Kumar's Musings - Chocolate, Pistachios, Cake

Musings Home :: Personal

Kumar
Contact me here

Subscribe
Subscribe to my syndicated feed.

♦♦♦ By Categories ♦♦♦

Feedback (1)
First Thoughts (1)
Personal (4)
Quirks (1)
Random (3)
Recreation (2)
Music (1)
Television (1)

♦♦♦ By Calendar ♦♦♦

Mon, 06 Mar 2006

Chocolate, Pistachios, Cake

Original date: February 9, 2006; completion date: March 3, 2006.

My current favourite one is Riesen®. I'm wasting money, and more importantly my health and my teeth on them, to be sure. But they are really tasty. I'm sounding like an ad (no, I haven't gotten anything from them) but it's good stuff.

Now, I know that almonds are much better, but I do love them pistachios. There's this farmers' market on Sundays in Brentwood (on Gretna Green, open 9am to ~2pm) where you get the best ones. if you go there, buy them from the stall close to San Vicente Blvd - the same person who sells raisins and other dried fruits as they have the best ones. They only carry them when they're in season though which is on now. I can never remember when the season ends or starts. I prefer the unsalted ones to get the pure taste from nature. Hey, go ahead and get the salted if that's what you fancy. Salt is naturally occurring too, so you can't go too wrong (check with your doctor, please, before taking my recommendation and messing up your health). Hey, if you still want almonds go to the Saturday market in Santa Monica on Arizona and get them from the guy selling the pre-packaged ones on the south side of the street — his stall is very close to and just west of 3^rd Street Promenade.

Enough plugs for things. On to more interesting and more time-wasting activities while still on the topic of food. I'm just going to mix in some TV and now you know we're really getting somewhere.

As I've mentioned before (see My first thoughts...), I'm a big fan of "That 70s Show." Do high school kids really get so much kicks out of messing up their close friends? It certainly seems to be the definition of friendship on this show. And they still stick together, through thick and thin, and double-crosses, girlfriend stealing, "burns" (I really love that term, esp "Uh Burn" and "Buuuurrrrrn"), etc. That's real friendship, I guess. Or just the TV version of it. Probably more the latter.

Anyway, the cake part. This part of it is mostly contrived to fit a pattern. It's my miniiature tribute to Haruki Murakami. You need to figure out the rest. If you're a fan of his, it'll be not too hard. If not, you may not care anyway. I'm sure I'll write more about him before too long. But, please don't ask as you won't get an answer from me.

Back to the cake part. Anyway when the woman (Donna) says "I love you" to her boyfriend (Eric), he comes back with "(long pause) I love cake" and later with "I love you (long pause) man" and eventually with "I love you" at the end of the show. Why is this interesting? I guess it isn't except as an artifice for the show to play out what it needs.

[/Personal/Random] Permanent links: This day w/ this entry

Tue, 07 Feb 2006

There are reasons, aren't there?

Original date: February 7, 2006

Do you wonder about rites, rituals, customs, etc? How do they get started and why do people continue doing them? There are reasons, I'm sure. The original reasons are almost always lost and they become things that people do. Habits.

Oftentimes, the value changes too. They still have utility, just not the original one. That doesn't matter so much.

Other things that aren't rituals that are still habits are very interesting in their own way. People classify them as good habits, bad habits. Some even call them unavoidable habits. Now that's an addiction, for sure, even if it isn't harmful to the person doing them or to others. I'm losing track of my main issue here. Let's get back to that.

A couple of things triggered this. My habitual behaviour under certain circumstances, be they riding the bus, reacting to certain things and even in certain ways in meetings and with certain people. Or even talking to myself and it comes out aloud once in a while. Doesn't that happen to you? Are you embarrassed when it does? Even if no one was around to notice? Now, what does it mean if you're not embarrassed even if people are around and noticed. Most of the time, people pretend that they didn't notice anything anyway.

The main thing that triggered this thought process was the coverage of a funeral of a famous person today. It was an important person. But why the ceremony? It certainly is a celebration of the life. Making their family feel (or only now realize) how important this person was is certainly one of the reasons. Setting an example for others is another. Hopefully, it their greatness that would inspire people and not the fact that there was such a big deal made about them. It doesn't even matter as long as they actually do good things that benefit others.

I started doing some web searches on funerals and found a large body of work related to this.Here's a good quote: "The funeral declares that a death has occurred. It commemorates the life that has been lived, and offers family and friends the opportunity to pay tribute to their loved one." (source: http://familyestate.com/main/funeral.html) Many of these talk about closure, acceptance, etc. Those most of us recognize. Most of these views are from sites that provide services for funerals.

I really liked this article entitled "why funerals?" from a group called American Society for Aging.

It is interesting that none of these articles (at least the few that I read) talks about setting an example and that's the most obvious one to me.

We need to have some semblance of a feeling of control over our lives. That's the reality we understand, need for our sanity. Ignoring them is always an option, I suppose. "what you don't know won't hurt you" is a common expression. Trust me, I don't know many cases when that's remotely true. What you don't know comes back to bite you most of the time.

Yes, there had better be reaons.

[/Personal/Random] Permanent links: This day w/ this entry

Mon, 06 Feb 2006

Not too bad a Sunday

Original date: February 6, 2006

Not too bad a day after all.

The running wasn't too great, but I completed it anyway. I guess leftover tiredness from Friday's 10K run. It wasn't a race, just decided to do it as I haven't run the Super Bowl 10K in Redondo Beach since 2003.

Watching the Super Bowl with friends was great. Plus the fact that the Steelers won made it nice. That doesn't matter too much when all's said and done. What's the connection, anyway? The fact that you lived in Pennsylvania, lo those many years ago. You've lived in the West coast considerably longer. It is still hard to give up your early experiences. Pennsylvania was your first home in the states.

Why the sudden switch to the second person? I'm not sure. Probably still a little less pretentious than using the third person, I suppose. I'm sure, I'll use the 3rd person too in one of these. Just try to look past that, alright?

The Steelers played pretty well but not great. Seattle played less well. I guess the Steelers were able to overcome more than Seattle is what makes it more interesting. In most of the statistics, they were worse off, but still came ahead. Which means that they did pretty well when it counted the most. They didn't let the opposition take advantage of the 2 interceptions and did take advantage of theirs. Take away the return for a touchdown and the interception so close to the goal line and the end might've been the other way around. Isn't that how sports go? Some lucky breaks for sure, but taking advantage of the breaks is where it seems to make the final impact. Now, that's a life lesson for us all.

So, what makes this day a "Not so bad" one? It was mostly because I was able to see some people who I haven't seen since last year. And, the children too. That makes it especially nice.

Not too bad a Sunday. Definitely.

[/Personal/Random] Permanent links: This day w/ this entry

Sun, 29 Jan 2006

Quirks & beliefs - Part I (Of many, I'm sure)

Original date: January 29, 2006 (started on 2005/11/11)

You don't know it yet, but I like parenthetical comments - sort of like voices in my own head, but not quite (I hope! See, your first glimpse of it already.). The other thing you need to know is I really don't like air-quotes. Real quotes are acceptable - and in many cases necessary - unless one's a plagiarist (Please see my very first sentence of - and, here it comes - "My first thoughts...".). You may notice places already in this brief note where many people would place quotes in writing or use them when saying them. Just stop thinking about it.

I'll stop now.

Well, maybe just two more things. I'm not a big fan of exclamation points either, except where appropriate. Again, see my first sentence in "My first thoughts...." Finally, I tend to use the words hope and hopefully regularly and only in the meaning of having hope or full of hope, not in the sense of expecting the worst. At least, that's optimistic, don't you think?

[/Personal/Quirks] Permanent links: This day w/ this entry