To The Last Page..

I finished “Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow”, as well as “Things Fall Apart”. The first was an excellent murder mystery-esque book, filled with amazing science regarding snow and theories on math and physics. A very different kind of novel, well worth the read. The ending left a little to be desired (I hate that feeling when you know there are only a few pages left in your right hand and you know the author can’t possibly wrap it up with so little time left.. ) but perhaps I just prefer my climax in the middle of the book. No denoument here my friends.

“Things Fall Apart” was a inimitably sad book, on so many levels. Personal, familial, global, historical – I wasn’t too sad to reach the end, just sad that it had such an ending. I’m not sure if I would recommend it…maybe you just have to read it yourself and see.

Up next – “One Hundred Years of Solitude” – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- “This Side of Paradise” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

Some Thoughts for the Day. Like You Need More.

"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day." -E.B White

"I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell." ~Harry S. Truman

"When I tell any truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do." ~William Blake

"We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable." ~Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." -Noam Chomsky

"The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human." -Aldous Huxley

I Need Some Help Mr. Bigstuff..

My brother is listening to a lot of Aretha Franklin on his iPod. Here is my current top five in rotation.

1. Blame it on the Tetons – Modest Mouse
2. Golden Touch – Razorlight
3. Rythem – Awol 1
4. Annie’s Parlour – Kid Koala

5. Beverly Hills – Weezer

Anybody been listening to anything new? I need some suggestions - and some bootlegged cd's to make their way over here.. ahem.

Something Stormy This Way Comes.

It appears that the monsoon as arrived...a little ‘monlate’ as the newspapers are fond of quipping. *smile* The temperature this morning was about 15 degrees cooler than I’m used to in the morning; so very strange. I found that I was quite comfortable in jeans and a light sweater.. at 30 degrees!!

Not too much going on this side of the world. I leave tomorrow night for Colombo, Sri Lanka, and am back the following Monday. It seems to have completely snuck up on me, I keep thinking that I’m not leaving for at least another week. I can’t believe that it’s already the end of June.

The weekend was lovely, a nice break. Bryan and I built a fort in his living room, with sheets and the dining room chairs. It was a perfect, grey, rainy day to do it. So we wore our toques and ate peanuts and drew pictures of log cabins (Bryan) and listened to Cat Power and Nightmares on Wax. I haven’t built a fort in years, and as Bryan commented, it seemed to take a lot more work when we were kids. Ain’t that the truth. It’s just about the only thing that’s gotten easier with age.

It was my Mum’s birthday yesterday, so we had a big dinner, ate way too much food and laughed so hard. That’s definitely something that I hope to bring to my own family – the amazing laughter and food that has always graced our table. I always feel like I’m getting a gift being able to sit at a table with my family.

That’s about it! I have to find some time today to pack and get ready for Sri Lanka. This weather just makes me want to drink tea and sleep and listen to jazz. Which worries me, since the monsoon lasts for a few months. Productivity may be a little low in the next while. *smile* Take care everyone!

Cooking Lessons a la Tibet

Dolma, Bryan’s Tibetan maid, showed me how to make momos today! She usually makes them when Bryan comes home from a trip, and they’re just so amazing. So I asked if she would show me how to make them, and the tomato stuff that goes with them. (Fondly referred to as “Tibetan Ketchup”)

It was so much fun. Dolma is about as big as a minute, I think the top of her head comes maybe to my chin, and when I stand at 5’2” (5’3” on my passport…) that’s pretty tiny. She’s got this endearing gold tooth and a head of long long black hair that’s curiously free of grey and always pulled so properly back into a big bun. She’s got the most beautiful, face altering smile, and she sticks her tongue out when she gets really excited. She could be anywhere from 50 years old to 150.. I have no clue. Her English isn’t great, but it’s a hell of a lot better than my Tibetan, so we get along pretty well. Plus, there is something that’s so familiar, so universal, about one woman teaching another how to cook something; most of the time our grins did more instructing than our words.

So we drank a little South African beer (which made Dolma delightfully giddy) and chopped chicken and made dough and laughed and laughed. She’s just so funny – I can see when she’s standing behind me that I’m doing it wrong because her little hands kept jumping forward, wanting to fix everything. *laugh* The ingredients and all the parts are pretty easy to make, it’s the hand-momo-coordination that you need to make the cool dough designs that just killed me. It was so much fun. At the end I was covered in chicken and ginger and dough and tomato – but it was so worth it. We all stood around the boiling pot as they steamed, waiting to eat them. Which we promptly did as soon as they were done. So now I’ve got an authentic Tibetan momo recipe, written on the back of the “Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist-Leninist) Manifesto” which for some reason, was the only paper in my purse.

Anybody interested in momo making lessons, I’ll give them to you for the price of a new winter scarf, a haircut, or some South African beer.

A Dictator's Doritos

The chances of getting Sadam Hussein on Ricky Lake are relatively slim. But, we have something better. A group of young men who guarded Sadam are now speaking with CNN in regards to their experiences. And oh lord, it’s a right laugh.

For instance, the young man who was so well bred that he almost said “Pleased to meet you” upon Sadam introducing himself.. when (and I quote) “My inner monologue had just kicked in, and now, I was like, Geez, you’re not pleased to meet him, he’s a dictator!” No word of a lie, this is on CNN.

My particular favourite was when they were speaking about Sadam’s favourite foods. Apparently, though his mind is on the loop, his bowels are regular with his daily requested cereal – Raisin Bran. #1 Choice Among Colorectal Surgeons and Dictators alike! 2 Scoops of Infidels in Every Box!

Like two children, these marines spoke in awe of the dictators penchant for Doritos. They would give him a “huge family sized bag” and “in ten minutes, it would be like… gone.” In a single sitting, they gasped! Yes, millions of Kurds and Shi'ites.. but a family sized bag of Doritos?

Pleased to meet you Sadam. Nice to see your other side.

Just 10 Pages.. Please.. a Literary Dime Bag..

So I’ve been indulging in my most academic of addictions – reading. And I’ve been truly, tortuously enjoying it, like a real junkie would. I’ve finished a literary litany of books over the past week or two, and would recommend a number of them.

“Lady Chatterley’s Lover” – D.H. Lawrence (Not what you’d think – but 10 times better)
“Middlesex” – Jeffrey Eugenides (Has pushed “Love in the Time of Cholera” to a tie for favourite book – probably is one of the best books of the past 10 years.)
“Mother Night” – Kurt Vonnegut (Deliciously dark humour –a wonderful read.)
“A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” – Dave Eggers (Painfully real. Made me love my mother.)
“Down and Out in Paris and London” – George Orwell (The pleasures of being poor in Paris – who says only having chocolate and bread to eat is a bad thing?)

Up next – “Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow” – Peter Hoeg
- “The Old Man and the Sea” – Ernest Hemingway
- “Things Fall Apart” – Chinua Achebe

If anyone has some suggestions.. please let me know. I’ve been going off a mixed list of Pulitzer prize winners and New York Times ten best lists etc etc – But nothing is better than real life references.

India Has Gone to Pot

India has gone to Pot..

Ms. Poshlust and Mr. Bryan

Ms. Poshlust and Mr. Bryan

Mountain Girl, is that you?

After 8 days in the mountains, having a friend cut your hair sounds like a good thing.

An Indian Backyard

Indian Backyard

Addictive, # 10577

www.wordcount.org

Waxing Happy

I had a boy take me on the back of a bicycle through the woods last night while I held my pants from being caught in the spokes and sang Patsy Cline. I sat on the back as he peddled through a perfectly set sun, leaving a lavender and blue sky for the trees to sleep under. The moon was a “waxing gibbous”, imperfect in its lopsided smile that helped, with the glow a city and 13 million people, to light the path. I think my skin sighed, and smiled.

Frying My Canadian Bacon

It’s so unbelievably hot here. This weekend it was 50 degrees in the sun, the hottest I’ve ever been in my life. The wind doesn’t help at all, they don’t have cool breezes here. You roll down your window in the car, in the hopes of something cool blowing your way – and instead you get a face full of what feels like a blowdryer. It was unbelievable. When you walk out of your front door, it’s like opening an oven.

The heat really doesn’t do too much for ones appearance either. Make-up is just a lost cause, as is doing your hair; after an hour in the heat, both of them have slid down around your waist and proceed to stay there. This lovely thing happens where your ankles swell and your toes get burnt by the sun, while the rest of you miraculously avoids getting a tan at all. Meanwhile, your sunglasses are creating some kind of oven between the lenses and your face, so that you have to take them off every 5 minutes lest you parboil your eyeballs. Allowing, of course, all the sweat on your brow to rush down and sting your blinking eyes that have just been exposed to ten million UVB/UVA rays.

While all this is happening, your body is trying to rid itself of any excess weight, usually in the form of sweat, not fat, as I’ve instructed it so many times. I’ve discovered that places that I never knew sweat – do indeed do so, and at alarming rates. The back of ones knees for instance. Or your ears. My favourite, of course, is when it gets so hot that I appear to be lactating. Always attractive.

The mornings and evenings offer little, if any reprieve at all. It’s already 30 degrees by 8:30am, with a usual projected high of about 45. 50 degrees when we’re really lucky. The evening is pretty much the same. It doesn’t go down past 25-30 often.

So, my bigger question is – how on earth am I going to live through a Canadian winter again? Where my hottest day here and my coldest day there have a difference of almost 100 degrees between them? I’ll be praying for a blowdryer then.. I have no doubt.

A Dusty Update

Delinquent as always.. all I can do is apologise. The days have been filed with work and friends and family and sun and laughter.. Filled with too much to sit still and write a blog.

Everything is well here – wonderfully well. Bryan and I have been playing explorers and driving all around Delhi listening to mixed tapes and getting horribly lost and laughing and yelling and doing all those things that seem amplified inside a car. (Or.. as Bryan refers to it.. “The toaster on wheels”. Which isn’t altogether an untrue description of the Qualis.)

We’ve been exploring antique shops and imagining houses and yard to put the treasures in; covered in dust and the incredibly heat. My favourite so far had almost three floors of absolute wonder. Armoires and couches and tables...coffee tables as big as dining room tables, marble arches bigger than my living room. Shelves of antique toys, little wooden elephants on wheels (which, I caved and bought and secretly stashed for an unimagined child of mine that might one day pull it along a sidewalk, unaware of the story of where their mummy picked it up..) little horses and camels… It was wonderful.

Bryan’s attempting to get his couches reupholstered before returning home, so we were also on the hunt (in the land of textiles; it really was a hunt – which surprised me.) for that particular fabric that would be perfect to buy in bolts of 35 metres and match the lovely furniture he bought. It was worse than prom dress shopping – and I have to say that I wasn’t too much of a help! *smile* It ended up that the place we dismissed at 10 in the morning was the place we ended back up at 6 in the evening, after a day of zipping around the city, positively hot and lost and feeling for all the world that there really couldn’t be worse traffic.

In all honesty.. I think things like that only make people closer, better. Especially here in Delhi, when the only person that speaks your language (literally and figuratively) is the one beside you, holding your hand and laughing just as hard as you. The only one who knows your “Oh my lord lets get out of here” look, things like that. I guess that’s probably relative all over the world. But somehow it just seems all the more-important, here in India. So Bryan – thanks for holding my hand and laughing with me, and knowing my “lets get out of here” face.

Other than the day to day adventures – there is also the most mundane of all – Work. *smile* It’s not been bad at all, fairly busy. This week has dragged by without a doubt, each day felt like a week itself. The family is well, my sister leaves for Canada for 6 weeks on Monday, and couldn’t be more thrilled if she tried. She’s spending the time on the prairies with my grandmother, and my mother keeps reiterating that it’s “Better to be bored in Canada than bored in India.” Which holds some small iota of logic.

That’s my small, and painfully useless update. I hope you’re all well – haven’t heard from a couple of you in a while.. *cough cough* So I’d appreciate an update. Hope you’re all well – of course I’m thinking of all of you. Take care of each other, talk to you soon.

Pale Yellow Papers

I can’t throw them out.

I’m filing all of this information about Nepal – the political upheavals going on, the Maoist insurgency, the clashes between the military and the rebels. And I have stacks, stacks, stacks.. Of these pale yellow papers from Amnesty International.

Each one is a record of somebody that has “been disappeared”. Each one is a brief biography of a person’s life, and the instances surrounding the fact that they have now “disappeared.” The last parts we know, the walking to the market, the coming home from school. The ‘no political ties’ and the ‘never voted’. Then the gone.

Apparently Nepal has the highest rate of “disappearances” in the entire world. An estimated 20000 people.

I’m supposed to throw them out. I can’t do it. They’re sitting on my desk.

I can’t throw them out.

Send in the Postman

So I’m sick. Sick with a distended third world belly. Oh, it may seem comical that I frequently wonder just how close I am to immaculate conception to get a belly like this.

But really, the thought of various amoebas throwing parties in the dim red light of my stomach, dancing away under the slightly intruding disco ball of my bellybutton, thrilled with all the room a missing intestine permits… Gosh.

I’ve tried to fight it. I’ve sent in the AntiBiotic BodyGuards, wielding white blood cells like nightsticks, but they’ve only succeeding in making the party a little less loud – wherein somebody yells “Damn you coppers!” and they kick up their heels and start doing the bumb and grind all over my lower intestine. (Made all the more important by the fact that it's the only one I have left.)

So instead I’m trying to live harmoniously with my resident friends, letting them sap me of energy, like it’s me that’s at the party, not just hosting it. It’s not working very well. I’m thinking that I’m going to have to throw in something a little tougher, perhaps the antibiotic equivalent of Bukowski, who will outlinger and outfester anything silly enough to hang around. I could live with that. Maybe.