This Is What Happens When You Have Glamorous Friends

I was out with Lunch-meet at a party at UB City that was organised by brewers UB (What a surprise!) in order to celebrate a win by Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB), the local cricket team. 

I got tanked up on red wine and chatted with one of the cheerleaders (yes, here in India, cricket warrants cheerleading), went to the kitchen and gorged on chicken shish, lamb shabbab, and intermittently cried out “sheep meat!” in between mouthfuls. 

There was a fashion show. Then they put on the cheerleaders. The place was lousy with Bangalore glitterati. Decent music, but a terrible DJ. Great food though! The caterers, Fava, made a spinach and ricotta ravioli that tasted so good it might have had a body in it. 

I found it funny how few guys made an effort to dress up; I was easily one of the best-dressed fellows there and considering the state of my wardrobe that’s really saying something! In contrast, all the women were dressed to the nines, goodness me! There was one lady with the most gorgeous little peepers, high heel, with a platform sole. All black with silver petals. I had to give her the compliment through Lunch-meet. The lady’s boyfriend was looking at me like I’d club him and carry her away if he took his eyes off of me for a mere fraction of a second.

Another Splurge

Because I've felt like eating Italian food. I discovered a decent foreign foods section at a place called Thom's Bakery, where I've seen the largest concentration of non-Indians outside of one of Viren's ex-pat club parties.

I pivked up a few things, but wasn't brave enough to drop the rupees they were asking for a tin of anchovies, I haven't developed enough of a craving for a good penne putanesca... Maybe one day. 

Today I feel like a good aglio olio, with a nice salad and braised chicken breast. Of course, just as I'm getting ready to start cooking there's a bloody power cut!

My Weekend Break

Ah, yes. So it seems in Hampi one can find Indians who stare. Even though I was travelling with a tall, pretty, blonde, Russian lady - my friend, Miss Piggy - damn near all stares were directed at yours truly. 

Piggy

Now, I already anticipated the possibility that the stares were because people couldn't understand why a tall, pretty, blonde would possibly keep company with the likes of me. So I compared the frequency and kinds of stares I got exploring the Hampi ruins alone with those I got exploring the ruins with Miss Piggy. About the same. Absolutely fascinating.

Less maddening than the daggers directed my way by the well-to-do black women in the People's Republic of Cambridge (Mass.) when I'm with a non-black female acquaintance; but also less amusing than being regarded with envious eyes by ex-pats when I go out with Lunch-Meet.

I was also surprised by the ways I observed some Indian tourists treating the ruins. I saw people pulling at statues, and/or climbing on them, littering, and even relieving themselves. As if the attitude was that personal enjoyment is of paramount importance; that it mattered not what was left for other people to enjoy as long as they got theirs.

Update

Our two interns have left so the office is super small and super quiet; consulting dept. is down to little old me and my supervisor again. Hope to get a new victim intern soon.

Still lonely, still missing She on occasion. Not just someone-to-hold-lonely though. I think I actually feel existentially lonely too at times. Missing old friends.

Finally managed to get a well-earned break and traveled to a place called Hampi in northern Karnataka. Absolutely beautiful. Pretty much spent two days in the sun and have a case of sunburn, HA! I burn so rarely that the pain and itching always, always comes as a total surprise.The sunburn hypothesis never even enters my mind until my skin starts peeling en masse like I got hit with a few gamma rays.

Sociological Images

Peeped one of Lunch-meet's magazines the other day. The Indian edition of Elle. In it was an article about transracial adoptions with the following lede:

Throughout her childhood, her white foster mother's assurances that she was "not really black", made author Precious Williams believe that her skin colour was something unpleasant. That's why reading about transracial adoptions by celebrities fills her with dread.

Yes, folks. This was the illustration they chose to put above the title. Ho ho!

And the piece de resistance, a bloody advert for skin-lightening sunscreen on the page right after the article, because, folks, dark skin really is unpleasant. All one need do is feign horror at those who express such a view openly (and, possibly, keep your fairness cream out of plain sight).

In Which I Vent My Spleen

I am at the end of my tether with these fucks at Vodafone. They've been promising me 3G for the past 4 months, and every time I call ir’s been: next month sir, for sure. It’s only had no reception a few times. Most of the time it works fine but the speed is really bloody slow, which means that I can barely use Skype.

I was quite pissed off last weekend, because my sister and several friends finally had the time to get on Skype. And I couldn't even chat to them because the data transfer ground to a halt over Saturday and Sunday. Apparently 3G is coming out tomorrow, but right now I don’t trust anything that comes from Vodafone, and I’m all Sunk-costs biased up, and averse to the fumduckery of other service providers to jump ship. 

It amazes me that they’re allowing their name to be put to the fiasco that is the Indian operation. How is it that in a country that exports thousands of engineers, this company can’t sort reliable connections for people in its so-called Silicon Valley?

Update: 3G has apparently been rolled out and - surprise surprise - I still have no access to it. I fear what might happen if I pay a visit to the local Vodafone office.

Thrice Valiant Prince

It was my birthday the other day, which I ended up celebrating in several parts: 

Part I 

boss treats me and the office to lunch. 

Part II 

A dinner at my place, I was coerced into playing host by my good friend Lunch-meet, got absolutely fakakta, woke up to a vibrating mobile phone on a bed stripped of all bedclothes, pillows had been similarly defrocked and lay strewn on my bedroom floor. I had mysterious pains in the lobe of my nose and both latissimus dorsi. It was my supervisor calling. "Why is she calling so early in the morning?" I thought. Turned out that it was actually 9am, and I’d missed the morning meeting. Luckily the entire office, including my bosses, found it absolutely hilarious. 

Part III 

My boy Rahu came over the following day and we shared a few cups of sake. In the evening I met up with Lunch-meet and went to a party organised by the local party boy, Viren. 

Lunch

Lunch wore her freak ‘em outfit - and kilamanjaro if she didn’t! She had these boys slobbering all damn night. It was a massacre. I had a whole bottle of champagne, two if you count the amount of champagne that was sprayed over me. Afterwards we headed back to her place and were joined by some mutual friends… had some amazing chicken kebab, and got fakata again. Good times, my lovelies. Good times.

Their Tears Are Sweet to Behold

Somebody call the fucking Waaahmbulance for the editors at the Wall Street Journal. Those dirty little commie bastards at The Guardian are taking baseball bats to kneecaps and they don't like it one bit:

We also trust that readers can see through the commercial and ideological motives of our competitor-critics. The Schadenfreude is so thick you can't cut it with a chainsaw. Especially redolent are lectures about journalistic standards from publications that give Julian Assange and WikiLeaks their moral imprimatur. They want their readers to believe, based on no evidence, that the tabloid excesses of one publication somehow tarnish thousands of other News Corp. journalists across the world.

"Competitor-critics"? Spare me. 

Of course, those meanies at The Guardian couldn't help but clap back. If those clowns in Congress get their act together on the whole debt ceiling thing, I might actually be able to enjoy the schadenfreude.

Apropos of Nothing

My colleagues in the office have been admonishing me to get a maid, and I can understand why. By the time I get round to cleaning on the weekend, my place has picked up more dust than the Event Horizon; and there are a number of mini-beasts relieving themselves in my apartment.

My policy is to leave creatures alone if they aren’t evil/Filthy McNasty/bothering me. Animalia non grata are few: mice, rats, houseflies, drosophila, mosquitoes, Japanese hornets, and giant centipedes (the latter two were shooed out of the house or thrown out with long chopsticks respectively).

The other day, a wasp was ambulating on my living room curtain when lifted its abdomen, and fired a rod of excreta onto the floor. Later a gecko, regarding me with a wary eye, lifted up its tail and released a sticky black globule, which landed with a nasty little soft thud on the cistern of my toilet. It was in the right area I suppose; cheeky son of a bachelor.

Now He's Cooking With Gas

So I finally sorted out my apartment with a gas connection and have begun the process of furnishing my apartment. (Issues in the office meant that I could never feel completely settled and was in a state of just waiting for the other shoe to drop.) I think I’ve got off to a good start with the furnishing. I’m thinking of getting some more pillows and a low table so I’m no longer eating breakfast off of my bed. Baby steps. 

I used my gas appliance for the first time a little while ago, and boy was that an adventure. I thought I’d make a sambhar with aubergines – a light sauce – and eat that with rice. On the way back home however I felt too tired to go to the store and pick up some rice, since I planned to cook the lentils I would use in my rice cooker. I opted instead to pick up a few chappathi from the nearby kitchen. Mistake number one, as it turned out. Shasti called as I began cooking. I asked her for some tips with making the sambhar, and things went downhill from there: 

What kind of Indian are you? You don’t eat sambhar with chappathi! It’s rice or idly! 

?! I’m not Indian at all! 

I’m not Indian either.

You’re cheating. Your parents are Indian, and you cook this shit all the time!

OK. Fine. Do you have tamarind?

… 

Mistake number two. In the end I had the chappathi with lentil sauce, and fried aubergines.

Sociological Images

Get thee away from me, thou foul and dark creature!

The Market Unleashed

I’ve been here a few months and I’ve gotta tell you folks. I am schizophrenic on the issue of auto drivers and their dad-burned idiosyncracies. I have rants – I say, rants in me about these fellows!

Believe It Or Not...

I'm still not opposed to nuclear power, even after the flustered cluck that went down with Fukushima Dai-ichi. That being said, I caught this interview with physicist Michio Kaku, and the professor plainly states that we came real close to losing all of Northern Japan as a habitable area; and would have done if TEPCO had not been forced to pump seawater into the reactors. All jokes about Tohoku aside, that's just gobsmackingly nuts. 

100% meltdown and clowns at TEPCO were apparently more concerned with their investment than the Japanese people. Good to know.

Suitor #12

Her exasperated tone was quite a contrast to the smile she had on her face as she said: “I’m with a friend. Is that OK with you?” 

The thing about Shasti is that she attracts rather a lot of male attention. I swear, some dudes are straight falling on their knees with rings if she so much as flings a kind word in their general direction. 

So we’re chilling one weekend and she gets a phone call, seems some model from Kashmir is blowing up her phone on a regular basis. Shortly after finishing her call with him, and peeps I kid you not, dude’s brother calls to try and get a date. Shasti switches off her phone, turns to me with a sigh and á me dit: I don’t understand, all these men, I turn them down but they keep calling me! 

A Few Novelties

1. Being happy when the power cuts are shorter than an hour. 
2. The realisation that not catching the fragrance of raw sewage between waking up and going to bed means the day has been an extraordinary one. I've also realised I feel the same way about days spent in Shibuya. 
3. Carrying over 20kg of drinking water about 150 meters from the market to my apartment every two weeks or so. 
4. Handwashing again after a more than a decade. It's like riding a bike, you never forget.
5. Trying to come to terms with the fact that cocktails in Bangalore are roughly the same cost as cocktails in Boston. 
6. Cravings for the flesh of animals – Right now I want a beef steak with chimichurri, Wagyu, char siu pork, the fragrant beef belly ramen from the Chinese restaurant I frequented when I worked in Shiba, the pork belly ramen from the restaurant I frequented when I worked in Saitama, the amazing kara-age from a great bar in Hannou city, pig knuckles from a restaurant I visited in Hong Kong, my red-cooked pork belly with cabbage, mum’s pepe (pepper) soup...
7. Getting into Indian politics: Tea Partiers, if you want to see what an actual Socialist looks like, get thee to West Bengal. Or, y’know, there’s always that guy Bernie Sanders.

Class Warfare

The office was out of toilet roll today, so I ended up using newspaper. Had the pleasure of cleaning up with Lloyd Blankfein’s face.

…

Don't give me that look.

Job Creation

“The wheels turn slower in India, you’ll have to take the time to get used to this.” – Rahu 

When you have a population of over a billy, how do you keep as much of it as you can in employment? Some will point to India’s vast informal economy. Fools! After nearly two weeks in the country I am supremely qualified to ask that we consider the Indian civil service – To the peeps at the shiyakusho: all is forgiven! 

Every foreigner who will be residing in India for 180 days or longer has to register at their local Foreign Residents Registry Office within 14 days of their arrival. Without a foreigner registry card you can’t do much of anything that requires some kind of contract: bank accounts, phone lines, home internet, and the like. Needless to say that without these it would be very difficult to do my thing. 

My experience of Indian bureaucracy to date has convinced me – for the moment – that the whole thing is one giant middle-class growing perpetunator™. Lawd knows what use there was, apart from the salaries, for the layers that stood between me and my foreigner card.

Indians Don't Stare

Indians don’t stare. I’ve noticed a few older people and young kids give long glances of curiosity, but for the most part – in my experience of a mere 7 days. Yes, I’m a dadburned expert in Indian culture now! – Indians, more precisely Bangaloreans, don’t stare. 

They might be thinking all sorts of shit about darkest Africa when they see me on the street, but so far no one has given me a look like they know all about “my kind”, no woman has given me furtive glances, or cowered in fear at my proximity, no one has crossed the street upon seeing me come towards them, and no one has damn near caused a traffic accident rubbernecking. 

So far it’s been a nice contrast to some parts of Londinium and Japan. I love my Japanese brothers and sisters, but sometimes… 

…

I give it one month before I’m venting about Indians in the same way. Or perhaps not. Maybe here the fumduckery starts at two black men walking down the street.

Discussions in Black History Month: On Black Conservatives

During the six months or so of my fruitless job hunting in the US, my friends and I used to joke about getting a job as a Black Conservative. It seems to be a growing industry in the age of Obama. I would ride the monster of American history to financial stability. All I'd need do is stand looking at myself in the mirror after an evening of slagging off black people for fun and profit.

Discussions in Black History Month: Those Who Don't Want To Know

While living in the United States I came to think that much of the energies of the national psyche are directed towards pretending the existence of African Americans and related structural inequalities does not signify evidence of some of the greatest crimes in their country's history.

It is, in my opinion, precisely this failure to wrestle the monster of history that leads to things like the Mississippi Sons of Confederate Veterans' efforts to have the state issue specialty license plates honoring an early leader of the Klu Klux Klan - Mississippi is the state with the highest proportion of African American residents.

I'm having a hard time understanding why anyone would want to honour a man who ran a "Negro Mart", and conspired to enslave millions of human beings. Those are his accomplisments. If, as his defenders argue, his last minute expression of regret is supposed to wipe the slate clean, what is there left to celebrate?