The Yes Zone

Moar! Moar!

Glenn D'mello — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 01:08:35 +0000

kthxbye!

Star

Glenn D'mello — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 07:36:08 +0000

One of my favourite activities at Christmas in Goa was building the barn for the nativity scene or crib as we called it. We use to whittle bamboo into narrow strips for the frame of the house, and then go out and fetch dried wild grass and use that to build the roof by using the bamboo to hold the grass in place.

And once that was done, we built a star that we would hang in front of the house. Most families built very elaborate stars. We would build a simple one – two five pointed frame tied together with spacers in the middle. It was then covered with tissue paper, decorated and hung.

I didn’t get to do a crib this year, but I did get to help out with the star.

2009 Book log

Glenn D'mello — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 23:47:30 +0000

Obviously, I had a lot of time on my hands in 2009.
Most of those books were also under 200 pages.
1. The Last Magician – Janette Turner Hospital*
2. Smart Dragons, Foolish Elves – Alan Dean Foster and Martin Harry Greenberg (Editors)
3. With a Rough Tongue – Amber Dawn and Trish Kelly (Editors)
4. First Contact – Dave A. Law and Darin Park (Editors)
5. Lois Lenz, Lesbian Secretary – Monica Nolan*
6. The Dragons of Babel – Michael Swanwick*
7. A Scholar of Magics – Caroline Stevermer
8. When the King Comes Home – Caroline Stevermer
9. First Cases – Robert J. Randisi (Editor)
10. Just Another Judgement Day – Simon R. Green*
11. The Accidental Sorcerer – K. E. Mills^
12. Polyphony (Vol 1) – Deborah Layne & Jay Lake (Editors)
13. Starlight 1 – Patrick Nielsen Hayden (Editor)
14. Who Can Save Us Now? – Owen King and John McNally (Editors)
15. 100 Ways to take better portrait photographs – Daniel Lezano & Bjorn Thomassen
16. Future Love (A Science Fiction Triad) – Anne McCaffrey, Joan H. Holly & Jeffrey A. Carver
17. Sextopia – Cecilia Tan (Editor)
18. Galactic Empires volume 1 – Brian Aldiss (Editor)
19. The Key – James N. Frey
20. Low Port – Sharon Lee & Steve Miller (Editors)*
21. The Stars Down Under – Sandra McDonald^
22. The Silent Strength of Stones – Nina Kiriki Hoffman*
23. Faerie Tales – Martin H. Greenberg & Russell Davis (Editors)
24. Diadem From The Stars – Jo Clayton
25. Lamarchos – Jo Clayton
26. Irsud – Jo Clayton
27. Maeve — Jo Clayton
28. Star Hunters – Jo Clayton
29. The Lord-Protector’s Daughter – L. E. Modesitt Jr
30. Space Shuttle – Melvyn Smith
31. Living in Space – Peter Smolders
32. Magical Beginnings – Steven H. Silver & Martin H. Greenberg (Editors)
33. A Fistful of Sky – Nina Kiriki Hoffman*
34. Man and his Symbols – Carl G. Jung
35. Cities in Flight, Vol 1 – James Blish*
36. A Red Heart of Memories – Nina Kiriki Hoffman*
37. Three the Hard Way – Susie Bright (Editor)
38. Ordermaster – L. E. Modesitt Jr.
39. Turncoat – Jim Butcher
40. Protector of the Realm – Gun Brooke
41. Lady be Good – Barbara Grier & Christine Cassidy (Editors)
42. The Spellman Files – Lisa Lutz*
43. Odd Girl Out – Timothy Zahn
44. Deluge – Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough^
45. Gold Comes in Bricks – A. A. Fair (Earle Stanley Gardner)
46. Bats Fly At Dusk – A. A. Fair (Earle Stanley Gardner)
47. All Grass Isn’t Green – A. A. Fair (Earle Stanley Gardner)
48. Pass the Gravy – A. A. Fair (Earle Stanley Gardner)
49. The Count of 9 – A. A. Fair (Earle Stanley Gardner)
50. You Can Die Laughing – A. A. Fair (Earle Stanley Gardner)
51. Give ‘Em the Ax – A. A. Fair (Earle Stanley Gardner)
52. Cut Thin to Win – A. A. Fair (Earle Stanley Gardner)
53. Top of the Heap – A. A. Fair (Earle Stanley Gardner)
54. Widows Wear Weeds – A. A. Fair (Earle Stanley Gardner)
55. Double or Quits – A. A. Fair (Earle Stanley Gardner)
56. Singer of Souls – Adam Stemple
57. Venus on the Half-Shell – Kilgore Trout
58. The Tales of Beedle the Bard – J. K. Rowling
59. Out of My Mind – Richard Bach
60. Alpha – Catherine Asaro
61. The Best American Erotica 2004 – Susie Bright (Editor)
62. The Cyborg From Earth – Charles Sheffield
63. Mockingbird – Sean Stewart
64. Return to Isis – Jean Stewart
65. The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil – George Saunders
66. Adventures of the Monkey God – Translated from Chinese by Arthur Waley
67. The Alabaster Staff – Edward Bolme
68. The Cunning Blood – Jeff Duntemann
69. The Lantern Road – John Argo
70. A Different Light – Elizabeth A. Lynn
71. New Magics – Patrick Nielsen Hayden (Editor)
72. Dune – Frank Herbert
73. The Great Fetish – L. Sprague de Camp
74. Numbers Don’t Lie – Terry Bisson
75. Daughters of a Coral Dawn – Katherine V. Forrest
76. Orphans of the Sky – Robert A. Heinlein
77. Natural Ordermage – L. E. Modesitt Jr.
78. Everyone has a life to live – Jerry Gay
79. This is who I am – Rosanne Olson
80. Retrospective – Cindy Sherman
81. The Myriad – R. N. Meluch
82. Lightwing – Tara K. Harper
83. Cat Scratch Fever – Tara K. Harper
84. The Worlds of H. Beam Piper – John F. Carr (Editor)
85. Duainfey – Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
86. Longeye – Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
87. One Jump Ahead – Mark L. Van Name
88. Little Fuzzy – H. Beam Piper
89. Fuzzy Sapiens – H. Beam Piper
90. Never Seen by Waking Eyes – Stephen Dedman*
91. Fast Forward 2 – Lou Anders (Editor)
92. Hounding the Moon – P. R. Frost
93. Psychoshop – Alfred Bster & Roger Zelazny
94. Steal the Dragon – Patricia Briggs
95. Imager – L. E. Modesitt Jr.
96. The Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
97. Devlin’s Luck – Patricia Bray
98. Lord Peter – Dorothy L. Sayers
99. The Edge of Space – Robert Silverberg (Editor) *
100. Grass – Sheri S. Tepper *
101. The Second Confession – Rex Stout
102. Daemons are Forever – Simon R. Green
103. Other Times Than Peace – David Drake
104. When The Tide Rises – David Drake
105. In The Stormy Red Sky – David Drake
106. The Wizard and the Warlord – Elizabeth Boyer
107. Haze – L. E. Modesitt Jr.
108. Best Max Carrados Detective Stories – Ernest Bramah
109. The Spy Who Haunted Me – Simon R. Green
110. Fragile Things – Neil Gaiman *
111. The Excalibur Alternative – David Weber ^
112. Scarab – Don D’Ammassa ^
113. The Quickening – Ly de Angeles
114. Sexual Chemistry – Julius Faust & Meredith Bernstein
115. Viewpoints Critical – L. E. Modesitt Jr
116. The Voyage of the Space Beagle – A. E. Van Vogt
117. Blood Child – Octavia E. Butler
118. Illumined Black and Other Adventures – Mac Tonnies
119. Takeoff – Randall Garret
120. The Ophiuchi Hotline – John Varley
121. Sunshine – Robin McKinley *
122. Death’s Daughter – Amber Benson ^
123. Sandman Slim – Richard Kadrey
124. Sins & Shadows – Lyn Benedict
125. Soarer’s Choice – L. E. Modesitt Jr.
126. In the flesh – Korem Shadmi
127. Oath of Swords – David Weber
128. Mona Lisa Awakening – Sunny
129. Mona Lisa Blossoming – Sunny
130. The Gilded Chain – Dave Duncan
131. To Serve and Submit – Susan Wright *
132. Raven Settles a Score – Donald MacKenzie
133. The Incredible Umbrella – Marvin Kaye
134. Keeping it real – Justina Robson ^
135. Time Patrol – Poul Anderson
136. Drink, play, fuck – Andrew Gottlieb
137. Superstar India – Shoba Dé

^ – Avoid.
* – Recommended

Trip news

Glenn D'mello — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 08:23:06 +0000

Finally got some time to write something instead of just enough time to upload photos to facebook. One sister and her family is away at her in-laws. My nephews are watching Kiki’s Delivery Service and mom is frying some fish in the kitchen. The weather here is perfect. The sun is just beginning to peek out of the clouds (it’s 10:30 am) and the temperature is a balmy 80 (albeit with 98% humidity). I sitting in the balcão and can smell squash the next door neighbor is cooking and can hear coconuts being grated. The birds are being lazy, just staying perched on the trees and bushes and there are butterflies flitting about.

Other than the noise of the movie and the truck the four year old has starting pushing around the house, its quiet outside. It’s amazing how much difference that quiet seems to make. This does not seem like civilization – I can hear traffic from miles away and there are honest-to-goodness vendors who walk by shouting out their wares (mostly fish at this time of the day). Of course, I can also hear every word that the neighbors say and know in exquisite detail exactly how wrongly the mornings tea was made.

I’ve got here Sunday afternoon and it’s been a blast so far. I landed in Singapore for a stop over and found that my checked in suitcase had set off the alarm, and found a very amusing (to me) sticker on the outside:

I can just picture the suitcase in the machine now: oh no!, I’m all alone in the big, bad, x-ray machine. Help! Help! and the TSA agent pulling the bag out and saying There, there, little suitcase. I’ll just open you up and check you out and put you back with the other suitcases. See? That was painless.

Singapore was amazing. I guess I liked it more this time around because the last time I was here, I was on a business trip and did not have a relaxed time around. December is the rainy season in Singapore, so my plan for walking around the city (there are 5 museums within a 5 block radius) fell apart. I wanted to stay awake and start beating the jetlag, so I signed up for a guided tour.

The tour didn’t start till 2:00pm, so I went down to Orchard road and wandered around.

Orchard road was an eye-opener. Good lord, they have really taken the Christmas shopping spirit to heart. My favorite part was when I dashed into a shop to get away from a downpour and got lost wondering around. The shops are like twisty little mazes, all alike. And when I found myself at the very bottom, next to the garage, there was a little sign at the bottom of the escalator:

The guided tour was as expected. Most of the group were like me – stopping over in Singapore before catching the next flight leaving at an unearthly hour. The guide was a die-hard Singaporean: Singapore was the greatest country in the world and the Singaporean government was the best and was always looking to help out native Singaporean citizens.

The regularly scheduled program followed with frequent informercials.

One stop on the tour was the botanical gardens, where christmas trees decorated by the various embassies in Singapore were exhibited:

The next day I left for Mumbai (or Bombay as I knew it as). I was also excited about flying into Mumbai for the first time at a decent hour (ok, the whole leaving at 4:00 am wasn’t so good, but the arriving at 10:00 am – I was all for that).

There was a giant fish pond at the airport that stopped me in my tracks.

Luckily, I slept on the way and once we started our descent, opened the window shades and looked outside.

I guess LA must have looked like this before the Clean Air act.
My sister had been to Delhi for a conference and she was telling me that when they went outside, their eyes started burning and they found it hard to breathe. Mumbai is a coastal city, so the ocean breezes keeps things from getting that bad.

Bad son

Glenn D'mello — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 08:22:05 +0000

This morning we were making tea when the gas ran out.
So I helped my dad carry this:

The gas cylinder weighs about 35 lbs.

on this:

While riding pillion back to the house, I was really happy that cellphone cameras are not ubiquitous in Santa Cruz, Goa.

Christmas treats we’ve cooked so far.

Glenn D'mello — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 08:21:35 +0000

All inside.

1. Neureos

These are thin puff pastry shells filled with
a. a mix of coconut, sugar, semolina, raisins, and ghee, or
b. a mix of coconut, sugar, raisins or
c. a mix of mung bean flour and raisins and sugar
and deep fried.

2. Korkol

The Goan version of the beignet.

3. Coconut cake

Most of you have had this at some time or another. I mostly make it for Thanksgiving/Christmas in San Francisco.

4. Dodol

This is really easy to make. Mix the milk of 4 coconuts, 1 kg of jaggery, 250gms rice flour and stir for four hours on a high flame.

5. Doce letri

Shredded young coconut cooked in a sugar syrup and garnished with egg yolk noodles cooked in sugar syrup.

6. Bebinca.

I finally figured out why my bebinca is not as yummy as my moms. I cook it with a 1:1:1 flour:sugar:fat ratio. She uses 1:2:2.

7. Chocolate cake
8. Chocolate cake
9. Fruit cake
My sisters cooked this – I didn’t help in any way.

Pretty much how I started cooking.

Glenn D'mello — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 08:20:13 +0000

That’s my sister and my nephew. He’s 4.

Jury Duty

Glenn D'mello — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 06:16:43 +0000

Look what my /bin/fortune came up with:

The Worst Jury

A murder trial at Manitoba in February 1978 was well advanced, when
one juror revealed that he was completely deaf and did not have the
remotest clue what was happening.
The judge, Mr. Justice Solomon, asked him if he had heard any
evidence at all and, when there was no reply, dismissed him.
The excitement which this caused was only equalled when a second
juror revealed that he spoke not a word of English. A fluent French
speaker, he exhibited great surprised when told, after two days, that he
was hearing a murder trial.
The trial was abandoned when a third juror said that he suffered
from both conditions, being simultaneously unversed in the English language
and nearly as deaf as the first juror.
The judge ordered a retrial.
— Stephen Pile, “The Book of Heroic Failures”

Backyard bird update

Glenn D'mello — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:26:42 +0000

“Hummingbirds are vicious little buggers.” – A friend of mine.
“No, no, no – they’re so little and cute.” – Me.

Well, sad to say, my friend was right.
Over the last week, I noticed a tiny little hummingbird dart in and feed while hovering, looking all around between feedings. “Hmm, that’s strange – maybe there’s a cat getting into the yard”, I thought.

Yesterday, I saw another hummingbird – a slightly larger one – sitting on the tree, just looking around. He was gorgeous, with a scarlet throat and a dark green back.

I was wondering what was up with that when I saw the littler hummingbird fly in towards the feeder, and the one in the tree dive-bombed it, chattering loudly while chasing it away. Vicious little bugger is right.

That said, there’s a scrub jay that’s started showing up:

Such pretty blue feathers!

Travel tales…

Glenn D'mello — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 06:13:43 +0000

In which I try to answer the questions what kind of toilets do we use in Goa?, do cows really walk the streets?, can vegetables be flowers? and where I try to see if anyone can identify a flower/plant that I’m very fond of.
Let me start with this flower. When I was growing up in Goa, I loved the rains, for when they came, this flower bloomed.

I fell in love with it and was sad to see it go nearly extinct. Fortunately, a local nursery started selling live plants and now I see it almost everywhere in Goa. Unfortunately, I don’t know what it’s called. This is what the plant looks like. If you recognize the plant and know of a US source, please let me know.

Next, the toilets: I forgot who had asked me this, and the question was whether we had the Indian style squatters or the western style sit-downers.
Well, Indians are smart. What we have are the combos. In light blue (or pink).

If you want to squat, you leave the seat up. If you want to sit, you put the seat down. The fuzzy cover is optional extra.

And now for some cow-porn. Yes, they do hang out in the middle of the street and neck in public. There was even some tongue action, which may not be completely clear from my vantage point.

This bouquet was on the buffet table at my nieces party.

I was impressed at the realism and detail in it.

Onions, radishes, egg-plant and beet root never looked so pretty before.

Other misc shots: I snapped a squirrel who had come over to sample some of the chikoos: