Three years back, I didn't wear jeans or trousers on a daily basis. I never wore less than 3 colours at a time. My daily dress was a salwar kameez.


It's a sort of fluid adaptable dress that comes to your rescue if you want to be ultra formal or ultra casual. But then I became a grad student here in the US. The cultural change has been massive. I not only went the unkempt daily-jeans route, but also turned completely monocolour. I have no idea how this happened. I look at my wardrobe and all I can see is miles and miles of:


WHAT THE HELL?? I had all the colours in the rainbow and additionally, several other vivid and wild shades in my wardrobe. I seem to be trapped in blue-scale now, too fashion-unconscious to get out.

Anyway, that is only a tangential point of the story. (Yeah, leave it to me to start at a tangent!) With the change in attire, new hair-splitting avenues have popped up. I never had to deal with the alien concept of SIZES before.

Three years back, my idea of trousers was a multi-pleated billowing cotton/satin/silk salwar worn under a long kameez (hindi/urdu for shirt). I guess that explained why I ended up picking size 12 jeans and ended up looking like the next-door rap star/pimp in my first year here. I had enough of the whole hanging-by-mere-faith-and-nothing-else-on-your-booty style the next year and went for a comfortable size 10. Last christmas, I was still comfortable at 8. Yesterday, I found out that for a pair of shorts to fit well and not look like a tent and yet be comfortable, they need to be size 6.

Did I just drop SIX sizes over the past two years?????? Considering, my weight has been constantly hovering at same figure over these said two years, the size drop is highly suspect. Apart from my perception of what a trouser should be, nothing else has changed. I think it would be safe to say that I have been tricked by vanity sizing. After my initial fascination with the in-da-hood baggy style, I have been the same size. It is just called "10" at walmart, "8" at old navy and "6" at Dots. Does it then mean that the more "upscale" a shop gets the more abridged their size-chart? Are these stores pandering to the egos of their respective clienteles?

The sizing mystery doesn't end at clothes. It extends to shoes. I am 7.0 in timberland, 5.0 in Hush-Puppies, 5.5 in adidas and 6.0 in reebok. Does this in some way reflect the average shoe size of the customers of these shoe-brands? Are marketing ploys employed to carefully profile the average customer and make them feel better.. for eg. if you are a die-hard hiker, you probably don't want to be told that you have feet sized similar to a dainty Japanese lady across the planet.

Well, in all their planning, they obviously left me out. This crazy sizing is driving me nuts and I am confused like hell. I am like an electron at many different places - stretched out from sizes 6 to 10 and my feet are nebulous clouds of feet-matter from 5.5 to 7.0. I am not vain. I am a size-monster.



Hahahaa... if you thought I looked like the girl in the salwar kameez, the vain joke is on you, sucker!

Hey Felly and Lauren,

Is this what you do Wednesday evenings on the floor above the art shop on Main Street?!!!???



Consider me bowled over! :)

In an interesting experiment today, I made dinner in 20 minutes flat set to some heavy metal goodness. The recipe is as follows:

~--Prologue: Witchery->> Fast as a Shark (Accept Cover)--~
Chop/Prep Veggies
Boil water, Turn off, Add cous cous. Set aside.

~--Body: Barilari->> Amo de la Oscuridad--~

To 1 tablespoon of peanut oil
Add a pinch of cumin
Add 4-5 small thai red chillies (chopped), saute for 10 seconds
Add julienned onions, saute for a minute
Add salt, pinch of turmeric powder, a pinch of black pepper powder
and a pinch of coriander powder
Add chopped Zucchini and saute for a minute
Add chopped carrot and sweet peas, saute for a minute

~--Epilogue: Grave Digger->> King Pest--~
Add cous cous and salt to taste
Stir Stir Stir

~--Conclusion: Deep Purple->> Rat Bat Blue--~
Dinner is Served!


;) ~--Postscript: Motorhead->> Smiling like a killer--~ ;)

So, get this! I work on the same floor and in fact, the same department as another (e:strip)per (yeah, not imk2. We are at WAR.) and I didn't know this for a WHOLE of three months!!!!

I was lounging in his cool office-space the other day and I noticed this very familiar picture on the desk. I thought it was (e:jim). When I looked closely, it wasn't (e:jim) but I was convinced it was his brother or some cousin. So I bust into the same office today and point to the picture and ask, is the last name of that bloke in the picture, Lindley? He goes, "No, why?" I blabber on and on about how I know this Jim who is totally like that person in the picture. He exclaims, "That Jim who does all the cool photos etc.". I nod and then he says, " Hey! Do you know Paul Visco, who works in the Washington Building". I then take over and rattle off a string of (e:Roswell)-Rippers, and he says, "Yeah, I know most of them". And then it dawns on me and I ask, "WHO ARE YOU??" Turns out its none other than (e:boxerboi), that avatar with the hot red Tee, the sun-shades and the uber cool back pack!

So I guess Buffalo is a tiny world and all cool (e:strip)pers do work at Roswell*. Haha. :)

PS: *Yeah, (e:imk2), you don't get mentioned. I don't care if you wear the most amazing clothes and see niche movies. You absolutely withheld important information. So, we are officially at war. ;)

The votes are in. I put in my ballot for another year at the building with the hollow lions, terrible heating and lukewarm water.

Here's why. Living in and around Linwood has suddenly become very fashionable. Rumours abound that it is going to become the next gated community north of California. The direct effect of such hearsay and feigned snobbishness of the neighbourhood are crazy rents.

I spent four days hunting for livable and affordable flats around the place and frankly, I am so overwhelmed that I have reached a state of compromise where I think that $600/month may not be too unreasonable a price to pay for a simple studio! Though I have signed on the dotted line for yet another 365 and 1/4th of a day of lukewarm shower-serfdom at the Mayflower, it still seems quite outrageous to me that I managed to find no other place half as reasonable as my building!

The rundown of the hunt (and these were perhaps the only flats available within my budget range):

1. Target at Summer and Linwood (Not my building): Horrible smelly carpet with stains. Yuck. No more carpet tyranny in my life. Ever. Wouldn't live on a carpet even for free. I am done with carpets for life.

2. Target further down Allen: $400 without utilities. $300/month for utilities for the whole of the winter. So essentially $750/month including internet and everything. For a grad student, this is financial suicide. Unless I want to live on Ramen Noodles and spend my time coupon clipping. Which, by the way, I don't because it also happens to be the perfect recipe for depression.

3. Target on Franklin: AWESOME one-bedroom flat. Maintained like a dream. Even smelled nice! Landlord: a gem of a person. $440 a month. The catch, you ask? 9Ft ceilings and thus, $300/month utilities. Same Ramen Noodle issue as above. I pass. (If anyone is interested, and can afford this, I can give you the landlord's contact.)

4. Multiple targets in Hotel Lenox: The one bedroom flat had a bleak and lifeless view from its windows with a kitchen thrown in as an afterthought into a dark corridor of the flat. Another studio had a kitchen with no windows. Call me conceited and spoiled, but to me, the kitchen is the most important room in a house. It's a room where love is grown, happiness is concocted, nostalgia is stirred, music is dreamed up, dances are brewed, ideas are born and orgasms are perfected. The lack of windows and natural light in a kitchen is more abominable than anything else. I retract my earlier statement about the carpet. A kitchen without windows is the living hell I don't want to venture into. Ever.

5. Target on Irving: Nice flat with the blinds drawn. If you are okay with staring at a collection of assorted trashcans from around the neighbourhood and the wall of your neighbour's house 3 feet away, this flat may be perfect for you. It certainly would make me hasten to the first airplane headed back home.

6. The best arrangement of 'em all: Living with (e:Drew) and (e:Janelle). Awesome house, pets I never owned (and probably never will) but have always wanted, ONE-HELL-OF-AN-AMAZING cook (yeah, I mean (e:janelle). Sorry, (e:drew). I have no proof of your culinary skills. ;)) to cook with, lower than crazy rent (in fact, unreasonably so), and best of all, living with one of the coolest (e:strip)pers around!!! But (and isn't there always one? :( ) they live on Lexington. For my lazy and erratic grad student ways, the dream ends there.

I get up barely 1/2 hour before I have to make it to work, walk/run like crazy down the streets and reach at the nick of time. Sometimes, I don't come back till 3:00 AM. No matter how hard I try, I keep slipping into these irregular hours and last minute marathon spells. I delude myself that all this counts towards my exercise regimen (that is non-existent, BTW) Living in a flat very near work acts as a buffer to all these random acts of craziness. I can afford to not be dependent on any transport but my own and also afford to not own a car. So, even though I am TRULY tempted by their offer, I can't take them up on it. I know that the solution is more discipline. But currenly this is in severe short-supply. :/

So yes, there is indeed, no such thing as a perfect flat. There are always kinks and cracks, virtual or otherwise. The tact is to whine and blog about them till they sort of go away from your consciousness.