Food memories

I wonder if one still loves the same things as a grown up as one once did as a child, especially in terms of food.

My fondest food memory as a child is one of eating a cucumber tomato sandwich paired with an orange fizzy drink probably 'goldspot'.
And I always had it when I went to my dad's office. He'd always call for these sandwiches and it'd come in a ceramic plate alongside a glowing bottle of carbonated sweet orange soda with a plastic straw bobbing about most carefree.

That sandwich, of which I ate only one triangle was huge. I'd had to hold it in both hands or maybe that I was such a child that my hands indeed were tiny.
That's probably from when I was 6-7 years old, no more than that.

Sitting on a revolving chair, propped up on three cushions leaning on the vast glass table I sat chowing down on what I thought was the pinnacle of culinary delight with crunchy cucumbers, juicy tomatoes, spread with thin layer of spread of some kind and salt and pepper sandwiched between soft buttery pieces of white bread, all washed down with the carbonated indulgence of tangy sweet orange.
Oh how delicious it was.
Maybe I'd give this combo another go one of these days, recreating the same moment and memories and of course that most delicious taste that I thought was oh so posh.

Maybe I'll buy a Fanta this weekend and go ahead with this little experiment.

App love

I love this app so much.
No matter what the question this app is the newer..for me.
Gets me around everywhere without the hassles of parking, driving, making itself available everywhere.

I'm seriously considering buying a new electrical scooter, only cuz anything that rides with petrol needs special permit in China and anything electrical is welcomed with open arms, but of course I'm still contemplating.
But this app, oh this app is my absolute favourite app. Unlocks every yellow darling bike that takes me everywhere I needs be.

For more sporting purposes like cross city trekking I use my geared bike proper but for purposes more mundane these basic cycles are sheer love.

In dirt and dust

I was delivered kilos upon kilos of potting soil today and I feel kinda bad that something like dirt had to be ordered online.

I mean, I'd normally go downstairs and dig up soil and use it for potting, but no!

Also the potting soil used in this sort of the world is rather different, in that it's sort of porous, like blackened sawdust and water much too easily leeches down towards roots and outside of the pot collecting in a plate.
These things baffle me.

But soil online? Something doesn't feel right about it.

to the gallows of today

Say one thing about sleep, say I had a bellyful of it.

Awake again at 3:30 am to an overactive hungry cat whose choice method of waking me up is by scratching the bed post to create enough noises that would rouse a comatose patient out of irritation and I am one of those light sleepers that can be woken by a loud wink in the vicinity.

Did I mention how playful the furry ball of satanic seed was? After a repast of the most lavish kinds, he thought it'd be so much fun to jump over my person and treat my curves as his own personal Autobahn.

Now how does one sleep when sleep is already broken and redistributed all over the bed in razor shards wide-awake with broken dreams and a hint of annoyance?
No sleep was to be had and the little demon kept leaping and jumping about the house running hither and thither, scratching carpets, playing with his food bowl, playing hide and seek with my blanket that I wore like a shroud and when enough was enough I realized it was almost 5:00 am.

Throwing aside my covers and steadying like a zombie I gurgled out sentences that were a collection of curses most colourful and made my way towards the kitchen whereupon I rage cooked food.
Imagine fixing breakfast and packing lunch at 5:00 instead of the usual time and I was in no mood for niceties.

A full on meal of protein packed spiced fried rice, fruit salad, and a small dessert for lunch and a bowl of porridge and sliced fruits for breakfast; only to look at the watch and realize it was only just 6:00 am.

The maniacal feline by now had had another go at his food and now seemed in lazier spirits.
Of course, when everyone has been roused awake by his pittering paws of diabolical activity it's only natural for the devil to call it a day and count forty winks for the next eight hours or so.

What doth I do?
My sleep lay broken, wasted amidst pillows, my body cried with anguish at not having more than 3 hours of sleep and my head hurt.
I was done with morning activities and there was only one way this day could go, viz., to the bed and that's exactly what I did.

Lying on the bed wondering how to get on with today I slept and slept some more until it was well, I'm ashamed to admit but until it was 10:00 am.
There wasn't a singular shade of worry cast upon my features, there was no guilt to speak of and looking around with a refreshed pair of eyes I saw the cat curled up into an impossibly cute ball of soft fur, lying next to me and there was only so much I could do from gushing into a hopeless ball of mush.
He eyed me sleepily, gave my arms a little head bump to acknowledge and express his affection and sleeps still on my bed.
As for me, I ran a couple errands went out for a bit and now sit nursing thoughts of coffee.

Shop hard dead smart

I'm not a compulsive online shopper. No sir!
I hardly ever buy things I do not need for I know the reality of finding useless things strewn about the house eating space, collection dust.
I'm not one for sales, for they never sell anything that you'd buy ordinarily; you end up finding something cheaper that you'd not have bought had it been expensive and why something now when you didn't buy it then?
It's mighty rare that I buy clothes/shoes (except some instances) online because I like to try out clothes before buying them.
So what do I really buy online?
Books for one..but apart from that some makeup, and that too when I know what I need to buy, instead of browsing things and selecting them then.
Foods I wouldn't find ordinarily in supermarkets like a bottle of kecap manis that I just ordered along with nori sheets and a couple kilos of chickpeas, for they are hard to find here, at least not until I go to a speciality store.

I am a restrained shopper at best, never buying anything needlessly, hardly even browsing online shopping sites, not until I feel the urgent need to buy something immediately..and those instances at few but not raw.

Lost in translation

Often times when I buy something on taobao, I need to translate Chinese characters to English and the results are often hilarious.

Game shows:

There's something to be said about watching game shows you know nothing about late at night and then suddenly finding yourself turning on tv at the same time everyday, usually 1:00am to watch some game show that was so cool and funny that you'd even started rooting for a dickish contestant.
Alas, these instances happen far and few in between, mostly when I'm in the Mecca of indulgence that is my trip home and watching late night tv as visible from a haze of delicious narcotic is one of the few unspoken pleasures of in life.. and my favourite television channel in such instances is AXN.

They have the oddest things happening each time you time on, and almost always you end up switching on to an episode of CSI:Miami which takes a mere moment to change but nights on AXN are ripe with fun fun fun game shows.

There was this game show where contestants were asked MCQ's ranging from silliest Hollywood trivia to somewhat serious current issues and contestant were eliminated on the basis of that, and it was the elimination which was hilarious as nothing could be.
Falling in water, getting shot through rubber pipe to fall in ponds, finding a trap door open to fall in..water. So on and the like, and if anyone complained about Hyena infestation then they've not heard a bunch of stoned vagrants laugh at 1:00am.
Wipeout being one of those beloved game shows that I just couldn't stop watching. Gods the falls were fun as all hell, watching people fail in seemingly easy looking but wretchedly difficult situations made even worse by water is by far one of the most hilarious things..and don't even get me started on crystal maze.
as a kid I was a maniac for crystal maze.
Not just me, my entire fam sat and watched the energetic host lead and put people in situations that had my palms sweating. It was such mad fun.

That's the thing about game shows. If they're well made and wonderfully executed in their originality then watching them can be pure joy, case in point survivor.

I used to watch it some time back, many years ago, though never following a season complete but turning on tv to find some episode going on that would grip me by the hook.
The plotting, scheming and politics on the show can be such rich fodder for hate and wonder, and the tasks are absolutely marvelous. It's so gritty and often times painful, and you can see the contestants deteriorating in front of your eyes. Losing weight, changing colour, turning into barbarians, solving puzzles and trying to survive.

Then there's another fitness based game show, which again, I saw on AXN where fit as fit can be people try to complete an impossibly difficult circuit of physically taxing obstacles made of tasks that looks like an illegitimate child of parkour and death wish. This was so fun that for two weeks I'd never miss an episode until of course my cup did run over and I made way back to my 'real' life.

Another month and I'd find myself turning television to watch another episode of something random and totally loving it, living for it that moment.

fitnss misery

That's just it, the thing with doing a long stretch of cool down post workout; I dispensed with yoga for today and just did a ten minute stretching workout to cool down my body and it's always after such cool downs that your body comes to a state of total relaxation and you let yourself think that you could've worked out a bit more.
There's this sudden feeling of over confident fitness that you forget the last 45 minutes of extensive workout out, out of which the last ten minutes were spent flapping around like a beached whale on the mat berating yourself for this torture.
Might be something to do with happy hormones, so happy that they almost try to convince you that you can do better. lift heavier, push harder, jump higher, when in fact you'd reached a saturation point in terms of your physical level of exertion wondering why liposuction isn't nearly as popular as it should be.
Of course, once you've settled down with a meal and what not there are parts in your anatomy that begins a song of sorts. Ones twanged with ache and sore pains.
Lower back, that felt like a lubricated engine of unstoppable energy suddenly turns into a spinal cord that's been through a wringer.

Sometimes especially during mornings you feel like you want to pussy out of this whole debacle.
It happened to me today, not because it was what my body was telling me, but because I was making excuses to not sweat. It was laziness and I would have listened to it had I not remembered the doughnut from Monday.
I had to melt away all the fat it added to my body, but in fact I needed an incentive to be able to eat another one sometime soon in the future without worrying much about it.
Also, if I'd given in to laziness today I'd do it tomorrow as well and it could continue until I fell out of habit and started making excuses, and that's not something we can have, is it?
If there's a good thing going, efforts should be made to make it better.
There's a difference between ok and good, and though it might seem like a thin line reaching over to the other side needs be supplemented with a little bit more.

Everything you ever need is on top of the stairs and there are no elevators and escalators don't work. Arghh!!

Cool curdles

One thing I always do each morning is check on the curd that I set a night before and once it's set I put it in the fridge.
Normally curd sets in about 12 hours here, for no reason other than the fresh milk that I buy is processed and pasteurized in a way that it doesn't spoil easy, and this process make it less susceptible to setting curd or yogurt and it's quiet a dilemma to find and or eat good unsweetened yogurt here, because yogurts are aplenty in the market but not a singular one is unsweetened; they're either flavour based or sweet and never carry enough active culture to set warm milk to curd either.
Right, so where was I?
Yeah, I checked on curd only to realize that after 12 hours of sitting serenely the damn thing was a vat of buttermilk with just a few clumps of curd spread hither and tither.

Oh dear! This is a phenomena that usually happens when the wether isn't warm enough and indeed the weather has cooled down.
Yesterday, after that sudden weather change and temperature drop the air has taken on a rather pleasant tone. It's not as humid neither sunny.

What this is from my experience is the onset of season change especially the way it happens in china.
For the next month the weather will turn into a bipolar nutcase, oscillating between humid warmth and cool pleasantness until one day the cool turns to chill and then it'll be cold all the way.

Another month of somewhat summer warmth then, one that comes with humid baggage and by the end of September I'll put my denim and light jackets for dry cleaning.

And the curd? Well, I put it in a warm water bath and it's set.
But a couple months later this exercise will become a lot more tedious, cuz I'll keep changing water baths every couple hours to keep it warm.

Bear fruit

So I ordered some seeds online and if I didn't know any better I'd say their names are written in Harry Potter fonts

Evening night

If apocalypse were a colour, smell, flavour, weather then it'd be what's happening right now.

My house is just about ready to be uprooted. It'll be like that house in 'up' minus the colourful balloons and animation.

Billowing curtains
blackening skies
charring clouds
lightening sounds
Shouting winds
Banging doors
A wee tornado
infesting my house
ingesting my thoughts
rustling screams
from a million leaves
singing in chorus
dislodging bees
birds aflutter
nighttime kiss
in evening bliss

Le chat

Monk during day monster during night.
A monkster that is my cat.

Herb demons

I was walking to reach someplace fairly quick when there was a road block up ahead and I decided to take a detour.
There was a huge piece of land next to the road with a few cows grazing and a couple goats had taken to following me for a while.
I paid it no mind and jumped into the random piece of dried land where the grasses had gone yellow, almost resembling hay and the cows were chewing cud like it was the end of times.

So I was walking through to cut across the road blockage and thus significantly reduce my commute when I heard some rustling happening behind me.
Looking back I saw that a couple cows had noticed me and were now slowly walking behind me.
I saw the goats that had disappeared and taken to grazing and from the corner of my eye realised that the cows had picked up pace.

Gosh, my heart felt a lump in my throat, weak kneed I realised they had begun running and were now chasing me.
What on earth?
I ran like the wind and I could hear them hurtling behind, and a sudden loud 'moo' awakened a fear laden cry from me, so massive that I woke myself up.
Blinking hard I lay staring at my ceiling.
Phew!
I mean if I'd not woken up on time, I'd have been gored by horns or trampled over.

Cows are fucking creepy I tell you.

Catatonia

My cat has completely revolutionized the concept of midnight munchies.
Regular as a clockwork and I must say his body clock is pretty accurate, he wakes up at 3:30am; that deliciously dream engrossing time when you're asleep deep into the depths of night and begins scratching at the bed post near my head so I can hear it.
Like a gentleman that he is he won't make meowing noises or ingratiate himself to my feet, no sir. He will scratch making somewhat loud scratchy noises, loud enough to wake me up, for I am a light sleeper and thus rouse me from whatever lovely nightmares I was chasing.

His only reason to do that is that he gets hungry. Hungrier than anything I've seen before and then he must be fed..and in fact I wait for him to finish because if I go to sleep again and he needs get out for ablutions then he'll wake me up yet again.
Eyelashes still stuck in dream swamp I stay sitting on the floor sometimes waiting for the fiend to finish his 'almost dawn' repast and decide whether he'd like to trot outside or laze inside the house, and it's almost 50-50.
Sometimes he'll go out, sometimes he won't.

When I hit the bed it takes me a solid 15-20 minutes to find the sleep I'd lost, excavating it from whatever hole it burrowed itself and pull it out to stretch in front of my eyes.

Just when I thought I'm finally asleep the alarm decides to wake me up, and so up I stay.
Though for some reason the couch offered me solace and let me sleep sometime in the morning and don't I love it just.

Legumed

My top five favorite legumes

1. Black eyed peas (Lobiya)
These are such delicious little beans. Easy to cook. Versatile with a mellow taste and a distinct flavour. My all time absolute favorite, not least because they cook fast and don't need to soak overnight..just a couple hours and you're good to go.

2. Chickpeas (chholay)
Need I say more? Boiled, sprouted, in curry or as hummus spread on toast. Chewed on as salad or as a crispy snack. Chickpeas are quick to adapt and delicious in almost everything.a plant based diet miracle food.

3. Kidney beans (rajmah)
And I include all sorts of kidney beans in it. The black ones, white ones, patchy spotted ones. What do I say about rajmah? One hasn't lived until eaten copious quantities dribbled over a mound of white rice..delicious in curries in salads and great fillers for anything Mexican, especially when cooking for vegans/vegetarians

4. Pigeon pea (toor daal)
It's the pivotal yellow daal cooked in every home. The basic, easiest everyday protein eaten almost every night. One daal many forms. It can be saintly and modest or pumped into a masala deliciousness. My all time favorite comfort meal which is a bowl of rice doused with simple yellow daal and ghee. It's my last meal on earth fantasy food. Just the way mom makes it.

5. Puy lentils (green masoor dal)
Absolutely not the red ones ever. This is one of those daal's that taste delicious in a tomato, onion gravy. These multifaceted darlings work great as a weekday meal and easily jeujed up into a party night rich daal. Oh god these are delicious

HONOURABLE MENTIONS
1. Peanuts
I mean come on they're peanuts,

2. Mung beans
Not only cuz they're lovely in salads and post work out meals but because I love mung bean starch noodles.

3. Soybean
Cuz tofu and soy milk.

---
Why am I writing about legumes? 8 days out of 7 I cook one or the other of these above mentioned legumes in varying forms, in almost two out of four daily meals.
Be it as soy milk or peanut butter; as salad or curry. As soup or snack.
I love me some legumes and so should everyone.
Delicious healthy protein, much better than animal ones I dare say with all the nutrients and none of the cholesterol. What else can one ask for?

Weather glint

You know that weather? The sand coloured golden aura just before a sand storm?
The kind of weather when the sun suddenly turns a ball of muted shine and it feels like it might just rain.
When you breathe in hard there are fine particle of dust and petrichor that percolate your sinuses; a few moments after which there are winds that rattle the roofs, blow away antennae, disrupt satellite tv and lower the temperatures just a bit, when looking out of the windows, seeing trees sway in that mad dust laden gale you wonder if rains can be far behind and they're not.
Though it never rains as much but sometimes there are sheets of slanting water that cut across buildings to smack against window panes discolouring the weather to an even more yellow sepia tint, sometimes spreading that odd feeling of uplifting sensation..giving a break from the usually hot oppressive weather that besieges us during months of August.

Yeah that weather, well right now it's a bit like that, minus the strong winds, dust and rains.
It is wheatish toned rusty jewellery covered in yellowish patina kind of filter that assaults your eyes as you look out and somehow it has infiltrated the house making it look a bit pleasantly jaundiced? Like a low wattage bulb has been turned on and its weak light has seen itself fit to encroach some parts of your life but not without a certain lustre.
Yeah! That!

modulating candies

There are many a ways to spend Monday. Wallowing in the depression that is weekday is one of them, plunging head on to meet unforgiving icebergs of work like a titanic is another, and listening to amorous voices sprinkled with timbre of soft brass and flowing amber is yet another.

According to a survey held in chambers of my heart, almost 100% arteries agree that listening to a paramour's enchanting voice on any given day helps in instant upliftment of mood, restoring vigour vitality, libido thus helping pump blood in those cooling zones of human body that have been frosting over for a while.
Another study by glands and ganglia highlight how the effects of a bewitching weekly speech by inamorata gorgeous help in glow restoration, reflexive smiles and a spontaneous dose of sudden ecstatic happiness that help relax facial structure into coy laughter and rapid blinking.
It is said the sudden burgeoning of butterflies and rapid heart beat helps the body detox and filter out the sads brought on by weeks of a particular absence.

Just a few minutes spent amidst russet rustles of dulcet mutter and I'm something new already..now Imagine..
sigh..

hearts.

Do not!

I mean why?

After being drawn to a patisserie and yielding to an inner greed I ended up buying a couple doughnuts yesterday.
Now here's the thing about doughnut.
I do love them, but my formula for eating one is to try and remember the last time I had one, and I think I didn't have any this year, which meant I could let myself feel the itch to grab one, or even two and call it a weekend.

Say one thing about me, say I'm a conservative doughnut eater at best, in that I'm never drawn to any doughnut that looks anything unlike one; star shaped, eclair shaped or anything other than a classic glazed doughnut is something I wouldn't eat.
No custard filled, chocolate mousse stuffed, bacon glazed, green tea tinted, strawberry flavoured doughnuts for me, no sir.
Just a simple basic sugar crusted or glazed one is all I need, but somehow yesterday apart from picking up a classic glazed one I let myself get tricked into picking a chocolate covered one as well.
I had them packed and decided to indulge after dinner, except I forgot and since I wasn't hungry yesterday I dined on a watermelon forgetting about the doughnuts that sat serenely in my bag.

One was silently plucked and eaten without my knowledge and of course it was the classic sugar glazed one and I didn't know of it until this morning I realised I'd forgotten these lovelies in my bag and found just the one.

Now what do I do?
It's a Monday!! I do not cheat eat on weekdays and yet I couldn't have this chocolate topped circle sit for a week in the refrigerator, and so I did what I shouldn't have done.

With my morning cup of masala tea I let myself feast on this little darling and now I wonder what should I do to atone for these sins?
I had a burger on Saturday and a doughnut on Monday! Gasps! I think I'll go and cry in a corner.
I can already feel the fat launch a crusade against my cholesterol and insulin.
Yikes!
Gods it was delicious. Oh so soft and delicious.

Botanicals and giant leaves

Sundead

So here I am finally at my doorstep, 3 shades tanner and sweaty to boot.

The entire day or almost five hours were spent loitering about in solid sunlight getting toasted or rather poached since it was humid to boot

But why on earth? Well I was at a botanical garden looking around at flowers and doing a bit of plant shopping and since it's one of those big botanical gardens of sorts I thought due respect must be paid and ended up doing a bit of hike all around the place, looking at conservatories, green houses and various gardens dedicated to different flowers..and all this mind you under sunny sun, soaking up a good deal of vitamin D in full afternoon heat.

My brains haven't dried out and for that I'm happy..and it was pretty productive to boot.

Lots of flowers, green grasses and shadows where I idled in the gardens.

End of Sunday already and to think I had just read and written a Monday hate post.
Ah well, I'm sure I can conjure some more new Monday hatred tomorrow .

Concert deets and marooned tonight

I've never really been to concerts where you actually sit yourself down on chairs and rock to a band..having said that almost everyone here knew the lyrics to almost all their songs.
So really it was a congregation of fans.
All in all a really fun night.
The show was fantastic, what with the perfect combo of sound, light, atmosphere and a totally non chaotic state of affairs.
The band MLTR knows their stuff and almost 3 decades of being a tight band has perfected their skills at enthralling the crowds, playing the right music at the right time, choosing songs that will deliver maximum impact at appropriate times, showing up for encores and keeping the most favorites mad hits for the last to break audiences into a frenzy of fanatic cries and claps.

A great night should end in a good meal but the plan for dinner fell flat on its face when the show ended much too late to let any restaurants be open and would you believe I let myself be drawn to a McDonalds and ate a double cheeseburger.
Now that's saying something.
Am I feeling guilty? No, not a bit. Some allowances should be made and a mere burger does little to break down my system, not that I'll be having another anytime soon, at least not till next year.
Let's see, I ate at a fast food chain almost four times this year and that's saying a lot.

Ah then, nighttime and I see no sleep on the horizon save 'house of chains' and to that I shall immerse myself.
If I keep at it I think I will finish it in another week or ten days with a steady fast pace that is.
I try to read everyday and some days I read over a hundred pages and some days I can only manage twenty, but not a single day goes when I read none.

Hearts aplenty this night..

Learnt to rock

Indoors

This is the first time I'm going to a concert being held in an indoor basketball stadium

Glimmer

A bit of glam never hurts my ladies.
Some rose dusted blush, a kiss of coppery glint, golden sheen and a long drawn eye for the drama, lovah!

Oh so wise no?

I was recommended Osho yesterday, to read that is.
It was spoken highly of—the philosophy his talks and books propagated; how life changing it is, how fantastically deep Oshso's thoughts and understanding are/were on certain subjects, his views, opinions and beliefs on spirituality and religions etc.

So yes, Osho was the center of a rather long conversation and his books recommended with a certain degree of pressure.

I don't know about others but I've not reached that part of life yet where I feel drawn to reading or even knowing Osho.
I've not a single spiritual bone in my body and my extent of spirituality begins and ends with a dose of vigorous breathing exercises and yoga.

Moreover do I wish to know and understand someone else's understandings of this world? Maybe not. Perhaps when I come to a thought end, when my own little formulas and beliefs devised out of experiences, regrets and knowledge fail me..but until then I'd like to let myself walk the path that my own wisdom however little that might be lights up.

Bloated

Today I relate to that week old corpse that comes afloat due to cadaverous bloat sporting a macabre pallor of gray mortality, with eyes reduced to a squint courtesy enlarged eye bags, the distance between jawline and neck but a blur, arms like sagging meatbags, the curve between waist and stomach a straight line, thighs a thunder and chins a plenty.

This isn't what I expected though this is exactly what happens after a night of excesses whence the dinner has been had much too late and the timings between meal and sleep are less than a couple hours.

Did I drink a lot? No sir. I did drink but efficiently made my own drinks that were less than 10mls each and of those I had maybe three?

I do blame the sodium that was I believe in mounds served up in all the foods that were of the largely snacking variety.
Chips and processed fries and taco's and spring rolls also fried and now I feel like I've been boiled up into a fattened cow.

I hate waking up like this, feeling heavy and thickset and all over depressed.
Sleeping late and on a full stomach to wake up late and feeling full still and all over disgusted.

A bloated face is one thing, but feeling it all over is entirely another and I need to remedy this quick if I wish to look anything like myself tonight.

It's not about appearances merely but the fact that you generally feel unhealthy especially with that taste inside your mouth that is suggestive of butter tastelessness.

Green tea..that's what I need and a lean salad and oh yogurt

Night morning

So here I am
Back in bed after a dinner party of sorts
It was strange that the people who'd invited us finally served dinner around 11:30
Now that's really late dinner and I don't know why it has to be so.

The invite said 7:00pm and we were there on time, but for the next five hours it was just drinks and snacks and by the time dinner rolled out I was full and kinda sleepy, also out of steam.
Didn't have much energy left to make small talks anymore, so quietly ate dinner and a few more small talks later repaired for home.

Now why is it that people think that guests will be ok with eating dinner so damn late?

Ah, anyway..time to sleep innit?
So late at night, and I didn't even find the cat any place.

Hopefully I wake up timely tomorrow.
Have a pet project to take care of. It's my plants. I'm going to pot them in new soil and see what's ailing them. Might have to do a bit of shopping but let's see and in evening there's this concert.

Will update more, all..soon

Foto fiddle

Food photography though nothing nearly as difficult as boiling water is really all about aesthetics.
Different people have different aesthetics and thus a different approach towards taking pictures. One could assume that every artist or so called who's good with his/her hands in drawing or painting is automatically a good photographer and it's not so.
I've plenty artists on my instagram feed who do not know the first thing about contrasts or balance in a picture and then there are some who couldn't be called anything remotely artistic not by a long shot, yet their photo shots and compositions are beautiful.

Where am I going with this?
Nowhere except that there are some who are largely ignored by 'learning curve', strictly food photography speaking.
I've come across many a insta accounts with a few thousand followers which in my opinion are a good lot many and they are primarily a foodpic account and not one, not a singular food picture they post on their account is even passable.

Extreme close ups, tight composition, background issues, photo/food composition, low lighting, underexposure, awkward angle, shallow depth of field, unsharp or dull, flat lighting, white balance issue, harsh lighting/overexposure are just a few follies that plague almost all their pictures and yet they keep posting a dozen photo's a week with the zealousness of a religious fanatic followed by an essay of hashtags which include words like #foodporn, #photography etc and here's the problem.

Foodporn isn't about food, it's about the presentation of food which may or may not be delicious in reality. It's about appealing to baser instincts of the viewer with the ability to make anyone salivate who looks at the photograph and for that the aesthetics have to be absolutely in sync with the thought behind the picture.

When a photo in question is marred by above mentioned problems the hashtag #foodporn is automatically out of question because no matter how tasty the food in reality may be, if the photograph doesn't translate it's exquisiteness then it's no point calling it anything porn because it fails to arouse my greed to eat it immediately.
So when I look at accounts that are created by people who love 'photography', 'food', 'travelling' etc and have a whole wall of badly clicked food pictures in an odd yellow lighting which probably comes from trying to beautify those photo's, since those are their aesthetics I'm always at a loss as to how a) this person's pictures haven't improved in almost two years b)why do they have such a large following c)why do so many people comment on these pics telling them how delicious they look d)why must these people insist on being proud of their pics when clearly there are a hundred thousand better food pics accounts out there to at least learn from.

So what I gather is that they completely fail to comprehend that what they call #foodporn photography is in fact just bad photography and that they just do not understand the difference between good and bad pictures.
For them any shot which has been edited to whatever ghastly editing they perceive is good enough to be hashtagged into oblivion and those who write good things about it in the comment sections are either sycophants or just as ignorant about photography.

I'm not trying to ridicule anyone or claim myself to be on top of the photography food chain, it's merely about how these accounts that bravely brandish their profiles as food lovers and photographers are in fact completely clueless about it and it irks me to see that they make no attempts at improving either.
Maybe they don't feel the need or perhaps they just don't have that learning curve or could be they already have enough followers to warrant that they're good enough.

'good enough', now that's a word hate. Problem with everything being just 'good enough' is that it isn't very good.

Ah, that's a bit about my photo rant.

skyfall

Night is the day
dim is the light
ghostly clouds obscuring the sky
crepuscular canopy ready to ignite
in umbral flames
of storm and rains
so lurid is it that I can't find
a place in my house where shadows reside

Why does me eat

I caved in
I ordered pizza
From a pizzeria
I'm sorry
Gods below ;)
The gravity feels fatter
It's absorbing me
I'm obese
Will I die?
Guilty
Tomorrow I'm going to work out till I faint
Till I'm blue in the face
Why did I do this?
Cuz I didn't want to cook
Cuz I felt greedy
Cuz I wanted to eat a pizza
Oh and did I mention
The two glasses of Guita?
Chilled la guita to be precise
So delicious
This combo of fortified wine and pizza?
Hmm, I could've had beer
But I didn't
Now I need chocolate
And another glass
It's not even weekend yet

Boo boo

Sickness that comes with weather change is a brute.
Rest rest and more rest.
Seize this time to restore and recuperate.

I hate the feeling of staying constantly drained with the onslaught of this sickness.
With cold and cough comes the fixed impression that someone is beating you with a sledgehammer when you're not looking.

At times like these people often say 'make the best of it' and one wonders how when you're actually stuck at the worst end of the stick.

Lying inert with little or no movement, bringing forth the gods of laziness helps, even while working that is.
Planting gadgets all around the couch or bed and staying slanted with a book can sometimes be the only way to please yourself during this absolute tormenting sickness.

Hot water helps, as does any sort of warm liquid..and tea! Ah tea feels like that ultimate salve, especially when prepared with black pepper and cloves and copious amounts of ginger.

Resting is the ket yo quick recovery however and slew I believe, though I do not usually have much luck with sleeping..but yes engage in hibernation extreme to get better..

Retro plans

Right, so I almost forgot to mention but this weekend I'm going for an MLTR concert.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean I know, but then again why not?

to the wise through the vice

I'm late to this space I see..

a phew then, a bit of sit, a sigh and now I'm ready.

Today has been lived at a rather leisurely pace, what with a couple pending not so important yet better to do them right away kind of things and some pending blogging I've been able to sit through pretty, though without any much time to write anything down here, my favourite mental spot to be.

It's like I come here to picnic, leaving morsel of words to be found while running on a treasure hunt of my own through refreshes and different URL's..coming across treasure troves of lines and paragraphs and lovely rants and hate essays, day updates, little poems, sometimes voices or confessions, or little notes of shy adulation, angry affirmation, wise revelations and photographs indeed.
Ah, I revel in them, live for them and use them as mortar to build my day into a beautiful sanctum where only I know I can be.

My fantastical castle made of perfumes known to nobody but me. ceilinged with clouds of white dreams; sweet to kiss a touch of wisp the feel of fluff..walled in porous time zones with the preposterous ability to reach inside a space that dwells within a cave of a mind, hidden in a drawer of infinite possibilities.
 drawer to which only I have the key, in exchange for mine of course..
these drawers with an invisible coop for transparent beings to reside in during moments of hurt, loneliness, dreams, thoughts, memories..through all that shan't ever be seen..

hearts

Make me invisible, gimme a sniper.

I've just finished reading all news related to this ongoing madness in Punjab and I don't know what to say except that it's medievally disheartening.
Most of these followers with cottons wool for brains should be smoked out of existence, not only because of their idiotic beliefs but also because they've all the time to spend doing something so idiotic which is most assuredly a sign that they have too much time on their hands which means they're pretty much useless to this society.
None of them must hold any steady jobs or employment thus adding to the parasites in this systems food chains and this country is done serving itself as host to these millions of dead brained maggots.

I'm seething with rage at their fatuous beliefs and harebrained blind love for a mere mortal who's stnothing more than a garish clown and a rapist at that.
Just goes on to show the extent of gullible junta that's breeding itself into imbecilic acceptance of everything that's fed to them.

Rationality and logic are words most unheard of and they're ready to hold an entire city hostage just to see a man whom they believe to be god to roam about scott free despite the glaring rape charges against him, and have the bleeding gall to actually threaten the very law enforcements that want to keep people safe.

Barbarians all of them.
What are they doing taking up our oxygen during these enlightened times?

I hope they do another asaram Bapu and throw this piece of rubbish in jail, following which at least a dozen followers or more publicly self immolate and cause such putrid stench that others are shocked into either doing the same or running for their lives.
I wouldn't mind seeing a hundred thousand pyres.
The sooner we rid ourselves of this garbage the better, because there's no way anyone can educate a mass that's ridden with stupidity.

I hope citizens of that city who're at the other end of this madness, bearing the brunt of this paranoia see themselves safely through this.
I hope the police and rapid action forces can contain this mad mob without casualties.

I hope justice is served and there's no damage to those not concerned.
in hopes I trust..hopefully all will be well.

Will keep looking for updates.

Tumblr woes chime in

I really do not know of the trouble with tumblr app since I've been unable to connect to VPN via phone for last 48 hours, but the last time I'd updated it was a couple night ago and it was fine that time.
The trouble as written started the very next day and each time I've tried to check it on the phone, well..vpn acted up.

This seems like a serious issue now.
Are there others also afflicted by this problem?

Tumblr can often times act pretty funny and scary too..I almost choked when it didn't show my other blogs sometime back and I worried myself that they all got deleted by some chance mistake and I was just about ready to set the world on fire when the screen blinked and then showed up.

Talk about glitch in the matrix.
I mean glitches are fine until I'm not transported through a sewer smothered in soapy liquid and hairless.

But yeah, wtf tumblr.
Now I'm getting mad at it.

oh baby

I feel like writing song like poems or is it poem like songs?
No, I think the former..I don't think I could write songs, and if I did they'd be sung in a loony bin or maybe become an anthem of a group of two demented people.
Now that's how I'd really want them to be; sung in broken rhymes, extended prose, deleted verse, scattered punctuations needled with limericks.

From drab to fab

wedderday thingummies.

Ah Wednesday..

there isn't a single part of me that isn't sore today, well except maybe some parts, but let's not talk about that.

Soreness..I could feel the soreness in my abs and legs from the moment I woke up today, knowing full well that yesterday's workout was the sole reason for this muscle ache, and what I did to counter it isn't anybody's guess, because I followed it up with an even more strenuous strength routine both for my abs as well as lower body, and now I can truly say that it hurts to breathe.

Why did I do this?
Well, mostly because if I postpone exercising days merely on account of soreness then I'm fully aware of my foibles and workouts will keep going farther and farther away from my daily schedule, moreover this way I know of muscles that are already taut and hammering them into place just becomes easier.
There are two ways this can go.
Either the pain gets so unbearable in the already sore areas that your form suffers or that already existing pain doesn't let you feel worse and you keep continuing torching those areas feeling the burn.

The latter happened to me and dare I say that now I feel like I'm cast in stone, impossibly cemented to move.
Perhaps I'll stick to yoga for a couple days and or increase its intensity and include a good many power moves.

My day has gotten unnecessarily long, in fact it's been so late I haven't even had lunch yet, and it sits in the oven baking serenely.
Even though I've snacked, I'm usually done with all manners of everything by this time and spend quality time doing constructive work, but today that didn't happen.

I got a bit busy mourning a couple plants that are now on their deathbeds. I don't know what's happened to them, I spent a good long while yesterday taking care that it didn't happen but apparently it did.
I think I'll dedicate this weekend to fixing them up good.
perhaps get new soil and figure out their sickness.
The saddest part is that it's my rose and mint plants that have borne the brunt and I can't see them go away like this.

My heart bleeds..

Soon..sobs.

:\

What's frustrating is not having ample reading material in that one place you know and love.
It's frustrating to refresh after hours and see smidgens..but even that shall do..for choosing isn't a luxury I intend on splurging.

Sand sickness

When all is calm, all is right
Why does it hurt
to say good night?

Toned needs

Sad stories are made of your favourite product empties.
Case in point my absolutely cherished toner that is near its death bed and will be nothing but a beautifully transparent turquoise bottle of emptiness come tomorrow night.
I am evangelical about a few things and an alcohol-free toner and micellar water are on top of my evangelical food pyramid.

I have just spent over two hours looking for that one specific brand of micellar water and toner and I'm sad to report that I found just the water but nay for the toner.

If this doesn't call for a sob fest I don't know what does.
The problem isn't that I didn't merely find them but that I'm not too sure if they were the originals.
There aren't too many shops keeping the specific Lancôme products I need and the couple places I found, well, one was in HK and the other looked dubious at best.
So here I am sans toner. :(

Might be will have to go to a Lancôme shop specific, but whatever it takes.

There are a hundred Korean brands some good some average touting good toners and they are bad at best because all of them or at least most contain alcohol. Gasps!!
All these faceshops and Laneige of the world are alcohol based toners..and that's disastrous I tell you..absolutely most categorically disastrous for the skin.
It makes my hair stand on edge when I read their ingredients at the back and almost always find alcohol.
There shan't be a singular drop of alcohol touching my skin, no sir! Not at all.

Take my advice dear sir and steer far away from Korean beauty products.
For no other reason than that they are a bit crazy.

If you're looking for good Asian brands then Shiseido and SK-II are what you're looking for..because they're indeed most impeccable in their performance and they have a couple products I've been using since forever.
You wanna spend money then these are the brands you want to get pauper for, not Korean ones.
But that's just me. I could hear almost every second person I know swear by some goddamn innisfree or other some such..and maybe they're good, but not really!

Talking of micellar water: I don't know why this isn't a staple in our beauty community. Why so called beauty influencers don't talk about it or even use it.
Granted it's a bit vintage in existence and extremely out of fashion but its the most useful product someone who's in need for good skin can have in their routine.
Ah maybe it is out of fashion then, but what am I if not a stickler for all things classic?

Also this was a most useless post. But by the gods I spent two hours looking for something on taobao and somebody's gotta hear of my pains.

In disconsolate murk

Every time I reach out for my mug of water it's empty. Oh the disappointment!

The dismay of finding night again inside your house. How does it let itself in, when I've forbidden its entry with all emphasis at my disposal.
Screamed at the sky to not let in anything remotely nightlike cross the threshold of my casa.
How does it then, just bleed in through the windows?
It's not liquid, nor is it solid.
It is just ethereal..that silly quality that things tend to have when they can't be classified.

Here it is again then. Burdening me with questions. It needn't ask, only present itself with the absolute truth of a dying day, and I'm answerable to having spent my time in a void of absent procrastination.

A full circle whirr of clock that comes about 24 times in a day..and look what the day finally dragged in; a dribble of obscure gloom that has learnt to feed on shadows.

Potted severe

I caved in and bought some plants online.
These are rosemary, basil and thyme.
I've just finished spending almost half a day attending to all my plants in my little balcony garden and have come back smothered in mosquito bites.

Apart from potting plants in new pots, I did I a bit of trimming, weeding out, fertilizing and nursing.
Added new dirt, aerated soil, added new compost which is actually just rinds of various fruits like watermelon and oranges.

The past few days that it rained most voraciously my plants did suffer some heavy damage.
Some stalks completely broke off, excessive water rotted one of my mint plants and two pots actually fell over to the other side on the ground.

There was a fair bit of damage control to be done and now I'm seated on my chair, discovering dirt under my finger nails and rubbing ointment of mosquito wounds.

I'd think this has been sort of a procrastination to keep away from all the writing I was talking about, but in my defense I did a wee bit yesterday, more like thought vomit but I'm ready to throttle it by the head for the next couple months.

No thoughts on dinner yet but tea is rightfully in order.

Drained

If we talk about drainage then India during its marvelous era of golden age during the Chadragupta Maurya time had the best drainage system works known to man.
They were such well planned and efficiently developed that our civilization was fast on its way to becoming the greatest civilizations of all time; this at a time when the rest of the world was still wearing animal skins and learning to communicate.
This was almost 3 centuries before Christ we are talking and much later, much much later, our drainage system is nowhere near as efficient, in fact it's literally gone down the drain.

The thing about drainage systems is that if it's not systematically cleaned, upgraded and taken care of then it turns on you, refusing to swallow the swill and spilling its belly all over the city.

The differences that've taken place in the last five years in every city are mind boggling.
There's been a sudden spurt of population, pollution and immigration and a continuous weakening of civic sense has helped our drainage systems suffer the most.

Most entry points get stuffed by garbage, since the good municipality cleaners appointed by the govt. clean up the roads and stuff the massive amounts of garbage which usually includes plastic into the open mouth of drainage blocks situated under sidewalks and when it rains, water tends not to trickle down the sewage pipes, instead staying on the roads and creating a wading pool of sorts.

There is little thought given to drainage or sewage and it's the last in priority since banning beef and singing national anthems is more important than any basic system maintenance.

We do not give drainage its dues. Appointed cleaners are untrained and no one bothers to upkeep their maintenance the way it's required. There's no proper equipment or clothing, nor special trainings or teachings accorded in the way of what reality lurks underground.

As long as drainage isn't treated as a part of our national developmental program the roads will continue to live as swimming pools during monsoons.
We have grown to accord such disgust to waste and anything that flows down the sewage that no one wants to even acknowledge the fact that humans make waste, our machines make waste, and that there needs be a proper channel to disperse that.

It's the very same mentality which gets in the way of clean public bathrooms in cities and clean bathrooms in houses.
It's not often you'll find yourself in a clean toilet in someone's house, because of the belief that it's a toilet not a kitchen.
And that's exactly it, it's a toilet which means one needs to kept it much cleaner than any place in the house.
Clean, sanitary, disinfectant and dry.

Just like how toilets are the true reflection of a house, efficient systematic drainage is the proper reflection of a country.
What would one make of a city where the drains don't work?
And it's not the one city, it's almost all cities and it's a crying shame.

Din din poof

There's something to be said about nights when dinner is done by 7:30pm.
Apart from boring it's also kind of regimentally annoying, in that anytime it gets any later than 8:00pm I feel like this is when the apocalypse strikes.
Live a little they say, how little they didn't say.

Bits and bobs

There's only so many photos one can edit in a day, anymore and your head begins to swim a bit.
I must've edited over a 100 photos and probably tomorrow so shall blog now that I'm not concentrating on drawing for a while there'll be a few things I'll be doing the rest couple months, viz., writing.
All sorts of writing.

The kind of writing that comes with sitting your ass on a chair and thinking thoughtful thoughts to the point your brains cells galvanize and begin churning out all sorts of ideas, regretfully mostly retarded ones, by once the idiotic ones are over the few intelligent at least seemingly intelligent at that moment come forth.

The problem with hindsight is that it makes everything creative or erudite from the past look like cockeyed idiocy and wincing is thence the only option.

What now?
Why dinner of course.
I'm forgoing with making rice because I think I've eaten too much rice this weekend as part of special dishes that are mostly if not always eaten with rice and so today shall be a no rice dinner night.
--

Hearing a soft knock I've just realized that my new neighbours have finally completely moved in. This process had been in the works for a few days and now they're here for good.
One of their sons is studying astrophysics as the sweet woman kindly told me and on knowing my heritage she assumed I must be a mathematical stalwart.
I didn't wish to dissuade her commonly known stereotyped image of Indians, and of course being able to immediately convert °F to °C only helped cement that fact while helping her sort out her house thermometer settings.
Ah well, what can one say.
There are a few stereotypes I can live with.
--

The cat is rampant today.
He's been out and about and I've not the slightest clue where he hid himself during the afternoon rains, talking of which, I didn't realize that I'd left the widows open and a couple hours later when I emerged from my study I saw that the living room floors had been attacked with a volley of torrential rains, sieving through the wire mesh and successfully created a wading pool of sorts in some places.

Right then, dinner!

Waves

It's been thunderously raining all day and my hair are a new kind of wavy.
Talk about hair alive.
Anymore cyclonic gales and watershed and I'll be a regular medusa.

Store wars

One of the bigger reasons I hate Apple is that it asks me to switch stores when I need to buy apps.
Case in point the 'easyblog' app which isn't available in the Chinese store, for which it asks me to change my store location to U.S. And the one reason I'd changed my store location to Chinese store is because the different life accommodating apps that one needs in China are not available in the U.S. Store, the App Store asked me to change it to Chinese store.

I've just about had it up till here with changing stores.

This isn't the first angry post I wish to write in the morning but it irks me.

Hellman

How do you unsee this?

News

I was just informed that 'Sonny Landham' the gritty Indian in predator died yesterday. :(

Tonight!

First time I'm watching it in HD and it's worth every second of it.

Fashion future

You heard it first here-

I'm going to do a bit of forecasting and foretelling about what the future fashion looks might be like.

Just like microblading is all the rage right now, a few years on shaved eyebrows will be the new thing.
This whole 'fae' look is fast catching on, and more and more people have begun shaving their entire faces, since having no brows let's them highlight some more features a lot more; drawing on eyebrows is far more adventurous and versatile than just having the same old eyebrows.

You can have a completely no eyebrow look and just accentuate on the eyes giving it an unearthly alien look or draw on different colored eyebrows.

More and more people have begun bleaching their eyebrows to completely blend them in with their skin tones and very soon they'll realize it's just easier to shave them off.

Watch your Instagram feed closely and in time you'll begin seeing alien featured eyebrow sans faces.

Sundays

In the blues

Sushi Saturday

Yikes

Apparently there's a movie called ' transmorphers' and I almost watched it.

Reads

And here I am, swallowing over a hundred pages of 'house of Chains'..if I go any faster I'm afraid I shall finish this book, and that I do not wish for to happen, but it will as it always does.
Witness

Shine on

As I sat sipping my glorious morning tea– that one moment during the entire day when I feel most at peace, when my thoughts are blanker than a baby's mind when I let the morning spark slowly seep through my entire being, gently animating me; stimulating my sleeping nerves, galvanizing my body, triggering little electric bolts that combust the ends of my neurons like miniature dynamites that I realized the lack of luster in my house.

My domus which is usually iridescent in its nature embodying a glimmering sheen of cleanliness and well being looked a little matted out.

It lacked the highlighting that is the high point of my house, the reflections that glint off all surfaces looked muted and it irked me to realize that it had been almost a week since I did dusting of any sort.

I winced at the thought and wondered a little more at this lack luster nature of this house and glanced around to realize that the rainfalls from the past week had deposited fair amount of gunk on my windows and that the glass panes needed polishing.
This work isn't I admit for the faint of heart, and I made a solemn vow to get it done with, right after tea.
Which is exactly what I did.

Not only did I wash off the water spots and residual dirt from my window panes but I polished each mirror and every reflecting area of moi casa with the zeal of competitive lightening bolts, rubbing and washing and wiping and polishing until every glass surface replied with a shining twinkle of acknowledgement.
This whole endeavor took about 3 hours which also included a thorough cleaning of the entire house what with dusting vacuuming and mopping and phew.

So here I am sitting silently, eating leftovers and wallowing in sanitized cleanliness complete with a resplendent irradiation of refulgent finish.

Eye stitch

My eye oh my eye.
A wire going through the eyelid had somehow knotted itself at the base and I had my own wedding to attend in the evening.
Gasps!
With some difficulty I disentangled the knot and slowly pulled out the wire, the pain was excruciating.

The wire was finally out but somehow my eyelashes had found a way through the small hole the wire had made in my eyelids and pushed through it.
If I closed my eyes, my eyeballs could feel a bunch of my eyelashes stabbing against them.
The whole left eye looked swollen and deeply red and not to mention I had my own wedding.

I woke up scratching my eye furiously.
My eye was indeed itchy and it hurt so.

There was nothing wrong with it but the dream scared me so that I kept feeling my eye for the next five minutes at exactly 3:40 am, for that's when the cat let me know he wanted to be let out.

I've just finished applying green tea ice cubes to my face and eyes and oh I feel refreshed and anything by way of irritation has left my face, my skin.

The reason behind this itchy eye I realized was that last night I felt so lazy, I didn't go through my usual nighttime routine and slept with the same face on I had since morning.
No cleansing, no toning, no masks, no under eye cream or face cream and all the residue of the day was deposited in and around inner corner of my eye which resulted in this disastrous dream, nay, nightmare.

What I wouldn't do for a sweet sweet dream.

Nighttime melts

3 movies back to back and now contemplating night..and with contemplations come the thoughts on life.
Ah life..what about it though?
Should one unwittingly invite on despair and make tonight a masochist fest of self loathing and discomfort or call upon existential crisis to feel acutely desolate and bored.

Isn't it delicious just to feel intensely bad about things, have regrets and wallow in wretched despondency only to finally resign to acceptance of what is and what will be, because some are done and dusted and some permanent engravings that can only be embellished but never erased.

That time of the night when it's past midnight and sleep is somewhere in the system except it's not ready to surface.
Maybe read something, but the workings between eyes and brains can only process photographs instead of words and in fact works even better with only images that pop up in minds eye, laminated in glossy sheen, stuck in life sized collage.

Tomorrow is a new day, one that perhaps I will will myself to get out of the house to do something social.

There's an ongoing book fair and though I'm fully aware that I'll find only few books of the readable variety (English) I'm still thinking of giving it a try.
Perhaps I'll find something, perhaps!

Maybe a couple manga's or comics..if not then no harm done.

Also there'll be a comic con in a couple months. At the same time that I'll be back home. But do I care?
Not a bit!

Ah, but night! Right!
Mayhaps an ode to this overcrowded loneliness..

Nighttime and the air is cool..

Hearts.

Camera tears

'Tis a heavy day, with many a things to do.
Monotonously warm, repetitiously humid..with few ways to uplift ones spirit there's always the creation of something magical that can/may help alleviate the dreary tonelessness of a tiresome Friday.
So here I am, cocooned in tedious excursions of the most fruitful kinds.

Break stuff

I was standing outside a field which looked a lot like a sports stadium with an actor of some description whose movie I'd never watch even if you wrapped me in barbed wires which is interesting because in my dream he was making jokes and I was standing in a sports field which suddenly began to rain chunks of glass.
Broken shards of piercing glass littering the entire field and falling continuously and I began walking towards a cover.
I saw a person engaged in his phone most seriously crouching under an insufficient awning not bothered too much about this broken glass rainfall and as I passed him he didn't even as much as look up.
I instantly knew he presumed that this weird phenomenon would soon be over, but it didn't and as I walked, suddenly barefoot a medium sized piece pierced my ankle and stayed there.
I cried in anguish.

In another scene the world looked pastel like a Wes Anderson movie and everything was getting destroyed.
I saw aeroplanes which looked more like 50's aircrafts burst into flames in mid air, buses crash against pavements, cars tearing apart in vicious accidents, and the entire world ablaze with all sorts of vehicle malfunctions, and yet the people around seemed hardly bothered.
Waiting calmly at bust stops, talking of reaching work and even my family now discussing a picnic in a chartered bus that could take the entire family someplace.
I kept telling them it's madness, that everything is crashing and falling to pieces, and they nonchalantly told me that once they're out of the city it won't happen.
But what about the fact that it might happen in the city?
We were in my brothers house in Delhi and it had all the old broken furniture that we'd rid years back and the actor was there too, making jokes again.

I saw the friendly bus driver open the doors and usher us in greeting everyone, while things burst into flames and crashed all around us.
I saw another bus strike the sidewalk and crumple into a bonsai sized toy and yet everyone was behaving like it's the most normal thing in the world.

It was cold, so cold and I woke up to switch off the air conditioning and back into bed, wondering about this dream.

Counting sheep

Twinkling beneath gossamer wink
a voice that erupts from a soothing jingle
cascading into my heart
tides on an unbodied beach
of gold sands and silver waves
painting the shores in a translucent haze
as does a voice
so rich in amber tones
Sodden in coppery notes
imbued with kindness deep
lyrical..mythical
that oozes down my being
conjuring an image
while shadows sleep
forming a portrait that soaks into me
mounting a head on to a voice
followed by a trio of three galaxies

-kisses

Crash boom bang

Here's presenting first hand account of the apocalyptical eclipse that currently besieges this part of the globe.

Thunderstorms with the intensity of a hundred nosediving suns, lightning jolts cracking with the sonic boom of meteor rains and caterwauls of needle tipped rains lashing against window panes.

If this were a movie It'd be 2012.

Every few seconds it turns into an electric bolt of flashing lights so bright that one wonders if the skies are actually a broken tube light.

Silvery is how I'd like to describe outside. It's dark but there's enough light so as to confuse you into thinking it a full moon night or rather that the moon has fallen a bit lower to glimpse at mundane goings on, but that's not the case.
It's the sky canopy that's ablaze with silver fires that reflect like mirror strands down here.

Most disturbing are the cacophonous bellows like clashing titans holding a gladiatorial contests for gods.

A doomsday special tonight..hard enough to make you wonder if this isn't how it all ends.

Arghhhhghgh!!!

Okay, now I'm just fucking angry.
I've lost my SIM card.
Or did I misplace it?

No I can't find it.
Bloody hell. Don't even eel like going into details here because I'm mega pissed..this is most extraordinary. Most!!!

What the fuck?
I'm having a bad bout of unfortunate adventures

Body chaos

My body is playing me so hard today.

Just isn't ready to feel good no matter what I do.
It's like asking me to go lie down and just keep lying down.
This is most unusual.
It's not tiring or that I'm tired or dead but just a bit on the lazy side, in that I have a phantom body ache which is not the kind that one gets from working out.
Something of an under the weather feeling which isn't feverish.
Like I've got a cat scratching under my skin
Or like my bones are silently rattling.
No muscle ache but my spine and shoulders and back feel like they're going through some internal revolution.

If this is what I think it is then it's fine..but gods the odd listlessness that I feel right now makes me want to bang my head on a wall, or push myself deep inside a soft couch.

I've napped only twice this year, and I'm not a napping person by any means but today makes me want to horizontal on a different level.

Info

Pray tell..
The phone plan that thou uses, one that hast you pay only a couple hundred a month.
I needs to know for I plan to have my phone plan back home which doesn't have me throwing money down a drain for no reason..

Juvenile things

When Karsa Orlong sends nudes.

Problems and solutions.

Well, whaddya know.
There was no text with the earlier blog post either, though I sent it from another mail.
The thing is that when there are multiple pictures the written bit gets chopped off too.
I think I'll have to send a screen grab of the written post as well, that's the only way out of this mess that I currently see.

I'd mentioned in my earlier post about idling away on phone and discovering all these add ons or whatever they're called and the reason why so many people spend their time posing in front of a camera.

also now I know where all the Chinese girls get their cute bunny DP's from.

Idling away

This is the thing

The issue indeed is with iCloud email and the only way round this is by mailing through another address.
I think I'll make on yahoo or hotmail or some such which works sans vpn.
Lemme check some.

Checking

Now let's see if this Nutella brioche can tell you what it really is except for just the photo.

Sending this from another email.

Fail fail

Okay, so I checked and what I write under a photo doesn't get published anymore.
Might have something to do with this whole iCloud debacle.
I'm going to check doing this with another e mail address

Check check 123

Cloud smashing

Today was spent in technical melodrama.

My iCloud storage has been full for over a year and I didn't much really care except for some reason I felt like caring about it today.

I took a backup of all my pictures from iPhone and deleted all the photos thusly making my phone complete photo free right now.

Also deleted the old data in the iCloud which it informs me that it'll do so in the next 30 days.

Actually there was no reason really to do this.
I don't care to have my personal life stored in a cloud but I need the iCloud mailing address since that's the only way I can mail blog posts without vpn.
Talk about misguided reasons.

But yeah..

I'm still on the lookout for some better ways of posting on blogs.

blogging fails

posting through email eats up my write up under the photo's and I'm not happy about that.
I'd written a concise summary of what was on my plate from the fried chicken photo and of course only the pic made it to the blog not the description of it.

I really have to find some other way to do this.

Your fryness

silver linings can come with a cloud attached

(This is going to be a long post)

Did I start the day by writing about how I wouldn't work out at all?
Funny this, life has a way of making one do exactly what they don't want.

Talk about stepping out of a comfort zone, I had to almost pitch a tent and do a bloody barbecue outside mine.

My morning post hinted at my anger towards some bank problem I'd been persistently having and how that didn't let me sleep last night..so today I vowed that I'd get it rectified one way or another or at least die trying.

Also there was a question of buying veggies and cat food.

Since the pet store is next to my house I'd decided on tackling that first and then going ahead with the bank work which was really an atm related task, and undertake each assignment one by one and systematically devour them all.

Right, so walking out to get everything done was clearly not an option because not only is it humid out but radiating white heat kind of hot and using a car was completely ruled out as well because there's no parking in front of these shops and it's a lot more messy to keep lugging a vehicle for so many errands dispersed liberally over a 5km radius.

A cycle being my best option I set out braving the heat looking forward to soaking in VitD and growing a healthy tan, and my problems began when I went about cycling, looking for an atm.

So the go to atm that I'd always used, a few hundred metres from my house had been shut down, or I don't know what because it had vanished from there.

Well, crap!
let's look for another one I mused and I saw a bank a couple crossings ahead.
So parking the cycle, which was one of those app cycles one tends to pick from anywhere I walked towards the bank, and I cannot stress enough how miserably incandescently white hellish fire hot it was and then there was a sort of cool breeze in this humidity that confused my internal weather understanding a bit.

Right, so breaking a goddamn sweat I reached the bank only to see it was getting #@%&* renovated!!
I mean goddamn!

Okay okay, don't start fuming just yet I consoled myself and I started walking in the direction of a busier intersection where I knew there were plenty banks and atm's and a huge mall.
The only problem was that it was at least 1Km ahead and I didn't think I'd have wanted to walk in this weather, so I started scanning the sidewalks for a bicycle, and it was littered with hundreds of bicycles, all except the one app cycle that I use, which I use only for its convenience which didn't ask me to scan a hundred different identifications on account of being a foreigner.

It's very user friendly and distinguished by its lemon yellow colour, and not a single mechanical steed of yellow colour did I find.

My shirt by now was saturated with sweat and I was still scanning the horizon, when I realized I'd walked almost enough to close the 1km distance, when like an oasis I say the horizon ablaze with a yellow darling.

Talk about sprinting, what I did was literally gallop through the two zebra crossings and whip out my phone with a flourish to scan the QR code on the bike and with such a satisfying ring did it unlock itself that I almost broke into tears

Back to business then.
Atm's where art thou at?
Cycling ahead, forward on the right and left I went to over a half dozen atm's and the card that needed to be activated didn't, and by this time I had almost given up when across the road I saw a few more banks and atm's..and what am I if not idiotically tenacious.

Wheeling my cycle as if t'were a fire mouthing stallion of forgotten legends I screeched to a halt in front of the many atm's only to have them refuse my card and or activate it.

Dejectedly as I pushed my card into the slot of the last atm, expecting nothing but disappointment, Lo! it worked!!!!!
If it were a movie I'd be getting showered with rose petals..so happy did I feel and there was no one to understand it except that strange yellow bicycle which I hopped onto with such glee it'd never known.

The app informed me I'd cycled almost 12 km's and gods was I far off from my house but did I care?
Not a wee bit my laddie, because my long pending atm related bank work was done! done! done!

Right, so head back and buy veggies, but wait!
I've come this far, gone through such immense trouble. My sweat was dripping on to baked cobblestones and evaporating instantly and for all this madness I needed a treat.

Fried chicken! I'm on my way.

Cycling on the sidewalk, looking for that 'power chicken' shop I cycled in a calm rhythm of making a sudden discovery when the shop, as yellow as my bicycle popped up in front.
Manna from heaven!

I got packed a few things that looked deliciously interesting and sped away much to the chagrin of my calves and halted only when I'd reached the vegetable vendor.

everything else is history.
I came back a sprightlier person, positively buoyant even if drenched to the gills with sweat.

I'd accomplished a lot of things, and found chicken as well.

This day that earlier had all the appearances of being as exciting as a dead fish on seabed and looked to be as morosely disappointing as love handles and gangrene turned out to be surprisingly good.

My long awaited work was done, and I can't be happier about it, it had been weighing on my head like lead and I found me some chicken and, well, I ended up working out even when I didn't want to.

My app informed me I'd cycled almost 16 kms and this includes the rough urban terrain of heavy traffic, sidewalks, slopes, and steep roads.
Not bad considering everything..

As they say, all's well that ends swell (and cycling on a hard seat I could tell you mine are)
Murphy's law probably had an off day.

Anger in my heart

Last night was an annoyance fest.
I slept pissed off at things, at my bank, at my phone operator.

I need to get things changed, plans revamped and the whole shebang.
I was so annoyed that I tried rage sleeping except I kept staring at the ceiling in complete silence till it was almost 2:00 and I wasn't sure if I were still awake or perhaps dreaming, because sometimes in between I felt like my sleeps broke off but I didn't even think I was sleeping.

Well, I didn't wake up to fix lunch/breakfast either because I was sleepy and it was suggested that today these chores wouldn't be necessary, courtesy a business meeting.

Well, I still woke up. Arranged all the dried dishes in their respective drawers and cupboards and cleaned the kitchen, then slept again.

I'm of a mind to not to anything because my body still aches from yesterday's extended yoga session and to think I was going to do a strength routine today. Haha! Forget it.

The only thing I'm doing is hauling myself over to a vegetable shop and buying a few necessities.
Oh, also some cat food.

I'm going to make some phone calls to my bank and kill a couple people now. And I've not even had my tea yet!

Chickening out

For the past couple weeks I've been having this nagging gluttonous urge to have some delicious fried chicken.

There's this lovely fried chicken kiosk near my house called 'power chicken' and I often see the seller dolling out huge portions of succulent fried chicken, sprinkling them with some seasonings I know not of and handing them to eager buyers.

Fried chicken has gained immense popularity here, not least because they're mad about KFC's but also because of the insane popularity of fried chicken in Korea which also abbreviates to KFC.
In fact the last time I ate fried chicken was in Korea and they have the most awesome way of serving it.
Apart from the seasonings sprinkled liberally they're served with ketchup, mayonnaise, tartar sauce and sweetened pickled radish which is five kinds of delicious.

I don't know how they serve it up here in this particular 'power chicken' shop but I love how crunching bronzed it looks and every time I pass that shop I wonder if I shouldn't buy some and gorge myself on it.

I haven't to this date and that's sad, but maybe I'd like to over the weekend.

Ah, fried foods..so delicious.

I'm going to dish up some pumpkin and lentils and rice and roti and call it a dinner..sighs