Skip to main content

Odds And Ends

Read this amazing interview with science fiction writer John Sladek. I have hardly read any SF - I find all the gizomology and futurology way too intimidating to come close to the story itself. But after reading this interview, I am tempted to give one of Sladek's books a shot.

Thanks to being exposed to the retail excesses of the season and some of the theme-park style holiday decorations we see in the neighborhood, J is missing the obvious lack of "holiday spirit" in our household. I could have stood up a tree in the corner of the living room but she would have wanted to go the whole nine-yards and I don't even know what that entails. Truth be told am not too keen on finding out and creating more work for myself.

As a compromise, we snuggled in the couch ate apples and checked out some Epicurious videos on the holiday cooking - chocolate, gingerbread houses, cookies and the like. J loves almost anything to do with cooking so this worked out quite well. As an unexpected bonus, we got to chance to see this Alice Waters feature titled Edible Schoolyard. It is a wonderful idea and how I wish it grew popular and became part of every child's public school experience.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

ggop said…
Wishing you and J a great holiday season and New Year! Yes, Alice Waters is doing good work - she has her critics who say its not affordable or practical to shop local etc. but I think as Indians who escaped the megamart onslaught invading the metros at the moment, we can completely relate.
1:00 PM
Unknown said…
ggop - A very happy New Year to you too ! If only there were more options to shop local.. In my neck of the woods WalMart reigns supreme.
6:30 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more

Carefree Wandering

There are these lines in Paul Cohelo's Alchemist that I love about the shepherd turning a year later to sell wool and being unsure if he would meet the girl there But in his heart he knew that it did matter. And he knew that shepherds, like seamen and like traveling salesmen, always found a town where there was someone who could make them forget the joys of carefree wandering. What is true of the the power of love and making a person want to settle is also true of  finding purpose in life. If and when a person is able to connect their work to purpose they care about, the desire for change disappears. They are able to instead channel that energy into enhancing the quality of the work they are already doing. As I write this, I remember S a brand manager I used to know a couple of decades ago. He worked for a company that made products for senior citizens, I was a consultant there. S was responsible for creating awareness of their new products and building awareness of what already ex...
Post a Comment
Read more