bombay bound

I'm off to Bombay again tomorrow, for just three weeks this time. That little jackass Fernando is still over there, and the lovely Cathy will be overlapping with my trip for the final few days, so the whole thing seems like it might in fact be bearable. And I hear there is a new fridge at the apartment that actually gets below 62 degrees Fahrenheit. And I am taking along my 12-year-old ironing board cover to donate to the apartment because it is in better shape than the twice-used one we bought at Hypercity.

Last night a few jerks people came over and we drank beer and insanely high-alcohol zinfandel and ordered in pizza from Little Star around the corner. If you have never had Little Star pizza, please drop whatever you are doing and go get some. Really, it's OK--I'll wait.

I spent last weekend with my friend (and fellow MEOW member) Claudia. Claudia's dog Reilly is hilarious and also very cute. To wit, the Stuffed Monkey Massacre series:





Claudia collects whisks and she'd recently decided they needed cleaning, so her kitchen resembled...um, I guess it resembled a place where there are a whole lot of clean whisks:



Claudia is evil and she forced me to buy out some beautiful clearance yarn (merino and cashmere) at Stonemountain & Daughter, which is primarily a fabric store but which also carries a small selection of some damn fine yarn. I also got more Noro Silk Garden to make another one of those stripes-within-stripes scarves. We spent a lot of the weekend either at knitters' gatherings or planted in front of the TV watching the final season of The Wire from start to finish, so I finished the scarf by Sunday evening.



Speaking of knitting, if you are in the market for an ass-kicking knitting guide, order yourself a copy of my friend (and yet another MEOW member) Vickie's new book, Knit Aid. And by the way, Vickie is 800,000 times hotter even than she looks in the drawing on the book cover, as evidenced by this (or any other) photo of her:



Hot, smart, and crafty...just the way I like 'em.

salad days

I arrived safely and on time in San Francisco. At the baggage claim I saw my red suitcase coming at me, followed two bags later by my green/gray Ricardo rolling duffel. I grabbed the red bag, quickly checking to make sure the identifying Chococat sticker was on the handle, then grabbed the duffel and headed outside, calling James to tell him I was ready. As I waited at the sidewalk I noticed that they had utterly and completely trashed my duffel bag, like to the point where this was clearly its last trip, ever. There were oil stains, ripped seams, and it looked curiously deflated, like maybe some of the contents had fallen out. So I unzipped the top to discover...a man's suit. A quick check of the tags revealed that this was in fact an impostor duffel.

I did not panic, knowing that somewhere out there someone named Chris was unzipping "his" bag to discover a bunch of salwar kameez he hadn't bought. (Luckily Indian Barbie was safely in my red bag, or else I might have panicked.) And indeed, the good folks at Delta baggage services had the whole thing sorted out and my bag delivered to me at home within three hours.

Remember how I had five days to spend in my new apartment before I had to go back to India in early January? Well, oddly enough, the boxes I left piled everywhere did not unpack themselves while I was gone. The place is kind of reminding me of India right now. I see a pile of crap and think, OK, I need to unpack that and put it where it belongs. And then I think, wait, it belongs on that bookshelf that's in the wrong room and doesn't have the shelves installed. OK, I will just move the bookshelf to where it belongs. But wait, it belongs in a room I plan to paint. So I don't want to set it all up and then have to move it in order to paint. OK, I will paint the room first. But wait, I don't have any painting supplies yet, and plus that room is full of crap that needs to get out of the way before I can paint anyway. OK, I'll put that stuff in the storage room by the back stairs. But wait, I need to get shelves installed in that room, which I can't do while it's full of crap. And so on. Basically, my infrastructure is so screwed up in so many intertwined ways that I can't imagine being able to get it sorted out and functioning within the next, oh, twenty-five years or so. And meanwhile I'll just live amidst the chaos and probably get used to it and forget that there even is such a thing as living somewhere other than in a big pile of unorganized, barely functional crap. India has done nothing if not dramatically lower my standards for what I consider a functional living space. Not to mention dramatically alter my opinion as to what counts as a "large" bug.

When Casey heard I was back, he asked whether I was drunk yet. Um, duh dude, I can get drunk in India--I mean, that's what Kingfisher Strong is for. What I can't do in India is eat a fresh salad or go for a walk without sustaining lung damage and passing out from heat exhaustion. So of course the first thing I did was go to Herbivore (which is right! around! the corner! from my new place) and get a major salad, and then I walked for about six miles, wearing a fleece jacket and long pants. God it felt good. And then I stopped by my corner organic market and bought a bunch of delicious, edible food. It's like being in heaven, only without Jesus loitering around and getting all up in my grille with his holier than thou attitude.

meet 'n' eat

We have our weekly Linguistic Technology Group all-hands meetings here on Thursdays at 1:00, just as we do in the San Francisco office--because if you expect me to give up any of the thirty or forty functioning brain cells I have left just to remember two different meeting times depending on what country I'm in, you are going to have to pry them out of my cold, dead hands. Today in a shameless bid for the hearts and minds of my employees, I ordered fancy cake to be brought in for the meeting, since this is the last Thursday I will be here for a while. When I say this was a bid for the hearts and minds of my employees, I am of course joking ha ha. In truth, given the smallish nature of our group at the moment (13 people plus me plus Big Anil minus Ksheeroda who is out on leave and minus Kulajit who is out with chicken pox), it was an excellent way for me to present myself as a thoughtful and generous manager while simultaneously near-guaranteeing that I would have leftover cake to take home. And so has it come to pass that my dinner tonight was coated with chocolate ganache, and now I have a headache and am in a sugar coma, possibly exacerbated by the fact that my lunch also consisted entirely of pastry (see above reference to 1:00 meeting time).

All this is just further proof that it was wise of me to join the gym near my apartment today. Near my apartment in San Francisco, I mean. Now, I am as technologically savvy as the next girl (provided that the next girl regularly discovers that the "problem" with her computer is that it is not plugged in), but still it delights me to no end that thanks to the Magic of the Internet, I am able to sit 10,000 miles away from the Club One at Fillmore Center and yet still take advantage of their current "Join in February and Get March Free!" offer without so much as lifting a phone or faxing a document. Now I am eagerly awaiting the day when the Internet can also do my workout for me, because it is on that day that I will know we have truly achieved utopia, and presumably by then I will also be able to get my cake via a personal Star Trek-style replicator while simultaneously enjoying a bergamot oil scented foot rub from Patrick Stewart.

Speaking of Star Trek, earlier this week I was cc'd on an email of which one of the only four other recipients was Adam Nimoy, son of Leonard, and that made me feel either extremely cool or extremely dorky, I'm not sure which. The reason for my tangential brush with Hollywood royalty involves my providing "notes" on a friend's screenplay-in-progress that shall remain nameless for now, but which involves the use of paintball as a metaphor for...well, I don't want to ruin the surprise.

Alert readers may have noticed that it is Thursday, and may recall that the latest promise extracted from the charlatan gypsy flimflam artist person from whom I recently ordered multiple salwar kameez sets was that they would be couriered to me on Wednesday. Guess what remains uncouriered? I finally managed to get her on the phone today after an embarrassing scene involving our office manager reminding me about that time a few weeks ago when he asked whether I needed the local line on my desk phone and I said no, just the VOIP line was fine, and also the throwing of my hands skyward while exclaiming "Punit, your country's technology baffles me!" and also a short tutorial on How To Use Your Indian Cellphone (You Moron). So after all that, I learned that it is allegedly a single custom dyed dupatta (shawl-y thing) that is holding up the order, and swear-to-ganesh it will be ready by Monday. To which I replied "Sujata, beeyotch, do not go playin' me like that." Actually no I didn't.

Meanwhile, today I wore yet another new ethnic outfit and it was the source of many delighted comments. Anuja, our lead HR admin person, stopped in her tracks and exclaimed, "You look *totally* Indian!" "It's the blond hair, isn't it?" I said, delicately primping my locks. I am seriously considering wearing only salwar kameez here from now on, because Casual Friday is nothing, my friends, compared to Wear Your Elaborately Embroidered Pajamas To Work Day.

yes, we have no teh internets

We have not had internet service at our apartment since Saturday afternoon, except for a few blissful hours when we were able to steal our neighbor's unprotected wireless on Sunday. Punit, our office manager, was very apologetic yesterday, explaining that "with these internet guys, you have to call every hour and follow up, and they'll say it will be fixed in 6 hours, but then it isn't," and I was like, "Dude, you know I've been in India most of the time since June, right? You think you need to 'splain that to me? I knows me some Indian repair protocols."

So yeah. I am posting from work. The internet at work only goes out once every couple of months, so that is nice.

Dan and Misti recently discovered a veritable paradise just a couple of blocks past our usual shopping area near the apartment. It is a street with trash cans that people apparently actually use; no car horns blaring; and several nice, clean shops, including a small produce/grocery store and A REAL LIVE BAKERY that makes ZOMG!!1!!1!!! whole grain breads. Which you can buy. And then eat. Mmmmm. Nom nom nom. (The "whole wheat" bread at the regular supermarket is basically overprocessed white bread that has been colored brown.)

We are closing in on the end of the training cycle for our six new hires, and then Dan will be flying back to the US. I have half a mind to either stow away in his luggage or tie him to something heavy at the office so HE CAN'T LEAVE PLEASE DON'T LEAVE ME DAN NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

foodie happiness

I know I keep talking about this and it is of interest to no one but me, but I set up this damn blog, so suck it up. It is SO much easier to stay vegan in San Francisco than in Bombay. There are lots of vegan restaurants. I can buy things like nutritional yeast and cashew butter and vegan margarine and cheese and fresh leafy greens that won't kill me with E. Coli (usually) and tempeh and gluten flour and seitan and soyrizo and soy yogurt etc. etc. I have a blender and a food processor. I have heavy pans that have real non-stick surfaces that don't scrape off in shreds into your food when you have the sheer audacity to use a plastic spatula on them. You get the idea.

James is visiting, so this morning I made us vegan omelettes (recipe at Fat Free Vegan Kitchen) and tempeh bacon:



Quoth James, "That was fancy!"

And also we got to drink coffee that was neither instant nor disgusting nor carried by hand from 10,000 miles away just so you can get a cup of decent coffee in the morning for god's sake is that too much to ask.

And also? I get to take showers that are warm and involve more than a trickle. And I don't have to watch for roaches when I walk around my apartment.

linguists on the loose

Today we took the new linguists out to lunch at a place called Kobe Sizzlers. Sizzlers are an odd Indian food phenomenon--they are like those sizzling dishes you get sometimes at Thai or Chinese restaurants, but with way more weird crap. Like, there will be the main protein, such as lamb or chicken or fish or paneer, and then a boatload of rice underneath and a ton of vegetables all around (cabbage, spinach, carrots, beans, tomato, peas, baby corn, onions, and cauliflower), and then some french fries for good measure, all with some kind of gravy and served on a sizzling platter.



Here's Lon enjoying the sizzling smoky goodness:



And here are our new (and a couple of old) colleagues:



Kneeling, left to right: Alex, Robin, Abdul
Standing, left to right: Lon, Anil S., Anil K., Sneha, Anuradha, Manasi, Kulajit, Pinkey

finally alex can has cheezburger

Alex's first order of business upon setting foot back on American soil: get a cheeseburger.





I had a veggie black bean burger, in case anyone is wondering. We're still at the airport, by the way. The weather is pretty dismal here in NYC, so I hope our plane can take off on time. As it is we're already looking at about 37 hours door-to-door. Awesome.

cheese...y

It is possible to make a pretty damn good vegan version of mac 'n' cheese, even without resorting to using soy cheese (which they don't seem to have here anyway; I can't even find vegan margarine):



One out of one Alex agrees that this dish is deliciously edible even if you are not vegan:



In fact, he just walked past me to get seconds.

I am excited about having lunch leftovers, although unfortunately they won't last long enough to take to work on Monday. A friend of mine reminded me this week that we used to take funny Polaroids of ourselves and stick them on our lunches with admonishing messages in the work fridge back at Educational Testing Service. This is a cell phone photo of a photo; I think you can still read the message, but unfortunately you can't really feel the intensity of our collective monitorial glare:



And check it out! I had hair once.

lazy weekend

Those of you who know me as the loquacious extrovert I am can probably imagine that our whirlwind recruiting trip to another city in a developing country to interview nine people whose native language is not English did a bit of a number on my social energy stores. Even a bubble bath and a very relaxing-looking chaise longue at the hotel in Delhi had done little to help.



I didn't realize how drained I was till this weekend, when the thought of leaving the apartment for anything beyond an hour's run seemed about as attractive as dirt.

Both Saturday and Sunday when the cleaning woman showed up, Casey and I were sitting in the exact same places on the same two couches in the living room--him with his computer and me with mine, and both times with me also knitting and listening to music on my headphones. I am pretty sure Mangal thinks we didn't move for 24 hours. I did get up once in a while to cook some comfort food--vegan pancakes for everybody both mornings, and today also some sheera, which is an Indian semolina pudding with nuts and raisins and banana. Needless to say, Casey did not eat any of that one. BANANA!

There was so much nonstop knitting action these past two days that I finished another pair of socks. Normally I don't worry about my yarn being vegan (technically wool and silk are not vegan, but those of you who have been to my apartment know that purging it of wool yarn would take six burly movers a full day, and at least one of them would suffer a hernia in the process). But the stuff I used for these socks (Tofutsies) is SO not vegan that I actually feel a bit weird about it--it's made with chitin, which comes from shellfish. It's supposedly naturally antibacterial or something like that. The bulk of the fiber is wool and soy silk (hence the name--which, hello, how misleading is that? what could sound more vegan than tofu yarn??).



And the yarn is actually so awesome (and you know how we feel about awesome) that I ordered enough for 3 more pairs of socks. I'm such a bad vegan. But damn I have cute socks.

UPDATED TO ADD: Casey just jumped off the couch, lunged and pointed at me, and shouted "Who's a dork?!" Then after a two-second pause he said "Remember that time, just now, when I said that?"

Good god, I love my coworkers.

beverage news

First of all, the trip to Delhi was a great success. We met 9 applicants who were all promising to some degree or another. Offers will be made. Also, Delhi is covered in monkeys. Just FYI.

On to the important stuff: beverage news.

1. You should make your own masala chai with whole spices. I will tell you how. Take the following and crunch them up a bit with a mortar and pestle or with a pulse or two in a spice grinder: 3 black peppercorns, a piece of star anise (or a few fennel seeds), 3 cloves, 2-3 green cardamom pods, and a small piece broken from a stick of cinnamon. Dump that along with a slice of peeled fresh ginger into a pot with 2 cups water and 1 cup milk or soy milk. Bring it to a boil for a few minutes. Turn off heat and dump in 3 rounded teaspoons of loose black tea and let it steep for 3 minutes. Strain everything into a teapot or mugs or whatever. Sweeten to taste. Enjoy the spicy goodness.



B. You should also make your own fresh lime soda. Squeeze some limes. Make some simple syrup (boil equal parts water and granulated sugar till the sugar is dissolved; let cool, then store in fridge). Pour about 1" lime juice in a glass, add a glop of sugar syrup, and top off with chilled club soda. We like to add a few shakes of salt, too. It's like Gatorade, except yummy.



iii. It is hard to get good coffee here, and in any case we do not have a coffee maker. I have discovered the beauty of the Greek "frappe." In a cocktail shaker put a couple of ice cubes, a Tbsp. of instant coffee (preferably the powdery kind, it dissolves easier), a couple glugs of milk or soy milk, about a Tbsp. of sugar syrup (see above), and about 1/2 cup water. Shake it up real shakey. Pour into a glass. It will have a nice head of foam.




d. We have now flown a couple of times on Kingfisher Airlines--yup, the same Kingfisher as Kingfisher beer. And yet Indian law prohibits the consumption of alcohol on domestic flights. THIS IS SO, SO WRONG. On the other hand, the flight attendants are gorgeous. Seriously, they are hot. Did I just say that in my out loud voice?

food beautiful food

Tonight we finally got our crap together and had enough of the new dishes/pans/etc. washed and enough food in the cupboards to actually cook a real dinner. One with pasta and olive oil and bell peppers and zucchini and basil and garlic and chili flakes. It was delicious. I would have taken a photo of a whole plate, but it got eaten up too fast.

And we have chocolate ice cream for dessert!!

Ahhhhhhhh.

partily heartily

Last night was the first annual [mumble-nameofcompany-mumble] Asia Pacific Big Ol' Party with Dancing and Food and Booze. It was so much fun!! It took place at a hotel down the street from work. Traffic was so bad at 6:00 that the people who decided to walk arrived faster than those who left earlier in cars. However, it being monsoon season and all, the ones who drove arrived much less, how you say, totally drenched. Gina was thinking of having a wet tee shirt contest, but only because she was a shoo-in for first place:


Our colleagues over here are a hoot. Some of them seem pretty demure in the office and then you get them on a dance floor and LOOK OUT. I was enlisted for some prolonged swing dancing moves by Godwin, our office manager (the Daniel T. of AP, as we refer to him). These photos aren't from the swing dance interlude, but you get the idea:




I sooooo do not know how to swing dance, incidentally, but it turns out that apparently only one member of the couple needs to know what he or she is doing.

Extensive hypothesis testing throughout the course of yesterday evening allows me confidently to assert that paneer tikka is nature's perfect food. (Because in nature the cheese comes straight out of the cow and directly into a bath of tasty spices and then falls into a tandoori oven and is served with coriander chutney...do I have this right? I don't leave the city much.)

Apropos of, um, well OK nothing (unless maybe he also loves paneer tikka!?), I will also report that I have a major crush on someone:


I watched The Namesake on the plane the other day (along with 17 other movies...damn that's a long flight from JFK to BOM) and I fell in lurrrrve with a certain Irrfan Khan. The double R is for Rrrrrrroww! I like to think of him as the Indian Jeff Goldblum. Casey says he has bug eyes, to which I say (a) what's your point, and (ii) you are just jealous now leave me alone with my screen saver please.

Oh, and speaking of people who are "the (other nationality) (so-and-so)," meet Vikram, our party emcee, a.k.a. the Asia Pacific counterpart to SF's T-Todd:


Vikram's nickname around the office is Big Trouble. And there's Priya with her gorgeous naturally curly hair in the foreground. (I am on a campaign to convince her that her curls are a major feature, not a bug. Seriously, people: girlfriend has some sexy hair.)

Oh! And also yesterday we had our first Hindi lesson. Poor Don and Priya had to be in a class with three linguists who kept turning to each other and saying things like "So Hindi is SOV, then?" and "Ah, it's a flap," and "Cool, postpositions!" and "I got yer velar fricative right here."

Hum khush karmchari hain! (We are happy employees!)

big adventure

The weather finally cooperated this weekend (meaning it only dumped rain a couple of short times and the temps were in the 80's and it was really muggy) and so Alex, Casey, Gina, Don, and I hired a car and went down to Colaba at the southern end of the city. It was quite an adventure! No outing would be complete without an Inappropriate Animals in Traffic component, so check this out:



A guy on a bike in downtown Mumbai traffic with two cows. On a leash.

We had yummy lunch at Delhi Darbar restaurant, and it looked a little something like this:

Gina and I both find it somewhat maddening (OK, Gina extremely maddening) that the custom in most restaurants here is to serve the various foods directly onto your plate, even when you don't want any (if you're not fast or firm enough about declining it). Anyway, we had 5 different veg items, and it was all pretty dang good. Even though I am usually vegan I must admit I have some kind of advanced Paneer Disorder, namely that I can't stop eating it nom nom nom.

See my picasa album for a whole bunch of new photos (link is also always on the sidebar over there), but here are a few favorites:







And of course we had to get a photo of this:


Now I'm ready to just sit and knit for a while. Whew. Karen = old lady.

headline news

Good to hear that "much of the problem will be solved in 2 years." Uhm, that's not going to help us get to work in the morning.



Last night Alex, Casey, Don, and I went to a restaurant across the street from the hotel for dinner. We had 4 beers, 4 main dishes, an appetizer, a bottle of mineral water, naan, and rice, and the bill came to about $23. Then we went back to the hotel and had a total of 3 alcoholic drinks, one juice drink, and two servings of ice cream, and it came to about $45. I think we're going to be spending more time looking for places to eat and drink outside the hotel.

more video + food news

People seemed to really like the traffic video, so I'm adding two more I filmed on the same morning. They are not as dramatic in terms of the actual traffic interactions, but the soundtracks are cool and you can get some more feel for the local color. Not to mention a quick look at our very nice driver!





In other breathtaking news, you can buy MANGO CORN FLAKES here!! I haven't actually tried them yet because I am still trying to soak the sticker goo off the inside of the bowl I bought to eat them in. I shake my fist angrily at the sticker goo gods! Bastards!!



Please note that this cereal has IRON SHAKTI (Iron Power!).