Phbbbt!

I recently traveled to Amsterdam, where much fun was had, although not the kind you’re imagining. However, this post is not about Amsterdam. No Siree, this is about the amazing, amazing place called the Charles De Gaulle Airport (Pronounced Sharlesdegaul, or Chardegol or Chago depending on how much of a hurry you are in, or how French you are, or both) I am neither in a hurry nor French, so I’m gonna call it CDG (Pronounced Seedy Ji).

I’m not in a hurry now, but at Seedy Ji, I had 2 hours to catch my connection to Schiphol (pronounced Skhiple and as Achmed the dead terrorist informs me, is spelt Ess Phlegm Eye ….). So anway, according to the map on the plane, Seedy ji is in France. Ten seconds out of the plane (no aerobridge was provided, since the weather outside was so brrrrrrrrrruddy beautiful how could anyone miss it) you know that either France is a tiny cold India or you have been tricked and taken round and round in the plane for ten hours. Not to sound unpatriotic, but we do seem to mop the floors of our arrivals halls with a random mix of phenyl and pee. If we mop them at all, that is.

Then we climbed up a rickety spiral ladder-staircase and collided with passengers trying to use an aerobridge to get to their Emirates flight. For a couple of minutes, we got all mixed up with folks whose boarding cards were not going to be checked again before their plane took off! How cool is that? Eventually we were shooed back down the stairs in French, and we waited for our turn to use the corridor. Which led us to a hall where hundreds of people waited to board shuttles that would take them to their terminals. “Eff Eff Eff “ (not the swear word, the letter) we shouted and probably broke a few necks and legs as we made our way through the crowd into the shuttle. Thankfully it was so cold that the people we injured did not feel a thing till we were safely out of their reach.

We made it to our gate ten minutes before boarding, and this time was used in trying to find the rest room, and let’s just say we are not sure whether Madame and Monsieur went to the correct sections. Thankfully everyone else was even more lost than us, so we did not encounter anyone in the process of conducting our business.

I’d heard the Amreeka-flyer husband complain about Seedy ji and assumed he was too fancy, but looks like the poor dude was just asking for a clean and organized place as he got off one long flight and on to another, longer one. Seedy ji had their lavatory exhaust next to the cafes when we were taking off for India, so I’m hoping not to have to go there again. I do love their language though. And that pathetic view of the Eiffel tower from the plane is not crossing that goal off my bucket list. What to do? What to do?

Recipe Of The Day

The right and proper way to fry and consume an egg if you are me:

1. Stick a slice of bread into a toaster. It’s nice if it’s the mini-oven kind, because it dries up and browns the toast very evenly.
2. Take a very, very clean non-stick pan and heat it for a couple of minutes on a low flame. Add 2-3 drops of oil.
3. Break an egg into the pan, taking care not to pierce the yolk with the jagged edge of the eggshell. (This accident has a higher chance of happening when you’re cooking the egg for yourself or for someone you want to impress. See Murphy 179:2)
4. Now take a clean spatula and resist the temptation to mess with the egg for a minute.
5. Ok now stop playing with the spatula, switch off that toaster already, and gingerly test the edges of the egg to see if it’s ready to come off. If it isn’t, your gas flame has switched off and your house is about to catch fire, or your pan was dirty and your maid is about to be fired.
6. Once the egg is happy to let go of the pan, lift it onto the spatula. If you’re like me, your yolk is obviously not right in the centre of the arrangement, so lift the egg such that the yolk rests on the spatula. Now take the naam of Jai Sri Ram and flip the egg.
7. Not so hard! You’ve broken the yolk! Yellow goo is flowing out from under the pretty egg. Find someone who will appreciate a cooked snack and feed this to them, and make yourself another. This time, turn the egg over gently.
8. In a minute, begin the spatula prodding again, and convince the egg that the toast is a nice and comfy bed to lie down upon.
9. Turn egg upside down and sunnier side up onto the toast, this time saving the yolk from your spatula’s incision, and sprinkle salt and pepper.
10. Now, like a 2-year-old, break the yolk with the spoon and smear the golden awesomeness of it all over the egg.
11. Enzoi!

Side Effects: This recipe is known to generate a strong craving for Darjeeling tea afterwards. And rusk to dip in it.

Wakey Wakey

Remember the summer holidays, when the excursion to the mountains was done, the homework more or less completed, and the cousins had come and gone, and it was up to you to entertain yourself? Out came paper taken from dad’s office, with the letterhead portion torn off not-so-neatly using a footruler, and out came the box of poster paints, and the brushes. My brushes were always bent like a dog’s tail, and stuck stiff with the memories of ghastly artwork from many months ago. They were made with sable hair, apparently:

The sable (Martes zibellina) is a species of marten which inhabits forest environments, primarily in Russia from the Ural Mountains throughout Siberia, in northern Mongolia and China and on Hokkaidō in Japan…. It has historically been harvested for its highly valued fur, which remains a luxury good to this day. (Wickedpedia)

Yeah! And Camel/Camlin was making 2-rupee sable hair paintbrushes for my grubby generation of schoolgoers. Rrrrrrrrrrrright!

Anyway, the paints were all dry and cracked, of course. Asking the parents for a new box was risky. Before PowerPoint and Excel, it was difficult to make a business case for the procurement of new resources for a project that was not expected to even recover costs, so the old paints had to be revived. A bit of water, vigorous shaking (with the lid PROPERLY closed) and waiting a few hours yielded acceptable results. And when the brushes were dipped in water, they un-clumped and resigned themselves to the torture that awaited them.

And so it is with the blog. I’m putting water in all the cracked paints: the ochre of comedy, the Prussian blue of insanity, the crimson of angry rants, the black and white of memories, the green of uninformed opinion, and the brown of bullshit. The dog-tailed brushes are probably made out of dog tails, but I’m getting them ready again nonetheless!

Janworry

Happy new year neglected blog and all-gone readers. Facebook has swallowed me whole, I guess.

I'm the one who whiningly asked for a bit of stability in life four years ago, and have been awarded with it: same job, same house, same husband for four years! Which is all nice, except I have nothing to blog about. And the itch to shake things up is getting stronger. Let's see what mischief I can manage...