ProcrastiBlog

Well... Let's call it a patent dislike.

I specifically left the house this afternoon to get my wedding band resized—an errand I've been meaning to run for about six months now*—only to find that every jewelry store in Park Slope is closed on Sunday. What's the deal?

But you know who is open on Sunday? The 5th Avenue empanada lady. You know how much an empanada costs? A dollar twenty-five. And you know what they are? Delicious.

Eat that, universe,

* The band has seemed a little too big since I got back from India, probably because of the 10 pounds I lost there (which have oddly stayed off, even after I returned to my customary diet of cow, pig, and Ben & Jerry's ice cream). The band has fallen off my finger twice: once on the street in Sunset Park and once on the beach in California. I haven't determined the precise combination of external/internal/body temperature and humidity/sweatiness that puts it in the danger zone, but I find that I self-consciously walk around with my hand curled in a fist, lest the band leap from my finger and into a sewer and/or the jaws of a whale.

[UPDATE] Upper East Side jewellers have a better work ethic, but $80 to shrink a platinum band a half size? Is that really how much it costs?

Mr. Kellner (who else?) wins the prize, which is no prize. Bonus points if you know where it came from. BTW, my browser doesn't even render this script properly. Something to do with the right-to-left text.

Blogger snuck a Hindi transliteration feature into the post composer. Why? I don't know. Does it work? Beats me. What does it say above? Does it make any sense?

I had my first post-India dosa today and... it met expectations. Which expectations were to be disappointed.

You may ask yourself: why would someone just two weeks back from India buy a dosa in New York anyway? And I would answer: because the dosa guy is one of the only interesting places to get a "fast" lunch near NYU.* The other top contenders are Two Boots and Mamoun's.** (Now that I think about it, I haven't been to Two Boots or Mamoun's yet. Somehow today I had the overpowering urge for a dosa. (Damn you, id!))

On the upside, I noticed that the dosa guy also offers uttapam and puttu, which I know I like, but have not had often enough to be a snob about (yet).

People of the world: NYU lunch joints. Recommend. A satisfying lunch has to be purchasable for $5 or less*** and it has to be fast take-out.**** Within five minutes of Warren Weaver Hall is preferred. (Joe's and Two Boots have me covered for pizza slices. Falafel, schwarma, and South Indian are also covered. (Duh.) If I start going to Chipotle on a regular basis, Hilleary will divorce me.)

* This will seem absurd to some. Having haunted the NYU area for 11 years, I am ridiculously jaded.

** Pamela's merits an honorable mention (primarily and inexplicably for the peanut butter and apple butter sandwich), but they closed over the summer...

*** Private to Tobi: that's like five billion Rupees.

**** Fellow NYU grad students seem to think sitting down for an hour at lunch is reasonable. They are wrong.

For the benefit of future foreign MSRI employees and other Americans in possession of a Citibank Suvidha account:

1) It is possible to transfer your Rupees to a US bank, see below.
2) I have not been able to use my Citibank India ATM card in the US, but I haven't actually tried very hard. It is not a PIN issue, as I can check my balance---it just won't let me take out cash.

To transfer your money to the US, you need to:

a) Have your passport, visa, and pay slips that have been signed and sealed by the company. In my case, I brought every single pay slip and they were stamped and signed by HR.

a) Go to the Citibank Suvidha office in the Prestige Meridien building on MG Road. This is not the regular Citibank branch office out front, but a special office which is reached by walking around the building to the left, up a staircase, and past a Cafe Coffee Day. You will be asked to sign in. You need to talk to, IIRC, Shamila at the second desk on the left.

b) Fill out a form requesting "Remission for the Maintenence of Family". Do not ask to close your account. This will cause a controversy. For the amount you will write something like "X Rupees in USD" to signify the conversion of your Rupee balance to US dollars. I believe there is a fee of Rs 1200 for the transfer.

c) Be careful when you sign the forms. The most commonly heard phrase in the Suvidha office is "signature mismatch". (Do you actually know how to sign your own name? You'll get to find out!)

D) Et voila. Your money will appear in your US bank account within a week.

[UPDATE 9/9/2006] ATM card works in U.S. Citibank ATMs. Has not worked as yet in non-Citibank ATMs.

On August 21, 2006, the company purchased me a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label* which I promptly turned over to Jonathan, who had gifted me the stolen whiskey. By some twisted Indian logic, this event was precipitated by my mentor's threat to buy me a bottle of whiskey himself by the end of the day if the company wouldn't. Thus endeth the Story of the Whiskey.

* Let's ignore the difference between Tennessee and Scotland and call it even.

So, yes, I am back in NY. I arrived back last Sunday. It is surprisingly not-weird to be here. It feels just like... being home.

I dropped off the face of the blogging Earth two weeks ago because (a) I had an enormous amount of work to do before I left Bangalore, (b) I've been just totally disoriented since I got back, and (c) NYU handed me a new laptop on Monday and I've spent all of my computer fiddling time since then trying to get wireless and "suspend to RAM" (i.e., sleep) working under Linux* (not responding to email, catching up on blogs, or getting any real work done).

I've actually got a bunch of things stacked up that I need to blog about, including: an end to the Saga of the Whiskey, the final lessons of India, the irritating trip home amid the Liquid Explosives Scare of '06, the Ballad of the Lost Bag, and "closeted gay friends: what's the deal?" Stay tuned.

* Anybody? Tips? The PC's a Dell Inspiron 6400, the wireless card's a Broadcom 1390, which I finally got working with a custom-compiled ndiswrapper**. Suspend to RAM seems hopeless.***

** NDIS!! Oh, how I loathe you!

*** As a result of my summer employment, I am feeling marginally more inclined to fuck it and just run Windows XP. The thing is, I spent an inordinate amount of my summer trying to get Cygwin and MSVC to play nice together and I long for a nice, reasonable command shell and a compiler to go with it.

There's this project on Flickr to have lots of people submit photos they took at exactly 2:42pm GMT, 19 August 2006. At the appointed hour (as ajudged by my insanely accurate timepiece), Carolyn and I were stuck in traffic coming back from Koramangala. I'm not sure what the exact rules are wrt sub-minute accuracy and what-not, but I now have three candidate pictures for submission. Let's take a vote!

The auto driver next to us (not our auto driver!), who thought we were two completely insane tourists:


Carloyn, centered and washed out by the flash, with a hint of another auto driver giving us the skunk eye:


Carolyn, off-kilter and trying to simultaneously take a picture of me:


Vote in comments.

Vijay invited us to visit his Dad's business, which is AFAIK to train pilots, build specialty aircraft, and sell aviation novelties.
I didn't even realize it was Vijay's family business until we were already there and he said, "Do you want anything? Just take it."



After a while I got bored and decided to just annoy Deb.



Later, we went to Cunningham Rd and had a disappointing meal.



What a day!

Sitting in front of the Taj Mahal (which, for my American readers, was built by the Muslim Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan as a memorial to his wife, incorporates verses of the Qu'ran into its design, and has an on-site mosque), I remember asking Hilleary what Osama bin Laden would think of it. The pinnacle of Muslim civilization's accomplishments or an impious despot's folly?

She said she had no idea and that predicting Osama bin Laden's thought patterns is not an activity that interests her.

I think this helps answer my question. (Although, it is not clear how legitimate this threat is or how well it ties in with the Islamo-whatsist world-view.)

Gilbird just handed me a bill of Rs 120 for 2 bottles of beer. So they weren't intended as repayment for the Jack Daniel's.

I spoke with Lepakshi on the phone and asked why I had received the beer. He said I received it because I had asked for it. But I hadn't. Gilbird says he was pulled away from his other work to go on an emergency beer run on my behalf.

This is all very strange, no? But I like beer. I even told Gilbird I am willing to pay for it (it's a fair price and I am glad to drink it), but he refused to take the money. He wants to get to the bottom of this. Good luck, man! I give up!

[UPDATE 9/4/2006] I paid for the beer before I left (at least I tried to). And Gilbird quit.

Either (1) the mangosteens I bought the other day were not the best of the batch, (2) those damn ants got in there and ruined them, or (3) they don't take well to refrigeration (although it stuns and/or kills the ants). Mangosteen, my exalted queen! Why have you forsaken me?

My hand has healed to the point where I can make use of it in most normal situations. There's still some swelling, which pushes my knuckle out of whack, and it still hurts if pressed, squeezed, or twisted.

Which brings me to handshaking. I suppose I am a bit of a handshaking pedant, feeling that a handshake which is neither too limp nor too firm (the Goldilocks shake) is an essential aspect of good character. The predicament of having a fractured hand without a cast puts me in something of a characterological double bind.

My strategy at first was to simply offer my hand and pray that my shaking partner was not one of those confounded knuckle grinders. This usually did not turn out well.

Then I tried offering my left hand. This is awkward.

Another course is to hold up my hand and declare, "I am injured," thereby excusing myself from the shake. This is lame.

Putting my comfort ahead of my reputation, I have stumbled across a foolproof strategy. As the hands come together, I conspire to make sure that only my fingers end up in the other party's palm. The result is the ultimate in a weak handshake---the action is essentially equivalent to offering up my hand to be kissed.

I'm sitting in bed, eating a mangosteen*, when I look down and my bowl is absolutely crawling with ants. "Huh. That's fast work," I thought. "Where did those ants come from?" Then I looked at my hand. And the fruit. Which were both covered in ants. Ack!

This might explain why only 2 of the 6 fruits in that batch were edible.

* Yes, mangosteen**. Which is not a kind of mango.

** Wikipedia says, "Mangosteen juice is a dye which can be almost impossible to remove from fabric (the reason why they are banned from some hotels in countries where they are available)." My bedsheets can attest to this fact.

Gilbird came over tonight with two bottles of beer, sent courtesy of Lepakshi. Thanks, Lepakshi! 40 more bottles like that and we'll be in the ballpark!

* I apologize for this unimaginative, generic title. This could have been the title of every single post I've done in the last 3 months...

[UPDATE 8/19/2006] Beer actually sent courtesy of my line of credit.

On July 4, 2006, Jonathan gave me the present of 1 liter of Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey. Unlike some brands of liquor, which are franchised to Indian distillers and sold for Rs 400-500, Jack Daniel's is imported from the US and costs more than Rs 3000.

Over the course of the next few weeks, no more than 5 shots of whiskey were poured. When we left for Delhi and points North on July 21, 2006, the bottle was more than 3/4 full.

When we arrived back in Bangalore on August 3, 2006, as I briefly mentioned, the whiskey was almost entirely gone. And to the extent that the contents had been diluted in the fashion of a homeopathic remedy, it was just plain gone.

The only people who had been in the guest house in those two weeks were two other MSR employees (who are moderate of habit and, in fact, teetotallers) and the household help.

Since I hadn't actually paid for the whiskey, I felt awkard about complaining. But at the same time, the housekeepers absolutely should not be drinking my liquor. So I complained to the appropriate persons in the lab.

Two days later, on August 7, 2006, I was informed that the culprit had been identified, had confessed, and would be made to pay. "Tomorrow."

Six days later, on August 13, 2006, the new housekeeper, Gilbird, informed me that the accused had "left the state" and was now denying that he ever drank the whiskey. "He cleaned the toilet and made the bed only. On his mother he swears."

Today, August 14, 2006, Gilbird, his manager Lepakshi, and the accused housecleaner knocked on my door at 10:00 AM. (Was the accused extradicted or had he given himself up? I don't know.) Lepakshi told me this was the boy who stole my whiskey, but he claims now to not have stolen it (and again with the toilet and the bed and the mother), and what did I want to say about that?

Um...

[UPDATE 8/15/2006] Two bottles of beer appear.

[UPDATE 8/19/2006] And are billed to my account. Word is that a resolution is pending... "Tomorrow"?

[UPDATE 9/4/2006] A bottle of Johnnie Walker appears. Close enough.

New photo set.

The good parts:

A really good breakfast at Kamat's on Mysore Road. Maybe the best meal I've had since Haridwar.

The falls:


The temple:


The hysterical laughing on the car ride home.

The bad parts:

The potholes:


The Qualis:


The 3 or 4 hours driving over potholes in the Qualis.

I really don't understand where this question comes from. I guess it's a clumsy translation of the local formalities. My answer is always "Christopher" (which inevitably comes back as "Mr. Christopher"), since "Chris" can easily become "Krishna" and "Conway" is just a waste of everybody's time. People here know the name "Christopher" the same way Americans know... Um... Are there any Indian names that Americans know? "Vijay"? "Ravi"? (Stupid Americans.)

Damn it. Felt on the verge of something all day yesterday and today I've woken up with a wicked sore throat.

Funny thing is I've been taking Cipro for unrelated stomach problems*, so either this is a viral infection or I've been breeding super-bacteria in my throat.

Another funny thing is that I'm realizing Hilleary was kind of lucky to get sick while we were traveling, because we could just call room service and ask for lemon or ginger tea. Whereas I'm about to go to the supermarket to go buy lemons and ginger and assemble a tea myself in the guest house kitchen. I think there's a knife in there somewhere...

I'm also going to the pharmacist to see if he will sell me anything like the Halls Defense lozenges that H and I swear by at times like these and to replenish my stock of ibuprofen, the only over-the-counter medication that I don't have a 200 or 300% overstock of**.

* It's a sign of the times that, after two days of the shits, I am only declaring myself sick now that my throat is sore.

** I have a gross oversupply of diarrhea and gas medicine, which I haven't taken at all, and Benedryl and loratadine, which I have taken only rarely. I don't have any cold medicine (e.g., Dayquil, Nyquil), which is now on Hilleary's "don't leave home without it" list. I went to the pharmacist in Jodhpur with a list of the active ingredients in Dayquil, which led to some rummaging in the back and the production of two dusty bottles of "expectorant". When we went to the hospital, H was prescribed 6 different medicines at once, which were (I have the receipt right here): Zifi LBX, Dilosyn, Zyrtec D, Sporlac, Flexon, and Pantop-D. Dayquil, people! It's good stuff!