2024 Week 38: Paneer Masala

I'll start with the animal pictures. We saw a massive neighbourhood cat. He's like a huge arse version of Miaou2.

 

The real Miaou2 screams to be let in the toilet so he can drink his favourite drink, toilet water.

Life is busy over at Pets Hideout. We are full house at the moment and every day I haul a ~10kg bag of used litter downstairs. The denizens are: Chako,

Haybeon,

Muffin & Miffy,

and Yuri the sofa bun.

Hana has gone home after staying here for 4 months.

It's been a good food week. First there was Banh Mi Saigon on Monday night. The standard banh mi is huge and crusty, stuffed with an unbelievable amount of hams and spams, plus pickled radish and carrot, sliced chili, fried chives and pork floss. Jon got the grilled pork noodle bowl which I think can feed 2 pax. We also got the summer rolls, which we couldn't finish but I ate for lunch the next day.

Had homemade burgers on Wednesday night because Jon was flying off on Thursday and I wanted to use up the veg and buns. They were nice. Also made grilled zucchini on the side.

Finally I met Joel for the following resplendent feast at Jaggi's on Saturday. Clockwise L-R: butter chicken, seekh kebab, pulau, ridiculously good mint & onion relish thing, mutton masala, paneer masala and aloo gobi. We came here for meat but the veggie dishes far outshone the meat ones IMO. Next round: Annalakshmi.

Most of my other meals have been plain. Salad and bread, avocado on bread, peppers and lentils, ham and cucumbers and bread, Subway.

I theorise that eating plainly for most meals makes me more sensitised to the experience of "special occasion" food.

Apart from eating and petting I have been busy this week with other stuff. I keep a time use record so I'll just let the stats do the talking:

• The Beyond book (2 days out of 7)
• Spending time with parents (2 days)
• Yoga (3 days)
• Writing on Substack (3 days)
• Sending/collecting Jon from airport (2 days)

No meetups this week but I did spend one day checking out the denizens of Stranger Conversations. The people who were quietly reading and writing looked all right, but the ones who spoke - or, rather, competitively virtue-signalled in the form of rhetorical questions ("how can we connect authentically as human beings, while living an intentional life?") disturbed me. Such go-nowhere musings would have been quite acceptable in some derelict college den with a communal bong, but the people in question are freshly-scrubbed, handsomely-dressed, well-remunerated professionals. Is this what happens when sellouts think they are being revolutionary?

I wonder if they actually inhabit a different universe, one where taking career breaks or freelancing or "Doing What You Love" does not lead one to poverty or privation. Or maybe they're good at hiding it. Or maybe I am jealous that my hard-won sense of financial stability and confidence is theirs for the taking, just like that. I will have to think about that more, but in the meantime maybe I will try writing like one of the Intentional Living Elite so that I can manifest a meaningful life myself.