Real Life, by Ryan Lidster
Thursday, April 6, 2006

In which I get my picture on the Wall of Flame

click to view

April is always the busiest month of the year, and this one is sure to be no exception. This upcoming Saturday is Lu`au, and on Sunday I am performing in two concerts: a split concert between Kate Hall (a vocalist) and Lisa Neher (a composer), and then Aki’s sophomore piano recital. It’s gearing up to be quite the next few weeks, because in only 2 and a half weeks’ time is my own Senior Recital! Aaaaahhh! I’m really excited for my recital, and my pieces are finally starting to come together, but there is a lot more pressure than I thought there would be. A lot of people are expecting a lot, and although I should be taking that as a compliment and as encouragement, at this particular juncture it is a bit much to take in. That aside though, I have lots of amazing pictures this post, and some good stories to tell.

On why one should not, in fact, eat dry ice

So, last semester Chelsea had an Organic Chemistry study party for which they had some secondary entertainment. They brought some of the extra dry ice from an experiment back from the Chemistry lab to our apartment and tried to make jello using the dry ice to cool the mix and make it set faster. As a joke, Chelsea dared me to join her in eating one of the chunks of dry ice, and put one in her mouth to fake eating it. I didn’t apparently notice that she later spat out the chunk into the sink, and promptly swallowed the thing whole. Oy….

For the next twenty minutes or so, every time I breathed smoke would come out of my mouth or nose. I felt like one of those seagulls who had just eaten a bunch of rice and whose stomach was about to explode from the build-up of gas. It was pretty ridiculous.

On Saturday night, we went to Salvador Molly’s, a restaurant not too far from Lewis & Clark with a kind of pirate theme. Fay and I decided to order something called a “Flaming Zombie,” which, as you can see in the picture on the right, had lots of dry ice through it. Especially after having just eaten more habañero peppers than is probably healthy or safe, I was not feeling particularly enthusiastic when it was first placed in front of us. After all, it was huge. And oozing smoke for crying out loud. So Rob helped us out some, and no one’s stomach exploded, and in the end it worked out well I think.

On restaurant experiences

I have different outing pictures for this post actually – some from Ethiopian food, some from Lebanese food, and then some from Salvador Molly’s. These outings are spread out over some time (Lebanese and Ethiopian food were both before Spring Break), but it’s still a lot considering my normal college budget. I really love these excursions; they’re a great way to spend time with friends, I get to experience new foods and expose others to food they otherwise wouldn’t have, and it’s a relatively cheap way to treat oneself from time to time.

Clay took a group of us to an Ethiopian restaurant near Lloyd Center downtown, which was my (and I think almost everyone in the group’s) first time having Ethiopian food. All the different dishes were served together on top of injere, a type of sourdough pancake bread that we used as our only utensil. There aren’t many foods that I don’t like, and I’m pretty open to trying new flavours without much reserve, but even the more conservative among us really enjoyed it; I highly recommend it!

Lebanese food kind of shows how impromptu most college gatherings are. It was just as Spring Break began, and I wanted to get to spend some time with Kristine, my roommate’s girlfriend who was up from Honolulu. One invite spurred another, and another, and suddenly 13 of us were heading down to this Lebanese restaurant downtown on Stark Avenue. Although I didn’t get much time to talk with Kristine specifically, I had a great time trying out the rose water soda, goat meat stew, having tons of tahini, and being around a group of really great people.

Lastly, Salvador Molly’s has a challenge for its clients: if you can eat all of the “Great Balls of Fire” (habañero and cheese fritters) with all their sauce, which is basically habañeros put in a blender, then you get your picture on the Wall of Flame. It’s fantastically campy, and it fits in really well with the whole atmosphere of the restaurant. Every year, they hold an annual competition to see who can eat the most Great Balls of Fire, with proceeds going to Oregon Heat, a local charity organisation that supplies poor families with gas heating during the winter. Chelsea, being either brave or stupid or both, challenged me to see who could eat more between the two of us. Now, as all my friends know by this point, I am a hot sauce fanatic; I sometimes even choose which snacks I want to eat based on whether or not I could put hot sauce on it. It’s ridiculous, and yet I still was sweating by the end of those. Habañeros are different than cayenne peppers (the type used in Tabasco); whereas cayenne hits you and then is gone, habañeros build gradually, and never relent. They just keep burning. I loved it, but I was definitely in pain for quite some time. Chelsea, on the other hand, was less accustomed to that level of spice, and relied pretty heavily on the smoothies and ice water that was available on the side. She’s a trooper, and she made it through, but after two smoothies, a lot of ice water, and sweating from the spice, her body temperature probably dropped a couple degrees and she was shaking pretty violently at times. She looked like she was going into shock, and we were all a little worried for a bit, but in the end, we both got our pictures on the Wall of Flame, so it was worth it.

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There will have to be more soon. For the time being, I’m really exhausted. This is Lu`au week, and I will definitely have some pictures of that for everyone later. Although Lu`au is one of the most enjoyable experiences I have in the year, it is also one that requires a lot of work, and at the same time as my senior recital preparation is underway, and with a few other concerts pending, there is a lot to get done and very little time to do it. For now though, I am off to read the New York Times and discuss foreign affairs with Mike and Lynne for my International Organisations class. I leave you with many, many pictures, which will fill in a lot of the stories too. Have a good week,

lidster@lclark.edu