Monkey In a Suit

I won’t credit the website because I don’t want them to have the incoming link and trace me back here-I recently came across an anonymous site written by the girlfriends/wives of men in finance. Sometimes the complaints really are about the toll on the relationship, but there are a goodly number of posts complaining about  how reduced fortunes equal a reduction in lifestyle and the odious situations they now have to put up with.

(No invites to the Hamptons…OMG, no, how will they ever survive?).

I am both sickened and fascinated. I’m pretty sure I’m somewhat different from the women the average finance guy dates-except I’ve dated so many of them at this point (seriously, I think I may have dated every Maharashtrian at Lehman Bros. at some point, Big Bird is constantly teasing me about it). Thinking these things would never even go through my mind.

Of course, they were all…well…meh is putting it nicely since we’re no longer together. But if we were, if the relationships had progressed, I cannot fathom being angry at having my “lifestyle” changed. Maybe it’s because I have okay earning potential myself, and it’s comparatively stable (many of the complainers seem to indicate that they don’t make very much money) but mostly it’s because I can’t imagine a day where the basis of my love for Big Bird is based on whether or not he has X job or could buy me Y things.

In fact, he has given me lovely things during the course of our relationship. But we’ve stuck it out through some crappy mistakes that both of us made, and I don’t think there’s a present/material good in the world that would keep either of us coming back to each other and trying to make to make it work time and time again.

What say you readers? Are the crows just coming home to roost for shallow people who purchased shallow women when the gettings were good? Or is this sort of conditional support more widespread than I thought? I can’t be the only person turning puce at the idea that it’s okay to desert your spouse emotionally when they can’t buy you stuff.

ETA:

Apparently one of the founding members was fired by her company for launching the site and the other one’s new marriage is on the rocks. Quelle surprise!

I actually wanted to send BB a link to the site to reinforce how awesome I am but

a) It’s depressing and the financial climate is depressing enough right now

b) Not being the world’s biggest douches to each other isn’t some great relationship accomplishment on either of our parts. It’s sort of what both of us expect.

But still! I can’t believe these people. BB has this one friend who is actually awesome and adorable and he finds it hard to meet people in the big apple and whenever BB tells me about his problems I’m always like “that’s because he’s trying to meet these chicks in a post Sex and the City world in the actual setting of SATC…it’s a lose lose proposition.”

A nice little meme courtesy of Ms. Mle of Pantalones del Fuego that I discovered in this post. Feel free to participate if you wish-meme details are at the bottom of this post. Great questions, mle!

1. If you could spend one day anywhere in the world (let’s say you get to travel to/from instantly but can only spend 24 hours in the location), where would it be and why?

This was probably the hardest question and it’s the one I answered last.

I would go to Bhutan because it is one of the hardest countries to go to in the world-largely because of the difficulty in getting a visa given that they restrict the number of people they admit each year. It is also the happiest, if I remember correctly.

I’d like to go and learn the secret of life. It seems to me that it would have everything that would make for a wonderful experience, and if I may be so pretentious, be the type of trip that would have a spiritual component that might actually serve to teach me something valuable.

2. What do you like best about living in LA?

Like a lot of transplants, I love the weather the most. It’s not a very exciting answer, I know. It’s not the lack of snow or cold as much as it is the lack of seasons and the year round sunshine. I know Southern California experiences its own form of “seasons.” Brown & Browner is an overexaggerated but accurate description of the climate changes around here. I grew up on the East Coast and northern Quebec, and intellectually I do love the change of seasons and the fluctuating environment-but practically speaking, I am happier with year round sunshine. I think there’s something in my blood that still calls out to be returned to the Tropics from whence I came .

The only downside to the lack of change is that it creates this sort of artificial environment that makes it difficult for me to keep track of time. I felt the same way whenI was in school-I had a hard time keeping track of days in the week as workdays/weekends because they all bled into each other. It was the lack of purpose necessarily assigned to each specific day of the week, is probably the best way to explain it. In the working world, I assign Monday through Friday the designation/purpose of Work/Suck and Saturday and Sunday as free time. In a seasonal climate, I assign a purpose and action to each part of the year because the seasons gear up each year to do their job and I have an easier time keeping track of time year to year. In a subtle-season climate such as this one, it all sorts of bleeds together for me and I wake up one day and realise  that it’s been almost 4 years since I graduated from law school and all of those seemed to pass faster than the 3 years I spent working towards my J.D.

Other answers I considered were

• Year round good produce
• Ethnic diversity, with resulting awesomeness in the restaurant industry
• Observing elements of the entertainment industry without being caught up in it (because it seems like a hard business)-for instance, House filmed on my street last week!

3. What do you look for in a significant other/romantic partner? Is this different than, say, 10 years ago?

Oh god, yes, my tastes are completely different compared to 10 years ago.

10 years ago I would

• Never, ever, EVER have dated an Indian guy
• Would never have dated anyone I considered “square”-for instance, I would never have gone out with a guy I considered “typical” or yuppie.
• An individual’s personal political preferences and literary/musical/aesthetic tastes would have mattered more to me-in the sense that I would have said that I could only be with someone whose preferences meshed well with mine.
• My parents’ opinions would not have mattered at all. Actually, I think I perversely liked choosing guys that would create Romeo-Juliet drama between me and my parents, whom I thought of as impossible and not having a clue as to the “real me”.
• I would not have considered the long-term consequences of an individual’s choice of career or their financial habits and I strongly suspect that I would have told myself we could have made it work even if our ideas on these issues were radically different.

Today

• I spent many years thinking I needed to be with an Indian. I no longer believe that but I think that it would be better if we shared the same faith or had overlapping spiritual beliefs and could agree on raising our children in a particular denomination/religion we both agreed on. I do not ever intend to convert myself. I’m Hindu so being with another Hindu or someone who identifies with a liberal Christian denomination or the general “spiritual” category would be best.
• I don’t really care if someone has a “square” job working for the man.
• I don’t care if someone is more conservative or liberal than I am. Being openminded and reasonable is more important to me-we can disagree on whether socialised medicine is necessary or not as long as you’re amiable about our disagreements.
• Flexibility is important-life is hard and a lot of things come up and those put pressure on relationships. Demonstrating commitment in the face of adversity is important to me. Are you willing to do things to make me happy, even if they are difficult and require commitment? Am I willing to do the same for you?
• Communicating with respect. I fully believe in John Gottman’s theories about successful relationships.
• If my parents don’t like you, is there a specific reason? They are pretty reasonable people and even told me that the Indian thing wasn’t as important to them as me being with someone educated and openminded about our culture. I would take my parents’ objections to a guy very seriously provided that it’s based on some objective reason generally thought of as being important in a successful marriage. My mom, especially, is a very good judge of character.
• Are your parents capable of tolerating me and if not, are you going to protect me against them? Honestly, I don’t think of myself as bad girlfriend/wife material so I’d expect a really specific reason for their  dislike, if you decide to take their dislike seriously. “I am North Indian and you  are South Indian” does not really fly with me and if you aren’t willing to stand up to your parents when they manipulate you into dumping your FIANCEE the day before her EVIDENCE EXAM then you aren’t capable of marrying anyone, let alone me. Or deserving for that matter, pussy. Anyway, I will always stand up to my parents being assholes to my friends/partner for no good reason so I expect the guy to do the same for me. I understand a close relationship with one’s parents (have a good one myself) but damn, cut the apron strings if they control every facet of your adult life.
• Do we share the same ideas on how to raise children? Our parents’ roles in our kids’ lives? Our priorities vis-a-vis their education? Our hopes and dreams for how we want to influence them professionally and ethically/morally?
• Are our spending habits and financial goals compatible? Do our ambitions mesh well?
• Do I simply think of you as a good human being, in spite of your flaws (I have them too).
• Do you make me laugh and is simply snuggling up to you comforting and fun? Do you appreciate my weirdness even if you are completely different and navigate social situations far more easily than I can (hmmmmmm, when have I ever felt like that? Oh yeah, all of last year!)

Very simply put-I would totally date an Indian hedge fundie in a blue business suit, which is like 7 other blue business suits in his closet and only he and other finance dorks can tell the difference, who is addicted to his crackberry and votes Republican-as long as I liked him and thought we had similar values on the stuff couples disagree over day to day (major and minor decisions). 10 years ago I wanted someone “alternative” who shared my 20 year old sensibilities on art, music and politics.

So I guess I am a totally boring now.

4. What will your next tattoo be, if you decide to get one?

 For tattoos I’m mostly interested in the religious symbols from Buddhism and Hinduism. I currently have an Ohm. The only 2 I really want are the dharmachakra and the sacred lotus.

5. If there was one thing that could be changed about the US (government, laws, social mores, culture memes, etc.), what would you change and why?

This is a tough one and I’ll go with a safe answer. I’d like to stop the extremely destructive techniques of coal-mining that continue to be used, especially the rape and scrape policies of blowing off mountaintops in Kentucky. I would also reverse the ridiculous court cases that give coal companies in Pennsylvania the right to scrape out all the minerals that lie under your property even if it means your land caves on itself. IMO that is a  brutal violation of property rights.

OTOH, I think that resource management in this country has often been legislated and judged by a “first come first serve” or “my rights” attitude and I think the environmental challenges of the future require us to work towards more collaborative forms of resoure management.

Wow, that was a really boring answer, wasn’t it? Uh, I’d like to reverse cases on property ownership in Pennsylvania and I’d like to change the underlying philosophy of “it’s okay to crap on the commons till we all go ’oh shit’!”

Like I said, I am growing boring and politically unclassifiable in my dotage.  

Here are the meme details:
If you’d like to play along, just follow these instructions:
1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.” (And realize I might take
a while to get back to you.)
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the
questions. (Eventually!)
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions. Be sure
you link back to the original post.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone
else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five
questions.

People keep asking me how I feel now.

What do you tell them?

I tell them I feel like Andy Dufresne right after he gets out of the prison.

But right after Andy Dufresne gets out of the prison he’s standing around covered in sh*t.

Yeah…but then the rain comes down and washes it all away.

Okay…you’re Andy Dufresne out of the prison, but why are you crying about being out of the prison and pounding on the walls trying to get back in?

*pause*

Because in some ways I’m like Red…I’ve been institutionalised. *triumphantly*

Oooh, good save. Man, you really love to analogize your life to that movie don’t you?

So does [Best Friend]. Baby, there are so many parallels it’s unbelievable.

If all of life can be analogized to the Shawshank Redemption, what am I?

Well…

Well what?

You’re not going to find it very romantic.

Don’t worry, I’m used to that by now…just tell me.

You’re like…*shy voice*…you’re like the posters of the glamourous pretty movie stars on the wall. The hope of escape lies behind those posters and it reminds him there’s a life outside of the prison filled with beauty.

Oh my god.

What?

That’s…that’s not unromantic…that’s amazingly sweet. I’m actually tearing up.

*perking up* Really?

Yes, really.

You’re also kind of like the boat…at the end of the movie. After a lifetime of suffering he gets an amazing prize.

Stop…this is almost too much. That’s like the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.

Well…it’s how I feel, even though I don’t show it as much as I should.

*curiously*

Anyway, what did you think I was going to say?

Well…when you said unromantic…I thought you were going to say I was like…the library cart.

Please give me some credit…even I’m not that bad.

Every time I post one of my “I am intrigued by WPF…but I would like to add several chilies and many spices to it” recipes, my friend always asks me to desify Chicken & Dumplings for her. I absolutely love a good, garlicky Chicken & Dumplings but X is just not into the traditional recipe, she tells me. Is there any way to make it so that the whole family will eat it?  I always mean to get around to it…but I found the request a little difficult to handle within the bounds of my cooking imagination. I will admit that as fond as I am of Cagey, and no matter how badly I wanted to help her, desifying this one sort of stumped me. How on earth could I make this quintissentially American dish into a frighteningly spicy offering worthy of the burnt out desi tongue?

The problem is that I just didn’t want it to taste gross. The thing about South Asian food, and what I try to do in my Confusion Food dishes, is make sure that the elements and spices meld together properly. When I cook purely Indian food and I can still taste the spices individually, I know that either I’ve frocked up the tempering or the proportions or I basically mixed spices that simply do not go well together. Add in the fact that she wanted it to taste garlicky and that the original recipe makes use of flour and milk, two ingredients that I don’t often use in my style of desi cooking, and I was pretty much at a loss as to how to do it.

This weekend I had some free time on my hands so I decided to take a chance. My favourite thing about this recipe is that you can easily switch out the protein to suit your lifestyle. So, and now might be the best time to “announce” this to the blog (as if you care!)…I have recently gone 90% pescatarian, mainly because I watched this terrible Top Chef episode where they had to cook at the farm and interact with the animals beforehand. I don’t eat pork or beef, but I will admit to indulging in lamb and chicken. Unfortunately, the animals were a little too cute for me, if you know what I mean. The truth is, I actually DO feel guilty for eating fish (ask BB about how my lower lip trembled while fishing in Belize) but fish eating is a large part of my ethnic background (my mother is Goan and my father was raised in Goa even though he is Maharashtrian) and I simply don’t see myself giving it up, especially considering my fitness schedule. OTOH, I am really good at cooking seafood, and it does satisfy me, so there’s no reason I shouldn’t mostly give up my other 2 sources of animal protein. I say mostly, because

• While I think the animals are cute, and omg, I can’t eat something that cute because I want to adopt it and cuddle it and have it make friends with J the Cat even though he will just cower in a corner and soil himself…I still REALLY like the taste of meat.
• I just don’t think it’s wise for me long term, both because of my career and BB’s career/friends, to be so picky about not eating meat that I come off as “ruining” dinner plans by insisting that my eating habits be accomodated vis-a-vis restaurant choice. Now, I am totally cool with vegetarians and when someone says “I don’t eat meat” my automatic thought is “how should we accomodate this person in terms of the restaurant choice” but that’s because India has a high proportion of vegetarians, many of my Marathi relatives are vegetarians and I don’t take it personally that people have made that choice-whether it’s cultural or a deliberate ethical issue. However, some people do get really pissy and judgey over these things so while I find the animals cute and I don’t want to eat them…I also don’t want judgey people to have my pickiness to hold over me because of my whole social climbey stuff.
• I want to use the qualifier “mostly” so when my friends see me hanging out with them chewing on chicken nachos I don’t get razzed for “cheating”. I was an omnivore till the age of 12 (parents left the choice of beef/pork up to me and my sister) and have eaten all other meats besides pork/beef since about the age of 12/13 till now, which is 29. So, maybe once in a while I’d like to snarf some chicken at a restaurant? Don’t hold it against me.   

So, uh, public service announcement over. And I promise you that I am physically incapable of going vegan and I will always make fun of them on this blog.

Anyway, getting back to the recipe

Vegetarians: sautee mushrooms seperately in olive oil, butter, or cooking spray and add to the pot with the milk.

Pescatarians: add shrimp or scallops (I used scallops because I was feeling lazy and didn’t want to shell anything but I think scallops would work better) as late as possible. Possibley even after the dumplings have cooked. Seafood is very delicate and doesn’t need long to cook. You don’t want to make them rubbery.

Omnivores: add chicken when recipe below says so!

Source Recipes:

Primarily The Cooking Critic’s post (link goes back to specific post) and the Better Homes & Gardens Recipe that she posted.

I also looked at Simply Recipe’s thoughts on how best to cook the dumplings, so I’m crediting her for technique even though I did not use her recipe.

and without further ado

Spicy Desi-Style Chicken & Dumplings Recipe

Ingredients:

Canola Oil, 1.5 tablespoons

Turmeric

Chili Powder/Cayenne

Mustard Seeds

Asafoetida

Cumin Seeds

Thai green chilies finely minced…I used 4 or 5 but mine were “old”

Garlic Powder, lashings

Salt, to taste

Fresh cilantro/dhania, lots, minced

2 % milk, 1 cup

All purpose Flour, 1/3 cup

Chicken/Vegetable Broth

1 package Bisquick “Buttermilk Biscuits” or Your Recipe for Dumplings –> this was easiest for me because I did not grow up making dumplings and I have no real “honour” to defend or desire to make them from scratch.

Vegetables: I used a few sliced baby carrots, a few florets of broccoli, frozen peas, some green beans chopped, a small can of corn & minced green onions (because hahaha, no way I am spending time peeling those baby onions). For the green onions, I used the whites and a few inches of stalk on each. I decided to go with fresh but you can just as easily dump in a mostly defrosted bag of frozen vegetables, just make sure not to overcook.

Protein: traditional dish uses cubed roasted/baked chicken. I really don’t see why you can’t just toss in cubed raw chicken with the vegetables and have it cook in the pot.

Method:

 1. Prep:

• Wash & chop the vegetables or empty frozen bag into a bowl and thaw on the countertop for 20 minutes.
• Mince the green onions finely, using as much of the stalk as you like.
• Mince the chilies finely
• Wash & mince the cilantro

2. Dumplings:

• Empty the Bisquick Buttermilk Dumplings packet into a glass bowl.
• Add minced cilantro
• I also added just a sprinkling (teaspoon max) of mixed coriander/cumin powder.
• Follow package directions. I added the water in little rivulets.
• According to everyone on the internet, the trick, even with a package, is to add the water very slowly and mix gently with the fingers. Overmixing leads to leaden dumplings. I don’t have a basis for comparison but I would not describe mine as leaden.
• Once a soft dough forms, stop and set aside.

3. Tempering the spices:

• Heat 1.5 tablespoons of canola/corn/safflower in a pot that has a tightly closing lid. On gas range, gas should be “medium high”. On my electric range I use between 7 and 8. You don’t want the heat so high that the spices burn very quickly.
• Right after you pour the oil in, add a teaspoon of mustard seeds, a teaspoon of cumin seeds, 1/4 teaspoon of turmeric, 1 teaspoon of cayenne, the minced fresh green chilies and several sprinkles of asafoetida. I apologise for not being able to give you a better approximation for the hing/asafoetida. Mine comes in this maddening little jar that doesn’t allow me to use a spoon but that requires me to poke a teeny tiny hole with a knife and then madly sprinkle into the oil every time I have to temper it. Uh…it’s very strong so I doubt you want even a 1/2 teaspoon. Maybe a quarter to start? That seems like a healthy amount-I get mine in such miniscule sprinklings that I really have no idea.

4. Cooking the Stew:

• Wait until you hear the mustard seeds pop and start dancing-wait 15 more seconds, making sure the powder spices aren’t burning.
• Pour in 1/2 a cup of broth.
• Add all the vegetables
• Now add more broth/water to just barely cover the vegetables. If you’re trying to cook the chicken from raw in the stew, add it in now (I really don’t see why you have to preroast or seperately poach it). You should add cooked cubed chicken at this point, also.  
• Let simmer & bubble for a few minutes-while you’re doing that, take 1 cup of milk and 1/3rd cup of flour and mix them in a bowl so that the lumps mostly dissolve (try to dissolve as much as possible with your grubby finger… I mean, a sterile spoon or piece of kitchen equipment).
• Once the flour is dissolved in the milk, add lashings of garlic powder into the milk flour mixture. Taste to see if it suits your garlickyness (that’s for you, Cagey ).
• Veggies should have been lightly boiling away and should be slightly cooked…so add the milk-flour-garlic mixture at this point.
• Stir and watch the stew thicken. Lower heat to simmer-bubble. Not like 1 or 2 bubbles occasionally floating to the surface, but a very slow simmer.
• Taste and add salt and pepper as necessary.

5. Dumplings:

• Now drop pawfuls of dumpling dough into the gently simmering stew.
• Cover with tightly closing lid and do not remove! The dumplings have to steam and opening the lid allows the steam to escape.
• Wait 15 minutes, then gently remove lid and poke a toothpick through dumpling. If it comes out clean they’re done.
• Throw in a pawful of fresh cilantro and remove from heat.

Remove to bowl and burn roof of mouth. Enjoy! Makes 4-6 very generous servings depending on how much broth you used to cover the veggies.

I am always on the lookout for ruin. If I smell a hint of it, my brain automatically switches into survival mode. My synapses fire and I start looking for a way out, a way in, or some place to hide until danger passes. When I get on a plane my eyes start to scan the emergency exits and my mind plots on how to nimbly leap over the seats towards them in case of a bona fide air emergency. In my Aeron chair at work, I scheme elaborate getaways if our chock-full-of-federal-agencies building is ever subject to some sort of hostile terrorist takeover. This has settled down since an actually Terrifying Organisation moved in to the floor below us. The IRS recently took tenancy in this skyscraper and I have stopped worrying about Masked Men and moved on to nightmares of Escaping My Office In Case of a Back Taxes Guilty Verdict. My friend the CPA is always waxing on and off about the risks of using TurboTax but do I ever listen? No. Last year I didn’t even use TurboTax. I used the TurboTax Knockoff.

If you want to chalk this up to anything, you may as well lay the blame at the feet of my generally being Highly Anxious as well as my crazy desi father’s belief that On the Beach is appropriate reading matter for 8 year old children. That first taste of post-apocalyptic fiction was but the beginning of my lifelong flirtation with the End of the World. Soon I would expand my doom-and-gloom palate to include dystopian literature, books about Hiroshima, and in a rather regressive trend, Christopher Pike & VC Andrews novels. I think my beleagured father found that harder to bear than when I paraded DH Lawrence under his nose after he banned me from watching 90210. The only thing scary about those bloody books is the calibre of their prose, he’d tell me. We will read Edgar Allan Poe and Washington Irving. They are much better and will prepare you better for the SATs than these kachra teen horror novels.

Even as a child, I’d read these horribly horribly bleak novels with a view to escape. If I were in that situation, how would I get out of it alive? Would I hide? Would I confront the enemy? Raise armies? Flee? When I was very young, I’d opt for hunkering down in the basement. As an adolescent, I’d imagine myself as some sort of Lara Croft-esque long limbed badass saviour who’d rally the troops to bring Eden back to Earth. These days I’m pretty much for grabbing my loved ones and hightailing it to safety.

I have never lost my taste for doom-and-gloom, nor have I quit plotting how to escape certain death in calamitous circumstances. I gave poor Big Bird a taste of my paranoia a few weeks ago in Belize. We were on the dock of our hotel, waiting for the water taxi to pick us up and drop us off at a restaurant,* when I saw two little lights wending their way across the beach, south of us. As they came closer, I heard the muffled roars of what I realised were ATVs. I’m sure the sane half of my mind realised that these were probably just locals who lived on the far north of the island and were making their way back to their remote home but the the crazy part of my mind, which is most of my consciousness, immediately leapt to conclusion that were about to beset by Brigands! These were pirates! Smugglers! And they were going to surround our deserted-with-no-form-of-self-defense-in-view resort with their ATVs and contraband weaponry, and pillage us, then murder and burn our hides.

My long-accustomed-to-plotting-against-fantastical-impossiblities-psyche instantaneously conjured up an equally-fantastical-and-improbable-escape. I let BB in on my plan.

If those people on the ATVs turn out to be brigands we have to fall flat on to the dock, then roll to the side and slip into into the resort’s little boat without being noticed, I stage whispered to BB. Then we hightail it out of here to San Pedro and alert the authorities.

Umm, okay, he replied, but I don’t really know how to drive that boat.

That’s okay, I think I read about escaping on a boat in an Enid Blyton book once, I should be able to figure it out and we’ll have some time because they’ll be murdering that family from the Palisades first, I whispered back. The lawyer wife looks tall and strong to me, she’ll hold them off while I figure out the steering.

It’s really great of them to be murdered on our behalf, BB snickered back.  

Having determined that BB was NOT taking the threat seriously, I slipped into my daydreams of doom. The brigands would loot the resort and we would nip into the boat and make an escape. BB bought his Desi Boy Car in automatic so I would be called upon to man the boat and take us to safety while he furiously Blackberried for help. Unfortunately, I would be hit with sniper fire and die in BB’s arms while he texted to New York for succour. There would be a very tragic cremation and immediately after the memorial service Big Bird would take consumptive and…

That’s when the water taxi got there and by that time the ATVs had crossed over our resort’s property and were further up the island, sparing us from an eventful evening of escaping a siege.

Of course, the thing about being half-crazily obsessed with escaping apocalypse is that you’re always busily reading about the apocalypse. My latest foray into this genre was S.M. Stirling’s Dies the Fire. The conceit in this offering is that a series of EMPs completely void the earth of electricity and any sort of combustion such that the entire world is plunged back into Ye Olde Medieval Times.

I would say it’s an uneven book, and in that sense, it reminds me a lot of The Stand. The best parts of it including the staging right up to The End of the World and the immediate aftermath. For me, The Stand was similar. It really started to falter once it got to the 2nd half of the book with all the Magical Negro and Standoff Between Good and Evil Plotline. Similarly, Dies the Fire was pretty good up until it turns out that the RenFaire/Dungeons & Dragons dorks will inherit the Post-Apocalyptic Earth. Because they are really good with medieval conditions, yo. Anyway, even if the Society For Creative Anachronisms really is going to be a major socio-political force in the post-apocalyptic world order, does that mean that we all automatically revert to Wiccanism and eating and acting like we’re in the middle of a Scottish romance novel? And does the end of electricity necessarily mean the end of democracy? Democracy has its roots in motherhumping ancient Greece, for god’s sake!

Here’s the thing. There are so many places in the world where people ARE living in what is essentially some form of post-apocalyptic hellhole. Pardon my French, but people in Sudan, Iraq, the Gaza…they are really suffering right now. It is easy for me to sit here in comfort and imagine the world as a hellish firepit because I have never seen it as such. In my world, the electricity is always on and human beings conduct themselves in a (mostly) civilised manner. The delicate balance between stability and apocalypse seems increasingly threatened, however, throughout the world.

Have you ever wondered what life would be like post apocalypse? Do you envision any sort of monumental societal breakdown in the typical apocalyptic scenario (nuclear war, outbreak of disease, the end of electricity)? What would you do?

Or am I the only one hatching plans?

*You have to travel by water taxi down the coast of Ambergris.

Don’t Laugh

I am now a union steward.

If your cynical mind automatically races to the bottom to figure out how I’m trying to tragedify these greens-shame on you! Also, yes, your instincts as to my naturally base nature would be accurate…so good on you proto-Machiavelli?

I’m union stewarding to round out my MBA application. Stepping up to opportunities of leadership and such. I accepted the position before the last syllable left the union rep’s lips. I think she thought there was going to be a snow job involved but I was pretty quick to seize the meat while the meat remained to be seized. BB was in full approval. Oh my little jalapena, he crowed, you make me so proud when you do these things! And then we retreated to our lair and giggled about how to divest orphans of their inheritances.

Just kidding. And rest assured that I informed my Brothers of my intentions. They are well aware of the fact that I feel I have big fish to fry elsewhere and they’ll have to start looking for a new steward in a couple of years.

BB told me it was time for the 2nd tattoo. What do you guys think? How would I look with an anchor on my forearm?

Neti Thought It Would Be This Good

I drank the yoga juice.

Well, actually, I put it in a wee ceramic teapot I obtained at the Whole Paycheck (trading at less than what they charge for an orange, harhar), stuffed the spout up my snout, and poured it straight down my sinuses.

It was bliss.

What’s even more astounding is that my parents didn’t know about neti. Which, odd that, because they’re so My Big Fat Greek Wedding about desi-ness and desi culture. Our people, our people, our people! Our people invented calculus! Our people had toilets back in grog-knows-when (they don’t like it when I point out that they haven’t improved on the design much since then)! Our people! So, I was utterly charmed when I discovered that they had no idea as to the Indo nature of the latest health store fad. Of course, my father rose gallantly to the occasion.  

Well, if it’s that great, of course We invented it. Now Mummy and I must go, American Idol is on.

You can always count on Baba.

Oh, but about the neti. So get this, I haven’t really been breathing through my nose for several months. It’s all the crappy air, pollution and the arid nature of our climate. So I’ve been hearing about neti for a while and this weekend I felt almost supernaturally compelled to try it out. The sensations are strange at first but the first thing I thought when the last of the saline solution dripped out of my left nostril was…

Holy crap, I can breathe through this nostril!

The second thing I thought was…

Hey, J’s litterbox needs to be cleaned.

I still have a little bit of day to day congestion but it’s a lot better than it used to be.

Side effects have included

*Better hearing

*Improved vision (umm, how does this happen?)

*Food tastes better.

You Really Like Me

One guy started favoriting my Flickr snaps. Here’s one that touched his fancy. I quite liked it myself.

Tupac in San Pedro

I can’t seem to download my own photo off of Flickr so I’ll post it to the post after I get home.

Oh how I congratulated myself
on my inestitinal fortitude
The immodium beckons
gotta go.

-e.e. monkeymcwearingchaps

It was a former British colony, after all. Everyone spoke English.

Travel writing, and for that matter, travel blogging, intimidates me. Most traveler writers and a certain subset of bloggers (especially ones that travel extensively) seem to have this established style of spare elegance and pensive DSLR assisted introspection that I’d emulate if I weren’t so gobliney and straight up Social Climbing Aspirational such that the whole enterprise would be completely contrary to my nature and pathetically funny if I ever attempted it. I suppose writing is what you make of it but I always feel like I should approach writing about travel experiences with a buckit of distanced ennui and all this internal conflict mumbojumbo that I am mostly over at this point since my life has basically boiled down to Managing My Family, Spoiling and Obessing over My Cat, Maintaining My Relationship, Work and Chores. Any spare time I have left over after fretting about J’s tapeworm, haranguing BB to remember to eat even if the market is imploding and doing endless ENDLESS laundry runs goes to my new Meditation and Karmic Balance Enterprise and kickboxing. Gods, I don’t have any frocking time to be elegant and highbrow about my travel because I barely have time to make my lunch AND inspect my cat’s butt. 

I also go everywhere with a gigantic lavender Diane von Furstenberg rolly bag AND a seperate carryon for my shoes and I think that alone has forever barred me from being admitted to the Halls of Travellers as Opposed to Tourists who are Also Always Expats but Never Immigrants.

I am an immigrant. And probably a polite tourist.

Which is probably why the most pithy thing I can say about Belize is that it’s superfun. And that I had a lot of fun. I got tanned, fished, swam with sharks and stingrays, ate a lot of mediocre food (not a foodie destination), ate some really good food, and spent several days with my man. All of this was lovely and relaxing and long overdue. Belize is one of those destinations that is just unique enough that you get a little bit of streetcred when you say that you chose it over Hawaii but with fewer parasitic diseases and better plumbing than you’d get in some of the more “indie” travel destinations. It’s a beautiful, friendly country where travel is easy and there are plenty of things to do.

I’d say the 2 most interesting experiences Belize has to offer that distinguish it from its Caribbean competitors are

1) Cavetubing: floating down the Sibun river in an innertube into underground caves

2) Excellent snorkeling/scuba opportunities: Belize has the 2nd largest barrier reef in the world and the Blue Hole. Neither BB nor I scuba but the snorkeling here is supposed to be as good as scuba generally. I have never scuba-ed but the snorkeling was definitely fantastic. There are a number of sites but we stuck to the big ones-Hol Chan Marine Reserve and Shark Ray Alley.

Of these, I found that the first was great but would have been better had we not been subjected to experiencing it with an entire Carnival Cruise ship of  screeching, hooting, hollering and generally obnoxious people who felt that what was originally a mystical/religious/spiritual journey for the Mayans (minus inner tubes) was now just a glorified aquatic bumpercar ride. Big Bird and I were perched high on a rock outpost above the caves with our guide keeping our place in line, watching our cruise ship friends generally behave like drunken English soccer thugs, when BB suddenly remarked that the whole cavetubing adventure, while cool, was also kind of sad. “They used to take this so seriously,” he pointed out, “but now it’s been reduced to shepherding 200 people at a time off a floating buffet and watching them scream as loudly as possible while you try to shove them downriver as fast as possible.” And lest you think we’re being snobby about Ugly Americans or something, rest assured that it wasn’t just Americans on that cruise.

I, did, however, get to jump off a point on that cliff into the tourmaline waters of the Sibun River so that was pretty cool.

Snorkeling with sharks and rays: what else to say other than, OMG, I voluntarily brushed up next to sharks and stingrays. And watched 2 turtles do a little water ballet. And swam after groups of Pretty Tropical Fish, but also schools of groupers, snappers and other Things I Like to Eat. I’d say I found the wildlife more interesting than the coral formations. Our guide was trying to point out a puffer fish to us but I didn’t catch sight of it.

If I learned anything from this trip it’s that we both seem to be reasonably easygoing and travel well together. I probably need a little bit of pawholding on planes and BB is happier when I’m planning the itinerary but neither of those are such big deals that we wouldn’t go somewhere together again.

I think, having taken this first “easier” vacation together, I’d like to go somewhere more atmospheric next time. I’m seriously considering Vietnam-though that’s also because I really really want to get a custommade wardrobe (BB: You just want a shopping holiday, Monkey!! Me: Yeah, but I totally need it for B-school!).

But I’d still like to go to Hawaii one day.

1) Broker peace accord between my cat’s fur and my boyfriend’s business suits. This will be about as likely as a Middle East peace accord but I will try my hardest.

2) Work on becoming a good enough photographer to warrant a Canon DSLR.

3) Buy a Macbook this year once and for all because I am tired of scuzzy PC laptops.

4) Continue meditating even though sometimes I try so hard to find my inner balance I actually end up giving myself a migraine. Reminder to self that meditating is not like cardio but instead involves trying to decipher cryptic statements like “follow your breath into your centre.” Consider purchasing Meditation Roadmap on account of not understanding where to follow breath and where my centre or third eye actually happen to be.

OTOH, keep meditating because it keeps me from being screechy with Big Bird when he draws lines in sand re: cat fur.

5) Figure out neti pot because sinusey headaches seem to be on the upswing.

6) Continue to keep weight within reasonable limits.

7) Continue kickboxing  and bootcamping.

Once market conditions return to reasonably stable, convince Big Bird to go on another vacation because this Belize thing ROCKED. Seriously, we travel well together what with me being okay on getting on teeny tiny planes (flew on an even tinier one than Buster pictured below-Cessna 172…look it up) as long as I have a paw to mangle and BB being easygoing as usual.

9) Push on b-school. Applications definitely have to be in for Class of ‘12

10) Eat more sushi. Is that really a resolution? Resolutions are supposed to be painful, right? I figure on a list of 9 hard things I owe myself a freeb.

Sorry I didn’t do this on time but I was catching kingfish and swimming with sharks and stingrays.

Hey everyone, I started uploading photos of our vacation. I’m doubtful about the underwater/cavetubing shots turning out so those memories may exist only in our heads. I’ll be adding to the flickr account over the next few days. Got quite a few shots up already. I’m reasonably proud of some of the ones I took.

www.flickr.com/photos/monkeymc