Port Newark: Your Global Kitchen

I know, I know, I blog about food all the time (when I manage to blog at all, that is...but hey! I've been doing pretty well lately, haven't I?). But seriously: it blows my mind that most of the people in the NY metro area have no idea that some of the best ethnic food stateside lies in dirty, grungy, forgotten-about Port Newark, behind all those gantry cranes you see from the Turnpike (one of my favorite pastimes since moving here is wondering what average, non port-working East Coasties think about ports. Do they know, for instance, that Newark is the largest container port on the East Coast? Do they wonder what goes on there? Do they say to themselves, "Huh, I wonder what those are?" when they see the cranes, or do they just not notice? If anyone has any insights, I'd be delighted to hear them). Granted, your average Joe can't just hop on board the nearest car ship and indulge in Filipino delicacies, so perhaps it's understandable that ship food doesn't get more media attention. So that's why I'm here: to draw your attention to la cuisine maritime and liven your day with accounts of what I eat for lunch. I'll break it down by country.

#1. The Philippines. You've probably never had Filipino food. I hadn't, until I started this gig, and all of a sudden things like chicken adobo, pork belly soup, and dried fried fish (to be skinned and boned by the diner, of course) were added to my list of dietary staples. To be honest, I could take or leave most of it (especially the pork belly...and sometimes hooves...) - but since 2/3 of all seafarers (and I'd guess the percentage is even higher for cooks) are Filipino, I eat an awful lot of it. Filipinos are also unfailingly hospitable (bonus). Fun fact: a recent edition of Time Out New York devoted a full page to a review of a new Filipino restaurant that just opened in Brooklyn. It cracks me up that snobby New Yorkers are paying exorbitant sums to eat fancified versions of the food I eat almost every day. For free.

#2. India. Yeah, all right, you've had Indian food before. But have you ever had real Indian food, prepared by Indians for Indians - Indians who weren't expecting an American to turn up for lunch? Totally different story. Totally different spiciness factor. Needless to say, I have devoted considerable time to cultivating the art of cunningly persuading Indian crews to feed me. Speaking some pidgin Hindi helps an awful lot (Another side note: the Hindi words for song and food are maddeningly similar, and the seafarers often think I'm asking them to play Bollywood music when I'm actually asking about lunch. Clearly, I need to work my pronunciation.). New favorite Indian dish: curried pumpkin. Absolutely out of this world.

#3. The Mediterranean Region (which here means Italy, Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Israel, and Greece). You find yourself a ship with a cook from one of these countries, you've hit paydirt. At least in one way. While the Mediterranean ethos lends itself fabulously to long, leisurely, and utterly delicious meals, it also lends itself (less fabulously) to ruthlessly hitting on women (nb: not trying to be racist. Having lived in Southern France for 8 months, I get that it's cultural. It still drives me CRAZY.). It's always a dilemma for me: do I eat incredible food, or do I stand up for my principles? The food usually wins. How could it not, when it's often things like homemade pasta, turkey drumsticks the size of my head, gorgeous fish, stuffed peppers, fresh donuts dripping with honey, and other things that would normally cost me more than I could afford, especially in this city? I mean, come on! Another point in food's favor: it's often accompanied by booze. Today, for instance, I was lunching on a salt ship with a Greek cook (think heaping plates of spaghetti bolognese, steak, fresh calamari and shrimp...yum.), and reached for the pitcher in front of me, assuming it was filled with water. It was not. It was filled with beer. Case closed. 

#4. The Rest of the World. The crews representing countries not mentioned above, which include but are not limited to: China, Japan, Sweden, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, and Korea are not likely to feed you. Although there are definitely exceptions, notably an all-Taiwanese ship with a female third officer who always feeds me fried rice. Even if it's 9:30 in the morning. 

Aaaand, now I'm hungry. Go figure. 

6 utterly ridiculous things that have happened this week/6 reasons I'm glad it's the weekend

1) Being asked by a seafarer if I was an NBA representative. I can only assume this was because of my height, though I really have no idea. To my knowledge, NBA reps don't routinely visit car carriers in Port Newark...

2) Riding all the way downtown on the subway with a wannabe rapper 4 year-old. 

3) Attending a public event where a woman announced her intention to commit suicide. In all sincerity. Still reeling from that one.

4) Visiting a very sick merchant marine veteran in the hospital and listening to him spout historically convoluted conspiracy theories for over an hour. Apparently, George W. Bush, JFK, Hitler, and AARP are still out to get him...

5) Witnessing a full-scale police intervention against a group of homeless women sleeping in the bathroom stalls at Penn Station Newark. Never wanting to go to the bathroom in Penn Station ever again. 

6) Watching a woman at a bank in West Harlem start viciously beating her 6 year-old child. In public. Researching the appropriate way to notify ACS in the future.

Dear life: please calm down. 

On linguistic confusion

I've been noticing lately that, while my foreign language skills are definitely improving (never have I actually spoken this much Hindi, and I even revived some very long lost Italian today!), my command of the English language has steadily declined since I began working for SCI. This is, in large part, because it's often necessary to speak very simplified English to communicate basic information with seafarers. Sentences like "What time are you sailing?" and "Do you have shore leave?" get reduced to "When sailing?" and "have shore pass?"(sometimes with accompanying hand gestures that probably confuse the poor mariners even more). It's always very embarrassing when I go back into the real world, forget where I am, and talk to adult, native English speakers like they're toddlers.

All that said, I was on a ship today that settled any doubts in my mind as to whether I need remedial English classes. I boarded the River Elegance knowing that it had an all Chinese crew and that they probably didn't have shore leave. I was armed with phones, which I was ready to leave on board for them to use, and innumberable phone cards. At the top of my gangway, I handed over my business card, proclaimed "From Seamen's Club!" (throwing in the word 'church' in those situations tends to be a bad, bad move, as causing people to think I'm there to proselytize is very near the bottom of my wish list), and waited for them to give me a visitor's pass. Which they didn't. Instead, they just looked exceedingly confused. So I tried again. "I'm here from Seamen's Club. I've come to see if you need anything." At this point, I took the phones and phone cards out of my bag, and physically handed them over to the perplexed gangway officers for inspection. No luck. They exchanged a few sentences in Chinese and puzzled over the phone cards as though I had just handed them moon rocks. I launched a new tactic. "How....many....crew?" I said, as slowly and clearly as I could manage.

The unbelievable response from the gangway officer, who was, by then, looking at me as though I myself had just landed on the deck in a spaceship: "Do...you...speak...English?" Needless to say, that was the point at which I deemed any hope of effective communication absolutely hopeless, turned around, and went right back down the gangway. What I really want to know is what the hell language he thought I was speaking! Is my Wisconsin accent really that incomprehensible?

Celebrating MLK in style!

It is, apparently, an East Coast tradition that MLK day is celebrated as a "day on," instead of a day off (Midwestern readers - are you familiar with this? The idea, while appealing, was quite foreign to me until recently). The same tradition applies, nationwide, to AmeriCorps volunteers, who get to honor Dr. King by doing a day-long service project instead of catching up on sleep. 

So it was that, grumbling and muttering all the while, my 3 comrades and I made our way to East Harlem yesterday, destined for an outreach center run by the Little Sisters of the Assumption. Our task, we had been told, was to facilitate programming about MLK for a group of 15-20 undocumented Mexican children, whose working parents couldn't afford childcare for the school holiday. Obviously, this wasn't the first time I'd worked with children before, but being in a room full of people who came up to my waist came as quite a shock to my system, considering I've scarcely seen a child since coming to New York. Much to my surprise, I had an absolute blast. 

As it turned out, our overarching goal was to make an "I have a dream" quilt: the kids each got to make quilt squares reflecting their dreams, all of which were compiled at the end of the day. It was both hilarious and sobering to see what they came up with. One child at my table was passionately committed to bringing an end to poaching jaguars in the South American jungle (why? I'll never know). Another wrote: "No more violence because that hurt people feeling," accompanied by a line of blurry stick figures. When I asked him what the people in the picture were doing, he said: "Praying together." Wow. 

Inevitably, the quilt making took up nowhere near the allotted time, and we were forced to improvise. Fortunately, we were rescued from the task of inventing a diverting game by three 10 year-old girls who came up to us and begged to play "the chair game." Further clarification revealed that, yes indeed - here were 16 East Harlem children who wanted nothing more than to play musical chairs. Brilliant. 

Believe you me, walking in circles around furniture is a very different reality than navigating gantry cranes and climbing gangways. Perhaps because I was so out of my element, it came as a true surprise that I, who can barely walk across my apartment without tripping over something, am inadvertently excellent at musical chairs. Try as I might to eliminate myself so that the kids could play for longer, I just kept on going, feeling increasingly ridiculous as the number of children circling with me dwindled. I finally managed to lose on purpose when there were 3 of us left. I don't think I'll ever live it down. Already, our program director sent out an email full of humiliating photos entitled: "Who knew Kristin was such a musical chairs fiend?"

All that just in case you needed further convincing that my life in New York is completely ridiculous. Check out the rest of the pictures on facebook.

Orange Juice Aplenty!

I've mentioned before that, while we are, of course, equally devoted to all seafarers, SCI has a special relationship with the crews of the orange juice tankers that berth in Port Newark. I'm convinced that this is largely because the ships are just so intriguing - I mean, come on, how could your curiosity not be peaked by a floating vessel carrying 30,000 metric tons of OJ? 

But there are definitely other reasons for our mutual devotion - for one, the 5 sister ships (the Orange Wave, Blossom, Sun, Sky, and Star) have been coming into Newark for longer than any of the chaplains can remember. Because the world of orange juice shipping is comparatively small (although it's still way larger than I ever would have guessed - between all the shipping companies, there are some 60 OJ tankers patrolling the high seas!), the seafarers are far more likely to come back to work on the same ship for years on end. In a job setting where you can go months and even years without seeing the same seafarer again, it's good to have some regulars. Their berth is close enough to our center that they can walk, so they know us well, and we see them often when they're in port.

Plus there's the bit where we love to visit their ships - an orange ship will be in for anywhere from 4-12 days, and they get visited by one chaplain or another on an almost daily basis. It's kind of a ridiculous use of our time - there are plenty of ships that we never get around to, and the OJ crews all have shore leave and aren't particularly needy. But the allure is hard to resist - unlike any other vessels in the port, the orange ships are beautiful and spotlessly clean. They'll always offer you an entire pitcher of fresh, Brazilian orange juice for your consumption (don't ever insult them by suggesting that their juice is from concentrate - they use liquid nitrogen to keep it fresh) and, if you play your cards right, it's pretty easy to get yourself invited for lunch. They crews are mostly Croatian, with a smattering of Spanish, Ukrainian, and Filipino thrown in for good measure, and you can be assured of a delicious Mediterranean meal. They surely know that, more often than not, we come aboard hoping for handouts rather than with the intention of being pastoral, but they humor us - after all, they do use our phones, internet, and transportation service whenever they're in. 

Much to my delight, the Orange Sun was just in for almost two weeks, because the storage unit was too full for her to unload any faster (it's incredibly difficult for me to imagine that, in a world paralyzed by fear of H1N1, global orange juice consumption has reached an all time low - go out and stock up, folks!). In that time, I visited her on three occasions and consumed what probably amounted to two gallons of juice (I take my perks where I can get 'em - I sure as hell can't afford to buy fresh-squeezed at New York prices!). I may work in one of the most dangerous and most polluted places on earth, but at least no one can say that I don't get my vitamins. Score. 

Gender dynamics in the shipping world

There are definitely days when I doubt whether my presence aboard ship serves any useful purpose whatsoever, much less whether it actually qualifies as ministry. Perhaps because all the seafarers are particularly lonely and moody after having been away from their families for the holidays, the latent sexual tension aboard ship has absolutely been through the roof since I've been back. It's getting on my nerves, to say the least. 

75% of the time, the first question I get asked by a seafarer is: "Do you have a boyfriend?" It's not that I'm unwilling to answer (resoundingly in the affirmative, for the love of god! I'm seriously thinking of procuring a fake wedding ring!), but I fail to see why it's even remotely relevant! I mean, what are the odds that, were I single, I would jump at the chance to hook up with some random dude (often 10-20 years older than me, I might add) on a ship, who I would then never be able to contact again? It's not like these conversations even take place in private - they almost always happen in group settings. And the killer is that almost all of the interrogators are themselves married (if they're bold enough to ask me, I'm sure as hell going to return the question)! Seriously, what are they hoping to accomplish!?

Today's conversations about my love life absolutely took the cake. I was on a very flirty Montenegran ship, and had already been asked the boyfriend question by at least six people. So when the third mate flopped down next to me and inquired yet again, I was already slightly peeved. After telling him that, yes, I did, the following dialogue ensued:

Seafarer: "So when are you going to get married?"

Me: (freaking out) "Uh...I don't know...uh...well..."

Seafarer: (very hopefully) "Tomorrow?"

Me: "Oh my God, NO!!"

Seafarer: (contemplative silence) "Hmm. You have a very nice nose."

Me: (failing to see how this is at all relevant) "Uh....thanks?"

Seafarer: (grunt of assent) "You should be very happy with it." 

After this incredibly unsettling conversation, and after most of the remaining crew had established that I was not, indeed, single, they left me alone with the second officer, a timid Ukrainian man  who was, ironically enough, the only person who hadn't flirted with me. There I was, counting my phone card money, while he struggled to open a huge box that a ship's chandler had just dropped off. When he finally wrenched open the carton, what should come tumbling out onto the table in front of me, but a huge case of 500 condoms. He promptly turned scarlet, and hastily tried to stuff it out of sight while I harnessed every bit of resolve toward trying not to burst out laughing.  What an utterly ridiculous ship. At least ten times a day, I think longingly of how much easier my job would be if I were male. 

New Year's Tidings

A very happy new year to you all! Again, I offer my sincere apologies for not being more regular about posting updates, and promise to try harder in 2010 (new year's resolution, anyone?). 

Life in NY continues to go by at dizzying speed. After spending a heavenly week in snowy WI, Kyle and I braved the 16 hour drive back to Manhattan just in time for New Year's Eve. And no, we didn't go to Times Square. After learning that one needs to arrive 10 hours ahead of time, our enthusiasm diminished considerably, and when it started sleeting, we decided to just stay in. As we don't have a working television, we couldn't even experience the famed ball drop vicariously...but then, I've never really understood the whole concept to begin with.

It was nice having a good chunk of time off to just enjoy the city without constantly having to run around it. We covered an amazing amount of ground in 5 days: from Brooklyn to the East Village to Battery Park City to Staten Island. Some highlights:

- Discovering that it is, wonder of wonders, possible to eat a good meal in Manhattan for under $10. And not just a good meal - a four course Indian feast for a mere $6.50! There's a block in the East Village that consists entirely of Indian restaurants, and it pretty neatly fits my picture of heaven. 

- Heading to the Brooklyn Passenger Terminal to visit the Queen Mary II, the biggest cruise ship that can come to any of the NY/NJ terminals (due to the low height of the surrounding bridges, the really enormous ships have to berth elsewhere). With 3000 passengers and 1200 crew, it's pretty much a floating city. The beauty of going to a cruise ship as a chaplain is that you get to see parts of the ship that most people don't even know exist - like the crew cafeteria which, while not quite comparable to the posh on-board restaurants, still serves a damn good buffet. 

- Going on a vertical tour of the Cathedral. For $15, you can climb into the triforium, the buttresses, and the roof. The views were absolutely mind-blowing. It was tantalizingly like being back in Europe.  

That's a long-winded way of saying that life is good and that, while no longer an exciting arena of unending discoveries, New York continues to keep me amused. Here's wishing you all a wonderful start to 2010!