The Visa Diaries

Back in March, I went to a beautiful, fancy spa with my mother. It is hard to imagine that anybody anywhere could have stuffed more loveliness and good feeling into one week than the folks at the Rancho La Puerta. The weather was sunny and dry; the grounds were fragrant and beautiful; the fitness classes were fun and toning. The morning walks were magical; the people were friendly; the spa treatments were decadent. And to top it all off, the food was simply amazing – fresh and beautiful and delicious. At every meal I wanted to oggle the gorgeousness of the vegetables and marvel over the succulence of the fruits almost as much as I wanted to eat them. And when I did eat the food, not only was it delicious, but with every bite I could feel its vitaminy-goodness entering into my cells and its phyto-wonder sweeping out my toxins. But there was something even more: it was as if all the essence of the food’s simple, organic life – short but well-lived, grounded in the earth, reaching for the sky, kissed by the sun and stars – was entering my soul. I somehow felt more *moral* with every bite that I ate.

Yes, the week at the spa was divine. And then it drew to a close. I found myself in the San Diego airport, a little peckish. The options, as I looked around at the vinyl airport chairs and the gray utility carpet, seemed to be old tortilla chips with fake orange cheese, and the plastic baggied, slightly soggy sandwiches they now peddle at Starbucks. I felt sad. And the thought of returning to my life in New York made me sad too. Of course good fresh food and produce exists in New York, but it didn’t exist so very consistently in my life. I used to go to Whole Paycheck pretty regularly, but then I changed jobs and no longer work or live near one. I could go to the Farmers’ Market at Prospect Park on Saturdays, it is true, but I never seem to make it. The fast food options near my work tend more toward street meat than biodynamic. As I mentally surveyed the state of my food life in New York City, I could feel my cells shriveling, the energy depleting, and the chemicals pooling. My color fell and my skin sagged thinking about it.

Never one to resign myself without a fight, I looked into my options first thing when I arrived back on the Right Coast. Being the bobo place that it is, CSAs are quite popular in Brooklyn, and at first I thought this was the thing to do. I came close to signing up for one, but then I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to go pick it up during the 6-10pm window on Thursdays when it has to be fetched, and thus would waste my bounty. In the end I settled on Urban Organic. Unlike a CSA, they are not tied to one farm. They buy a selections of things that are in season (all organic) put ‘em in a box and – here is the key – deliver it to you. I was sold.

I get a box every two weeks. It is usually waiting outside my door when I get home from work on Mondays, filled with a friendly crew of things like chard, cabbage, tangellos, potatoes, etc. Some are more exotic than others, some I like more than others, but all of them provide that vital nutrient I was craving: the goodness for body and soul of well raised food.

I think Duty-Free is a big misnomer. Every time I travel internationally, I feel absolutely duty-bound to buy something at the airport, either on the way there, or on the way back, or both. Whoever idea duty-free was, is a genius. Actually, I seem to remember reading in some glossy mag that it was the idea of somebody called Frank Miller (father to the ugly Miller sisters, who pay publicists to get them into the social pages of said glossy mags). Well then, Mr. Miller was a genius.

Let’s be honest, the “duty-free” part is what consumer psychologists (I took a class in this last term) call an “enabling attribute.” An enabling attribute is something like anti-lock breaks on an expensive sports car – a practical feature that we use to rationalize a purchase that is really big-fat indulgence. The 10% or 15% that we save in tax at duty-free, which usually becomes rather insignificant by the time you count in vagaries of exchange rate and product availability, just lets us delude ourselves that we are being a responsible shopper.

The slight discount, supposedly unavailable ina any other venue, is just like the car salesman who says, “I’ll give you this price if you buy now, but if you come back tomorrow, it might not be available.” Another thing I learned in that consumer psychology class is that we are much more motivated by fear of potential regret – ie, we’d rather plonk down for something we don’t really need, than wake up tomorrow morning with despair in the pit of our stomach because we missed out on the only jar of Creme de la Mer that will ever be available to us in our whole lives! See, it taps into something really irrational.

The other genius things about duty free are that it happens at just the right time, when we are in holiday-mode, and thus ready to loosen all our normal responsible thinking, and have a good time. Those Gucci sunglasses that seem just a bit excessive in the normal course of things, all of a sudden seem the perfect emblem of our free-holiday-spirit. Go on, burn out the credit card – after all, in comparison to the price of the plane ticket and the rest of the trip, that new watch is just a drop in the bucket!!

And, even better, if we just think about it right, we can see that duty-free saves us even more money. First of all, there’s the fact that I always sample profusely, and use it as an opportunity to bolster my skin defenses against the coming onslaught of dry, recycled airplane air. I’d say two different kinds of eye gel, a moisturizer, and a refreshing facial mist is about par for a session of sampling at duty-free before boarding. The more expensive, obviously, the better – Chanel, La Prairie, and Creme de la Mer are all good stops.

Then, duty-free also saves us money by preventing the waste of unused foreign currency. Rather than just stuffing it in those “Change for Good” envelopes on the plane, if we have $5 worth of foreign currency left on the way back, it makes perfect sense to buy part of a $100 hat with that, the rest on credit card, just so you’re not wasting money. yeah.

For all of these reasons, for its very embodiment of holiday-ness, I look forward to duty-free. I look forward to whiling away the time before my flight amongst all the cosmetic concessions, and get annoyed when I am late to the airport and it cuts into my duty-free time. It represents holiday time, and in that sense (and that sense only) is actually duty-free.

That I will make a purchase at duty-free is almost a given. With all of these pressures, I am feeling extremely virtuous to say, this time my purchase was all of a Clarins juicy lip gloss, in the perfect bright-red, white-girl-in-the sunshine color.

Er, at least I was that good in New York. In Hong Kong a pair of sunglasses might have crept in. But I needed those.

Kuala Lumpur is one of those amazingly exotic sounding places, like Zanzibar or Samarkand – at least to my American ears. It is always mentioned in movies as the source of ocean tankers full of illicit cargo, or nefarious asian gang goings-on. Whenever I heard the name, it conjured images of sultry yellow lighting over semi-obscurred characters in luxuriously carved wooden rooms, sites of mysterious dealings and romantic liaisons.

Arriving there last Sunday, however, the actual Kuala Lumpur presents quite a different picture. Apparently, the Malaysians have been quite industrious over the past quarter century, and cleaned up most of the exotic, colonial “asianness” (pardon my Orientalism) that was the Kuala Lumpur of my fantasies. The “KL” of today is all modern high-rise, eight-lane highway, and gleaming mega-mall.

Seemingly, it should be the country for me: as one person I met told me, “the pastimes of most Malaysians are eating and shopping.” (This was offered in explanation of why none of the locals had been up the the jungle in the North of the country that is an international ecological treasure and tourist destination). Fair enough – although I did go to the jungle, I also went to the mall. And ate a lot. More on that:

What I didn’t find fair enough was the rampant sizism of the Malaysian malls! Even had I not been eating for Asia (and to be fair, with the 3-day juice fast that I did in Thailand, I think it all came out equal), there was not one thing in that mall that fit me!

Starting with shoes – we started with shoes because Arvind left my Christmas gift on the airplane, and thus was trying to replace it with a pair of casual, flippy, low-heels. We found the perfect pair at Bally… and then found that they only do up to a size 39. Apparently nowhere in the whole country, perhaps continent (because I tried again Hong Kong duty free) does higher! I am a size 40 – 9 US, 7 UK – which is perfectly normal and perhaps even small for someone who is 5′ 10″. However, if I lived in Kuala Lumpur, apparently I would have to go barefoot. Polite yet feckless, one sales person after another smiled and shook their heads, with absolute certainly that they did not have my size. Well then.

Stymied on the shoe front, and still in need of a Christmas pressie, I thought maybe some nice, tailored long jean shorts would be the thing. I spotted a Miss Sixty shop, and inside the perfect pair – just the right combination of funk and coy. And asked for my size: 30. Again, completely reasonable for all those of us who don’t make our living by walking a runway in Milan or Paris. And to think I had actually been feeling rather fit due to my juice fast. Oh contrare! The punky, spaghetti-noodle bodied salesboy came to my dressing room and announced: sorry, we don’t have that size ma’am! Here’s tip: if you ever want to feel utterly too big, like a kid outside of a candy store, just go shopping in Kuala Lumpur. At least it will save some cash. Which you will of course need to send with the therapist once you get back home.

In the end, my Christmas present from Arvind turned into a wallet. Turquoise patent leather, and very cute. Shockingly, wallets turn out to be the same size in Kuala Lumpur as everywhere else in the world – my credit cards fit into it no problem.

With only one semester more of school ever, it is time I start getting nostalgic for the student life. So, here goes: two of the very best things about life in the ivory tower are 1.) student discounts, and 2.) long school vacations. And when you put those two things together, you get… me going to Thailand and Malaysia for 2 weeks!! ding ding ding! (Well, I guess a long-distance relationship has something to do with it as well, as I’m meeting up with Arvind there, but the trip wouldn’t be possible without the other two.)

The Amex card isn’t the only one with priviledges – armed with my International Student card, I am looking forward to sunshine, balmy seas, thai massages and that whole south-east asian backpacker/dropout thing. Can’t wait!

I will log on from the road, don’t worry, and I will be soooo chilled/ massaged/ sun-drenched you will hardly even recognize me. You also may not recognize me because it may really not be me – I have recruited a guest-star blogger during my absence, my friend Christina, who is a champion shopper too.

Ta ta till Thailand!

I got accused by one of my classmates for “not living the student life” when I told him about my time in New York last weekend. Amongst the general New York-ish activities like going to a show (the now-closed Absinthe “sexy circus” down at Pier 17), stopping by the MOMA (the current exhibition “Out of Time: A Contemporary View” is pretty flippin-fantastic), brunch at Balthazar, etc, we also spent a fair amount of time at Soho House New York. Arvind is a member in London, and gets entry to the entire family of clubs.

I used to be anti- the members club. Why bother when there are bars and restaurants aplenty? Why go back to the same venue over and over when there are so many new places to try? Why hang out with a bunch of twats who need their co-bar-inhabitants to be vetted? Members clubs are an urban uncle to the beer-guzzling fraternity member rampaging over college campuses across america, and I never liked fraternities for the same reasons.

However, it was our lovely friend Indira’s birthday (she is filming a pilot of an exciting new tv show in town), and what with none of us being exactly local, Soho House seemed like a good bet. And it was just that – a good, safe, bet, where we didn’t have to wait in line or waste time equivocating, where there were contemporary cocktail mixes with cucumbers and such, and where there were enough people but not too many. It was comfortable and well-executed media-yuppy lounge. Apart from the fake tin panels tacked on the ceiling (”Soho” House feeling it had to live up to its name, despite being in the meat-packing district?) it was all a comfortable, benign blend of contemporary/ old-boys-club – somewhat the same tone of decor as a Banana Republic.

Well, we had such a nice time, or have become so lazy, the we returned Sunday afternoon. The roof deck with the pool, overlooking the Hudson River at sunset, was what got me accused of not living the student life. Fair enough. And now I see the benefits of the members club. Compared to the airless confines of the average New York apartment, where you are lucky if you have a view across a shaft, this roof deck complete with wifi and bar service was absolute nirvana. Even sans roof deck, the members club is a comfortable public space to hang out, chat, work, occasionally eat or drink, whatever. A place where the chairs are cushy and reconfigurable, to take you from coffee to cocktails, and where you do not feel like there is a stopwatch ticking for your table. Kind of like an upmarket version of Starbucks, actually. Yeah… Starbucks House. Sohobucks…

Well, if you thought I got away form Marrakech with just a couple of rugs, you still don’t know me very well! The total booty haul was:

2 rugs
1 yummy woolen winter hat
1 gorgeous rafia woven handbag
3 punched tin lamps (2 are a wedding gift for my friend Steph)
3 bottles of rose water
1 black leather belt with gold studs (woof!)
1 malachite ring
1 pair of handmade leather slippers

Plus an assortment of food, drink, and entertainment, including 2 hammams and 2 suppers at the amazing outdoor food stalls in Place Jemma El Fna.

If this seems like a lot, you will be amazed at the restraint I showed, given all that I possibly could have bought out of the pile of teak, ceramics, leather, silk, spice, and on and on that jammed the souk

I am particularly chuffed about the hat, which is just toffee-colored hand know yumminess and will be a constant companion this winter (unsure why the Moroccan knit heavy woolen hats? it was over 100 degrees the whole time). And also the tin lamps, which were made by Mak’s friend Hassan Hajjaj, who is Morocco’s answer to Andy Warhol. He takes traditional Moroccan crafts, and mashes them up with funky pop references. Very cool stuff, and a big shout out to both him and Abdul for giving me a bit of orientation around Marrakech. If you are ever there, you must stay his Riad Yima.

Anyway, what can I say? I love traveling, and I loved Marrakech – warm desert air and dusty pink walls, donkeys in the streets and snake charmers in the square. Mint tea and more mint tea. Objects are memory devices, a physical way to bring home and save a small bit of a beautiful experience. I don’t know when I will get back there, but padding about my apartment in my handsewn leather slippers, I will remember the souk fondly and, just perhaps, be able to close my eyes and feel a warm ray of the north african sun.

Speaking of modern glopats, I am off to Marrakech for 4 days, a last get-a-way before back-to-school and back-to-living-in-my-studio.

I am flying the bright orange beacon of cheap city breaks across Europe, easyJet. Despite the fact that nobody I know has ever flown anywhere for the £19 that they always seem to advertise, despite the fact that the trek out to Stansted often takes as long as the flight itself, easyJet is still a symbol of freedom and open cultural frontiers. It is one of the things that makes living in London a boon, because it means you can get out of London, and get almost anywhere, from Milan to Marrakech, from Riga to Rome, often for less than the cost of a big night out in London.

Although of coarse I am going for the culture, the ambience, the sights and the desert air, of coarse there is also meant to be an amazing souk, full of magic lanterns and flying carpets, presumably. So, I suppose that since I am there, I may have to go check it out. wink wink.

My glamorous and well-travelled friend Mak (one of the original Robert Palmer girls!) wagers in on what my purchases will be:

Stay tuned here to find out… Wheeeeeee!