I"d prefer to give things to people, particularly if I know them, than to throw them away.
Your choice...
Tigan / skillet.
Adult sleeping bag.
Bodum coffee press.
Women"s silver tights.
I have three of these chairs.
Six of these bins / shelves in total.
They have legs.
If you have sore muscles.
Ceramic pie plate / serving dish.
Calaphone roasting pan.
Somersize it ! Slowly...
Lodge cast iron grilling skillet (dark mark is drying water).
Whatever remains will be donated. Thanks.
1) It"s unfiltred
2) The colour -- brick-y red -- makes me wonder about its age
3) It smells like capers, steak and red peppers, though there is also a bit of pomegranate juice aroma, which quickly dissipates
4) It seems drier than expected for a semi-dry wine.
Weird. Not bad, though.
from Gitanjali, by Rabindranath Tagore
The streets and the empty glasses
The great coolness of hands
Nothing broken.
Nothing dirtied.
Nothing inhuman.
Kindly good day, good evening
I am lazy, you see
In good health
To the health of the landscape
The lover of wide-open streets
If you want me to love you
Open immaculate hands
I am not refreshed.
Odilon-Jean Pйrier (1926)
But it"s not like there would be the need to work outside one"s shift, either.
And it"s possible to read or chat when on duty. Hmmm!
Recently, I"ve been on a boza kick, but the stuff produced here has aspartame in it, which gives me headaches and stomach trouble if too much is consumed. (Also the downfall of diet sodas. How long will it take for sucralose/Splenda to come to Bulgaria? When I was in France in May, it had just arrived there...)
It"s fun.
They say that I"ll soon be more Bulgarian than една българка. Not bad.
I have looked in every store on Levski Boulevard, on Vitosha, in the mall, on and around Solounska Street, in underpass stalls, on Sakuzov Boulevard, and have found nothing. I want a bag of real leather, with a shoulder strap, nothing dowdy, nothing trendy, and preferably not in a depressing shade.
Most bags are large enough to hold a piglet. I do not have a piglet; I have a notebook, two cell phones, a pen, chapstick, a business card holder and sometimes a camera and/or an iPod Mini.
Sometimes, when I’m walking, I go through and date everything that I am wearing. Dating (things) has always held a great significance for me. In second grade, I kept a journal as part of my mum’s schooling requirements for us. For a period of time, I observed a lacewing’s life in our front yard. Then it died, and I was distraught. My mum did not understand why I did not want to write in my journal. Forced, in a shaky hand I wrote: “The lacewing is dead.”
This was all dated.
Today I am wearing: Diesel shoes, Sofia, July 2006, bought with Mum; teal socks, Lands’ End, mail order, US, 1992 (the last remaining pair from a threepack; the red and the pink pairs have since disappeared); jeans, FCUK/Philadelphia, July 4 2002, with friends; underwear, Target store in Orange, California, 2002; Under Armour undershirt, Christmas 2007, from D; Oilily Jeans shirt, January 1 2002, South Coast Plaza, Costa Mesa, California, bought by me while in distress over a boy; Schott NYC jacket, Istanbul, December 26 2007, Christmas present from D; Marchon Airlock 2 glasses, Dr Kaye’s office, Orange County, May 2005, insurance; bobbypins, Hondos Center, Dafni, Athens, Greece, July 2007, bought by me.
Does any of this matter?
No.
It reminds me of the baba with whom I sat and talked for two hours on Saturday January 26 at the koukeri festival in Pernik. She introduced herself to me: “I’m Ivan X’s mother Maria (I think that was her name). I have three lunch coupons.” I told her that I did not work at the cafe, and we sat and talked instead. She told me many things that I knew, but always pretend to not know, because the teller gets such pleasure out of national pride. She told me that she never buys clothes, making instead out of two old skirts a new blouse, out of two old blouses a new chemise, out of an old jacket a skirt. She told me some verbs for “to milk”: doya, mouzeya and again another one, but there I cannot make out what she wrote.
This leads me to think: what does one really need? My first six months in Bulgaria, I lived in a hostel with no kitchen, with only two small suitcases of stuff – clothing and toiletries. I ate kiselo zele, yoghurt, banitsa. It worked. Someone recently mentioned some social experiment that some families in the United States undertook: to not buy anything save the necessities for a year. They survived.
It’s easier to not buy: you will never be disappointed with the purchase.
Or, is it that one does not deserve to buy if it is not necessary?
Today I bought: apples from downstairs; pyjamas from women’secret; izvara, buffalo yoghurt, canned tomatoes, bulgur, oatmeal, lotion from Picadilly; broccoli and leeks from downstairs; bleach; rakiya x 2, choubritsa, fig preserves from the market on Sakuzov; natural toothpaste from Lechitel. This is more than I normally buy, maybe. I have this thing about the street markets that the babas and dyadovsti do: they have my 100 per cent support. Rakiya from two different babi, because I fear European Union regulations coming in and killing their lifesource and my enjoyment. The one baba said that I should heat it and mull it with indrishe, which turns out to be pelargonium. The other said that this would not be necessary with hers, as she already distilled it with oleander. The latter’s was finer, cleaner. But I wanted a comparison. Because one day this will be gone.
By The Associated Press – 10.54am, Monday 28 January 2008
In February 2001, President Bush delivered an economic address to a joint session of Congress; in subsequent years he presented his annual State of the Union address. A look at his approval rating in the Gallup Poll around the time of each speech.
_February 2001: 62 percent approval.
_January 2002: 84 percent.
_January 2003: 60 percent.
_January 2004: 53 percent.
_February 2005: 51 percent.
_January 2006: 43 percent.
_January 2007: 36 percent.
_January 2008: 32 percent.
It was fun, talking with people and seeing people and dreaming about... a future career as... who knows what. A life even more in that world. It"s possible! май да.
Let"s see. Out of the nominated restaurants, I"ve only been to about four of them: Opera, Chef"s Restaurant Elea, La Capannina and Beyond the Alley, Behind the Cupboard. Hm.
In the six categories, the nominations were (winners have an *):
Restaurant of the Year Bacchus-Chivas Regal 2007
Chef’s (Pasarel /on the Sofia-Borovets road/)
Classic Gourmet Club (Sofia)*
Musala Palace (Varna)
Original Cuisine
Dimo Dimov – Gourmet Club Classic
Joon Yoshida – Brasserie (Sofia)
Plamen Petrov – La Famiglia (Varna)
Plamen Stamov – Silver Gourmet (Zlatni Pyasutsi/Golden Sands)*
Toni Ivanov – Uniqato (Stara Zagora)
Best Selection of Drinks
Gourmet Club Classic
Musala Palace*
Stara Sofia (Sofia)
Bar & Dinner
Brasserie*
Opera (Sofia)
Up Stairs (Sofia)
Debut
Chef’s Restaurant Elea
La Maison du Gourmet (Sofia)*
Nicola’s Streetfood Bar (Sofia)
Readers’ Choice Award
Bourgas: La Perle Noire
Haskovo: Alafrangite
Plovdiv: Hebros, Hemingway
Sofia: Checkpoint Charlie, Chef’s*, Chef’s Restaurant Elea, Gourmet Club Classic, La Capannina, La Maison du Gourmet, Nicola’s Streetfood Bar, Enoteka Uno, Vishnite, The House with the Clock, Beyond the Alley Behind the Cupboard
Varna: La Famiglia, Silver Gourmet, Kapitol, Musala Palace
I also bough Jerusalem artichoke from an old man, which, this year, I was permitted to buy -- trying to buy them last year, the baba selling them told me that "they are for people with kidney stones (I think that"s what she said?); you"re young and don"t need them". I just like the taste!
This is too early for winter!