They Were Surely Mad

It’s dark. I was heading to my friend's apartment, and walking up the stairs behind an Indian lady...

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.

Red in Tooth and Claw

I was having a conversation with one of the interns in which I mentioned that I couldn't live in New York. “Not enough green”, I said, to which he immediately retorted, “and you’re living in Bangalore?” 

He had a point for sure, the rapid development of this city is literally brutalising the landscape. Urban planning is non-existent: Well there are plans but they aren't implemented; there are regulations, but they are worked around. Just the other day the one patch of green I had next to my apartment was removed to reveal a nasty eyesore of red-brown earth littered with the plastic detritus of untold multitudes. Some cinder blocks have been foisted upon the ground along grooves barely deep enough to fill up in the rain. 

I was standing on the balcony at the office and shortly after my exchange with the intern, I observed a group of crows taking turns eating the carcass of a rat. Suddenly, one of the local raptors – a hawk, methinks – swoops in, and without landing, or even so much as a by-your-leave, snatches up the rat. I burst out laughing, turned to him and said, “This is why I can live in Bangalore!”

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!

On A Lighter Note

I get a kick out of nonsense like this. Only in Japan.

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.