Indian(s) Cooking

A cultural predicament. The men that cooked our dinner last weekend are Indian citizens. Two of the three guys LOVE to cook. They arrived with all of the supplies to cook a meal for the eleven of us. The meal was great but there was an interesting nugget that we learned that is truly a cultural difference. Ajit is the hard core programmer and tech geek who is not married and has no real interest in cooking. Ajit will eventually get married the traditional way, with an arranged marriage: "you adapt, you make it work, it can be very nice" and of course there is the exchange of dowries and such.

Raahi is the programmer with terrific communication and customer skills. He is married and has a little 3 month old child. He doesn't get to see his family very often because he works in the States, Japan, Malaysia, and anyplace else that he is needed. His wife has a career in India and won't be moving.
Raahi keeps his cooking skills a secret. There are traditional roles at stake here, and men don't cook.

Tamal is the curious one. Philosophy, politics, culture, conversation, technical, history, religion, and COOKING. Tamal seems to enjoy everything.
Tamal has a dilemma. He loves cooking. He wants a wife. He is going to have to make some decisions. If he marries a 'traditional' woman the cooking will become a secret, an experimental phase of his 'younger days' that isn't talked about anymore. He will miss cooking. He will have a wife. If he marries a woman who has been 'westernized' he can continue to cook, but of course there are those other 'westernization' side effects that come along for the ride. Just because he likes to cook does not necessarily mean that he wants to do all of the cleaning and other chores that 'westernized' men get suckered into.

Beth has always said that ladies should always marry a man 'who likes to cook'. (Her mother always said that it is just as easy to marry a 'rich man' than a 'poor man') Hmmm a rich guy that loves to cook... this awful image of Richard Simmons doing jumping jacks keeps popping up... (I don't cook and I don't do jumping jacks in silly clothes either)

So the dilema is: Should Tamal hide his love for cooking or does he narrow his prospects significantly by only considering women that are 'comfortable' with a man in the kitchen. After some chatting we learned that Tamal has recently decided to go with Raahi's technique and leave the cooking behind. The world will have one less man in the kitchen.

The names have been changed to allow our Indian friends to keep their secret hobbies truly secret. I will try to cook more.

Credit Card Qualifications

Yesterday Beth and I met with Harv to discuss our finances to find out how long hobos can be hobos, and it reminded me of an odd experience that I had in late November.

We were in Clearwater Florida and I saw an advertisement for a "New! Bank-O-Merica Ultra-Point Mega Card!". The basic gist of it was that the customer (me) would earn one and ONE HALF points for every dollar spent instead of the wimpy little one point that I am earning now with my obviously inferior (Bank-O-Merica) card. A little background: Before we left on The Adventure I moved most of my banking to Bank-O-Merica because I wanted a National bank because even though you can make withdrawals from any ATM anywhere, you still cannot make deposits anywhere but your own bank. It wasn't until a week into the trip that I realized that I would not have ANY deposits to make for a very long time. I closed all of my credit accounts because they were just regular credit cards and I knew that I should be getting 'frequent flier miles' as I am driving along. I did the entire trip with one Bank-O-Merica card and earned a LOT of points. Points that I still haven't used because at this point I feel like I am at the carnival and being told that I only can choose a prize on the Second Shelf while I am looking up at the BIG prizes that are on the upper shelves. So I am not using my points, but I want more more more. This advertisement promises more.

I call them up. I tell the telemarketer that I already have a Bank-O-Merica card and could I please upgrade it to the one-and-ONE-HALF bonus super-duper card? Nope. My error was that I did not call 'customer service' where they do that sort of thing, I had called a telemarketer in North Dakota or Southern Bangalore. She was limited by what her marketing script (that was scrolling in front of her) told her to say. "No, all you have to do is apply for a NEW card". I thought that was silly, but I hadn't figured out that I was at the wrong place yet. "It ONLY takes a few minutes to apply!".

OK, the one thing that I have an abundance of is time.

Your name: "blah blah blah, no that's EEE-ell-ell"

Your Address: "blah blah blah"

and then it got more interesting...

Do you OWN or RENT your home: "Ahhhhhhh, Neither"

"Neither?": "Nope, Neither. We are living in our van"

So do you rent or own?: Well I own the van. So if you haven't got "homeless" or "vehicle" as a choice, you could say I own.

"I'll leave that blank"

"How much do you pay for rent? Oh never mind"

"How long have you been at your current address?"

"Six hours"

"What bracket is your monthly income within:

Less than $50,000?

Less than $75,000?

Less than ..." "Less than Ten dollars", I interrupted.

"I'm not talking per hour here..."

"No I mean Annually, I have NO income"

Silence.

I could hear some clicking as she starts skipping questions.

"You do not have to disclose any income or payments for alimony or child support that are involved, but with Social Security and other income would you say that your income is less than..."

"Zero! Just say that I have ZERO income. It's all one way here. Nothing IN. NADA. Everything out."

"OK, I'll put in zero"

At this point she just skipped ahead to the spiel about how we will hear from them in x number of weeks and if I am approved I will receive a card in x number of weeks.

"Blah blah blah, is there anything else I can do for you today?"

I asked if there was anything else that she was authorized to do besides sign me up for another card? She replied no, so I said "Well I guess we are done then". She thanked me "for using Bank-O-Merica and to Have a nice day!" even though she has never actually worked for Bank-O-Merica but instead works in a telemarketer's boiler room.

The next day I went on my Bank-O-Merica site to check on something and I noticed that the list of accounts already included my Brandy-Spandy-New-one-and-one-HALF point credit card.

No money, no home, just a willingness to spend money and they are GLAD to give a drifter a credit card with a $50,000 credit limit.

Only in America.

Dentistry on the ranch.

This one was a surprise to me (I seem to be surprised surprisingly-easy these days).

It seems that here on the Hamster Ranch on Hamster Hill in New Hamster, there is a regular need for dentistry. Hamster teeth keep growing for their entire lives and even though they spend at least 18 hours a day chewing, their molars (which are surprisingly large) don't wear evenly. There are large flat areas but the edges develop long sharp points. It isn't a problem for hamsters that live out in the wild, but these are SHOW hamsters. They do a sport called dressage. To do dressage and most other hamster sports the beasts need to wear a halter, a very snug fitting halter. Think of it like a bull dog: those jowls and cheeks (and drool) all hang out the side so that nothing gets crunched by teeth. If you take a roll of duct tape and compressed the cute-smiling-fat little face into a slim snout like a normal dog has, the bulldog would be biting his cheeks between his teeth as he attempts to take your arm off because of the nasty thing you did with the duct tape.

Well these hamsters with halters have the same problem. So it's time to call in Reeney the vet. Reeney also does teeth, so today she is Reeney the dentist.

I was NOT prepared for what was going on in the barn.

There was this contraption, the likes of which even I, Mr. Gadget himself, could not have thought up. It pries open the mouth so Reeney can reach up in there and do all kinds of things without the slightest worry about losing an arm or two.

This shiny gizmo doesn't bother the hamster because the hamster is stoned. Very stoned. Even I could ride this hamster. In fact if I could keep all of these hamsters stoned like this, I would learn to appreciate them enough to call them horses. They would actually be fun to be around instead of just being perceived by me as giant composting machines that cost a huge amount of money to operate. Horses are NOT a reasonable hobby. They consume your life. Hampsters are much easier. I am avoiding silly things in my life so this is NOT a top-notch horse farm for high-end horses, this is the Hamster Ranch on Hamster Hill in New Hamster (this is properly spoken while closing my eyes and clamping my hands over both ears). Although I have found that changing the name(s) doesn't solve the problem of chipping ice, shoveling lots-o-stuff, large hay bales, grain, wood chips, and now... dentistry. OK, back to the dentistry.

Reeney pried open the mouth with the little ratchets and put a magnetic flashlight on the upper lip of this gizmo and then she puts a little battery pack up on the nose. This gave her a nice view of an armlength of mouth. She takes a water squirter and cleans out the mouth and a pound of grass pours out on the floor. After I figure out that the green is 'food in process' instead of algae washing out of somewhere, I begin to understand one of the advantages of having a mouth (and tongue) the size of my thigh, you can eat and run, literally. These things are prey animals, so they never know when they have to run away, so they have a large mouth that they can empty out when it is convenient. They don't intend to... it's just that they really chew their food like we all are supposed to, and so even if their cheeks don't puff out, they are carrying an entire meal with them at all times, just like..., just like..., well, like a hamster.

Now if I had a mouth like that, maybe I could handle clothes shopping a little better. I could pre-load with a variety of foods and when I am standing in the smooth linoleum 'men's area' that winds through Filene's, I could just stand there and eat. (ok, back to the story)

Reeney started to grind the teeth but Lynn-Winn (the patient) gave the signal that she was not quite stoned enough. Reeney backed off, went to her truck and came back with 'the stuff' that Lynn-Winn wanted.

Five minutes later Lynn-Winn gave us the peace sign and Reeney was ready to go again. She picked up her Black & Decker power drill with a long tool mounted on it. At the end of a stainless steel shaft was a one inch diameter hood that is mounted perpendicular to the shaft. Inside the little hood is a rotating disc with diamonds that very quickly could grind through anything in it's way.

Now through this entire process Beth is grinning (she likes vet stuff), I am standing there with my camera hanging around my neck but because my jaw was hanging so far down from utter amazement, I kept getting the back of my camera wet. Noel, the co-owner of the horse, and Reeney the vet/dentist, who is also a co-owner of the horse and chattering continuously at high speed [at] each other like a couple of high-school girls. They have NOT stopped talking except when Reeney went to get more drugs (wow, it really WAS like high school, man). While Reeney's mouth was still going full speed she takes this tool that can cut through titanium, and just shoves it up this stoned horse's mouth and starts grinding away. I was squirming like crazy but Lynn-Winn was doing the equivalent of "wow, man!", it was obvious in her eyes. Reeney extracts the tool and shoves her arm up there to feel how much more there is to do, retracts the arm, inserts the tool and starts grinding, all while talking and not even taking a breath from what I could see.

It took about fifteen minutes and then after a 'rinse and spit', she loosened up the speculum and started removing the equipment.

Lynn-Winn stood in the stall and smiled while we talked about the process. This process is necessary because of the type of work that these horses do. She is asked occasionally "who do you need to do this? What do wild mustangs do?". She replies that wild mustangs do not wear halters and they probably stab their cheeks alot.

"But it's unnatural", and Reeney replies that there is nothing natural about thoroughbreds, they are a man-made creature, they don't exist in the wild, and just like most breeds of horses and dogs, they were created by man and need to be maintained my man (or in this case, Reeney).

Reeney left and I spent time recovering from the ordeal.

A couple of hours later Lynn-Winn's podiatrist, who calls himself a farrier, came and did a manicure. Everything got cleaned up. Lynn-Winn seemed to be in good spirits and didn't mind all of the attention at all. Last night Lynn-Winn, Smarty, and the grey mare all loaded up into a trailer and at this moment are cruising toward Aiken, NC, where it is warm. Nice and warm.

2008-01-28 NH, Horse Dentistry

Dentistry on the ranch.

(Click for more pictures)

Chemistry minus-101

I saw something the other day that was so amazing.

It was a person that either had discovered a loophole in the laws of chemistry or was an incredibly stupid person.

I was in a drugstore buying some useless item. The person in the checkout line in front of me was a larger sized boxy woman with a VFW voice². She had an armload of trinkets and when it was her turn she dumped her load and proceeded to order four packs each of two different types of cigarettes. She paid and left the store.

I checked out and walked to my car. I was sitting in my car writing down an idea that had popped up when the lady with the VFW voice waddled up and heaved herself up into the pickup truck next to me.

This was the same pickup truck that I had noticed during my slow stroll to my car (my stroll was obviously much faster than Miss VFW). I had noticed the truck because the tired looking driver was sitting there with one of those oxygen tubes strung across his face.

I don't know why, but the couple did not drive away. I was in the middle of trying to grasp the concept of going to buy cigarettes by getting a ride from a person on oxygen.

My intense pondering was interrupted by an act that amazed me. The VFW gal lit up a cigarette. She was actually smoking in the closed cab of a truck where oxygen was being used!

Note: Oxygen mixed with a match creates an annoying ball of fire, and if that ball of fire is enclosed in a finite space (like the cab of a pickup truck), the ball of fire can be accompanied by large shards of metal, glass, and people parts.

I drove away as fast as I could. I did take a quick look through the smoke filled cab to confirm that the tired looking man was still wearing his nose-hose, he was, but the inside of the truck looked like a bong.

I am confused about what I saw...

...on so many levels.

---

Note 2: VFW Voice: The easily recognizable sound emanating from a person that has been smoking 'a little' since the age of fourteen, usually consumed simultaneously with beer or coffee. Cause: Beer and coffee seem to act as a catalyst that reacts with the smoke to modify vocal cords from their natural flexible condition into extra crispy with an efficacy rate of more than 98%.

Symptoms: When you hear a 35 year old gal with the interesting voice of Lead Belly, Rod Stewart, or George C. Scott, then that is a VFW voice.

The Beauty School.

Karl and I arrived a few minutes early for our haircuts. I had just met Karl two days ago and now we were bonding by goin' fer a haircut. We were going to the Beauty School because they have the best prices in town and they do a pretty good job if you've got the time. The students are slower than professionals and there is an element of risk involved. If you are one of those people that needs their hair just the way it's supposed to be, you probably do not want to be under the scissors of a nervous student.

I had been to a beauty academy before, but that was a little one that only had two students so the teacher was heavily involved with my cut. The thing that I remember about that place was that the first time that I was there I was being quizzed by the student about what I wanted done. My usual answer of "whatever you want" just didn't work with someone who is eighteen years old. Most eighteen year olds have no idea "what they want" and shouldn't be given the opportunity to inflict their impulses on other people, especially adults. When the instructor came in twenty minutes later we were pawing through "fashion magazines" trying to find a picture of a male heterosexual so that we could find a "recipe" for my haircut¹.

The instructor took our magazines away and and started asking me what I wanted. Since the "whatever you want" technique was such an utter failure, I tried explaining what I wanted, just like I used to see on TV when people would settle in with Floyd the Barber in downtown Mayberry.

"Take some off the top and trim up the sides."

The instructor could see through my ruse and just fluffed my hair around and said "you just do a standard little-boy haircut". She actually said that, a little-boy haircut! I was so insulted, but since I wouldn't be able to defend myself if she pulled out the fancy words like 'layering' and 'tapering', I just kept my mouth shut and got the haircut. My haircut was "acceptable" according to Beth. I went a few times. My father-in-law liked the price I paid ($2) and started to go for his monthly tune-up. When I would see him after he got each haircut, all I could see was little-boy haircut. It really was. A little wisp in front, longer on top, and almost shaved sides. The wisp was there just in case you had to "dress up" you could add water to your comb and try to make a little pompadour on the front. After seeing Dad looking like Dennis the Menace too often, I moved on to another place to get my haircuts, but that's another story.

That was years ago. Today was the first time that I had dared to try another School. I mostly did it because I have had such a good time at my other haircuts this year that I thought "how much weirder could it be"?

This school was much bigger than the other one. It had a waiting room with six chairs. No fashion magazines either. I figured that girls that are going to "cosmetology" and "esthetic's" classes probably couldn't rearrange those magazines on the table without seeing some teaser on a cover that would make them swipe the whole issue.

We could hear what sounded like quite a few young girls on the other side of the wall. At precisely nine o'clock what sounded like the "teacher" came in and started doing roll call. There were a LOT of students. Carrie came in and got me. I had to sign a release form so that if I didn't have two eyebrows and two ears when I left, it wasn't their fault.

I walked down to the washing stations. It was a long room with at least thirty barber setups. There were also thirty young gals and one young guy chattering away all wearing their black smocks. Constant chattering. They must have to pump in extra oxygen by the afternoon to support this much talking.

After my hair was washed I was walking back to Carrie's station and the student next to Carrie's was poking around in her cabinet and there were people in there. I said "you've got people". She replied that she's "only got heads". Two heads. Each student has two heads stashed in their cabinet so if they don't have any live clients, they work on their fake ones.

While my hair was being cut, there were six or so live people and 24 or so mannequins getting their hair styled. There still was a huge amount of talking going on and almost half of the people were plastic.

I went with the "anything you want" technique and it turned out fine.

It took about an hour but it is a very nice haircut. When Carrie was finished the "Pro" came over and made about another 60 snips with the scissors, just to "clean things up". So I got two haircuts for 8 bucks.

The students do not get paid for their work, probably so that they can get used to the idea of never making enough to pay their bills, after all, they are going out into the real world here. So I tipped her 5 bucks. So $13 for a haircut still comes out to less than WallyWorld or SuckyClips Inc.

There was an interesting dialog taking place while the "Pro" was "cleaning things up". The pro had worked at a place that I used to go to many years ago but now she "is on her own". That is barber talk for "renting a spot". They pay monthly rent to get a chair at a beauty salon and they give the owner of the salon a percentage in exchange for scheduling, heat, water, and those wonderful fumes that you can't really find anywhere else.

My little student got excited because she wants to "be on her own" because that is the "only way to make any money". The pro stated that she liked being "on her own" because she didn't have to charge her customers as much as a "working for a company" would force her to. The student said "or charge as MUCH as you want" with a big smile on her face. The pro and I both replied with the equivalent of "you can only charge big bucks ONCE, and then they will politely leave and never come back", which seemed to disappoint the little student a lot.

She looked so sad, so I offered "...except for the stupid ones!" "They will come back no matter how much you charge and how little hair they have as long as they think that it is very difficult to get an appointment with you." "But of course, you need a LOT of experience to pull that off." That seemed to cheer her up. Tonight she will have dreams of $60 haircuts dancing through her head. "All I need is ONE big job and I can retire..."

When I came out to meet Karl in the waiting room he looked up and said "Hey, you got a better one than me!" so I knew that I had hit pay dirt.

The end.

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Note¹ Concerning finding a hairstyle in a magazine: In case you are wondering, we were unsuccessful, "fashion magazines" do not seem to have any heterosexual males that have come out of the closet yet, maybe someday men will be able to be stylish without trying to look like a boy-toy. I say "out of the closet" because not ALL good looking guys could be gay, statistically, SOME of them would have to be straight, but if you are going to be a model you have to have the "current look" which means that if you are straight, you sure don't want to look straight. Remember when all female models had to look like junkies? The next phase after that was the S&M look with harsh eye makeup and baring their teeth. Very pleasant.