was tiring, but quite satisfying.

rp clearup - as expected, only a minimal number turned up, the usual suspects didn't. but for all that, a great job was done and we were finished by 4. despite taking superlong breaks. very dusty and grimy and shitty, but it's very satisfying when you see a room all cleared up. oh and hacking apart all the wooden stuff was actually quite fun, if scary what with the saw being waved around by a half-drunk shooj and the splinters and the loud noises of people jumping on wodden things in order to break them, and the hammers and the screwdrivers. hardware, hee. ok i did not just say that.

oh and lunch with kel, worm, shooj, claud. fun. for once no leering indian guy in delifrance. i had a delipotato and a not-very-good chocolate ice blend that cost more than the delipotato. delipotato was quite good thouhg, but they should've put more egg in. there was far too little egg for that huge potato.

home, and a good shower. then my mom decided to have me make paayasam (this indian sweet soup thingy) because it's the lord krishna's birthday today. and she was... indisposed, so i had to do it. oh before that, i drew little krishna feet on the floor. like kolams (the white riceflour designs on the floor, except these are little feet to represent the feet of the child Krishna.) I remember when my brother was small my mom used to dip his feet in riceflour and make prints on the floor with his feet. I imagine she used to do the same when I was small, before my brother was born. Indians do such cute things. Anyway it was my first time drawing feet on the floor, for that matter first serious time attempting a kolam, and the feet turned out quite alien-like. Rather disproportionate in various ways.

Back to the paayasam. The first thing I cook all by myself, albeit with my mom standing next to me and instructing, and it's something completely useless like paayasam which nobody cooks on a daily basis, meaning that it'll be of no use to me in the future. Although, perhaps my future will consist of taking out/eating out on a daily basis, and on these occasional religious occasions when the Women of the House are required to cook things, I will be of use. Only I was never one for religious ceremony, so uh. What the hell. But also, this paayasam was not the type that i like, cos apparently the type that i like is more complicated to make and there was no time plus i'm hardly a cookery expert so that was a no-go. In any case, I had to stand around for a really long time waiting for the lentils to get mushy, and stirring them the whole time to ensure they didn't stick to the bottom of the pan. cooking is a long and tiring job, but while waiting for the lentils to mushify i did manage to start reading angels and demons and get through almost a hundred pages. more about that later. Oh and at the beginning I was supposed to roast them. I managed to burn them instead, quite quickly. My mother was astounded how quickly I managed to burn them. She said that it must've been quite hard to burn them in a matter of seconds. Ultimately the paayasam turned out tasting quite bad, but apparently it was supposed to taste like that. As in, most people are supposed to find that taste good. Although Indian food also has that requisite number of religion/health-related food items that taste absolutely gross. I've never had any of them, but looking is quite enough. Like this thing called kashaayam which is this gross brown substance and is supposed to be really healthy. And this religious thingy which is supposedly composed of various cow things, like cow dung and cow pee and cow milk and cow other-things. My uncle was telling me about it, that boys have to eat that mixture when they get their sacred threads (poonals). I'm not sure if he was joking, but thank god I'm not a brahmin boy. My brother is, heehee. He's got his poonal already, and he says he had to eat that thing, but he could also be joking. The men in my family spend far too much time joking.

Ok I just went off on some wild tangent there. So I made paayasam, it tasted bad but only to me it seems, and my mother was proud that her baby cooked and her first dish was sweet therefore my life will be sweet or some bullshit. And then I had to go to her friend's place for Janmaashtami (Krishna-birthday) celebrations which was utterly yawn-worthy and stupid. I mean, I'm all for Indian festivity but this was a bunch of people sitting around and being serious and discussing matters of Extreme Gravity and meditating and doing other boring things on the occasion of the birth of the most mischievous god in Hindu mythology/theology. Seriously, what gives? And the whole satsang thing among that group of people - it's so pseudo-letsbebetterpeople. Sheesh. Ok, for fear that one of their daughters might stumble on this blog, I will not say anything further. Only that the real spiritualism is somewhat lacking, and that even if it was there, in my opinion gatherings of that sort are a useless way of being spiritual. Ugh. Whatever. And trying to force me to sing random bhajans. And looking all devotional while people are singing bhajans -really badly- and getting so affronted when someone suggested that the 10th avatar (kalki) had already appeared as the prophet mohammed. ok sigh i think i said i'd shut up, so i will now.

home, and haagen dazs to make me feel better. and wedding plans with bernasty. being random. honeymoon's in pondicherry, everyone's invited to do community service with us. ok seriously. interested people please tell me. i can't have more than ten people in total though. cos this woman from the pondicherry auroville place itself is arranging everything for us, except airfare. after the dates are confirmed we can settle air tickets. air tickets will be the most expensive part of the trip. india tickets aren't very cheap.

my mom's very nice body shop moisturiser on my hands now. it smells heavenly. i'm sick of my marks&sparks moisturiser. i shall keep borrowing this one from my mom, until she relents and buys me a bottle for myself. yay.

going to sleep nowwww. my arms hurt from all the lifting. although other did a considerable lot more lifting than me. hmm.