Cape Town: A Home At The End of The World

CITIES I’VE SEEN. CITIES I’VE FELT

The Sights

Despite the many blessings I’ve enjoyed all along - wonderful family, surfeit of friends, book shops in every city my dad was transferred to, and an education system that played perfectly to my, now rusty, ability to learn anything by rote – by 26 I’d still managed to make a pretty good mess of my life. Even if it wasn’t apparent to most people around me. So much so, that when I flew into Cape Town on a sunny December afternoon in 2003, it was a flight from my life in India in more ways than one. My stay in Cape Town marked the beginning of an ~18 month period when everything seemed to go right in my life – with such little contribution from me – that I went from being a non-believer in all things providential to a mere sceptic. Five of those wonderful months were spent in Cape Town.

That summer in Cape Town is pretty close to as good as its ever got for me. I was happily surprised by its very European vibe…and infrastructure…at decidedly African prices. It was the first time I was going to spend a decent length of time in a foreign city when I didn’t have either of the two problems that had bedeviled me previously – no money (destitute exchange student in Paris), or no understanding of the local language (isolated intern in Tokyo). In addition, for once, sunsets at nine o’clock occurred after work-days set at around five or six. And so I had a lot of time to kill and fortunately Cape Town provided a lot of ways to kill it.

Landing in Cape Town, the first thing I noticed was Table Mountain. Not just because it’s a permanent, massive presence looming (benignly, a little like a pet plateau) over the city but also because it is on every other picture post-card, shop name and hotel billboard advertisement. 'Rooms with a view of the Table Mountain' the billboards boasted, as if there could be any that didn’t. Over the following months, Table Mountain did justify this obsession – mostly thanx to its schizophrenic relationship with the local cloud community. Embracing and rejecting the cloud cover randomly on a daily basis, it yielded beautiful ever-varying views...that I never got bored of. It also provided endless opportunities for small talk with strangers in bars...that unfortunately I never made use of.

Gazing at Table Mountain's was only one of the ways of killing time in the city. Lazing on any one of several spectacular beaches that nature has so thoughtfully hewn out of the cliffs that line the Cape’s coast, gobbled up many of my weekend afternoons. Tourist quick-tip - Mornings in the Cape summer are windy. Windy enough to blow away beach umbrellas along with that contented sun-facing closed-eyed look that one gets on the beach. So its better to just club till four in the morning, sleep till noon and then head to the beach to get your tan going.

Late afternoons or evenings, back from the beach, I’d head over to the V&A Waterfront to watch the hordes of street performers or grab an early dinner at one the many seafood restaurants. For those of you who saw Blood Diamonds and cried at the contrived ending (How could you?!) – the Waterfront is where Jennifer Connolly was dining when Di Caprio called to bid her farewell (Spoiler alert! I guess). I had tears in my eyes too – but only because I had an urgent craving to jump onto the next flight to Cape Town and couldn’t since I’m still ad-less on this blog and so have to hold down a job that expects me to give advance notice of vacations.

The City had scads of cafes and restaurants to while time away in. The variety of cuisines and the number of good restaurants to choose from was such, that deciding on where to eat took up a good chunk of time too. I’m pretty sure Zagat food reviewers flying to Cape Town, keep their return dates open - there’s just no knowing how long it would take to do justice to the city’s restaurant scene. The range of cuisines was particularly gratifying to my greedy, easily-bored, foodie self. There was game meat to try out – a culinary safari available at your fork-tips - the menus boasted of items like Boar cutlets, zebra and free-range ostrich steaks, or crocodile tail. I gamely (pun unintended) tried nearly everything except warthog; crocodile tail in case you wanted to know, tastes like chicken. For eating something tamer you still could choose from a range spanning African and European cuisines from multiple countries and every fusion variant in between. One of my favourite restaurants was a pan-African one. It served dishes purportedly from all over Africa…from Zambia to Egypt, and from Senegal to Ethiopia. Hobbled by a single entry South African visa, there was no way for me to use a weekend fly-back to one of those countries to confirm the authenticity of the dishes...but somehow I was OK with taking the restaurant at its word. Instead, I reveled in feeling wonderfully cosmopolitan by just reading the menu.

Other weekends were spent driving or ferrying myself around the Cape where there was tons more to do and see. One particular weekend stands out. It involved driving through the wine-country, less than an hour outside the city: rolling green hills covered with vine-rows, charming old estates you could stay in over the weekend if you had lots of money, and lots of wine to guzzle while pretending you’re only swizzling it. The perfect day was marred somewhat when my then partner R, who’d flown in for a couple of weeks, scolded me for refusing to try most red wines on the philistinic grounds of preferring whites. It quickly became alright again when we lunched at a restaurant whose name I forget, situated on a sun-drenched slope with a fantastic view of the surrounding vineyards. We had to wait despite having reservations – because you really couldn’t expect people to hurry through their gourmet courses, could you? But I didn’t really mind because it gave me more time to laze on the grassy slope and soak in the view. Yeah, lazing was quite a theme with me in those five months…still is actually.

What else do I remember fondly? Well, there was the day spent walking along the winding elevated plank-paths on Boulder Beach. Cute, largely mute African penguins on both sides - huddling in their hole-in-the-ground nests or waddling around companionably with a friend or sometimes just standing still in groups at the water’s edge.

And there was the day spent on Robben Island, Cape Town's Alcatraz - accessible by ferry - where Mandela was imprisoned for decades. The most chilling part of the visit was not the prison itself but the quarry that the prisoners had to work in – breaking stone all day, every day only to have it carted away and dumped in a different part of the island. The quarried stone was never used for anything. The idea apparently was to break the prisoners’ not just physically by making them do back-breaking work but also mentally, by making them do superfluous back-breaking work. Robben Island has the second largest penguin colony after Boulder Beach. Predictably, the prisoners were also not allowed to go anywhere from where they could view the penguins, lest they derive some simple pleasure from it. Talk about a petty, perverted system.

And finally the day spent standing at the southern edge of Africa at the Cape of Good Hope (have loved that name since childhood) trying to tell the waters of the Atlantic from those of the Indian Ocean. There’s some other spot which is actually a little further to the south, but its further away and more difficult to get to from Cape Town. And so, both tourists and locals alike are happy treating Cape of Good Hope as the point at which all roads lead northwards. The topography at the Cape was breath-taking. The land didn’t end in a gentle beach sloping into a gentle sea; but rose up forming high cliffs that plunged into the crashing waves below. A strong, sometimes howling, wind was blowing that day, bending the proteas (natives shrubs after which the cricket team is named), every which way. Coming down from the main cliff, you could see a couple of ostriches, generally hanging out on the small beach. They were accompanied by a couple of representatives of some species of very large rats and a large porcupine with a very impressive quiver. All in all, the scene had a wild, untamed quality to it. There it was. Finally. A visual that at least partly fit my conception of Africa.

Interrogation Under Pressure

No, Its not about how the US does not torture anyone, Anywhere.

So I cannot for the life of me decide, dear reader, whether the best way to refer to my pal Robin RedBreast in any future posts is Robin R. or R. RedBreast. You remember Robin (Mile High Vipassana). He, of the chirpy demeanour, who when sitting across you at a restaurant table, cracking a joke and shaking with laughter brings to mind a brightly hued songbird hopping happily on a branch outside your bedroom window. Think of that picture and tell me, whats the more fitting appellation?

Robin R. might be more appropriate given that he's from South India, all the way from Thammizh Naadh in fact. Please note the high levels of PC - phonetic correctness - achieved by this blog just then. But then RedBreast is just a qualifier not the name of his village-well. So I guess that can't be the source of his last initial.

So maybe R. RedBreast is better? It has the advantage of following a naming convention familiar to both Western and Indian readers and also fits the criteria of maintaining a degree of anonymity, which is a rather inconsistently observed piece of blogging etiquette. I think its also more visually evocative of that brightly hued bird I was talking about. Hmmm... So unless there's a massive demand for using Robin R. with a similarly well thought out rationale behind it, R. RedBreast it shall be.

And in case you're wondering what caused me to inflict this perhaps surprising question on you...feel free to claim all credit for yourselves, dear demanding reader. In the past few weeks I've been gratified to have received many more comments about my posts, than I usually do. Both on and off the blog. Of course some of these have been actually by me responding to other comments. But then, hamaare Bihar main, ballot-box stuffing is a time-honoured ritual.

But some of you have been rather demanding..."Where's Tokyo Take II" asked someone. "Do another city", said another, briefly giving me visions of being expected to change my name to Debbie and booking the next SouthWest flight to Texas.

This tells you a few things about me -
a) I like getting comments about my posts (on the blog is better than off it, though I'll take whatever I can get :)
b) I'm easily pleased and have a very American attitude where feeling successful about my blog is concerned. (If my readership goes from 1 to 2, well then, I just doubled my readership! Random House here I come.)
c) I sometimes babble under stress

Stress? You ask.

Uhuh. I fully intended to write a Take II on Tokyo and about other cities that have affected me - almost universally positively (probably a function of lowered expectations due to our celebrated Metropolis In The East). However the last couple of days when I've sat down to compose a coda to Cape Town or a panegyric to Paris, my synapses have refused to fire.

Yes. I'm forced to confess. I have a block...not a writer's block for I do not deserve (yet?) to suffer from that lofty aspirational affliction. Just a simple block. And while I've tried to fight it the last couple of days, to write something that might satisfy your ravenous hunger for all things written by me, it doesn't work...The thoughts and feelings refuse to morph into prose. And so I have decided, I shall wait for it to dissolve. By itself. In the meantime, do excuse me while I go listen to Queen vocalizing my distress.

Sappy Sentiment of the month

PLAYING ON MY IPOD

The last couple of weeks, the song thats been playing most on my IPod is Nickelback's If Everyone Cared...I've only recently started listening to Nickelback but really like several of their songs. A lot has to do with the rock-y-without-being-noisy feel of their music and the powerful, testosterone-fueled raspy voice of the lead singer (whoever he is). But this specific song I liked because of its sappy, almost cheesy sentiment that I'd have expected a rock band to shy away from expressing openly :) Its almost venturing into boy band territory. The innocence, almost simpleness of the emotion expressed by the lyrics is rescued by the hard edge in the singer's voice, the muscular guitaring and the assertive rather than plaintive tone in which its been sung.

The refrain which I love for its retro-sixties sentiment goes as follows:

If everyone cared and nobody cried
If everyone loved and nobody lied
If everyone shared and swallowed their pride
Then we'd see the day, when nobody died

When I initially heard the song, I thought the last line was framed as a question, "Would we see the day, when nobody died?" I still think thats more appropriate and accurate - I'm pretty sure, honesty, humility, and love alone won't end conflicts...but maybe thats just the beleaguered cynic in me...winning out for once.

Tokyo Take I - A Spring Underneath A Fly-over

CITIES I'VE SEEN. CITIES I'VE FELT.

I love cities. Love them. Specially those cities which have been around long enough and have been successful enough to have climbed from the bottom rung of Maslow's Need Hierarchy ladder to a point where they are not just about making money or just getting by but also about something more - something that characterizes them and gives them a personality of their own. I've been lucky enough to have spent time - months, years or even just days in some of nicest ones...and some of the not-so-nice ones. And then there's Tokyo - a city that I've had a bit of a love-hate relationship with, for several years.

Tokyo was the first city outside India that I saw way back in a different century - in the spring of 2000. And Tokyo dazzled me. Everything was new and shiny (the buildings built during the real estate bubble were still pretty young), the airport bus seemed to whizz through the night without a sound. The roads were super-smooth, the people extremely polite, the cabs had doors that opened and close on their own (Woe betide the tourist who touched the door handle; you'd wilt under the drivers' glare like a cherry blossom under the attack of the Monilinia Laxa fungus). Tokyo seemed to give the impression of nature having been comprehensively conquered by man. At least in Roppongi where I lived, everything seemed to have been tamed. Nearly every surface had been covered by concrete and where natural soil was visible, it was buried under small, well tended patches of shrubbery or trees. Perhaps the crowning achievement in my eyes was the infinitely complex flyover system - which were sometimes as high as six or seven storeys, usually had multiple layers and crested and dipped multiple times without touching ground before they got you to your destination.

Roppongi is the main expatriate district in Tokyo, where the gaijin (foreigners) tend to cluster. I lived a block off the main street linking Roppongi with Akasaka, a staid business district where my office was located. I'd been put up in a respectable sized service apartment where the only thing they didn't do was take care of the laundry (loved it).

Roppongi is famous for its raucous night life - sleazy (and some classy) strip clubs, hostess bars and just plain-sex joints - abutting expensive sushi bars, the odd McDonald's and Hard Rock Cafe, and high end clubs like The Lexington - favorite haunt of the hot expat models in the city (They really are pretty hot...I know cos I went there in keeping with my hot-blooded straight male disguise :).

Akasaka was only a 20 minute walk from Roppongi. In the evenings, walking back home from work across Roppongi's main drag, it was pretty common to be accosted by a bouncer (often the only black man on the street), shown a racy photograph and asked in plain hearing of the expats crowding the sidewalks - "Want some hot p***y?" It could really be as simple as that. And many men - including several on my trading desk - took advantage of what was on offer. (Un?)Fortunately my appetites didn't drive me in that particular direction.

In some ways though, I had an easier time with menu choices than my other three vegetarian batch-mates who spent nearly the entire two months eating veggie Subways for lunch and curd rice for dinner - not daring to buy much from grocery shops, where no one seemed to know English and where all the labeling was in Japanese; petrified that what tasted like tofu could just as well be dried sea urchin.

Tokyo also intimidated me...an admission it took me some time to make. In many ways it was too ordered and too strange for me. I found it hard not to cross the street at 3:00am at night when the pedestrian light was red. Or not to count the change that the cabbie gave me (Its considered insulting - though he always seemed to count mine!) Or to not poke some of those dang slippery sashimi pieces with chop-sticks (also considered rude). I remember being especially freaked out the first (and only) time I tried to use the Tokyo Metro and found people standing in neat queues on the platform to get in. The Bombayite in me couldn't handle the concept. I never went back. And growing up in multi-lingual India had not prepared me for Japan's monocultural experience. If you didn't know the language and couldn't read Kanji there was few people you could speak to and few things you could read. It was a curiously isolating , even numbing experience - to walk around in the crowded streets, people chattering, neon signs blazing and still not be able to absorb 95% of it (except usually for street signs). Laptops and the internet - the lonely traveler's saviours - were not ubiquitous then and I certainly did not have access to them.

Finally...Tokyo annoyed me. I found Japan perplexingly difficult to get a handle on - partly I'm sure, because of the language barrier. Maybe people were just being their reserved selves, but the system at times seemed hostile to foreigners in a passive-aggressive way. I spied that hostility in several isolated things - In the fact that at Tokyo Tower they charged tourists more than what they charged locals (yes they do the same at the Taj but then India wasn't the second largest economy in the world at the time). In the way they did not have any English or foreign language signage at this beautiful temple outside Tokyo that I went to with my friends. In Mayor Ishihara's massive popularity and repeated ability to get re-elected when he was known to have isolationist tendencies (7 years later he is still mayor)...Or in the fact that multiple-generation Koreans born in Japan were not automatically given citizenship because their ancestry cannot be traced back to a Japanese lineage. And then there was the widely recognised and accepted chauvinism in Japanese society. One of the Indian swap traders I worked with, joked about how the culture fit him well since it was even more chauvinistic than India.

Why did I care? I don't know - But I decided to snub Tokyo - I withdrew to what was most familiar in a foreign country - no not the local Indian restaurant - but, ironically, the representative symbols of HollywoodLand. So I ate at Subway and the New York Diner, hung out at the Hard Rock Cafe and rented English movie videos to watch, nearly every night. That time spent wasn't a complete waste, btw - I saw some really good movies in really clear video prints for once. I didn't venture out once to electric Akihabara or glitzy Ginza. Apart from one-off visits to Shibuya and Shinjuku and the wonderful Ueno zoo I pretty much stayed in Roppongi.

So at the end of my two months in Tokyo, having not strolled by a single blooming cherry tree, I left, rather gratefully for India. My lasting impression of Tokyo was one of mild claustrophobia caused by feeling hemmed in by the multiple-storey high, multi-layer flyover that ran the entire distance between Roponggi and Akasaka. The flyover blocked out the sun along the entire route and, given that most of my time outdoors was spent walking from home to office and back, left me with a rather industrial cast-in-concrete memory of the city. Not surprisingly I was in no hurry to go back.

Spot the Oxymoron

"There's a very nice Middle-Eastern restaurant in downtown Sunnyvale"

For those unsure of what an oxymoron is - here's a helpful primer - The picture below depicts one.

Is it the Fourth of July Again?

Forget flip-flops, tis the time for drag-heels

My downstairs neighbour who's really a terrific guy (and I'm ready to take on whoever says he isn't) was kind enough to let me know that he was going out to town for a few days. More than a week! May the Travel Gods continue to smile on him.

So I've already taken advantage of the situation in several ways - after my usual curfew of eleven o'clock:
a) Tapped my feet on the floor while sprawling on the bed playing Risk on my computer
b) Sang out loud to the tune of Dido's "Thank You" while washing up for the night
c) Trundled my suitcase loudly through the doorway instead of hefting it over the threshold in my arms like the proverbial new bride
d) Wore my noisy slippers and went click-click CLACK-CLACK all over the house
e) Resolved to wake up at least once in the middle of the night to go, make sure to flush noisily and then thump heavily (oh yeah!) over to the kitchen through the bedroom for a glass of water, rather than tip-toeing through the corridor.

That freak gust of wind you saw blow off the leaves on that tree was me letting out my breath.
Independence Day came a week late - but whats that they say about being better late than never?

PS: Also, decided to drop something heavy at least once each night to make sure the law of averages stays on my side once he's back

Mile-High Vipassana

My friend Robin RedBreast who's as feather-footed as the name implies told me recently that he doesn't read my blog much because its not personal enough for him. So this post is also for him.

I recently flew to Japan - only my third international flight since about July last year - (believe me I'm not complaining about not travelling cattle class more often). On the flight out to Tokyo, I realised that these long flights can have an unintended side effect which can be salutary or stressful, depending on one's relationship with the truth about oneselves. They can create the conditions for a (sometimes involuntary) bout of introspection.

On a ten hour flight, once you've been forced to switch off the phone, the movies are ones you've already seen or - if its United - ones you wouldn't ever want to, when the laptop battery runs out having lasted only half as long as you thought it should and when you've run through that wonderfully interesting book twice as fast as you hoped you would, there really isn't much to do other than switch on your thoughts. Some people can get lost in music (the iPod's battery can generally last an entire flight) but I find I do a lot of my thinking when the only distraction is music.

There are other uses of an iPod too of course. I use mine to ward off surprise attacks from your friendly-neighbourhood-seat-extroverts. You know. Those people who think that nothing could be better than to have perfect strangers belted into place next to them for hours on end. All the better to get to know them and make-new-friends! Yay! Don't get me wrong, I'm mostly a friendly guy but I find starting a conversation with strangers on flights is rather like the Chinese saying about a rescuer becoming responsible for a rescuee for life. Most people assume that because you said "Hi" to them at the beginning you've effectively promised to engage them in conversation through the rest of the flight. So having been burned by such strangely social souls a few times, I now board planes with my earphones in place and keep them firmly plugged in for the duration even if the iPod isn't on.

Given that the iPod doesn't help me prevent one-ness with my thoughts, I've had a couple of fairly big epiphanies on my international flights. Last year after a 10 day stretch of flying London-SF-London-Singapore-London-SF I found myself sitting up in my business class sleeper bed, staring into space and realising that I needed time off to think about what to do about my job and the absence of any life in my life. Sometimes weekend long clubbing just isn't enough :) It led me to taking 3 months off from work and eventually changing jobs.

This time when my computer unhelpfully died within the first hour and the latest installment of the Tales of the City novels proved to be a fast and slightly disappointing read, I was again left with nothing to do but switch to my iPod...and my thoughts. Thankfully my life's a little more interesting right now so the conversation with myself didn't involve as much of a scolding as last time. The result of the enforced introspection was that as I stepped out at Tokyo's Narita airport I was resolved on a few things...I won't tell you what conclusions I came to about myself and what I needed to change...thats way too personal for me...but will leave you to deduce what you may, dear reader, from the resolutions. My three mid-year resolutions are to force myself to sit down to write even if the story is not clear in my mind (waiting for it to reveal itself has led to a 8 month hiatus!)...to buy myself a silver thumb ring to wear sometimes without waiting for someone to buy one for me...and to start making plans to visit all those places that I want to go to but have been putting off for when I have someone special to see them with. Nothing life changing - thankfully. Of course that may be a sign that the flight-enforced self-discovery needed to go on longer...but for now I'll just take it as a sign that I'm no longer cursed with an interesting life and its attendant melodramatic subscripts.

But Yeah. It is funny how my introspections seem to lead me towards more vacations. :)
Maybe I should take a more serious look at one of those Vipassana courses - the voluntary, on-ground kind...?

What Lies Beneath

So it was a beautiful evening that I was spending with several of my closest friends in San Francisco on the terrace of the new flat I’d just moved into. We had a couple of bottles of wine open and were clearly heading towards Merryville. However it was still early in the evening – the summer sun was still hanging around just above the horizon – so we really weren’t being too noisy for that time of the day.

I went in to get the last bottle of wine from the kitchen, when, hearing a voice, I opened the kitchen door. It opened into the back stairwell and some five floors down, there was this guy leaning over the balustrade, peering up at me…”He’s back. And now you’ve had it with all the noise you’re making.” He said, in a distinctly unpleasant way. I don’t know why, but it raised goosebumps all down my back. Following some atavistic instinct for self-preservation I ran to the terrace to warn my friends…not sure about exactly what. There was no one there…so I ran back into the house and into the living room and that’s where everyone was. They were gathered in a semi-circle in the middle of the room looking at a small group of people who were standing in the front doorway. I don’t quite recall what they looked like, but there was a general air of menace hanging over the room. One man was clearly in command and I just knew that this was the guy the lower-floor neighbour had been referring to.

“You’ve just arrived and are already creating a nuisance.”, the man said – or something to that effect. “Well I live right beneath you and I’m going to show you why that’s a bad idea.”

I wasn’t sure where this was heading…but it wasn’t to Merryville for sure. My friends were standing there seemingly paralyzed. I said something like “you can’t barge in here. I’m going to call 911 if you don’t get out now.” Only to find I didn’t have my mobile phone on me. I looked around a little panicked, it wasn’t anywhere to be seen in the living room. I hissed at my friends with rising fear and frustration, “Guys can one of you give me your mobile phone?” They looked at me dumbly and one of them piped up, “We don’t have them.”

“What? Why not” , I asked through clenched teeth, trying hard to stay calm.

“He asked to see what they were like and so we gave them to him. And now he won't give them back.”, said my friend.

I looked at the guy from downstairs to see that he did indeed have several phones in his hands.

I could hardly believe it. “How could you guys be so dumb!”. I yelled...abandoning my attempt to hide my panic. And the goose-bumps? Well they were more like goose-mole-hills now. From the way my heart-beat had accelerated, I knew this was really bad news and that it was going to get a lot worse.

That’s when, thankfully…I woke up. Sweating. Heart beat racing. All goose-bumpy.

Anyone who’s come to stay with me or even visited me, knows that I’m a little paranoid about my downstairs neighbour. Almost unfailingly when I have guests staying over, or even just friends at home for dinner, he will come up. A quiet really very unassuming knock announcing his arrival, he will proceed to complain about how much disturbance we’re causing. He usually sports this disheveled, massively harassed look, designed to show me how much trauma has been inflicted on him.

And his complaints can border on the bizarre. “Sometimes when I’m sitting and trying to read in the evenings and you walk heavily, it disturbs my train of thought.” He told me one day. He also complains about his downstairs neighbour playing the TV too loud, so I’m pretty sure I’m not really the one who’s the problem here.

Wanting to be the good immigrant neighbour, I’ve ended up tip-toeing around the house in bare feet, harassing any friends/guests to do the same, making sure to speak in low voices after 9:00pm and generally avoided inviting people over for dinner (my courage usually holds up for lunch).

This was the first time though, that he’d invaded my house in my dreams. Make that nightmares. Funnily, its happened at a time when I thought I was making progress with standing up to him – I recently told him he shouldn’t expect me to walk quietly in the house between 8:00am to 11:00pm. I felt proud about that for several days after that.

Obviously though, living in fear of disturbing my neighbour has affected me in some really insidious, subliminal ways. Neighbours inspiring nightmares can’t be healthy in the long run.

As I see it, I have a few choices:
a) I could move away – but that would mean giving up the view of the Golden Gate
b) I could give him my Bose noice cancellation head-phones to help him concentrate better when he’s reading and sleep deeper when’s he in bed – But I’ve lost my I-Pod head-phones and that would leave me head-phone-less and therefore I-Pod-less; certainly a fate worse than insomnia
c) I could buy him a lifetime’s supply of Ambien to help him sleep better – but then he might start sleep-walking (like many Ambien consumers seem to do) and binge-eating (also a side-effect). Worse he could try to sleep-walk into my kitchen and that would really be my nightmare come to life…except for the move from the living room to the kitchen


So for now I’m left with no good choices. Like the the beautiful lake-house in “What Lies Beneath” that hid the source of much mental anguish for its new residents, my rather charming rent-controlled apartment has proved to be rather less fun to live in than it promised. Of course having said that, I would probably complain less if J looked more like Harrison Ford…thirty years back. He doesn't.


In the mean-time, I’m going to hold on to my cell-phone. And keep it charged. And if you do come to visit – please remember to tread softly.

The Mother of All Put-Downs

Umm...Mom, feel free to skip this post :)

I'm constantly surprised by the number of people who haven't heard Pink's new club-hit called "You and Your Hand". And thats when I have to remind myself that not everyone spends every free minute on weekend nights dancing in their town's hottest clubs. That, not everyone likes to spend hours gyrating with abandon to the latest amazing beats, crushed between a gaggle of gorgeous toned bodies, the alcohol buzz just loud enough to drown out the voice telling you that your dancing sucks, body thrumming as one with the all the rest on the dance-floor, collectively generating a heat-wave that overwhelms the air-conditioning and leaches out those apple-martini imbibed calories into abs-crunching dance-moves. I've never understood why.

OK I romanticise a little bit. Yeah...the beats can usually be more accurately described as brain-numbing, the bodies are often sweaty, please-put-your-shirt-back-on kind. That voice in your head - the one valiantly trying to tell you your dancing sucks? Its right...and you're better off not drowning it out. And there's no space to move in a self-respecting club let alone let loose with abs-crunches. But on the whole, clubbing is a ton of fun. It is!

Anyway getting back to the main point...a lot of people don't seem to have heard about Pink's latest club-hit called "You and Your Hand"

I love the song - its very very danceable - specially in the remix version thats played almost daily on Energy. Energy, to give you some context, is my favorite Bay Area FM station (energy927fm.com). They play hard core dance tracks 24/7 with a wonderful lack of irony. For example, they'll play "I can't wait for the weekend to begin" on Monday mornings, just when you're stuck in a traffic jam on Highway 101, on the way to work.

Again, back to Pink's song. The reason I really love it is because the lyrics are steeped in a huge vat of pure, wonderfully unchecked sarcasm with the power to eviscerate any and all dopes in bars who find themselves at the receiving end of the song.

Here's the refrain:

I'm not here for your entertainment
You don't really wanna mess with me tonight
Just stop and take a second
I was fine before you walked into my life
Cause you know it's over
Before it began
Keep your drink, just gimme the money
It's just you and your hand tonight

Its the last line that elevates this song, in my mind, to the title of the Mother of All Put-Downs. Its pure unadulterated, pithy, sarcastic genius. Saddam Hussein, who coined the term "Mother of All..."and who was sarcastic till the very end, wryly questioning the bravery of the mob who taunted him as he walked to the gallows, would've approved. I think.

Of course if you're one of those people who do spend every free weekend night minute in clubs - you might appreciate the rather sad irony of singing along to the lyrics.

If you're there. Every weekend night. In that club. Then, you probably can't afford to sing it like you mean it. :)

Not unless you're Pink, anyway

The Blessing of an Impermanent Smile

If you’ve read the Kite Runner – you might remember that the eponymous character, a preteen Afghan servant-boy was born with a cleft lip; a permanent smile as the book put it. I read the book relatively recently at the urging of my Mom. Though initially not very interested in the book, I found I couldn’t put it down once I’d started and was rather disappointed when it ended. I wish it had been a few hundred pages longer. It’s a story spanning several years spent in pre and mid-civil-war Kabul and in San Francisco.

One of the most heart-warming passages in the book for me – and the book had many heart-warming as well as heart-breaking ones L - was when the protagonist’s father, a rich Afghan Pathan, at whose house the Kite-Runner worked and lived, flew in a doctor from India on the Kite Runner’s birthday to perform surgery on him to fix the cleft lip. And in doing so, gave him the gift, no a blessing, of smiling only when he wanted to, only when his smile could also reach his eyes.

It wasn’t long after I finished reading the book and perhaps because it was on my mind, I came across an ad in the newspaper by an organization called the TheSmileTrain. I think it was the organization’s name that first caught my eye…it brought a vision of train bogies full of happy, smiling, sunny faces to mind. I read the ad – something I don’t usually do – and then checked out their website too. Feel free to do the same by clicking on anywhere that TheSmileTrain’s name is mentioned in this post. Beware – before you click - you might find yourself compelled to make a donation. TheSmileTrain is an organization dedicated to performing the simple surgery to fix cleft lips on kids all across the world. That’s all they do. In countries like India, Brazil, Uganda, these surgeries cost as little as $250 and have the ability to transform the lives of these kids. Since 2000, they’ve helped more than 200,000 children, many of them in India.

In TheSmileTrain’s words millions of children suffering... with unrepaired clefts...cannot eat or speak properly. Aren’t allowed to attend school or hold a job. And face very difficult lives filled with shame and isolation, pain and heartache. Many are also abandoned by their parents at birth. Think about it, when was the last time you saw someone with a cleft lip in a position of power or eminence. Families suffer too. A friend of mine who was looking at the web-site with me, told me about a friend who didn’t want to share pictures of her new-born baby with any of her friends and relatives. The mother privately told my friend, that the baby had a cleft lip and the parents, who I’m sure loved their child, did not want to show him off until the surgery that they were lucky enough to be able to afford.

There are so many things in life that we should not take for granted. A voluntary smile, I think, is something everyone should be able to. Here’s to TheSmileTrain for working to extend that privilege and blessing to more and more people everyday.

Paris Hilton Hospitalized After Alarming Spike in IQ

FAKE NEWS ALERT! ALSO PUBLISHED AT SISTER SITE DAILY NEWS PARALYSIS

Leading socialite and hotel heiress Paris Hilton (ageless) was today rushed to Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles after doctors measured a sudden spike in her IQ during a fitness check. An intern at the doctor’s office, who preferred to remain anonymous, said that the occasional songstress’ condition was “serious but stable”. Paris who has recently been going through a particularly stressful period due to being awarded a jail sentence for driving on a suspended license, was not available for comment and was said to be under sedation to help calm the unusual amount of brain activity that was caught “just in time” according to the intern, who admitted to being an ardent Paris Hilton fan.

“There’s just no one better than Paris when it comes to posing endlessly in front cameras at all times of the day. Anyone else might have easily died of boredom from mindlessly repeating the same poses in 8 different dresses each day.”, she said. “But Paris’ has been doing a yeoman’s job over the last decade or so. She’s my hero!”

Dr. Ridge Waters, a celebrity Hollywood psychologist, said the IQ spike was probably caused by the large amounts of time the actress was spending in recent days in figuring out ingenious ways to stay out of jail. Just last week she hit upon the brilliant idea of starting a MySpace petition to Governor Schwaznegger of California through a friend, fired her lawyer and generally spent enormous amounts of time brain-storming ideas with friends. According to Dr. Waters such high levels of mental stimulation in individuals unused to it, can be especially detrimental to the brain’s long-term ability to handle daily mind-numbing tasks. Such a development could spell disaster for the 24/7 socialite.

A friend of Ms. Hilton, who rushed to the hospital when she heard the news, tearfully said she’d been afraid something like this might happen since last Friday when Paris claimed to be feeling “discombobulated by the legal terms used by lawyers.” It was reportedly only the second time that the often-time model is known to have used a word with more than three syllables. The first instance being when she addressed noted fashion designer Ermenegildo Zegna by his first name at a party. Her friends explained at the time, that she usually calls him ‘Erm’ but didn’t want to sound like she was clearing her throat when so many microphones were present.

Sources close to Ms. Hilton have hotly denied claims by some bloggers that there had been other such instances, saying that “Yves Saint-Laurent” does not count since it is really three words not one. The sources also dismissed that this would have any long-term effects on Ms. Hilton’s ability to fulfill her many endorsement deals, in an attempt to calm nervous media buyers. However in a sign of things to come, stocks of several tabloids fell sharply in late trading on NYSE on worries that the IQ spike might be persistent and could sharply reduce Ms. Hilton’s poses-per-day average. Meanwhile, dismayed fans of Ms. Hilton had started gathering outside the hospital by late evening, holding placards saying “We love you Paris” and “Stop! You had us at Disco…”

The Squirrel(s) who Ate Too Much - Conclusion

An Allegory in 2000 Chirrups

All characters in this story are fictional. Any resemblance to an alarmingly over-weight population of a stupendously consumption-driven society may not be purely coincidental. I’m talking about the Yosemite squirrels, of course. No really! :)

Click to read Part I first

Click to read Part II first

Click to read Part III first

Part 4: Darkness

Squirrel FAQs - Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Should I feed squirrels peanuts? (Source: www.squirrels.org)
A: Only if they are unsalted. Too much salt is not good for the squirrel, it increases their heart rate. This in turn, can contribute to an early death.

“Bushy-Brow?”

Bushy-Brow who’d been devouring the delicious pine-nut, oblivious to everything around him, nearly jumped out of his skin. “What? Who is it?” he snarled. “Its me. Wavy.” Said a small voice below him. It sounded a little scared. He turned and looked down to see Wavy-Tail peering up at the branch. “I’m sorry Bushy-Brow. But I heard you and Curly-Whiskers talking about a Pine-Nut Patch and decided to follow you. Where’s the Pine-Nut Patch Bushy-Brow? And why did those Long-Legs take Curly-Whiskers away?”

Bushy-Brow took a deep breath – he had to stay calm and follow the emergency plan that the Long-Legs had told him about.

“You shouldn’t have followed us Wavy.” He said in his best you’ve-been-a-naughty-squirret-but-I'm-still-willing-to-forgive-you voice. “You know squirrets especially are not allowed this side of the hill.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” Wailed Wavy. “Please don’t tell Ma. I only wanted to get a pine-nut for her.”

Bushy-Brow made his way down the trunk, carefully holding his pine-nut under his chin. “Hey.” He said kindly, plopping down softly beside the downcast squirret. “You made a mistake but its OK! Curly-Whiskers has gone with the Long-Legs to get the pine-nuts.” He nuzzled Wavy kindly. “Now don't look so disappointed. I’ll let you share a secret treat instead. But you have to help me dig, then."

“Anything!” said Wavy grateful that Bushy-Brow didn’t seem angry anymore. Bushy-Brow hurried over to a nearby tree and started digging with his paws. He moved over a bit to let Wavy in by his side. They both dug hard for about 5 minutes when Wavy felt a different texture under his paws. It was slippery and smooth – not hard and crumbly like dirt. Wavy had never seen anything like it. "OK, move over and let me pull it out”, said Bushy-Brow nudging him away, a little roughly. He caught hold of the plastic packet with his teeth and pulled it out. Wavy could see that there was something that looked like food inside the slippery cover. Bushy-Brow gnawed a large hole through the plastic and then shook it with his teeth until all its contents fell out.

“You’ll love it”, said Bushy-Brow “Its very rare, but it goes bad outside the covering very fast, so you have to eat it all right away. OK? Are you hungry?” “Yes. Yes!” Said Wavy, chasing his tail in excitement. “Ma has been allowing me to eat only 2 hazel-nuts a day. I’m very hungry!”. He pounced on the nuts and started gobbling them up.

“Yeah I’ve not been happy that she’s not doing her part to finish the daily food blessing.” Bushy-Brow said slowly "I’ve let it be for now since I know she’s grieving for Red. But there’s no reason to starve a youngster like you.”

“These are really tasty” said Wavy in delight in between chomps, not really listening. “What are they?”

“They’re called peanuts.” Said Bushy-Brow, looking at him unblinkingly. “These are special peanuts. They have something called salt rubbed on them that makes them taste even better. I'm glad you like them. Eat up then.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Curly-Whiskers crouched, scared to death, in the trap lying on its side in the back seat of the car. He could hear the two Long-Legs talking to each other. Then one of them brought the black case close to his mouth and said something to it. He heard the box start chirruping. He could understand the words but still couldn’t quite understand what had happened to him. “I’m telling you”, the box said, “Buying Bushy from that trapper and this Babel-Box were the two best investments we ever made.” The box stopped chirruping. The Long-Legs kept on talking to each other in their strange tongue.

“I agree, man. Its so much easier to train an animal with this thing.” Said Roger. “Pavlov would’ve loved it!”

“Yeah.”, said Fred. “We got ourselves a big guy today. These buggers seem to be really gorging themselves on the nuts and shit. Beats force-feeding those damn geese and ducks. These squirrels are great – they do all our work for us.”

“Yeah. I can’t do force-feeding man! That's cruelty man!” agreed Roger. “But who’d have thought squirrel liver pate would taste so good or get so pricey on the black-market after they banned foie gras!"

"Or" crowed his partner. "that we’d someday become the Squirrel Liver Moguls." "Dayhum! ", he said drawing out the word and savoring the feeling driving it, "Life is good.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A dark night had fallen over the hills of Yosemite. Pine-Eyes scampered into the Food Patch trying her best to control the panic that she could feel rising in her stomach. She hadn’t seen Wavy for hours now. He was usually back by moon-rise. Well the moon hadn't risen but that was only because today was its Day-of-Rest.

The Patch was its usual noisy self, squirrels everywhere, over-eating, chirruping nineteen-to-the-dozen and resting after having over-eaten. Only Bushy-Brow was being relatively industrious, intently clearing the brush from the edges of the Patch.

She couldn’t see Wavy amongst the throng gorging themselves at the Patch. She'd been hoping he had defied her and gone to the Patch to eat anyway. But he wasn't there. Where was he?!

“Has anyone seen Wavy?”, she called out, trying to keep the nervous squeak out of her voice. “He went out to play and hasn’t come back yet.”

Barely anyone looked up from their dinner.

Concluded

The Squirrel(s) Who Ate Too Much - Part III

An allegory in 2000 chirrups
All characters in this story are fictional. However any resemblance to an alarmingly over-weight population of a stupendously consumption-driven society may not be completely coincidental. (I’m talking about the Yosemite squirrels, of course. No, really! :)

Click to Read Part I first

Click to Read Part II first

Part 3: Twilight

Wavy was climbing carefully down the hazel tree, a large hazel-nut tucked under his chin. “Ma is going to get such a surprise.”, he said to himself, “She’ll think there’s hope for me yet.” He was about half-way down the trunk when he heard chirruping. It was Bushy-Brow with fat old Curly-Whiskers. Curly-Whiskers had been one of Red’s closest friends. They were hurrying down the small path that led over the top of the hill. Wavy had never been there before. It had never been considered very safe for squirrets because you could run into a lot of Long-Legs there. And then, when the eagle attacks started, Bushy-Brow had decided that it was best if no one – squirrels or squirrets – went there...because the Pine-Mother alone knew what other dangers lay there. So no one did, anymore.

“I’m telling you I have the same feeling that I had the day I found the Food Patch.”, Bushy-Brow was saying as he scurried up the hill, a few scampers ahead of Curly-Whiskers. This time, I think the Pine-Mother wants to lead me to a Pine-Nut Patch. I can just feel it in my bones.”

Curly-Whiskers scurried as fast as he could, trying to keep up with his much fitter leader, but already feeling a little winded. He could hear his sacred-drum in his ears already. But he couldn’t help feel excited. It would be wonderful to taste pine-nuts after so many years! And Bushy-Brow had chosen him, and him alone, to share in the glory that would follow from the discovery. “No one else can know”, he had said, “because I don’t want to raise squirrels' hopes and have them belied.”

“Is it over the hill?” he asked Bushy-Brow between breaths, hoping that the answer would be a no. “Yes. I think so. Hurry!”.

Wavy’s ears pricked up. A Pine-nut Patch! Maybe he could get one for Ma! She would LOVE that. He dropped his hazel-nut (he was sick of eating them everyday, anyway) and started following the other two squirrels at a distance. If they saw they him, they’d surely send him back to Ma. The two adult squrrels had already disappeared over the top of the hill. Lost in imagining Pine-Eyes’ delight as he hurried after them, he wasn’t prepared for the strange sight that greeted him as he crested the hill, huffing and puffing.

About 30 glides down the other side, he saw Bushy-Brow sitting on a branch on his haunches, barely 10 scampers away from two Long-Legs! What was he doing? He seemed to be chirruping at one of the Long-Legs. One Long-Leg held a wooden box from which he could hear more chirruping - that sounded like Curly-Whiskers. Was he inside the box? The other Long-Leg held a small black case in front of Bushy Brow and when Bushy-Brow stopped speaking, the man brought the case back to himself, holding it close to his ears. Wavy heard strange sounds coming out of the case. The man moved the case near his mouth and made some strange sounds himself. He then held the case close to Bushy-Brow and wonder of wonders, Wavy-Tail heard chirrups coming out of it.“You're doing a heckuva job, Bushy.” He heard the case say. “We’ll see you again after eight suns this time. Here’s your reward” The Long-Leg held out a pine-nut to Bushy-Brow who quickly snatched it from his hand. “Thank you Master. Thank you!” He said in an uncharacteristically servile voice. “I won’t fail you.”

The two Long-Legs turned and walked away.

Click to read concluding Part IV

The Squirrel(s) who Ate Too Much - Part II

An allegory in 2000 chirrups
All characters in this story are fictional. However any resemblance to an alarmingly over-weight population of a stupendously consumption-driven society may not be completely coincidental. (I’m talking about the Yosemite squirrels, of course. No, really! :)

Click to Read Part I first

Part 2: Afternoon

Pine-Eyes was resting in the shade of a buck brush near the edge of Vernal Falls. Her legs ached from all the climbing she’d had to do. She buried her nose in her lush tail and closed her eyes for a well-deserved siesta. “Ma. Can I go play with the other squirrets now?” Uncurling herself, she saw Wavy-Tail sitting on his hind-legs, looking hopefully at her, his whiskers twitching in nervous anticipation. She usually made him sleep in the afternoon – he was still very young. But “OK you can go play today. But no jump-gliding while I’m not there. Its too dangerous.” Wavy-Tail ambled off happily. While she was happy that he'd largely gotten over Red's death, she also felt a little hurt that he'd done it relatively easily. But then he hadn’t known Red for very long – unlike his many older brothers and sisters. He was her baby. Her last one – She’d always known she couldn’t be with anyone but Red.

Dolefully, she tucked her nose back into her curled up tail. How had everything changed so much? It wasn’t just that she’d lost her love of many, many years. The changes had started several years back – around the time that Bushy-Brow had appeared. What was it…six winters back? That had been a tough year. That was the first year that the pine trees stopped bearing nuts and started dying. The older squirrels said it was because the weather was changing. Bushy-Brow had wandered into a Squirrel Council Meeting one day – said he was from Great Yosemite Falls and was looking for a change. He had an air of arrogance about him that turned many squirrels off – but the Vernal Falls tribe were nothing, if not hospitable.

He seemed to spend little time foraging for nuts, whiling away many mornings Tail-Sledding with the older squirrets seeing who could get to the bottom of the mound fastest. He’d disappear towards evening into the deep woods – finally to forage one assumed – and seemed to be lucky enough to never have to ask another squirrel for hard-gathered food. He was like any other squirrel; if a little more irresponsible…and seemingly lucky…than most.

But then 2 full moons after he came, he turned into a hero overnight. That was the night he ended everyone’s food worries for all time…he discovered the Food Patch…the small clearing about halfway up the hill from Vernal Falls where a small smorgasbord used to appear mysteriously everyday. All the types of squirrel foods you could think of - hazelnuts, mushrooms, even some delicious peanuts though none seemed to go grow in the Yosemite valley. There were no pine-nuts but who was complaining. It had been a wonderful meal. Everyone had eaten for two that night. And the next day, the Patch was again full of food. Everyday the heaps of nuts and mushrooms was replenished and soon everyone gave up the daily gathering of food. They’d laze about or play all day and just go to the Patch evening and feast to their heart’s content…eating much more than any squirrel could have needed.

Bushy-Brow said he’d been led to it by instinct, but believed that the Pine Mother herself had guided him to it. He also said no one should go near the Patch except after the sun had set otherwise the food wouldn’t appear. He claimed it was their sacred duty to finish all that appeared in the Food Patch...that if they didn’t, the Mother might get offended and stop providing for them. And of course they did…even though everyday the food was more than enough to feed all of them and then again by half. They also made him a de facto leader, acknowledged as such by the Squirrel Council. Then the strange eagle attacks had started. They’d heard of eagle attacks over in Nevada Falls but Vernal Falls had always been a safe place to live. They weren’t really attacks, at least not that anyone had seen, but squirrels started disappearing every so often. Now it had gotten so bad that one squirrel was disappearing every 5-10 suns or so. Everyone was scared…no one had seen an eagle but what else could it be? Bushy-Brow had rallied the troops, so to chirrup, when the attacks first began. It had to be eagles and Squirrels had to stick together, he’d said, if they were to be safe and survive. The old ways of relatively solitary, independent living didn’t work anymore – there had to be more rules about where squirrels should roam, what they should do and when; they had to have a night patrol to keep them safe and so on. The Squirrel Council had been grateful for his leadership and adopted most of his suggestions. These were scary times but at least they had the Food Patch to keep them fed and the Night Patrolers to warn them of danger.

Pine-Eyes had grown to like Bushy-Brow like most other squirrels. Except maybe the way he’d insist on spending hours everyday clearing the area around the Patch of twigs and dry grass. She found that a little weird. Its not as if he used them to build a large nest to impress a maiden squirrel with. No, he just cleared the brush. Obsessively. There was that time that Droopy-LeftEar had come running to him in tears to say she’d looked everywhere and couldn’t find her twin Droopy-RightEar anywhere. He’d asked her to rest on her haunches and give him five minutes to finish the day’s clearing.

For the most part though, Pine-Eyes (and Red) had felt grateful that Bushy-Brow had appeared just when the trying times started. But today, lying in the shade of the buck brush, she couldn’t help but wish that they could go back to the old days when there was no Bushy-Brow. Because then there were also no eagle attacks, hardly any rules, the Pine-Mother’s bounty came in the form of pine-nuts and not the Food Patch. And then, by her side, there was Red.

Click to read Part III

Part IV to follow

The Squirrel(s) who Ate Too Much - Part I

An Allegory in 2000 Chirrups
All characters in this story are fictional. However any resemblance to an alarmingly over-weight population of a stupendously consumption-driven society may not be completely coincidental. (I’m talking about the Yosemite squirrels, of course. Who did you think I was referring to :)

Part 1 : Morning

“Wavy-Tail don’t go so near the edge.” Scolded his mother, “Come back here and forage with me. Dinner doesn’t grow on trees you know.” Then corrected herself, “Well actually it does. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have to work to get it. You have to gather your share of nuts.”

“Oh Ma. Can’t I go Tail-Sledding down Riverside Mount. Long-Whiskers and White-Stripe are going. Its not fair.” Wavy wailed. Pine-Eyes wasn’t impressed. “Well let them go. They can go eat at the Patch tonight, but we’re not going to. If you want dinner tonight, you come back here and gather it, young squirret.” She watched her son scamper back slowly, wavy tail drooping rather non-eponymously. He started clambering laboriously, up the trunk of another hazel tree near hers. Her heart leapt into her mouth for a second as he seemed to slip a couple of feet, then dug his claws into the bark and held on before starting to climb again. He really needed to lose weight, and quickly. Just like his mother did. And his father had needed to.

She looked away, offered a silent prayer to the Pine Mother and gingerly started making her way towards the delicious looking nut that lay at the end of the branch. There was a time, before she, and really every other squirrel in Yosemite's Vernal Falls got fat, when she would have scampered towards the nut blithely; light of feet, tail billowing behind her, cool breeze caressing the fine down on her back. She and Just-Red would sometimes race each other to a nut; she beat him to it more times than not...Red often let her win, especially if it was a pine-nut. They both loved pine-nuts. And then at dusk they’d sit together, their shared body warmth helping to keep the Yosemite chill out, and he’d lovingly nip her ears while she nibbled on the nut.

Red! Red, with the rust red tail he was so proud of. Red, the only squirrel in all of Vernal Falls, without a hyphenated name. Red, who defied all demands by the Squirrel Council to add a noun to his name as per ancient custom…and who said that if they really wanted to hyphenate his name they should call him Just-Red. He knew that choosing an adjective would annoy them even more. Or was it an adverb, she was bad at this! Her beloved Red who’d become so fond of eating, so enamored of the sumptuous delights of the Food Patch that it had eventually led to his death. Only a few full moons back. The sound of his fat body thudding sickeningly into the ground still haunted Pine-Eyes. It was the sound of the world coming crashing down around her. He had attempted to make a flying leap from one high branch to another and had fallen short by several spans…having badly misjudged how, the weight he’d put on recently and his general sluggishness, had affected his Jump-Gliding skills. His beloved tail had been unable to parachute his weight down safely. That’s when Pine-Eyes decided that she and Wavy had to stop eating at the Food Patch. There had been too much eating and too little exercise.

Even after so many moons, the mere thought of Red made Pine-Eyes’ whiskers droop with the terrible weight of her sorrow. She willed them up again with an effort that sent a quiver down her back. Wavy had been hard hit by Red's death and had only recently started coming out of his shell. She couldn't let Wavy see her looking sad again. If only she had lachrymal glands so she could let all her emotions out in one big flood of tears. As she'd sometimes seen lonely Long-Leg hikers do, in the forest, when they thought no one was watching. Perhaps then the sadness would stop gnawing at her – trying to get back into center-stage in her mind from the corner that she had banished it to. She missed Red so!

Click to read Part II

Click to read Part III

Indian Tourism's New Hope?

No these aren't misplaced ads from the Incredible India campaign but maybe they should be. Early in April, Macy's (its a major American retail chain for those fortunate to never have been exposed to this wallet-lightening temptress) held its annual flower show and chose a rather banal slogan Imagine India. But then they went ahead and spent thousands of dollars doing up the interiors to look like an ornate Indian wedding hall bedecked with thousands of beautiful flowers. And they installed a giant Ganesh-ji right above the main entrance on Union Square. Along with a five-storey poster of an anonymous Indian woman in full Technicolor. The whole thing had a bit of an exotic (and cheesy) feel to it...in the Bay Area, I think this isn't necessarily a bad thing from a tourism promotion point of view. A mention of India, here, usually evokes a vision of masses of software engineers huddled in a maze of cubicles. Not exactly something that will start a stampede to the travel agents.

Not sure if Macy's did this in all their stores or just the flagship outlets. If they did it at all outlets, then over the fortnight that the flower show lasted, the campaign probably got as many eye-balls across the US as the Incredible India campaign ads have over the last couple of years. Maybe the Tourism Authority of India should just pay Macy's to keep the theme every year! Hey they could even donate a tiger or two to keep in a display window - they'll probably be safer there than under the auspices of Project Tiger.

Seduced into Exercising

Today is one of those days when the city justifies its high rents. Its also a day when I realised that the reason LA has beautiful, fit people is because of the weather. If I lived in LA, or if SF's weather was more like that - a sunny disposition all year round, instead of weird mood swings that it has), I'd probably have six-pack abs by now.

The morning dawned bright and sunny, the waters of the bay glowi... actually I don't know what the dawn looked like at all. I woke up at eleven in the morning - (Hey, its decently early by Sunday morning standards). But I can say for sure that noon dawned bright and sunny, and hot. Hot enough for the breeze to be warm instead of chilly. In fact as I sit her typing on my laptop, nearly seven thirty in the evening, its still bright and sunny and hot outside. Hot enough for me to be sitting here sweating. That never happens...well ok, it happens...but only about 5 days in a year and usually they're all in October.

I was going to follow my usual Sunday morning routine - read the NYT, have brunch, laze around watching TV, order in if there's no plans and watch more TV. But almost as soon as I stepped out to meet my locationally-named friend Malad for brunch in the Marina I was assaulted by guilt pangs for not making use of the wonderful weather to get some exercise in. As Malad and I walked down Chestnut St we saw hordes (ok not hordes but many) of fitness-freaks running, skating, cycling their way to Amazing Abs. This continued all through our 3 egg-omelette brunch (I skipped the cheese as a concession to my guilt-gods) since we made the mistake of sitting outside in the sun. ..."because we couldn't sit in the sun in India" said my friend, on the one day that it was too hot to sit outside in SF too. :)

After brunch, Malad headed off for a snooze. Propelled by a mixture of guilt and voyeurism (several of the men running or even just walking on the streets were displaying a rather endearing propensity to do so without their shirts), I decided to go for a short cycle ride along the marina. It turned out to be a great idea. There was almost a festival going on there and only part of it was about fitness. The overall effect of all that activity in the marina's beautiful setting was rather energising.

I feel compelled to describe the scene to you, dear reader...Along the ribbon of greenery that runs along the waterfront...there were the afore referenced shirtless men (and shirt-ful women) jogging, skating and cycling; colorful kites bobbing in the blue sky; one of them, a many-tailed monster, was tormenting a black dog (see pics); people were picnicking on the benches near Fort Point and some were even sunning themselves on the excuse for a beach there; a stray blue balloon struggled in the branches of a tree in Crissy Fields; the gold dome of the Palace of Fine Arts glowed in the sun, nicely setting off the view of the mostly white houses behind it; the Acalacia* trees growing along the road that climbs up to the Golden Gate looked like pyramids banded with layers of shade and sunny green; white sail-boats dotted the Bay; kids were playing volleyball; people lazed in the grass amongst the California buttercups reading, dozing...you get the picture. It was a great place to be. Entranced by the scene, I ended up spending 90 minutes cycling up and down the waterfront - must have covered 6-7 miles. Definitely enough to work off that omelette.

Of course, tomorrow the cold, blustery weather shall be back and I shall again have an excuse for not exercising. Sometimes I think the only way I can have a six-pack is to get cosmetic surgery (they put a six-pack plastic board just under your stomach skin) or to go to the nearest corner store and buy beer**. Guess which one I'll pick :)

*Don't bother googling Acalacia trees to see what they look like. I made the name up. Who the hell knows what the trees are called. I'm pretty convinced most authors do the same.

**Shouldn't a set of six beer cans be called a Pot-Belly instead of a Six-Pack? Doesn't make any sense!

The Unintended Economic Consequences of a Daily Arriving Newspaper

Here's my question of the day for you, dear diligent reader - Can the decline in newspaper subscriptions, in the last few years, be responsible for the several quarters of economic growth that the US has enjoyed? What else could explain the growth that the US has had despite an extraordinarily inept administration with a one-tone economic policy ("lowering taxes brings growth")? And conversely, if the economy slows does it make sense to stop your newspaper subscriptions?

Here's where I'm coming from...Sometime late one night, in the last week of March, my fingers hovered over my keypad. Frozen by indecision. Or by the magnitude of the decision they were about to type-off on. I was on the NY Times subscription page - about to fill in the details of my credit card to allow the dead-tree version of the newspaper to start arriving at my doorstep on a daily basis. I was nervous that if seen to be complacent under the assumption that I had cut frequent travel from my life for good (as symbolised by a daily subscription), I'd be served another huge dollop of it by fate.

I'm still getting used to the changes - drastic ones - in my daily schedule, wrought by my recently changing jobs. I actually get to sleep in my own bed, for most of the week, a lot of weeks; can work from home ever so often and actually generally start and finish at reasonable hours. So much so that, actually reading the newspaper no longer feels like an achievement. Procuring it, however, still seemed like solving a daily linear optimization problem - run to the nearest C-store or starbucks to buy a paper before the first call in the morning while also trying to maximise sleeping time. Not easy.

After several minutes of hesitation I decided to tempt the gods of mischief and sign up for daily delivery for the next three months. A few days after that fateful March night, on April Fools Day, to be precise, the NYT started arriving at my doorstep. And its been doing that regularly ever since. Everyday. Day after day. And after nearly a month of this, I've started noticing some rather surprising, unexpected changes that I think may be exacerbating the recent slowing down of the US economy. Its caused me to stop and think - and I shamelessly borrow stylistically from Carrie Bradshaw here - Can gaining a daily NY Times subscription lose me my monthly salary?

Here's three ways in which a daily subscription have lowered my contribution to economic growth:

a) Bringing my coffee consumption down to a trickle: For the last two years I've been spending an average of $150 per month at Starbucks' ubiquitous cafes. No more...I no longer have to start my day running to the nearest Starbucks to pick up the NY Times and also picking up a caramel machchiato and a random flavour of reduced fat coffee cake. Now that I get my paper at home, I've been to a Starbucks maybe 3 times in the last one month. The savings pay for the subscription many times over just on that one count but obviously aren't helping our consumption driven economy.

b) 'Zen'ding my spiritual upliftment costs into limbo: Now I don't have to deal with the stress of finding my daily Times-fix. Combined with the improvements in my work-life balance thats caused me to indefinitely defer my plans to rejoin meditation classes at the SF Buddhist Center. Thats another $100 per quarter saved - even on a sliding scale contribution system! btw I'd highly recommend the Center for non-subscribing NY Times readers :)

c)Tightening my spending on reading material: On days when I was running late for work, I'd have to skip my Starbucks-NY Times stop in the mornings. By the time I got to a news-stand or cafe later in the day, half-crazed by my paper-news withdrawal symptoms, I'd end up buying more than just the Times. The beneficiaries of my addiction ranged from the Financial Times to (I'm ashamed to admit) the right-wing rag WSJ and once even the Spanish language version of People magazine (I thought it would help me practice my rapidly rusting Spanish). Now of course, those medical emergencies don't occur - saving me $10-15 every month (I used to run late quite often :) And this doesn't even include the 50% discount for 3 months I got for the NY Times subscription itself...a $75 hit in NYT's revenues.

There will undoubtedly be sceptics who scoff at whether one person's reduced spending could impact something as large as the US economy. I would respectfully suggest that they read up on the history of the First World War. It took one shot in Sarajevo to start a 4 year global conflict. So if you're in a job that's easily outsource-able in a recession, my suggestion would be cancel that newspaper subscription already! Of course, buying a new house with savings you probably don't have, would help too.

FREE Monthly Bulbs Giveaway: Make-The-Switch

I’m starting a FREE Monthly GiveAway of Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) bulbs where I shall give away 16 energy saving CFLs with a 23 Watt output (equivalent to a 100 watt incandescent bulb) to who-ever requests it - friend, foe, stranger. Every month.

Here's why: I’ve only recently gotten around to replacing all the light bulbs in my house with energy-saving CFLs...even though I’ve known about their great energy saving impact for a few months now. It wasn’t about affordability - PG&E is selling them for 50 cents a piece!! The delay happened simply because replacing incandescent bulbs that were still working was just not very top-of-the-mind for me and so I’d forget to buy them. If you're like me and lazy, not sure if you’ll like CFLs or just plain can’t remember to go buy them, this is your chance to Make-The-Switch and green-light your home. Click here or on the permanent link on the side-bar for more details

If you've already made the switch dear reader, feel free to refer your friends to this offer.