straggler details
Two things I spaced mentioning in yesterday's post:
#1. Shobhit's cousin's name is Anubhab, and both Shobhit and Vinaya spelled it wrong in texts: Anubhav. Apparently Anubhav is a much more common name, but when I asked Anubhab to clarify when we were at Abhishek's and Vinaya's on Saturday evening, he told me it is indeed Anubhab. That's how it's spelled on his Facebook page, after all. I wondered if it had to do with the fact that in Hindi, "b" and "v" sounds actually sound very, very similar. Anubhab told me that name translates directly from Hindi to English as "Experience."
. . . Well, isn't this fascinating? When you put in "experience" into the English-Hindi translator online, it comes back . . . Anubhav. What the hell? So Anubhab tells me it really ends with a b; also tells me it means experience; the online translation ends it with a v. Maybe the letters are just interchangeable in Hindi. All I can say for certain is I have it from the source himself that the official spelling of his name is with a b at the end. (It's pronounced "Uh-noo bub".)
#2. The samosas Shobhit deep fried on Sunday evening using the very last of the leftover potato filling made Wednesday last week, and with fresh-made breading made with dough from scratch -- there were six I brought to work yesterday. To a person, they were raved about. And I found six people to give them to, so I didn't get any of those: Scott and Noah as always; Terry, the HBC Merchandiser; Lynn Vea, the "Executive Chef" who sits behind me on the days she comes into the office (she raved the most, and practically danced when I told her I left her a gift); Aimée, the Office Manager; and Claudia.
That's the last of the samosas for another while, anyway -- I think Shobhit might make more for Christmas. I really want to do a video one of these days of the entire process, so that can serve as the closest approximation of a "recipe" that people have asked for online many times over -- except that Shobhit never does recipes, and they are slightly different every time. The biggest problem with this idea is that samosas alone are a multi-day process, with Shobhit typically rolling out dough and chopping vegetables often while I'm not around. Getting video of every part of the process, which would be ideal, is going to be a challenge. I'd still love to do it one of these days, though; I think it would be fun.
By the way, in the fairly unlikely event any of you are still (or were ever) interested, I finally finished captioning all the photos in both the photo albums for the Lighting of the Tree Celebration on Friday and taking Anubhab to Snoqualmie Pass on Saturday.
What do I update you on for yesterday, then? It was a pretty low-key day. I walked home from work, pit-stopping at Target for tin foil and floss along the way; dropped off dry cleaning; and then I was just starting the risotto dinner when Shobhit got home from work. I deliberately made up the three boxes of it into two different pots, so Shobhit could have his own version with lots of chopped jalapeño in it, something I will avoid if I can. I had one serving of it and dished one leftover lunch, and then put what I had left in to mix with Shobhit's batch -- I was able to dish two lunch containers of his for him.
We then watched an old episode of Married... with Children that we guessed must have been a season premiere, perhaps for season five. (Yep.) I didn't bother mentioning it last night, but that episode in particular I thought was truly awful. The Bundys attempt to go on vacation, and nearly the entire episode is set in a car stuck in standstill traffic overnight. The people in the car next to them pick a fight and they all get out and brawl.
To be fair, the whole point of Married... with Children was always to be trashy, but this was truly over the top -- in a way that, I thought, would only appeal to audiences with the basest of instincts. You really wouldn't ever see this shit on mainstream TV today. Although the show was never a particularly huge hit, their own ratings peaked with seasons five and six, and I feel like this trashiness was an attempt to up the ante with its increasing fan base over the previous years. It felt like a show trying too hard to do more of what audiences were increasingly coming for, in essence becoming too successful for its own good -- even within the context of being about a family of trashy losers. In any case, the show occasionally gave me a chuckle back in the day, and it still does occasionally, but I didn't find that particular episode funny at all.
There's probably a key difference, too, between seeing the show once a week over traditional seasons spanning over a decade, and binge-watching its dark trashiness in a matter of days or weeks. It may very well be that too much Married... with Children all at once just isn't that good for you.
So! Then we finally gave the final, sixth season of House of Cards a look -- after being soured on Kevin Spacey, who turns out to be way worse a human than anyone ever imagined, this is the first, last and only season without him. It's all about Claire now. That's still kind of appropriate, because I always felt there were hints that she was even more ruthless than Francis Underwood anyway. In any case, so far so good. Nowhere near the show's peak quality, and I agree with Shobhit that the score is kind of bad this time around, but I do really like the cinematography as well as the performances. I'm happy to stick with it for now, especially knowing this is it for the series.
[posted 12:23 pm]