A visit to my old pictures of these Har Gows or shrimp dumplings made me wax nostalgic…These little shrimp bonnets were a part of a delicious Dim Sum at the Empress Pavilion in downtown Los Angeles.

The Cantonese phrase dim sum (點心) means literally “touch the heart” or “order to your heart’s content”. Originally it was not a main meal, only a snack, and therefore only meant to touch the heart and even though it is now a staple of chinese cuisine everywhere, it reigns supreme in Hong Kong.

Let’s go back to L.A.’s Empress Pavilion. Golden rule: if the place is completely packed with Chinese people, odds are that the food is pretty good!

I have been to this restaurant where the “feeling” is more authentic (with huge round tables and frequent cart circulation). I love picking out my food from carts being wheeled around.  It’s such a novel experience for a Persian (who always has to be coerced into taking some more food enrobed in taarof!)

Imagine waitresses with huge steaming carts full of exotic Dim Sum that they push around, and the excitement of choosing what you want from the cart. I love Cheung Fun or rice noodle roll that you see on the top shelf of the cart above and in your dish bellow:

“Travellers on the ancient Silk Road needed a place to take a nap, so teahouses were established along the roadside. Rural farmers, exhausted after working hard in the fields, would also go to teahouses for a relaxing afternoon of tea. People later discovered that tea can aid in digestion, so teahouse owners began adding various snacks and the tradition of dim sum evolved.”

Kai-lan (Gai-lan) or Chinese broccoli (or Chinese kale) is prepared in front of your hungry eyes,

The sharing act of dim sum is very important to the ceremony of eating it and drinking tea “Yum Cha” together as a unit. As I mentioned above, “Dim Sum” means point of the heart, so the act is supposed to warm your heart while you dine. Dim Sum is a breakfast and lunch time food. You will not be able to find it after 2pm!

I don’t particularly care for fried turnip cakes or potstickers but I always order them when I am taking people for Dim Sum for the first time:

I have been to the nitty gritty San Francisco chinatown Dim Sum places too; they are more authentic but can overwhelm you if you don’t drink a zillion cups of tea with your food:

My favorite remains the Los Angeles Dim Sum so think about me and drop me a line next time you are having some!

to see my other food posts:

Ms. Foodie goes to Hollywood

Tea from the land of the morning calm

You eat your values 

Coffee from paradise 

Michele’s quesadilla 

Ok, I’m a pig 

I have covered Christmas at length before – explore the links below and let me know which one you like best:

Christmas 2007 here.

Christmas 2008 here.

Christmas 2009 here.

Christmas 2010 here.

And my favorite Christmas post here. 

I didn’t agree with everything he said (but who would? who could?) yet I learned a lot of very interesting things from him especially his relentless atheism that provoked the wrath of the faithful!

He sold his soul to the devil of alcohol and booze who helped him write but killed him prematurely. Keeping his great wit until the end he said: “In whatever kind of a ‘race’ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist”.

Here are some quotes from him that I like:

“There are all kinds of stupid people that annoy me but what annoys me most is a lazy argument.”

“People are being too easily pleased. I’m amazed they settle for so little.”

“A gentleman is someone who is never rude by accident.”

“A lot of friendships absolutely depend upon a sort of shared language.”

“I hate stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition.”

His friend Richard Dawkins said: “I think he was one of the greatest orators of all time. He was a polymath, a wit, immensely knowledgeable, and a valiant fighter against all tyrants including imaginary supernatural ones.”  

I got to know his work via his excellent articles and book reviews and then I read his great book, “God is not great, how religion poisons everything”. I laughed all the way through the book! I liked his succinct biography of Thomas Jefferson  and his latest book, Arguably, is patiently waiting in my Kindle.

Graydon Carter says: “There will never be another like Christopher. A man of ferocious intellect, who was as vibrant on the page as he was at the bar.”

I read in Time that When Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, believers of all faiths prayed for his health — and his salvation. The staunch atheist responded that he was grateful for the good wishes and hoped that praying for him made the faithful feel better. ”Hitchens was never far below boiling point. He was an evangelical secularist, an atheist warlord.”

His friend, the novelist Ian McEwan, once said of Hitchens: “It all seems instantly neurologically available: everything he’s ever read, everyone he’s ever met, every story he’s ever heard. I’ve seldom met anyone who speaks in such fluid, elegant, nuanced sentences, dizzying in their breadth of reference.”

I loved the fact that he didn’t like Kissinger, Lady Diana, Jerry Falwell or Jacqueline Kennedy (he called her widow of opportunity!)

I strongly disagreed with him on his stand on the Iraq war or his view on abortion but he bought me back when I read what he had said of George Bush, when he was governor of Texas: ‘He is unusually incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinarily uneducated, and apparently quite proud of all these things’.

Another quote: “Marx says criticism of religion is the beginning of all criticism. Philosophy starts where religion ends, just as chemistry starts where alchemy breaks off or astronomy starts where astrology runs out. It is the necessary argument. Not believing in the supernatural is the critical thing.”

These past few months, It was heart wrenching to read his articles about the cancer killing him but he never lost his grace. His memoir, Hitch-22, was a good (if not great) read because I was curious about what made this man who he is. I would like to see his friends, Salman Rushdie and Martin Amis, write about his death, his life…

Read about his last days here.

Read Hitchens’ article about his own imminent death here.

A good article about him is on today’s NYTimes here. 

This is one of the most beautiful renditions of my Persian name, Dordaneh (a unique pearl—dor: pearl, daneh: one, unique):

It was created for me some years ago by  Nasrollah Afjei, the Iranian master painter calligrapher. I visited his most recent works at the Gallerie Nicolas Flamel in Paris some time ago;  I felt a  great sense of admiration and satisfaction in front of his beautiful canvases like this one:

The following is one of his more recent ones from the “Siah Mashgh” series; as young students in Iran, we all had to practice our calligraphy with special pens and the exercises were called Siah Mashgh or the black homework because of the extra black ink!

Even though Persian and Arabic use the same alphabet (Persian has 4 more letters than Arabic which has 28), the writing is way more beautiful and lends itself  better to calligraphy. ”Nas’taliq” is the most popular contemporary Persian calligraphy style.

The Persian script is exclusively written cursively: the majority of letters in a word connect to each other. A characteristic feature of this script, possibly tracing back to Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, is that much to the chagrin of foreigners vowels are underrepresented! It’s a bit like shorthand with consonants but mostly omitted vowels.

“In comparison to Europe and North America calligraphy is a far more popular and practiced form of art in Iran and in most other countries around this area. You can spot at least one piece of calligraphy hung on the walls of most Iranian households.”

Since the script is cursive, the appearance of a letter changes depending on its position: isolated, beginning (joined on the left), middle (joined on both sides), and end (joined on the right) of a word.

Afjei is a genius in morphing them into a beautiful image that is part painting and part calligraphy…

I am wondering how Mister Afjei would create his masterpieces had he to work with the old Persian Cuneiform!

For those of you who can still read Persian, here is the poem that Nasrollah Afjei painted/calligraphed for me from the 14th century Persian poet, Shah Nematollah Vali. The main verse where you find my name roughly means “each one of us has a beautiful unique pearl”:

و لیکن هر یکی‌ از ما نکو دردانه ای‌ داریم

Visit this great site for some amazing calligraphy here.

The above photo reminds me of my friend, Maureen.

I liked his other-worldly portraits where even the nudes were not in your face!

A jewel of a photo for me was Brancusi’s Eileen on the bench of his studio; I have appreciated his sculptures for ever and his “sleeping muse” kept me company for years.

The highlight for me was the Silk Gallery’s Persian Women; I met the super talented Shadi Ghadirian with her new collection of Miss Butterfly (Shahparak khanom):

A graceful and delicate butterfly/woman gets trapped in the web of a spider…

I knew her for her “Ghajar” and “Like Everyday” collections:

The late Bahman Jalali’s “image of imagination” was watching me quietly from the wall:

Iranian photographers’ works are regularly presented to museums and other institutions everywhere thanks to the Silk Road Gallery ; I like Rana Javadi’s Termeh clad woman:

There was a gorgeous sun setting on Grand Palais that made everything glow in the golden hour; perfect for taking pictures!

After Iran I went to Africa starting from Egypt and Youssef Nabil’s taunting girls:

then to Morocco and Lalla Essaydi’s “I want to be Shirin Neshat when I grow up” image; there is something about the written text that fascinates me:

The great surprise were the other Africans like this beautiful portrait, by Soungalo Malé, of this girl in her sunday suit in 1960; she looks at you with modesty but elegance:

I fell in love with this vintage photo of Ian Berry’s African Collection; a small print that made me smile:

The energy of the place made me forget my aching feet so I plowed on…

I was happy to see Sissi Farassat’s  Andrea, swimming in a sea of sequins:

I love fashion photography and I wasn’t disappointed! Cathleen Naundorf’s Dior 2007 collection made me want to color it pink:

Kate Moss was omnipresent but I liked Annie Leibovitz’s protrait of hers (bellow); she is best friends with the camera and many of her portraits were shouting from multiple galleries!

I saw Leibovitz’s pilgrimage photos too and I loved them all; here is the one I like to include here with all its majesty:

On the other end of the spectrum was Chris Bucklow‘s a thousand points of light that reminded me of Castaneda’s Don Genaro!

I like big cities and skyscrapers so I easily connected with Gail Albert Halaban’s  “Dance studio” from her Out my window NY city collection. Put that on your wall and the whole world changes…

The sun was shining when I went in the Grand Palais,

and I came out when it was growing dark; the site of the Petit Palais in the Parisian “blue hour” was indeed majestic:

Visit the  Silk Road Gallery  here

Who will survive it and which will be the winner of  the three major currencies for global dominance: the United states dollar, the Euro or the Chinese Reminbi ( Yuan)?

There are no trick or treaters in Paris but I can’t help thinking about Halloweens in United States; I love this fun holiday and the whole tradition of choosing the pumpkins, carving them and waiting for little kids to come begging for candies.

The best halloween I’ve had was years ago in Salem Massachusetts; it was raining and the whole neighborhood was covered with gorgeous foliage (on the trees and on the ground). I am getting a bit nostalgic here so here is the last pumpkin I actually carved in California a couple of years ago:

I am getting used to Halloween in europe though—this year I actually bought some pumpkins whereas last year in Zurich I just made a poster for the occasion!

My very frightening but prescient Holloween post of 3 years ago:

Trick-or-Treat, a blood red Halloween

Halloween in Darfur

On a happier note, watch the great Peanuts Pumpkin story here.

Steve Jobs will be remembered everyday by millions of people for a long long time…

I absolutely love my Kindle! I thought that as a bibliophile, I will hate any e-reader but I can’t find any fault with this quiet, light, patient, non-demanding, treasure chest of a library that goes from my purse to my bed table and travels everywhere with me from a crowded café in Paris to my quiet bed table.

It lets me highlight any passage in the book which I can print later; I don’t even have to open a dictionary to see the meaning of a word – my kindle whispers it in my eyes…My sneaky Kindle lets me read a sampler of the books I am interested in and only then gently pushes me into making money for Amazon…

Now it’s my Kindle’s turn to talk about me:

Hello, my name is Kindle Bezos and I am to tell you how my  mommy, Michele loves me. I am a spoiled, pampered, well loved little gadget; Michele lost my brother but she bought me one day later. She loves me and my dad, Jeff!

*She hugs me and kisses me to make the world jealous…

*She loves it that I am not a battery vampire like her iPad .

*She learned my instructions quickly (I am easy) and she types on me with patience and she talks to me often in 3 languages!

*She loves it that I can communicate easily with the mothership and get her almost any book her little heart desires; she likes the good deals I broker for her and I am working on showing her my French side (no luck on any Persian titles showing up on my screen soon!)

*She takes care of me – I even have a great polka dotted cover! She downloads almost everything I suggest to her (Papa Jeff will be happy with me if I succeed to make her read the New York Times on me!)

I don’t like it when:

a) She highlights long passages (sometimes I want to shout so she stops before underlining the whole damned book).

b) She stops often for a word’s definition (I am expecting that from my foreign owners; they always exhaust me with the dictionary…)

All this said, nothing comes close to a real library which I had in a previous life:

Those old friends are sitting in a storage room in Los Angeles and waiting for me to go and rescue them!

I love my Kindle but in defense of books, watch this very funny clip here.

The best commercial for Kindle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hg7bYEZ6e8&NR=1