Sunday, May 22, 2011

i'M coVeRed. wiTh fLouR.

so it looks like i might be moving. to boston.

this raises a whole lot of different questions.

like what do i do with the 5 pounds of baking flour in my kitchen?? [ what the heck was i thinking?? ] and the numerous pounds of daal and rice and stuff. just stuff. everywhere i look in the house i see hideous amounts of stuff. good lord what happened to me and why did i buy so much stuff??

so in an effort to not throw away groceries, i tried to make some dosa. seems simple huh. i got urad daal and i got rice , plenty of it..

so i even have them soaked. only thing is , when i go to grind it, i can't really remember the propertions. well lets try it on instinct, whatever... i finish grinding and it looks ok....so anyways i finish up and clean and it takes me the better part of an hour. ofcourse all through that hour i have the nagging feeling that i'm doing something wrong and i should have checked the recipe...

so here i am 2-3 hours later. i stop in the middle of reading my book. let me fire up the ol' rusty internet and check the recipe and after all how bad can it be. for god's sake its just two ingredients. rice and urad daal.

..

..

oooohhh kaaaay.

big. effing. mistake.

it's 3 cups rice to 1 cup daal.. and not 1:3 of rice and daal....

ooooops.

$%#&^@. i'm screwed.


DON'T you understand yet???????
if i have to make this right, i have to eat this dosas for the next 4 months.....


time to host a dosa dinner party. jeez man, no one is gonna want to eat this. ^$%%^#$%

Friday, May 20, 2011

whY tO wriTe AnD hOw

one needs to have thoughts to write. thoughts that your willing to commit to paper [ not those that might put me in jail or send me straight to hell ] , thoughts that will not majorly offend those you know are reading this junk the next day, also thoughts that are not just plain stupid or boring. [ do YOU want to read about how my ear is itchy today??? or how i can't find the pair of a sick i mean sock???. if yes, by god why???!!?? there's facebook and a million idiots for that ]

one also needs time to put those random thoughts into sentences and then time to open the blogger website and type those sentences. but the most important part is having those thoughts. [ the thoughts that won't put you in jail or hell... ]

both H and D gave me 25 bucks each for .. i don't really know why. mebe being a good sport and helping their teams? so in all i did have some fun in beijing and worked a lot and sightsee'd [ wat? ] a bit. is it sightsee'd sightsawed? oh watever. [ you get the point and i gotta throw a few bones at the grammar police. how else will i earn their undying love/hate?? ]

aaah i'm gonna miss you short funny ppl working in the beijing office.
i guess i'm gonna miss a whole lot of things when i leave portland. [ yes i have made my peace; i will leave, with or without I ]

yaawn. can't really sleep and beginning to feel hungry. there's nothing useful in the fridge except some peas and.... argh i swore i'd never talk about my food issues... oh no i'm turning into a facebook clone!!

hOw cAn i sLeeP whEn mY brAiN is aBuzZZ

Gawd it was a nightmare of a flight back. First of all , for some strange reason everyone and their mother was travelling today back to the US. Second , there was this squawling, screaming brat of a kid who couldn't or wouldn't shutup through the whole 15 hour duration of the flight. Actually that's not true , she did give us a brief respite a couple of hours in between when she fell into an exhausted stupor. At first of course I pitied the parents, what could they do?? But then I heard them ofefring her a cookie, and o-m-g are you crazy? Are you giving her sugar???!!! Why don't you stab that fork in my eye while your at it. Your so effin insane you unfit sob's. pardon my french but a few dozen hours without sleep, is like sharp needles being driven into my brain.

Hmm she actually stopped crying to eat the cookie. In-flight attendent, please bring the whole darn box of food you have at the back. We need to keep feeding this baby till we land!

I can't tell you how much I missed google while I was in beijing. It was horrible. I had seperation anxiety and kept trying to refresh my chrome browser page and it kept kicking me out of my connected state. Oh cruel google, how you have made me dependent on you…
Though I did finally finish shantaram. Yes I admit. It was awesome. Yes I was wrong to say he's too preachy.. [ Though I still feel that about the first 150-200 pages. ] But then his experiences are awesome and allowances must be made. And after all that he's gone through, I guess a lot of allowances must be made. The book is well written , and he does have a way of telling a story. It is primarily his point of view and I have to admit I have a hard time sympathizing with him fraternizing so much with the m's.
But what strikes you the most is the amazing life experiences he's gone through and a guy who can write ! Yes go read the book. And yes he HAS captured our indian spirit very well. All things that make us tick [ food and movies and song and dance ] , all things that make us stupid … yup he's pat on.
I just don't agree with some of his sentences.. Or wisdom that he throws out. Hope dies when you stop dreaming.. Or something like that. They're scattered across the book in plenty and … oh well allowances must be made.

Ofcourse it's 3AM, I have been awake and staring at the ceiling for the last 2 hours. Just landed back yesterday and my boss tells me , moving to boston isn't going to be possible within the group.. So I'll likely have to change my job within or without I.
Sigh… I hate change. Its so much work! [ yes I'm just lazy ]
One thing I don't like about being an adult is how much work it is. You gotta remember so many things! Pay the bills, pay the rent, pay the tickets, get the money, pay the money.. Cook the food. Eat it. [ far worse than cooking the food, trust me ]
Remember ur bags, don't forget this and don't forge that.
So .. Much.. Work. Can I just hire a nanny ??

daY N

It's the nth day. I've been eating peanuts and apples all week. With an occasional pasta .. But mostly my diet is congee or rice noodles with some "pickle"
Everytime I put a morsel in my mouth , I sniff it, ask the waiter numerous times , "is this rice boiled in water?"; " are you sure sure, or just guessing…". Even then , I highly doubt I'm being true to my "origins" and eating only "kosher" .. What's with all the double quotes today? mebe it’s the congee….
And even if the waiter politely assures me that indeed, its just water and powder and I can tell from the tasteless smell, that really they have added no beef or chicken, its just some bland stuff.. Yet I glare at him balefully and with a gloomy thought in my head, that my dear ol' granny is probably turning in her grave at this very moment while I eat the noodles.
Oh well.

I thought guys in india were bad. Traffic and all that, but today I saw a guy just blatantly break atleast 4 traffic laws within the space of a minute. He rips on the platform, takes and illegal left turn from the platform on the right side of the road, enters the left road when the signal was red and does all this at breakneck speed.

Its amazing! These guys are worse than us!!

Whoa! I'm suddenly feeling thankful for home. Darn it, I just realized I probably I'm having so many browser issues becoz I'm using chrome!!

Tomorrow I plan to go to an indian restaurant. Wish me luck!!

The next day…

It was awesome. I had gobi manchurian. I know it wasn't half as good as it should have been, and I should have taken something more traidtional.. But there were just too many items on the menu and I went a little crazy. It's two days later and I still have biryani in my fridge in the hotel!!
Yumm..

Went shopping this weeekend and to the temple of heaven. Went a little crazy in the shops too. Shopped a LOT. And I won't tell my awesome find. It’s a fake bag of a certain ahem brand.. And I don't want to get arrested, so until I'm home safe… mum's the word.

The temple of heaven was pretty nice. I liked it. nothing like the summer palace or the forbidden city though. They were a-mazing.

I'm pretty proud of myself, went in the subway station all the way. To and back. Lucky the chinese are pretty organized and all the stations are written in english. I even changed routes and switched train lines. Awesome ! Chinese kids are cute, and funny and cry a lot when taking the subway. Ofcourse that could also be due to the indignity of having your bare ass exposed to complete strangers. I'm pretty sure anyone would be very very upset when put in that kind of sitch.
I think it's all thanks to the olympics that they had to put so many dual , triple language signs around. Makes it a lot easier for folks like us to travel on our own. Ha! I'm not paying an underqualified, over zealous tour guide kid fresh out of college to take me around and bug me about where my boyfriend is.
I can take the subway !

I saw another interesting thing today. a tree growing in the middle of another tree. From far it looks like the same tree has two very different kinds of leaves. The pagoda and something else. Juniper? Its pretty funny.

The ancient chinese were a pagan gruesome lot. Praying to the heavens, wind and sun, sacrificing animals , pushing them into big pits of fire and finally feasting on them. Btw eating vegetables is like fasting to them. wow! they must consider us a nation of starving sods..

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

dAy zeRo

Ofcourse, It is interesting to travel to a place like the south east or far east. It is most interesting to keep track of all the different kind of visitors that are going to the same place as you, and know what kind of wierdos are entering the country on that day.
To a place like china? Yeah you have some variety. You can say that.

There are the whites, the folks so enamoured with the orient and so desperate to show their adoration. The ladies end up wearing all sorts of junk on their person. You know the baubles.. And yes they do kinda clash with ur gucci and reebok maa'am. There are the men, who show their preference of all things oriental by turning into some unshaven monkey clones and letting their hair go. Literally.

There are the business travellers like moi, who are only noteworthy for their lack of anything colorful and their exeptionally drab outfits.
And in the end you have the strange little natives.
Such as that little man, standing in the middle of the corridor, wearing red headphones and doing this strange little exercise dance and looking so ridiculous that I can't resist snapping out my laptop, getting it out of blissful hibernation and whipping up a paragraph.
Hey, you. Strange little man. Did you know those snappy hip movements would get you arrested in my home country ? Just saying.
Oh god I look over and a full 20 min later, he's still making those little forward and backward hip movements. I must be careful not to stare with fascinated horror.

The general chinese public are not very much unlike the indians. Little regard for queues, and impatience to get where their going and absolute no care for conventional ideas of public decorum. Though to be fair they are far more well behaved in public than any indian back in india could every hope to be.

Have you ever noticed that are chinky cousins < if I may be so politically incorrect > , ok strike that, our northern cousins so resemble fish ? I often wonder, is it their fishy diet? That over eons they have stoppped looking like monkeys , like the rest of us and start resembling catfish?
That is one thing I notice most when I go there. Especially the ugly men. Ok , once again backing away from the political incorrectness, the not-attractive men.

Finally the funny little man has stopped dancing and gyrating his hips and is standing in the queue. Wait I am supposed to be in that queue. Ok toodles.