Flourescent poopie test

5:15 AM PST Appx 1 gram flourscein powder mixed with 5 ml glycerin into 250 mg H2O. Took 4 capsules psyllium husk (appx. 2 grams) at same time. When will the poopies start to glow?

Only in India...

(this from a letter to the editor in the Hindu, Jan 15, 2012)

A 50-year-old woman was brought in a state of septic shock to the hospital where I worked. An emergency surgery was performed and everyone was shocked to find a ripe coconut in her uterus. Enquiries revealed that the patient suffered from uterine prolapse and was treated by a quack in Kanyakumari. The coconut had held the usterus in position for some time but eventually created a life-threatening sepsis. (goes on from here to decry holistic vs. allopathic practice)

Do I believe it? Yes. lol lol lol Only in India!

Pithyness

"The degree to which one toots one's horn is inversely proportional to its size"

Travel Plans

Made my travel plans to India this evening (tax purposes, dontcha know) and it's the last damn trip I make: if I don't get a job or can't find a way to retire there I'll stay here.

Cross your fingers either way!

I'll be in Trichur/Thrissur from

Mon 02 May 2011
through
Tue 14 Jun 2011

If you're in the neighborhood, say hi!


[Who thinks of this stupid shit? The post button is in white text on a pale, pale tan background. I kid you not! My skin is whiter than the background...]

Update

I thought you knew the story: India changed the policy on tourist visas while I was down there looking for a flat. Instead of 1 day out of the country every six months, they changed it to _2 months_ out of the country every six months. That royally fisked things up. I'm glad I hadn't yet shipped off everything I owned, though!

So I came back here and have 6 months left on a leased apartment. I'm scheming plans to move down again; *this time* on either an employment or business visa.

bkovitz, I love you

Don't remember why I happened to plug "Berkeley Subjunctive" into Google, but out spat this result:

1 point by bkovitz 359 days ago | link | parent

"This is what I believe: to have consciousness, or rather to be conscious, and in spite of being sure of this, it should be considered as a proper belief, since one cannot formulate exactly what is meant by this, leave alone prove that it is so."
WTF!?

Eric Berne, founder of the bizarre 1960s psychotherapy called Transactional Analysis, had a name for that kind of writing: the Berkeley Subjunctive. "In the extreme case, the title reads, 'Some Introductory Remarks Concerning Factors Involved in Gathering Data Toward a Theory of...'—a very modest title indeed, since it is plain that it will take about two hundred years before the theory itself is ready for publication."

Is there any content on that page, beyond "Uhh, maybe consciousness exists and maybe it doesn't"?

Is There Anybody Out There?

Drop an anonymous comment if you'd like me to continue posting.

Decisions, decisions...

I've decided to move down here. I've been dithering back and forth for some weeks now, but after all, that's why I came down in the first place. The first few weeks didn't go so well: The heat really aggravated me, as did the mosquito bites I suffer when visiting my friends in Palaikarra. I love them all to death, but after a couple days I go mad with itching!



On top of that I had a bugger of a cold and then a bout of nasty food poisoning which lasted a good ten days or so. Had I not been playing the suffering stoic, I would have taken some antibiotics sooner, because they quite literally cleared it up within a matter of hours. Tinidazole rocks!



But I gradually acclimated to the heat and though I still sweat like a pig (or a jim!) it doesn't seen to bother me as much. It's been running 30-33 (86 -- 91 F) during the day with about 60% -- 80% humidity and I suppose the summer months will be worse. At home I run the AC at 28 (82) which is a bit luxurious, and I suppose when I calculate the electricity bill tomorrow I'm in for a rude shock. Electricity is 6 rupees (13 cents) per unit, which I dearly hope is a kilowatt!



Then I went to Kodaikanal, which was the second purpose of the trip. I fancied the idea of settling there, buying some property and setting up a hotel cum B&B and a restaurant but it would be impossible. Primero, land prices for a good location are out of reach. Segundo, competition is fierce and finally, I didn't take to the people or the locals vs. "summer people" culture. It's a lovely place though and I'd like to visit again during the "season". When I was there it felt exactly like Seattle, only with more fog (Kodai means fog). Needless to say I missed out on the views from 7500 feet...



So that left me in a funk. My grand plan was squashed and I was hot and bothered. On top of that, I was bored. Internet too slow for even a YouTube, television extremely limited. Thank god for the Kindle! I found some entertainment by having my hand fixed by a plastic surgeon at a local hospital, which is actually a whole story in itself. Results were (are) splendid 3 weeks post-op, especially when the entire cost was about $476 (call it $480 when you include the antibiotics and adhesive tape)



But I'd planted a seed within a few days of my arrival which chose the depth of my funk to sprout. There are no cafes here, and so the only real place where I could sit and read and people-watch was at the biggest "mall" in town: City Center. I'd become accustomed to having lunch and tea at a decent (used to be better) restaurant called Bay Leaf during the afternoon and on a whim one day I offered my services to the local "Learn English Here" school next door. I had no idea what I was doing and was quite frank about it, but I pitched myself as a tutor in spoken English with an emphasis on accent reduction. I have had some experience with that and know my way around a sentence fairly well, so I told them as much and let it go at that.



As far as I can figure it must be something genetic because the pitch was a home run. Within a week I was taking three batches a day for a half-hour or more and just having a grand time talking WITH them and gently correcting grammar and pronunciation along the way. A few sessions were absolute duds, but by and large I did pretty well having no curriculum (curricula?) to draw upon. One day they read limericks on the Kindle (and what a boon that turned out to be!), another Mother Goose, and quite a few days were just three word doublets composed in Excel from English word frequency lists.



To make a long story short, after a couple weeks it was clear I was doing a great job: apparently they loved me (and I hope not just because of the novelty factor) and I could tell their accents were noticeably improving. The owner and I have been having some discussion about employment and I'd like to accept, but he can't pay much and the red tape is terra incognito for us both. It's not very often a small time operator like he wants to hire an American; and even less often an American wants to take a job at a relative pittance in India! I can see the visa officers scrutinizing the applications now...



But if that doesn't work out I think I'll still end up here for one simple reason: when I get back to the States I'll miss India, esp. Kerala and even more so, Trichur. I do not miss Seattle -- haven't even thought about it except for the ferrets. Lord know I certainly don't miss Ohio (but I miss my friend Chintu a wee bit). I still miss San Francisco, but the BS in San Fran and California in general is more than my stomach can take, so where do I go?

Breast Feeding Frenzy

"That looks interesting" I thought as I scrolled through the on-screen programming guide. Turns out the Discovery Channel was showing Bear Feeding Frenzy...

Get a grip!

Had my hand fixed a couple days ago. It's still in a cast so I can't type too well. The only thing worse than being practically the only white man down here is being a white man with a cast on his arm. Everyone seems concerned: they point and gesture as to say "What happened?" In my best Malayalam I tell them, "Meen chinganee" while making a petting motion. It means crocodile (gharial, to be exact)...

This and That

Oh poo, my antibiotic conservatism has backfired. After putting up with that damned gastroenteritis for a number of weeks, I finally broke down and began some antibiotic treatment a few days ago. The effect was practically miraculous: within 4 hours my belly felt normal again, so I suspect it was giardia just presenting differently than I've seen it before. But unfortunately I'd had my CBC taken before that and the WBC was elevated, so the surgeon has decided to wait a few days before doing my hand. Now I'm sitting around with a head full of Xanax and nothing much to do until Friday.



I've been in Kodaikanal for the past few days checking out whether I'd like to live and settle down there, and perhaps build or buy a hotel/restaurant. I could have been in Seattle for the weather because it rained and drizzled almost the entire time! The kodai (fog) was pretty thick too, so my sightseeing was limited to about 500 yards on a good day. It's a beautiful spot and I'd have to go back during the nice season just to see the sights. Don't think I could live there though, and heaven help me if I wanted to buy property! Not only would a good location be out of reach of my budget, but the competition is just too fierce to make a go of it.



One bright spot was a visit to the Jesuit school's natural history museum where I had a good chat with the brother in charge and seemed to impress him with my rusty knowledge of zoology and the like. I got the impression it wouldn't be too hard to secure a teaching job there like any number of other expats have done. Many seem to be Australian, for some reason. So who knows - if I get bored and restless in 10 years or so when the area's a little more developed I might go back and see if I could still swing it.



I do start teaching conversational English for a couple hours a day at a vocational school in town in a couple days. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing of course, but I pitched it to the manager as just an informal, low-pressure way for the students to practice their English and get some gentle guidance on pronunciation and grammar. As an icebreaker, I've come up with the idea of sticking a bunch of limericks on my Kindle and passing it around and having each student read one aloud. It'll give me an idea of the sounds they are having trouble with and provide some amusement, too. I had to nix the idea of dirty limericks for obvious reasons, but the silly thought of a guy saying "There once was man from Nantucket…" with an Indian accent seems permanently stuck in my head. I ran across another one which would get me fired in about thirty seconds, but I'll share it here:



One morning Mahatma Gandhi
Had a hard-on and it was a dandy.
He said to his aide,
"Please bring me a maid,
Or a goat, or whatever is handy!"

Dinga Dinga Dee!

How do the Israelis sell arms to India? With a Bollywood video, of course!


This is unfathomably bizarre.

A Case of the Vapours?

I've been sick with the worst case of food poisoning I've ever had.


Normally I wouldn't mention it, but one symptom was (I hope I can now use the past tense!) so peculiar I thought I'd mention it: gas.


It was like NASA set up a wind tunnel between my legs. Had it been hydrogen, I could have single-handedly sent that balloon kid (and his little dog, too) from here to Nova Scotia.


I think it was salmonella because of the fever and other symptoms. The gas was certainly the hallmark, though. Any clues, let me know.


Other than that, things have been fine.

Wherefore art thou, Sabeena?

Sabeena is NOT some newly acquainted nautch girl.


I've known her a long, long time and don't know what I'd do without her extra special gift.


She performs nobody's business and puts a shine on everything she touches.


I've brought her to America on a couple occasions and she does her stuff just as well up there as she does down here.


Ahhh, Sabeena!






Sabeena is a soap/scouring powder made from what I think is sifted ashes and some phenomenally powerful, phosphate-laden detergent. I'm sure fish shudder at the very thought of her, but God! can it clean something fierce!


It's opaque on X-ray, so Indian customs always checks my bags when I leave India with a coveted 1 kilo stash. It's also horribly commonplace, so they give me this quizzical eye as if to say, "Why the hell are you taking Sabeena out of the country?"


If only they knew...

Happy Christmas!

Off the Dole

If you think the best pineapples in the world come from Hawaii, you're wrong; very, very wrong.


Even when I lived there I couldn't get pineapples like those in Kerala as Appu, my trusty photographer and assistant demonstrates:







At 20 Rs (43¢) apiece, I could live off them.


So how to choose and prepare a pineapple?
First off, find one that's uniformly yellow or golden and sniff the stem. You want them golden, but not to the point of fermentation, so if you catch a whiff of alcohol or ketone, it's over-ripe.
Second, pick one as nearly cylindrical as possible because this makes the dissection easier and with less waste.
Third, pick one whose surface is as uniform as possible. If the pits for the little flowers(?) are deep, much will be wasted in the peeling process.


That said, how do you cut it up? There are probably many methods, but through trial and error I've found the one below to work the best.


Start with a large, heavy chef's knife or a cleaver if you have one. Sharper is better, of course. Mind that if you're using carbon steel, pineapple is acidic and will discolor the blades in no time flat, so be sure to wash up immediately post operation.


Begin by twisting off the crown and cutting the tops and bottoms off so the remainder resembles a cylinder. You needn't chop off too much at this point because if they are rounded we can still salvage plenty of good fruit with some extra cutting.







Next, lay the pineapple on its side and slice off a strip of rind from the right hand edge about ¼" deep from the outside. At this point, check the cut pineapple edge to see if you've managed to cut out most (not all -- that'd be too wasteful) of the eyes. If too many remain, the subsequent cuts will need be deeper; on the other hand, if none remain you've probably cut too deeply and will waste a good deal of the pineapple.





Give the pineapple a turn of about 30° (12 or 15 cuts will be needed in total) and make another slice at a tangent to the perimeter beginning somewhere in the already cut portion. The idea at this point it to carve a polygon out of the circular circumference. We leave the curved tops and bottoms for a later step.


Now to those pesky tops and bottoms. Set the pineapple on its flat base and again repeat the tangential cutting routine 'round both the top and bottom angling your knife or cleaver as seen below. If the base or top was exceedingly curved, you can repeat the cuts at the angle formed by the side and bottom cuts.







Fan as I am of kitchen gadgets, at this point I think it's much easier to remove the core with a knife rather than one of those clever cutters, but it takes a sharp knife, a steady hand and a good eye.


Eyeball the skinned fruit and determine the centerline through the core. Your first cut is most crucial, so take your time. Measure twice, cut once! With the fruit still vertical, bisect down the centerline. If you lay the thing down on its side it'll roll all over, so be sure to do this with the pineapple in a vertical position.







At this point you can either repeat the process by halving the halves again along the vertical axis, but I find cutting the halves in thirds (6 pieces total) makes smaller and nicer chunks. Of course, you could always half the halved halves (8 total), but that's too much work unless the pineapple's really big or you want tiny little chunks.







Then just lay the resulting spears flat on the cutting board and cut the core out with a single slice at the edge of the woody portion. You needn't remove every bit of the core because that part closest to the flesh isn't so woody and fibrous. Then just line the slices up and cut them at 1 or 2 inch intervals and you're done! Be sure to wash the knife and cutting board asap because bees and flies just love that sweet, sticky juice. (Okay, so you may not have that problem in America!)







Bon apetit!







Next time we'll learn how to remove the husk from a coconut using just a machete...

Yes, We Have No Bananas

Kerala boasts a huge variety of bananas for sale. Some are cooked and steamed, others eaten raw, and still others are used just as offerings at temple.

When you go the market you specify not only the type of banana you want, but also how ripe: whether it's a "today" banana, or a "tomorrow" banana.






A common breakfast food is puttu and steamed plantains. Puttu is pounded rice flakes mixed with water, layered between grated coconut and steamed in a metal tube for 15 minutes or so.

Once it's emptied on your plate, you mash up some steamed plantain, mix it with the puttu and enjoy. Quite filling and tasty, too.


Another breakfast dish is uppumavu: basically a very dry cream of wheat cooked with some mild spices.

You eat that with mashed bananas and a drop or two of ghee (clarified butter). The bananas eaten with uppumavu are called pallayam todan -- a different, smaller and sweeter kind than green plantains.






Because bananas are such an important staple, a specialized knife has been invented to cut them off the stems. It's pretty clever and works well, but I wouldn't want TSA finding one in my suitcase!

See Jane Run -- straight to her congress-critter

New CDC estimate: 1 in 110 children have autism

Yeah, and I'm queen of Romania. Tell me, will the greatest good for the greatest number be achieved by funding "special ed" for these supposedly developmentally disabled, autistic children; or would it be better spent funding "special ed" for the far more clearly defined 99th percentile on an IQ test?

Medicine in India

Preface: I've had Dupuytren's contracture in my left hand for a number of years and lately it's been getting worse, so much so that it's time to get it fixed. Given the cost of medical care in the US and that repair is fairly straightforward and commonplace, I decided to see what having it fixed in India was like.

It's 9:00 AM and I've tried calling the surgeon's two landlines to no avail. Dare I try his mobile? I do. He answers himself and says he'd be happy to provide a consult, just come down to the hospital and ask for his office at the Enquiry window. I tell him I'll be right down. 15 minutes and a 50¢ auto ride later, I'm standing at the Enquiry window at Ashwani hospital. Just then, a tiny little gal comes up and motions me to follow her. She doesn't speak a word, just beckons. At this point I'm not sure what's going on -- is she taking me to someone who speaks English? That might be good, so I follow. Ashwani is a private hospital and it's big -- well, probably not so big compared to UCSF or the like, but still... So I follow her up ramps and down corridors and through a warren of rooms until I'm shown to Dr Raman's office. Well, I've been expected! That's a relief.

Dr Raman's office is pretty rudimentary: about 20' x 10' with a desk in front and a tiny exam table behind, separated by a curtain. A few books, a sink and that's about it. Dr Raman himself is about 60-65, small brown and friendly. I thrust out my hand and say "Dupuytren's". He pokes the strained tendons, asks a few questions (Any trouble with your feet? Penis? Are you diabetic?) and then it's my turn to ask the questions. I'm concerned about a recurrence after surgery and he tells me it's unlikely. Any other post-surgical complications? "Yes, infection. Especially with you foreigners. You're not used to our germs." I had to laugh, having had some experience with hospital acquired infections in India, of which I won't go into detail. I ask about the surgery itself: local or general? Local, with a brachial block.

At this point I notice that after 5 minutes he's summed me up and is talking to me as an equal, not as some white-coated condescending priest of the "Medical Establishment". What a relief! No bullshit, no carefully guarded answers the lawyers have trained them to mouth, just an honest exchange of questions and answers and information.

He starts to explain the bystander system, but I know about that so he goes on. In India, you need someone with you when you go to hospital to act as an advocate, gopher and whatever. Maybe it's a requirement so they have someone to haul the body away if something goes wrong? I don't know. Surgery itself will take 45 minutes, but he wants me there for 8 hours, or until the sedation wears off. Stitches come out in 2 weeks and I tell him I heal quickly so it might be a few days before that (I've learned this the hard way -- having stitches pulled through healed flesh hurts!) He replies telling me that hands tend to heal more slowly that the rest of the body. I tell him I'm prone to keloid formation and he says not to worry, hands are an exception (True? I don't know).

Cost? 15,000 Rs. ($326).

That's sound about right. Mind you, this is a private hospital and a private doctor, so he's paying for the operating room (theater, they still call it down there), his office, and god knows what else. 15,000 is no small sum, either, and I have a hunch much of it is going to him; as is proper because I'm paying for his experience and knowledge. I wonder if he has malpractice insurance? ~snicker~

So that's about it. Just call him to make an OR appointment and then get the damned thing fixed. Easy-peasey. I can only imagine what it'd be like trying to get this done in US without insurance. Perhaps we could learn something from the Indian system? It's my hunch the damn lawyers are what have screwed it up so badly, and I'll give you two examples. First; I'm prone to boils and have learned the hard way it's better to have a sebaceous cyst excised BEFORE it gets infected and turns ugly. I had a doctor in Ohio who always sent them in to pathology afterwards, at a cost of $60 each. Why? Oh, the one-in-a-million chance the cyst wasn't a sebaceous cyst. The lawyers make him do it, you see. Better safe than sorry. Cui bono?

THIS speaks for itself. I can't get my teeth cleaned without indemnifying my dentist in proper legalese.

Sheesh.

General Kvetch

I've had a cold the past three days and I'm miserable. I haven't had a cold in years, and it's pushing 90° every day and my head and sinuses feels like a haggis about to burst. I'm going to wander down and get some codeine and paracetamol and a pineapple and come home and read Agatha Christie all day.

There was power cut yesterday afternoon. No problem, happens all the time. It eventually comes back. But by 6:30 PM, the sun had set and I notice my neighbors have power but I don't. I check the fuse box: all the switches are on and the weird little switch is green. I call the landlord and he sends up the neighbor from downstairs. He opens the fuse box and flips the weird little switch from green to red. Power restored. Yes, that's right: in India, red is on and green is off. Or maybe it's just this circuit breaker manufacturer, because I notice the labels are also marked the same way.

Ah, India. You gotta love it.