Remember those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books that Mrs. Mason used to read to us in elementary school, where you got part of a story and then could pick one of two endings? I never really saw the point because nobody ever read just one of the endings (you always go back and read the other one), but since there were so many possibilities for titling this post I decided to list out three options and let you, esteemed reader, pick the one you like best and then continue reading. So we have:
A Tale of Three Can Openers
It's Not a Party Until A. R. Rahman Gets Involved
"I Think Communism is Like Love - For It to Work, You Really Have to Feel It!"
The Perils of Self-Rising Flour
Now that you've selected your title, let's continue.
I'm finally getting more and more of my English weather; it's been quite rainy the past few days and of course I won't ever complain about that. It was on such a rainy day, quite a while back (as in a month and a half or so), that the can opener I bought when I first got here decided it wasn't going to work anymore. It appears to work just fine until you actually try to use it on a can - once you do that, the handle doesn't turn the gears, but it will do so as long as there's no can involved. Being too stubborn to buy a new one, I dealt with this problem for a while by using the sharp edge to just punch around the edges of cans and this actually worked pretty well. However, all good things must come to an end, and one day as I was attempting to open a can of pears I realized that the gears had now become so misaligned that they wouldn't even punch around the edges anymore. At that point I realized that I couldn't go any longer without buying a new one, so the next day I walked over to Asda thinking I would buy another one of the same variety (think the kind we have at home). As it happened, Asda was out of them that day, but they had another kind with just one handle. It was cheaper than the first one had been but I couldn't figure out how to use it just by looking at it. I played with it for a bit, and a guy in the same isle actually asked me if it was a can opener. I figured that since I really did need one (since about 98% of my food is in cans) I would take it back and ask one of my engineering-major flatmates how to do it, since they're smart about that stuff. When I got back I took this second can opener out for a test-drive, and as I predicted, I couldn't get it to work. As not predicted, nobody else could either. To this day, we still can't. This was, of course, highly frustrating, since not only did I spend good money to buy a can opener that didn't work, but I then had two useless ones sitting side by side in my drawer. Irene was kind enough to lend me hers for a bit but that couldn't remain the status quo, so a day or two later I headed back to Asda in search of yet a third can opener. This time they didn't have either of the first two kinds, but they did have one like Irene's, for 44 pence. So far, that one works beautifully, and disproves the paper in Dad's office espousing the philosophy of paying a little extra for a better product.
I saw something very interesting the other day out on Oxford Road - I was going outside to throw my garbage in the dumpster when I heard shouting and chanting coming from the street. I looked down the corridor between the buildings and saw the tail end of a large group of people moving slowly down the street. It was pouring rain and since I had only planned to take the garbage out quickly I wasn't dressed in a whole lot (not indecent or anything of course, but certainly not in anything approaching rainwear) but I was curious and walked out to the street to see if I could find out what was going on. When I got to the sidewalk I saw about 250 people doing a slow march down the street, carrying signs, posters, and huge banners, and surrounded by police. Since I was at the back I couldn't see what the signs were and I couldn't really understand the chants and shouts, so I decided that since it was such a beautiful day I would just take the long way back to the dorm and go around the nearby cluster of buildings, thus giving me an excuse to follow them down the block. There weren't many people out walking so I was somewhat conspicuous (wearing flip flops and a tank top may have added to that) but I caught up to them and could watch them go past as I stood on the corner. From there I could see the signs, many of which had a guy's picture on them, and some of them that also said things like, "Murderers! Murderers!" and one particularly memorable one that had a swastika and said "Islamic Hitler!" There was a banner in a foreign language and I still had no idea what was going on, but there was a guy on the corner who was affiliated with the protest handing out fliers explaining what they were doing. It seems they were a group of Kurds protesting the treatment of Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, who was arrested in 1999 and has been beaten, tortured, and imprisoned at the hands of the Turkish government. They were attempting to bring his plight to our attention as well as advocate for a peaceful reconciliation between the Turks and the Kurds. As they crossed the main intersection of Oxford Road and Booth St., a guy got to the front and started shouting, "BBC, where are you? Shame on you!" repeatedly, and they continued down the street in that fashion. It was really something to see.
The other night, Avi knocked on my door and said we were all gathering in the kitchen to discuss a plan for a Valentine's Day celebration of our own making. As usual it turned into a long yet enjoyable round table and we decided on dinner for VDay night, with everybody making something to pass. Since I can't really cook anything, I decided on brownies, since that recipe is so good and they're so simple to make. I also decided to bake them on Sunday so that if anything went horribly wrong I would have time to try it again on Monday. I got my baking supplies at Asda and was glad that I already had a bag of flour from when I made the Thanksgiving pies. Since I don't have an electric mixer here, I got a rotary mixer from Asda as well, thinking it would make my life easier - it didn't. The gears froze as soon as it was called upon to mix anything other than air. I've decided to just never buy anything from Asda if it contains gears. Anyway, I made up a double batch but using butter instead of shortening (all Asda has are blocks of generic "Lard Product" and if it's not Crisco, I don't trust it), and as I was finishing that up Avi and Nithya came around to see what was up. We poured it into my flan dishes (it turns out you can make pretty much anything in a flan dish, perhaps even a flan) and put them in the oven. I made sure not to put them on the very bottom so they wouldn't burn. Since we still haven't quite figured out the oven we sort of guessed at a setting and temperature, and as I was washing my dishes and we were all chatting, we began to smell something that resembled charcoal. Avi very thoughtfully put a bowl over the smoke detector and we went to inspect the oven. In my zeal to not burn the bottom of the pan, I put one of them on the top rack, which was a little closer to the heating element than I thought. The top was quite burned but the rest of the batter was still liquid, so we took it out and kept the second one (on the middle rack) baking. Then we carefully removed the burned crust from the first dish and decided to put it in after the other one had finished. The burned top provided us with a convenient snack; I had no idea it would taste that good. We chatted for a while while they baked, and then Avi brought out a deck of cards and we played the Indian version of Bluff/B.S./Peanut Butter/whatever you call it. Suffice it to say that was never good at it and probably never will be, but it was a lot of fun. We also tried to figure out how to play poker; it came back to me a bit after reading over the rules but I'm still very rusty. I actually used to be pretty good at 5 Card Draw in highschool, so maybe I can get it back. The brownies did finish eventually, but when I took them out of the oven they looked mighty puffy. That recipe isn't really supposed to rise, and I was quite surprised to see that it had. Then I looked at the flour - I had inadvertently gotten self-rising flour instead of just normal flour (I'm assuming that King Arthur doesn't do a whole lot of self-rising). In effect, I had turned brownies into a cake. They didn't taste anything like they were supposed to, although I was the only one who knew any different. They were certainly edible, just not what they were supposed to be. So I sort of made two small cakes, but since they were edible I decided not to worry about it too much (especially given that I have no idea what temperature they were baked at; in fact, I think they were baked at a total of four separate temperatures). And thankfully, unlike the pies, they did not take five hours to bake up.
We had planned on eating at about 8 on Monday night, and I wandered into the kitchen at about 7:30 where just about everyone else was already hanging out. There had been posters up around the hall advertising a small VDay party for the dorm down in the common room, so we figured we'd head down there, have a drink, and then come up and eat. I was surprised at how crowded it was, but it was lively and festive. We hung out there for a bit and then returned to our domicile for our feast. We cranked up the Hindi/Tamil music ("Chaiyya Chaiyya" anyone? Nothing beats A. R. Rahman and some good Indian music when you really want to get things going - it's a ready-made party, and no, that's not sarcasm), did our final preparations and re-heating, and we were off and running. I must say, we do a heck of a pot-luck when we want to. Carlos made what I'm going to call Mexican tortilla paninis - they do have a proper Spanish name but I can't remember it. It sounded like salcinitas, but I'll have to check. Basically they're like a ham and cheese sandwich but with soft tortillas instead of bread, and then they're grilled. Avi made a Chinese noodle dish that included tiny pieces of chicken and possibly beef (I think I like chicken better when it comes in teeny tiny pieces) with assorted masala. Nithya made a rice dish that included spinach and egg. Ada did two things, but they went together - first, she boiled chicken in a Nigerian sauce, and then she did up a plantain paste. It came in a powder sort of like Irene's nut sauce, but this was more like a very stiff mashed potato. To do it properly you would use the sauce on the plantain paste, but most of us ended up trying it on multiple things. Fauzen didn't have a whole lot of time to really cook anything up since he had a huge presentation that day that he's been preparing for, but the day before he had made up a chicken dish and he reheated the leftovers. That actually reminded me very strongly of Hiro's curry, although spicier - the consistency was almost the same though, and the taste itself was very similar, just strong. Everything was really good, although I'd have to say that Avi's Chinese dish won a special place in my heart - there are so many recipes from everybody that I'm gonna have to get before we all part ways at the end of August. We should make a cookbook . . . but it was really a great dinner, with lots of good conversation ranging from weird classmates to political systems to how the Chinese could take over the world (there were some very interesting theories put forth about that in particular). We had a pretty in-depth conversation about Communism, its tenents, how we've seen it in the past, and why it won't ever truly work in real life. Avi gave what I think is one of the truest statements about Communism that I've ever heard - "I think Communism is like love - for it to work, you really have to feel it!" Very wise, and also very much in the VDay spirit. Mixing economic theory and romance? Absolutely - what do you do at your parties?
Now, we're much too awesome to just eat dinner and then call it quits, and we had decided to play Monopoly afterward. Earlier in the week there had been a game with Carlos, Ada, Avi, Nithya, and Avi and Nithya's friend playing; I stumbled in about an hour after they started and in the spirit of procrastination I stayed on as banker. It was quite a game - hugely competative and highly suspenseful, with Avi, Nithya, and their friend merging into one corporation and Ada and Carlos merging to form another. It was like the Cold War for a while, but it was so much fun that we decided to do it again after VDay dinner. When you have six people playing it becomes a much more interesting game that we generally get at home with just two or three, and this time Ada, Nithya, and I ended up merging pretty early. Carlos and Avi eventually merged, and since Fauzan decided to represent the Chinese empire for the evening, our mutual strategy was to take him down (all in good fun, of course). He held out on his own for a surprisingly long time - shocking, actually, but eventually we did it, and the Avi/Carlos corporation ended up coming out on top. However, he went down with dignity and a great time was had by all; we didn't finish until past one in the morning. I can state with certainty that this was the most enjoyable Valentine's Day I've ever had, and by far the most action-packed. The only unfortunate thing was that Irene wasn't able to be there; she had a meeting with a presentation group and couldn't make it back.
About once a week a stack of newspapers gets delivered to the hall lobby that are free for the taking, and usually one of them ends up in our kitchen. I tend to leaf through them, and recently found two very interesting things. The first comes out of what was actually a rather horrific front page article about a 92 year old woman who was beaten and mugged on her own front steps by some a**hole who wanted to steal her purse containing a total of 28 pounds. As awful as that is, what really caught my attention was the description of the guy who did it - in a US newspaper, I'm pretty sure he would have been referred to as the alleged perpetrator, the would-be mugger, or something like that. However, he was referred to in this paper as the "callous thug." That just struck me so hard that I almost laughed (but felt terrible about it afterward). I can't even imagine that sort of wording being used in a paper back home. After that he was referred to as a "yob" which I think is like another word for hoodlum. But the callous thug description just really got to me. The second one I found yesterday - it was actually from half a piece that was ripped out of the paper and it only caught my eye because it was about the Tea Party (yes, our fabulous US political group). It was talking about the relationship between the Tea Party and the media, and this little tidbit appeared about halfway down the first column - "Although fueled by dislike for taxes, hatred of the 'liberal media' - including virtually all channels (barring Fox News) and most print publications - is a central tenet of the Tea Party's world view." That really made me laugh; three guesses as to what that paper thinks of the Tea Partiers.
Stay tuned for more adventures, and perhaps more delightful Communism-related quotes, brought to you by your favorite George Kenyon residents.
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