BEST OF THE SEVENTIES DANCE HITS

When my gay Filipino best friend was little, he told his mum that he wanted to marry an Indian girl so they could do Bollywood dance together. My childhood fantasies weren't too different, except that instead of dancing, I would play piano and sing tragic songs. Unfortunately for me, I grew up with a mum who was not into tragic piano, and insisted on turning up the radio and dancing down the staircase with a dramatic pause at the landing, much to my consternation. (She was very young.)

It is a well-known fact (I'm sure) that kids with gregarious, extroverted parents grow up painfully shy - I grew up with stammering legs. My private nightmare (well, one of my top ten private nightmares) is being at a tame gathering of friends and having it morph into an impromptu dance party. At the first sign of a drumbeat my legs get tongue-tied. My little sister has inherited my mother's impeccable sense of rhythm - I got my dad's two hairy left feet.

For my mum's birthday, then, here are my favourite dance hits from the 1970's and by the "1970's" I mean 1965-1980, they're from movies that came out before I did, but after Technicolor and Elvis and the end of colonial rule in Africa (yeah I totally just Wikipedia-ed that). So whether you're looking to impress that Indian cutie in class (me) by bustin' out these movie moves, or to amuse a bunch of drunk friends after you've watched all the Ali G videos on YouTube, you'll find that this list provides sufficient material to make you cringe with embarrassment the next day.

10. DIL KYA KARE from Julie (1975)
This song would be a lot higher on the list but for the hideousness of the video. If even someone with my dubious tastes finds the guy's choice of attire and constant rubbing-up-against-each-other nightmare-ish, well, you know what to expect. [Button-down shirt unbuttoned and tied at the belly to reveal carpet chest, matched by - oh god, my eyes - cut-off Daisy Duke shorts.] Also noteworthy is the Bollywood phenomenon of pregnancy by suggestive writhing in the grass. Abstinence does not work, people.

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9. AAJ KAL TERE MERE PYAAR from Brahmachari (1968)
I'm not a big fan of Shammi Kapoor, but the man managed to find his way into some of the best dance numbers of the time, with some of the most spirited dance partners (see also Entry #7 below). Praan I'm sorry to say loses points for not looking appropriately dastardly or sporting a fabulously villainous mustache.

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8. AAP JAISA KOI from Qurbani (1980)
Zeenat Aman was not the most talented of actresses and dancers, but she wasn't too bad either. Unlike Parveen Babi or Rekha, she wasn't drop-dead gorgeous... or maybe the camera-man's unhealthy attachment to soft focus didn't do her justice. But there's something almost endearingly adolescent about her awkwardness, not in a gross or pervy way, oh man I'm really digging myself into a hole here. I just like her, okay? So deal.

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7. O HASEENA ZULFONWALI from Teesri Manzil (1966)
Helen on the other hand is probably the most insanely talented dancer that Bollywood has witnessed. Just as Asha Bhosle is the best singer Bollywood has produced. Lata is overrated, people.

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6. DUM MARO DUM from Hare Rama Hare Krishna (1971)
More Zeenat! And in the top 6 are Bollywood's dance staples, and knowing them will give you insider status, like, instantly. And you know what that means... free pot.

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5. MEHBOOBA MEHBOOBA from Sholay (1975)
I apologise for the relentless hirsuteness of Indian men. I suspect it is genetic, unlike the leer, which takes practice.

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4. LEKAR HUM DEEWANA DIL from Yaadon Ki Baarat (1973)
You probably can't tell just by looking at him, but the dancing dude is not a pro dancer - armed with that guitar (which is probably a prop) he infiltrated the dancing troupe, for purposes as yet unknown, but possibly connected with the distinctly nefarious-looking bearded villain.
The waiter with the knowing look and head wiggle isn't really a waiter (if you notice he didn't even manage to get a matching outfit to blend in with the other wait staff) but he is obviously in cahoots with the dancer. But that in my mind adds to the Mystery and Suspense and makes this dance number utterly Awesome. Even without that dude rappelling between buildings or whatever the fuck he's doing. Holy fuck, is that Dharam? Well at least now we can establish that he is with the good guys.

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3. PIYA TU AB TO AAJA from Caravan (1971)
The vampiest - and campiest - of Helen's dance numbers, completely unnecessary for advancement of movie plot, but raises several questions, such as: What's in that drink that makes her instantly smashed but only improves her balance and coordination? And where can I get it?

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2. JAANE JAAN DHOONDTHA from Jawaani Deewani (1972)
Chubby man in a toupee plays hide and seek with coy sari-clad woman toting a tiny teddy, running around in the woods. Not that kind of teddy, and not that kind of wood either. 

SAY WHAT?
Jaane jaan Life of my life
dhoondtha phir raha I wander searching
hoon tumhe for you
raat din main night and day
yahaan se vahaan from here to there
Mujhko avaaz do Call out to me 
Chhup gaye ho sanam You're hidden, my love
Tum kahaan? Where are you?
Main yahaan! I'm here!
Tum kahaan? Where are you?
Main yahaan! I'm here!

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1. ROOP TERA MASTANA from Aradhana (1969)
Rajesh Khanna all hairy-chested and not-so-subtly indicating he would like to do sex with Sharmila Tagore. Nothing explicit, this is Bollywood, so fast-forward nine months and she has a baby, so the only smex you get is in retrospect. Kinda like real life I suppose. Yeah, kids, always carry a condom.

SAY WHAT?
Roop tera Your form is
Mastana intoxicating
Pyaar mera My love (for you)
Deewana crazy (out of control)
Bhool koi Some mistake (i.e. smex)
Humse na ho jaaye We shouldn't make!



 
And for more exuberant cheesiness, here's the '90's remix.

 

LIME DISEASE

Have you all ever noticed how the lime-flavoured gummy bears always taste like chemical effluence? It doesn't matter what brand it is, or what kind of gummy creature - well it is possible that gummy babies are different, I wouldn't know, I have never eaten them as I find them slightly frightening, like the dead baby in Trainspotting.

...Anyway. The bag of gummy rattlesnakes that I'm currently enjoying contains an assortment of six colour-coded flavours: apple, strawberry, blackberry, orange, lemon and lime. Notice how you can easily distinguish the flavours from each other by their colours, all except the lime from apple. So you bite into an apple snake, thinking mmm-yeah sugary goodness and blech, it's lime. NOBODY LOVES LIME! Make another flavour! I'm not sayin' it has to be something complicated like honey-roasted walnut mocha creme or fresh bouquet of summer flowers, but how about grape or cherry!

Besides, the big selling point of gummy bears is not that they taste like apples or blueberries or whatever, it's the sugar. Gummy bears are just chewy sugar. Lemon is not really lemony, orange is not tangy, and the berry flavours are just slightly more saccharine than the citrus ones, and they're all just mildly, pleasantly fruity, all except for lime which smells and tastes like floor cleaner. Lime is the stinkface in the cubicle next to you who never bathes and is growing mushrooms in his bodily crevices. NO ONE WILL MISS HIM IF YOU ORDER A HIT ON HIM.

Just sayin'.

Anyway, other than lime, gummy creatures are generally awesome, so yeah, keep up the good work. But take out the lime.

DUMBASS QUESTIONS PEOPLE ASK

So I had my mates over for drinks, and one of them showed me this blog entry and we all unanimously decided we wanted to be friends with the author. And this led to the fun drinking game, Dumbass Questions People Ask You.

1. Encountered in Ireland: "Where do Africans hide their tails when they're wearing pants?"

2. From an Australian guy who has travelled in India: "Do you Indians talk to each other in Indian?"

3. Same guy: "Are Indian people smarter than us, or is it just the smarter Indian people that get to come to our country?"

4. "Do people in Borneo live in trees? Is it true that they're cannibals?"

5. "You're gay, does that mean you want to be a woman?" also "You're gay, right, so if you got a boyfriend would you be the girl or the boy?"

Of course (dis)honourable mention for the rhetorical: "Why are all the cute guys gay? It's such a waste."

5. Apparently this is a very common one. Guy at a bar whose advances were rejected by a friend: "Oh, so are you a lesbian?"

6. "Why do feminists hate men?" immediately followed by: "Why does that girl dress like that, with her breasts hanging out of her top? Not sayin' she's asking for it or anything but..."

7. From the receptionist at the Malaysian firm I temped at, on the first day at work: "Why are you so black?"

This is an expanding list, of course.

CHECKERBOARD COOKIES

Adapted from the Joy of Baking web site.
YOU'LL NEED:
Kitchen scales
Large bowl
Electric beater or long-handled wooden spoon
Sieve
Baking paper
Rolling pin
Ruler
Knife
Baking tray
Oven

INGREDIENTS:
350gm flour
250gm butter
150gm sugar
4 tbsp cocoa
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla essence

1. Beat the butter, sugar, egg and vanilla together in a bowl till smooth.

2. Sift the flour into the bowl. Mix it in, making sure the dough isn’t lumpy.

3. Divide the dough into two halves. Wrap the first half in baking paper and refrigerate.

4. Add cocoa to the second half, mix it in till incorporated. Refrigerate.

5. Take out the first half and roll it out into a rectangle 1cm thick and about 5cm wide.

6. Using a ruler and a sharp knife, measure and cut the sheet of dough so that it is exactly 4cm wide and x cm long.

7. Cover the white rectangle in baking paper and place in the freezer.

8. Roll the cut-off dough from the edges into a ball and refrigerate separately.

9. Take out the second half of the dough (with cocoa) and repeat steps 5–8.

10. After 15 minutes, take out the two rectangles. Brush the top of the vanilla layer with a bit of water, and place the chocolate layer edges lined up precisely.

11. Measure down the length of the log, and cut it in half so you have two pieces ½x cm long.

12. Take the second piece and place it on top of the first, so you have a ½cm long log that is 4cm wide and 4cm high, layered vanilla-chocolate-vanilla-chocolate.

13. Using the ruler and knife, carefully cut the log lengthwise into four pieces 1cm wide (and 4cm deep, with alternate vanilla-chocolate-vanilla-chocolate layers).

14. Carefully lift the second piece and flip it so its layers are now chocolate-vanilla-chocolate-vanilla. Do the same with the fourth piece.

15. Cut the checkerboard log in two halves, ¼x cm long, wrap them in baking paper and refrigerate.

16. Take out the first ball of extra vanilla dough, and roll it out into a 4½cm wide, __cm long rectangular sheet.

17. Take out the first checkerboard log and place it on the sheet. Wrap the sheet around its length, sealing the edges with a bit of water if necessary. Refrigerate.

18. Repeat with the second checkerboard log and the chocolate dough.

19. Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C. Slice the checkerboard logs into ½ cm thick slices, and arrange them on a baking tray.

20. Bake for five minutes. Cool and serve.

Do not feed your pets cookies, no matter how much they beg.

REALLY REALLY LUCKY

Sometimes
The sun is out
And you're indoors
And you think dammit who cares about this bloody essay I'm going out
And you step out and close your eyes and smile and turn your face up
That's when it starts
To rain.
And if you're really really lucky you would've left your keys inside.

This has been a poem by a Melbourne dweller, thank you thank you.

WEIRD THINGS PEOPLE SAY

So I ran into this girl from class yesterday. I stopped to chat, partly because she's a nice girl (and no one wants nice girls thinking that they're rude or weird). Also we're two expats in Melbourne and I felt an odd need to create or reinforce a bond, and an even odder compulsion to reach out cross-culturally and somehow, through this one conversation, dispel any negative stereotypes about my people and make tremendous headway in improving race relations.

So we spent the entire conversation dissing Australians.

It was beautiful. She asked me if I planned to go back to America (I'm not American, for the record, I just studied there for a few years) and I said it would be an option if it weren't so far away. She said it sounded like I missed it there and I said yes, I kind of did. She asked if I liked it better there than there in Australia.

I glanced over my shoulder. We were alone.

And I said that well, Australia has its good points, as does every place I've lived in, but Americans, well at least the Americans I met in America, were just... nicer.

She looked at me slightly incredulously, and said, "Really?"

And I said, "Yeah, they're just... warmer. If you look a little lost, they stop and offer to help. When I was in America, no one commented on my accent, or asked me questions like 'How come you guys are never on time, is it a cultural thing?' whereas here it is a rare week when that doesn't happen."

And she said, "And on the tram, they make these loud remarks, Chinese people this and Indian people that... it's not nice but we can't do anything."

I nodded, and then quickly added, feeling a twinge of guilt for the Aussies that I -am- friends with, of course not everyone is like that, it's just that you keep expecting it to happen. And she said, to be fair it's not just the Aussies, the Brits tend to be racist too.

"But not the Scottish people," she said.

"Or the Welsh," I added, thinking of my friend Hannah. "And Irish are nice too, I've never met an Irish person that's not nice."

It looked like we were going to be friends. We had covered nearly all of the white Anglophone world, and concurred on the niceness scale of all but the Kiwis and Canadians. Walking to the tram, I felt warm and fuzzy, and idly wondered if I had been a trifle hasty in my generalisations.

Sure, I thought to myself as I got onto my tram, over half the people I made friends with in America were Americans, whereas here, it adds up to a grand total of two good friends, plus three others I'd like to know better, one ex that I don't talk to but shall certainly talk about at some point, and a handful of acquaintances.

And then some dude on the tram made a loud remark about Melbourne being overridden by bloody Asians, and I thought, ah. I may be wrong, but sometimes it feels so... right.

BABY SPINACH AND CHICK PEA SOUP

YOU'LL NEED:
A knife and chopping board
A stockpot
A spatula
A ladle
A kettle

INGREDIENTS:
1 can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 bag of baby spinach, washed
10-12 cherry tomatoes, halved
2-3 small potatoes, washed and quartered
1 red onion, sliced
2 chilli peppers, slit lengthwise
4-8 pods of garlic, shelled
a sprig of fresh rosemary
a sprig of fresh thyme or ½ tsp dry thyme
olive oil & salt to taste

1. Fill the kettle with water and turn it on.
2. Pour some oil into the stockpot, and set it on the gas stove over a medium flame.
3. Sauté the onions, chilli peppers, garlic pods and potatoes, with a pinch of salt for about 5 minutes.
4. Add the herbs and chickpeas, and pour about three cups of boiling water in.
5. Cover, lower the flame and cook till the potatoes are nearly done done.
6. Add the tomatoes and spinach, and more salt and water if necessary. Once the spinach is wilted, turn off the stove.

Apparently, one can add wine early on: after step 3, add white wine and herbs, and after a few minutes, the chick peas and water. I think. Also one can ply one's guests with wine early on, and ensure that they will be too inebriated to tell the difference by dinnertime.

Not that I would dream of resorting to such underhanded means.

YESTERDAY I KILLED: A POEM

Yesterday I killed
a fly
that flew
into
our apartment.
Chased it
with a can
of bug spray in each hand
and
killed it
dead.
The End.

ARE YOU THAT GUY?

Conversation in a busy dumpling house. Two guys at a table full of people were talking about abortion.

Quick description. Guy 1 was 23, American, white, straight, a pre-med student, about 6ft tall, lean, fit, quite good-looking. Guy 2 was 24, Australian, white, straight, a media studies major, about 6ft tall, lean, fit, quite good-looking. There were three women at the table.

Guy 1 was doing a paper on the ethics/morality/legality of abortion for a class, and Guy 2 was jokingly oversimplifying the first one's position on the matter. Now I'm not sure about what the first guy's actual opinion on abortion was, because my brain was busy doing that thing where it sends pounding flashes of purple and red and yellow to the back of my eyes.

THE QUESTIONNAIRE
Before I explain, let's start with a short, fun exercise I like to call the abortion questionnaire. For each of the questions, choose the MOST APPROPRIATE answer from the three or four options provided. This means that if you're not Jewish, and if someone asks you if your parents insist on keeping kosher, the answer is not "Yes" or "No" - the most appropriate answer is "Not Applicable". Here goes!

01. Have you ever had an abortion?
   [YES]     [NO]                                                  [NOT APPLICABLE]
02. Are there any circumstances under which you have considered or would consider having an abortion?
   [YES]     [NO]     [NOT SURE]                            [NOT APPLICABLE]
03. Have you had an abortion because, or would you consider an abortion if, you felt you were too young for pregnancy/childbirth?
   [YES]     [NO]     [NOT SURE]                            [NOT APPLICABLE]
04. Have you had an abortion because, or would you consider an abortion if, you felt you were too young for parenthood?
   [YES]     [NO]     [NOT SURE]                            [NOT APPLICABLE]
05. Have you had an abortion because, or would you consider an abortion if, you became pregnant as a result of your contraception failing (such as condom tearing)?
   [YES]     [NO]     [NOT SURE]                            [NOT APPLICABLE]
06. Have you had an abortion because, or would you consider an abortion if, you became pregnant as a result of a sexual encounter that took place when you were under the influence of alcohol or drugs?
   [YES]     [NO]     [NOT SURE]                            [NOT APPLICABLE]
07. Have you had an abortion because, or would you consider an abortion if, you became pregnant as a result of a sexual encounter that took place when your ability to make informed decisions was in any other way compromised?
   [YES]     [NO]     [NOT SURE]                            [NOT APPLICABLE]
08. Have you had an abortion because, or would you consider an abortion if, you became pregnant because of a sexual encounter that you did not give your consent to, or did not desire?
   [YES]     [NO]     [NOT SURE]                            [NOT APPLICABLE]
09. Have you had an abortion because, or would you consider an abortion if, your fetus was not of your desired gender?
   [YES]     [NO]     [NOT SURE]                            [NOT APPLICABLE]
10. Have you had an abortion because, or would you consider an abortion if, your fetus had developmental abnormalities?
   [YES]     [NO]     [NOT SURE]                            [NOT APPLICABLE]
11. Have you had an abortion because, or would you consider an abortion if, your partner wanted you to terminate the pregnancy?
   [YES]     [NO]     [NOT SURE]                            [NOT APPLICABLE]
12. Have you had an abortion because, or would you consider an abortion if, your pregnancy posed a risk to your life, health, or mental well-being?
   [YES]     [NO]     [NOT SURE]                            [NOT APPLICABLE]
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If you've answered 'not applicable' on all the above questions, please step into this room where we can talk:

THE ROOM
Let's set aside for the moment what your views on abortion are. If none of these questions is applicable to you personally, it is probably because it is impossible for you to become pregnant. Maybe you don't have a uterus. Maybe you have a chromosomal anomaly.

The bottom line is, the question of whether or not to have an abortion is one that you will never face. It will never apply to you.

You may argue that it doesn't need to, that you are entitled to an opinion anyway. You may argue that moral values are absolute.

Or you may argue that actually, it could apply to you: what if your partner is the one facing these choices and she wants or needs you to help her decide what to do?

Or you may be a pre-med student, or a doctor, and may have to decide whether or not to perform abortions, either as a routine procedure or on a case-by-case basis.

However, you can choose to become a neurologist or endocrinologist and entirely bypass the abortion issue. You can walk away from a pregnant girlfriend - your pregnant girlfriend cannot walk away from her pregnancy quite as easily.

This is what separates you from all those individuals standing outside this room. Whether they are straight or gay, tall or short, fat or thin, as long as they have a functioning uterus, this is not purely hypothetical for them. Whatever they may believe, something horrible can happen to them that makes them reevaluate their convictions and make difficult choices. It's different.

HOW DIFFERENT?
Imagine that you're hanging out with a couple of Middle Eastern dudes who have a jokey discussion on whether alcohol fuels immorality among white people and destroys the fabric of Western society.

Now imagine that these guys come from a highly populated and extremely powerful Islamic country that won a major war twenty years ago, a war that decimated your own population. And that as a result, the citizens of this country get to rewrite your laws.

Whether or not the rewritten laws will benefit your society is moot. Whether they are enforced strictly or not at all is irrelevant.

The point is, a good proportion of the people who decide how you should live your life, and how you should be punished if you don't live your life that way, do so from outside. So when one of them mouths off about whether or not public sodomy is an appropriate or excessive punishment for white men who are caught drinking, your gut instinct might be to tell them to fuck off or to punch them in the face.

But if you have any instinct for self-preservation, there will be a pragmatic voice in your head telling you that you cannot afford to antagonise these people. So you end up engaging in a debate with them about the issue. They may point out studies that prove that alcohol is harmful and encourages reckless behaviour. They may say that violating and humiliating an offender in public would have the necessary effect of deterring this undesirable behaviour.

You try to keep your cool and argue respectfully, conceding some points and questioning some leaps in logic. Because you know that if you get upset, these guys may say, "See, this is what alcohol does to white guys. It makes them argumentative and hysterical and violent."

SO IF YOU'RE THAT GUY...
please keep in mind that this is how it can feel for the non-male, non-straight, or non-white people around you when you air your views on gay rights, abortion rights, minority rights.

They may not say anything because they're upset and don't want to show it and reinforce your stereotypes about them. They may engage in a civil discussion on THEIR rights with you, because they're aware that you have the power to collectively take those rights away. If your point of view coincides somewhat with theirs, they may just be relieved to have someone on their side. Or maybe this power dynamic is so entrenched in their thinking - as it is in yours - that none of this even occurs to them.

Or maybe they're not speaking up because they just want to keep the peace, and have a beer with friends, without it devolving into yet another heated debate that divides the group and leaves everyone with a bad taste in the mouth.

MISO SOBA WITH SEAWEED & MUSHROOMS

YOU'LL NEED:
A kettle
A knife & chopping board
A colander
A wok
A spatula

INGREDIENTS:
Soba noodles
2 tbsp red miso paste
2 tsp chopped garlic
1 tsp tamarind paste
One small red onion, sliced
Seaweed
Kale, washed and chopped
10-12 Swiss brown mushrooms, sliced
Olive oil

1. Fill the kettle and turn it on.
2. In the wok, fry onions, garlic, and kale in a little olive oil.
3. Add the mushrooms, miso paste, tamarind paste, seaweed, and about a cup of boiling water.
4. Pour the rest of the boiling water on the soba noodles. Drain them in the colander, and add to the wok.
5. Stir-fry for 4-5 minutes, and serve.

STOMACH BUTTERFLICATION

You know those annoying people who call their partners "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" when they're well past the age of boy/girlhood? Well, I am one of those people. I am also one of those people that is afraid of commitment, afraid of compromise, afraid of failing at the relationship thing (despite long and glorious history of spectacular relationship implosions that should've gotten me used to it by now).

And I am one of those people that other people think should definitely Meet This Nice Friend of theirs who will be Perfect For Me. And I am one of those people that says sure, I'd be happy to meet them, and then spends the entire day drinking tea to quell the nervousness of having to go out later that evening and Make A Good Impression.

Which is how I spent all of yesterday.

I woke up to a text message from Andie and six from Phil, and dragged my weary ass into the shower to get marginally presentable. Shaved and showered, I retrieved my mobile from the sink where it had fallen after vibrating violently off the counter thanks to multiple phone calls from Phil stating that I was rubbish, and demanding that I rectify this sorry state of affairs by getting my lazy butt out of the house and coming to meet them immediately. I hurriedly chowed down a bowl of soba (it was to be the only bright spot in my weekend), checked what I could see of the upper half of my outfit in the 6-inch high bathroom mirror, made sure my teeth were seaweed-free, and headed out.

Two hours on the crowded tram. I got off, convinced that I smelled of BO and stale onions. In the five minutes it took to dash across Brunswick Street, I had made the mental leap to inevitable rejection and possibly even quiet ridicule, and was wracking my brain for the perks of dying alone and unloved, when the bouncer at Little Creatures said, "Coming in?" and I nodded, forever sealing my fate.

As it turns out, the evening wasn't half bad. Somehow dashing your own hopes before your beer arrives makes you slightly more immune to marked lack of eye-contact, let alone signs of even fleeting curiosity from the party you're being set up with. Or when said party returns from the bathroom and your friends not-so-subtly move so you're sitting next to each other. I rapidly downed four pints, reasoning with myself that if I was doomed to making a fool of myself, I might as well do so in a state of oblivion.

Andie remarked that the night was young and suggested that we go dancing, an idea taken up rather enthusiastically by everyone. Except me. I tried to channel my panic into fervent appeals to the universe that the dance club down the street have burnt down, and as a backup plan, tried to think of excuses to leave that wouldn't sound like I was giving Phil's friend the brush-off (because even my pessimism is adulterated with optimism). Luckily for me, the dance club plan was shelved in favour of karaoke - and karaoke meant more drinking and all-round humiliation. I got to do the one thing that I think impresses potential dates: throw back straight shots of tequila and belt out hits from early '90's boy bands.

Why I'm still single is one of the enduring mysteries of the universe.

GINGER ORANGE PEKOE TEA

YOU'LL NEED:
Two teapots
A kettle
A knife
A teaspoon
One or more teacups
A microwave

INGREDIENTS:
Orange pekoe tea
Fresh ginger root
Milk or lemon
Honey or brown sugar

1. Fill the kettle with water and turn it on.
2. Slice a piece of ginger root (say about 1-2cm) and put it in one teapot.
3. Measure tea leaves into the other teapot: a teaspoon for every cup, and one more for the pot. This amount can be varied according to taste.
4. When water begins to boil, pour it into the first teapot (the one with the ginger) and let it sit for about a minute.
5. Pour the water from the first teapot into the second, and give it a bit of a swirl.
6. Pour it back into the first teapot immediately.

Now, anytime you feel like a cup of tea, pour yourself a cup from the first teapot, microwave it for about a minute and a half, add milk and sugar (or honey and lemon if you prefer) and enjoy. Since the teapot has almost no tea leaves in it, the tea won't be bitter and nasty. Ginger tea works wonders for colds, migraines, and increasing your empathy cred with girlfriends.

BIG BLOGGER IS WATCHING YOU

Commonwealth residents who grew up in the '70's and '80's when British publishers were continuing to print our school textbooks despite the ostensible collapse of the Raj may recall having to read an essay by George Orwell titled "Why I Write". I don't actually remember what Orwell's reasons for writing were, but I'm willing to bet that like his style, they were clear, logical, and as thrilling as cardboard. The best bits of Orwell's writing, as with Shakespeare, the Bible, and other creative works, have become clichéd sourceless pop-culture sound-bites: Big Brother, some are more equal than others... okay, nothing else comes to mind, but you know what I mean.

Anyway, the reason I bring up Orwell is that I like to think it makes my blog sound smart and serious. Because Orwell, by general consensus, is smart and serious, while retaining that enviable aura of political controversy that marks him as a truth-teller that Valiantly Defies Authority. And Orwell wrote an essay called "Why I Write", which seems to me a perfect way to segue into my own reasons for writing.

Most writers have a sneaking suspicion that they're overflowing receptacles of brilliance. And receptacles of brilliance aren't particularly interested in other (rival) receptacles of (alleged) brilliance: they're preoccupied with tricking The System into publishing their one book, for surely the inevitable recognition and adulation from The Masses will take care of the rest. Voila, the internet.

Cut to the present day, and my reasons for writing:
1. I have a sneaking suspicion that I am an overflowing receptacle of brilliance.
2.

...okay, so there's just the one reason. This blog, like all the other blogs I've abandoned in the past (but you'll never find out about, since I've covered my tracks by hitting the Delete All Cookies button, ha!) is about why I'm right. Here I shall discuss a range of topics, such as:

- Manga
- Food
- Films
- Awesome things I've been doing
- People who suck
and occasionally
- Things of importance.

So onward, little piglets! Let's get on with it. Tally ho, and all that jazz. Comment allez-vous, arrivederci, sayonara. Ole.

THINLY VEILED TEST POST

Veteran slacker blogger seeks to jumpstart writing kick, gets distracted by fonts and such.