it's because I was.

Can't Miss: Curry Wurst, Reichstag, Listening in on German conversation (even if you don't know what they're saying)

Tragedy.

I got word today that Jill Walker Robinson, my former boss at the Pomona College Office of Communications, died on November 17 while traveling in Texas. She was 44. I only worked under her for a semester before she left Pomona to start her own publishing company, but I will be eternally grateful for her support and guidance during that time. She was a great mentor, a great friend and a great person.

Here's the story from News 8 in Austin.

Bye, Bye, Bye

TRL - MTV Shows

MTV aired its last episode of TRL on Sunday after 10 long years of providing afterschool entertainment to millions of teens. An all-star line-up of celebrities, many of whom rode the TRL wave to pop stardom in the late '90s and early '00s, made appearances in a 3-hour-long tribute to the MTV staple. It really is the end of an era.

Spam on the rise.

Apparently, the current economic downturn is forcing more and more people to turn to Spam to, as the NY Times put it, put "something that resembles meat on the table." The Hormel factory in Minnesota has been cranking out cans of the "gelatinous 12-ounce rectangle[s] of spiced ham and pork" by the millions non-stop since July to keep up with the demand. Who woulda thunk it given this NY Times description of the delicacy:

Spam, a gelatinous 12-ounce rectangle of spiced ham and pork, may be among the world’s most maligned foods, dismissed as inedible by food elites and skewered by comedians who have offered smart-alecky theories on its name (one G-rated example: Something Posing As Meat).

And just for the record, the Spam article does not once mention Hawaii. I guess these New England journalists just don't care about how the rise in Spam prices is gonna lead to a decline in local utility. Alonka.

Obama and Hawaii

Death Cab

Death Cab for Cutie is one of those bands that I've liked since high school that have gone from indie to not-so-indie-anymore. And while some might have turned their sights from the band as the masses latched on, I'm still very much a fan of Ben and the gang, and was really happy to find out that they would be performing nearby.

Death Cab performed Friday night at the Edinburgh Corn Exchange just about 15 minutes out of the city centre. The venue was nice enough. A Glass House sized hall nestled between a row of town houses (I sort of feel bad for the residents) and an ASDA (that would be the UK version of Wal-Mart). DCfC being such a popular band, I expected the venue to be arena-sized, but we were actually pretty close to everything.

The opener was a Scottish band called Frightened Rabbit, who seemed pretty popular with the local crowd. I only knew one of their songs...but enjoyed their catchy shrieking nevertheless. ('I Feel Better' was especially good.)

Death Cab themselves were very good. What was interesting, I thought, was the nonchanlance with which Ben Gibbard and the band made their way to the stage. For one of the biggest singers/songwriters in the past five or so years, they did not act like it. (He even traded in his trademark horn-rimmed glasses for contacts?!) No theatrics, just music. They barrelled through about an hour and a half of their more well-known tracks, starting with 'Bixby Canyon Bridge' off of their Narrow Stairs album and ending their encore with 'Transatlanticism.' The high point: the crowd joining Gibbard and his guitar for a hushed, almost transcendant version of 'I Will Follow You Into the Dark.'