Post Punk Kitchen Forum

i am so frustrated! why are some people soooooo unprofessional about keeping appointments, calling when they say they will, remembering dates, etc? i have a business relationship with a friend where we're supposed to be working on a project and she consistently forgets to call, makes skype appts and then breaks them, never responds to emails, etc. i'm so tempted to just tell her, you know, i can't work with you any more, but i hate to cut people off.

shiitake. I woke up (it's the middle of the night) feeling really weak and starving and thirsty, so I drank half a bottle of kombucha and a piece of toast, and proceeded to projectile vomit. All over the place as I ran to the bathroom. I just spend an hour scrubbing and I am sitting here shivering and feeling awful. I have to get on a flight to San Francisco today and I'm so worried that I have the flu again, which is SUPER bad because the woman I am visiting is in an extremely compromised state of health.

ooh sorry torque that is annoying.
vijita! I'm sorry you're ill. Love you much. Perhaps you can wear a mask when visiting your friend, just in case? I wore one the other week when visiting mine, who has zero immune system at times, even though I think it was allergies I was experiencing.
I hope it's not the flu but a bad reaction to kombucha in the early morning. Hugs!

Entertained by someone I work with in a different company who likes to work on Saturdays because he emailed me referencing a department in his company that wasn't currently open. As if I would be at work.

A lot of people I work with are workaholics but I am making a sincere effort to not be a workaholic and enjoy life outside of work.

On another front, things with the crush are going very very well. (Being an adult and actually giving someone my number is a good thing)

I felt like I had to respond to this, but want to preface by saying that I adore poopiebitch and paprikapapaya and don't mean to offend, but only to perhaps offer a perspective.



I don't think its culturally Indian (or South Asian) to live in cramped quarters with practically nothing. There are many South Asians who live in their own homes, not with extended family or others and many have very nice furnishings etc.

I do think that when you move to a foreign country like the US and Canada (I moved to the US when I was 16 and many of our family members moved to Canada in the 80s), everything seems really expensive to you and you don't have much saved up if you're coming from non-European countries. Also, you often don't yet have good credit to get credit cards and you also know that you don't have anyone to take you in if you lose your housing. And so you try and keep as much cash as you can for emergencies. At least in the US, it feels like a single healthcare emergency can bankrupt even a middle class family who doesn't have insurance. When we lived in the US for my Dad's post-doc, my mother became so overprotective because even a regular MD visit was a lot to pay for.

As an example of an immigrant, who is not South Asian, who had a similar experience, one of my friends moved here from Ghana and after being homeless for a few months (they went from JFK right to living in the public hallway near the apartment of people they knew so they could store their suitcase and use the bathroom), started living in the same type of cramped housing without furniture etc, because they were trying to get established.

And students (the population Poopie's friend works with) tend to be poorer and less rooted in the community than others, and often live in smaller spaces because they don't have much money and don't accumulate much because they are hoping to find work and are ready to move anywhere in the country on graduation.

Paprikapapaya, I am sorry that the baby is loud. Leela had a period of a few weeks (probably about 3 - 4 (but everything in that time is a haze to me)) where she cried a lot. It was because her gut wasn't yet mature and she had gas pain :( But it passed and she hasn't cried a lot since, so hopefully it will al pass quickly!

pet peeve: people who post links on facebook or twitter to their amazon wish lists and say "hey it's almost my birthday, just saying!" and then also it's full of expensive stuff.

Immigrants from Central/South America have similar experiences. Where I grew up (California), many actually would live in a van near a river or a shanty. Others would share a small apartment. Although, historically, smaller living quarters were accepted. My grandfather built a 3 bedroom house in California (fairly normal) and had 7 kids (again fairly normal for a Catholic family of the time). There was some creative living arrangements when all the kids were younger but it worked out.

It isn't just immigrants though, I used to live above a deaf woman who had around 8 or 9 kids. It would've been a 3 bedroom apartment so it often got loud because of the kids but it was louder because the deaf woman would scream as a normal voice level so whenever she talked, it was a scream (I don't know how her throat didn't hurt). I figured it was just kind of life as apartment living.

Thanks for the perspective, both poopie and Tofulish! I appreciate it.

One thing I always found interesting was the way these families use space that we (we meaning...me, I guess) consider "dead" space. And by that I mean, the mother of the crying baby and a few other young Indian moms sometimes walk the halls of the building - not to get from point A to point B, but just to get out of the cramped apartment and walk their babies. That's something that I've never thought to do, hang out in the hallway. But why not? Also, many of the boys played cricket in the side yard between my apartment building and the house next door. To me, it's always been this dead space; no one goes there except to let their dogs poop. Sure, the grass gets cut, but I've never thought of hanging out in it.

I'm trying hard to not use "othering" language, because it's not like that. But it's been a learning experience for me, seeing how newly-landed folks are adapting to this part of the world. Oh, also, I thought it was really cute that so many of the young Indian men were wearing parkas back in September on their way to work. I snickered to myself and thought, "Oh, you just wait..."

Anyway, I hope the baby is well. I think he's a bit older than newborn, so I don't know.

People do that?!
I only ever drop gift hints to family, and that's because they'll straight up ask me what I want/need if I don't.

(...not that proud after all)

Thanks for the perspective Tofulish! I certainly didn't mean to suggest all South Asians choose to live in cramped conditions, and reading back over my post I definitely didn't word it very well. I also do want to add that my friend expressed that those he had worked with who did choose to live that way (even after getting high paying jobs in the medical field) did so in order to live in nice houses with nice furnishing later, with no debt. I don't think that came through in my original post. That mentality - of saving and buying rather than going into debt so we can have things NOW - is what I meant when I said I thought it was cultural <3

yeah, i've seen it a few times recently and it just strikes me as so tasteless!

BTW: my birthday is coming up soon! Should I PM you the link to my wish list or just post it here?

I second Panda. (Although if it were me, I'd probably never talk to any of them again.)

Heh, I cut my hair over the sink just before Christmas. Didn't leave as much as that (my hair is very fine and not very abundant). I'm not sure I'm thrilled with the result, but it beats paying someone who will probably snark about the condition of my hair while they cut it and ignore my instructions.

I admit I do this sometimes, but always as a joke! I don't usually get birthday gifts from people so there's honestly no motive behind it. But if I post a link for some cool new thing I saw, I might be like "hey, check it out. it also happens to be close to my birthday"

Edit: oops! I just clicked submit and then noticed that people are linking to their wish lists! That's definitely tacky.

yeah, if you were like "hey it's almost my birthday" and the linked to a new car or something, i'd just think it was a joke, obvs.

Hey guys it is only 324 days until my birthday http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/17melrn ... iginal.jpg

Roommate complaint ahead!

Our roommate's bathroom is also the shared bathroom for guests. We had friends over for the weekend while he was away, so I cleaned his toilet (which was a forking disgusting moldy mess) and tossed the four or five towels that were in the bathroom floor into his bedroom (which was covered in dirty laundry anyway). He waits until all of his towels are dirty to clean them, which is fine, but it's kind of gross leaving them in the bathroom floor for weeks at a time. There's a little cubby under the sink that would fit a laundry basket perfectly, and that's where he leaves them. Anyway, this was last weekend, and today, I noticed that he'd tossed those towels back into the bathroom. Does not compute.

Aw, I like it when people do that! If I'm going to get someone a gift, I want to get them someone they actually want. If I wasn't going to get them a gift anyway, I don't have to look at their wishlist...but it makes it easier to at least get an idea of what they might like if I do want to get them something. I dunno, maybe I'm weird but I think it's cool when people ask for what they want instead of just hoping someone will magically read their mind ;-)

Ripping up the carpeting in my room. Sooo not fun. I'm doing the sections that are not underneath furniture now, and dreading the point at which I have to start carting all the furniture around. I'll feel really accomplished when it's all done, though!

Must... Not... Go... Crazy...

Biker boy's niece had her baby today so he's a great uncle now. Babies being born makes it a good day.

I just broke a hammer. I was trying to get up some carpet tack board and it was really stuck, so I put all my strength into it and the hammer just kind of bent in half. Either I am really strong or that was a really shitty hammer.