09.07.12 - Japanese Yodeling

Monday morning editors meeting; Big Chief Sandy usually does a small monologue on her thoughts. Today it was inspired by an article in the New York Times about the dire state of print media. She wants us to think about how the writer’s comments correspond to ethnic media and especially NAM as a news hub which has the advantage of being able to collaborate with many different organisations rather than just being a single entity.

I said that the story that had caught my eye over the weekend was about Google and how it is launching a Legalize Love Campaign, designed to champion LGBT rights and fight homophobic prejudice. I thought that it was an interesting fight for Google to pick and felt like a company standing up for something it believes in rather than tokenism. Sandy looked pretty unimpressed but my idea was taken up by two of the main editors who agreed that it was very interesting, so, boo sucks to old Sandybags.  

Worked on my Olympics story which had stalled due to slow responses from crucial people and a story on Russian-American relations called  ‘Tit-for-Tat Across the Iron Curtain’. Peter is going to have a look but whenever I have put words down about a something I think is interesting I tend to end up thinking, ‘Where is the story in this?’, so I expect that is what he will say too.

My tactic for finding a USP has been to trawl news sites such as Russian Times, Al Jazeera, BBC if I’m desperate. There was an article about Francois Hollande standing by his commitment to make Armenian genocide denial illegal. There is a big Armenian community in America so Peter said I should write something about it. If I am interested in a subject I find it almost impossible to write about it without injecting my own opinion. As I was told that my last story was too straight news maybe that’s OK, but I have a feeling that you’re not meant to do that.

There is a little eating area at the side of the open plan office with a fridge, microwave, classic American jug of coffee. Most people bring in their lunch but as I have no tuperware, am only in 3 days a week and have to look forward to something that it not a packed lunch I don’t. I sat down for lunch today with Viji, an Indian lady in her middle age. She came to do a Masters in Boston and never left the US. She writes about healthcare but is also a yoga teacher and gives Indian cooking lessons. She is going to let me know when her next one is.

I stayed late at the office, 6pm which I suppose is not late for many, because I was planning on going to a Bluegrass jam night in the Mission District. I taught the coffee shop around the corner how to make a flat white, they haven’t made it out here yet which I find surprising as the San Franciscans love their coffee and anything trendy. It was good to have my old favourite.

The music didn’t start until 9pm so I hung around for 3 hours; wandering into shops, having a beer. They don’t seem to do half pints here, it is always the one large size. I don’t think that small is a word in the American vernacular. Half pints of milk are hard to find, they only do packs of 20 cigarettes, boxes of six eggs are sparse, shots are a regulation 50ml.

I am reading a book called ‘The Barbary Plague’ about the 1900 outbreak of bubonic plague in SF. I was amazed to discover that there had been wave of it here not that long ago. The style of the book is magnificently OTT, quite annoying at first but once you get used to it it’s a fast and page turning read. My favourite phrases so far which sum up the tone are; “The Chinese, with their Asian features and golden hue”, “an unforeseen accident almost derailed the rat eradication campaign. It was bound to happen in a town as studded with rat bait as a panettone is with raisins” and then she describes someone as having a “bisque-complexion”. This woman worked for the Wall Street Journal, I think her talents were wasted, she should have been writing Mills & Boon. One interesting fact was that inspectors would unleash guinea pigs into plague stricken houses to attract the fleas before they entered.

I had dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant. I don’t really like dining alone and tonight was probably the first time that I really wished someone else was there. Laughing at your own jokes wares off after a while! And I think that restaurants should change their service strategy for solo diners; everything should take twice the time. Whenever I eat alone I think ‘How can this only have taken 20 minutes?’ However slow I eat it just never takes up any time at all. I hate it even more when there are other people on their own, you feel like you should have some sort of solidarity in your singularity. And then you catch there eye and you see mutual pity and understanding, ugh!

The food was quite like mild Indian food but it came on an injera, an Ethiopian pancake which has the look of honeycomb tripe but is a sour flatbread. You are meant to eat with you fingers, using the injera to scoop up the food. I had a glass of Ethiopian honey wine which is half way between a sweet and a dry sherry but honey flavoured. I wasn’t very hungry when I started but being greedy and thinking that if I left anything I would only have spent 15 minutes at dinner I finished the lot. And left feeling fat and lonely.

The bar where the bluegrass was called Amnesia. It was a classic dive bar, as dark as an opium den, but with a high ceiling and stage at the back. I was going to write a long description of the act that was playing, Toshio Hirano, but all you have to do it watch this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiQN3W3hiPM and you’ll understand. I had misread the calender and thought that I was seeing a completely different act. I might have thought twice if I had watched the preview. He sounded like an incomprehensible, vibrato sheep. You start to realise how incredibly common words like ‘lonesome’, ‘railroad’ and ‘love’ are in bluegrass music and they aren’t easy for someone with a heavy Japanese accent. But he had lots of charm and enthusiasm so you couldn’t help liking him, and his yodeling was very good. I managed 45 minutes and then cycled home. Was it worth the 3 hour wait? Yes, because now I can share this extraordinary talent with you all. I have just discovered that he has a website, http://www.toshiohirano.com/, and is evidently a SF legend.