Fuck You, Domino’s Cheese burst

I got to leave work early today.  It was painfully exciting (painful being the important word).  The bus was waiting at 3:40am.  The driver was sleeping on top of the bus.  It was a new napping spot for me.  As other people trickled out of the building, I figured they had never seen him sleep on top of the bus either.  They all pointed, laughed and taunted as the driver slowly climbed down with his sleeping mat (a folded up piece of cardboard from some box).  He walked down the street and peed on a lamppost. 

I desperately wished he would climb into the bus and start our scary journey back to the Taj President.  I wanted to be home desperately because of the Domino’s Cheeseburst Pizza. 

On Friday night, the company employees from New York were all hanging out.  We were drinking wine and having random conversation when pizza came up as a topic of discussion.  Bobby went on and on about Domino’s and how delicious the cheeseburst pizza was.  I asked about its ingredients.  “Well,” He said, “Imagine stuffed crust pizza, but put the cheese everywhere… not just on the crust.  Put it under the sauce and cheese.  It’s liquid and delicious.”   Lana agreed with him – it had to be good.

Today, Allison asked me if I was hungry around 11pm (India Time).  I had missed breakfast because sleep was so good in the king sized bed.  I agreed and suggested the cheeseburst.  I have my half of an eight inch pizza, and it was decadent.  I wish I had died right there – so the rest didn’t have to happen.  It was culinary masterpiece, but why don’t they sell it in the states?

I know why – because it is the most corrosive thing to the human digestive system you could possibly imagine.  Something about synthetic liquid that oozes out from under the sauce and cheese means delicious.  What words identify it?  Delicious? Yes!  Interesting? Yes! Fatty? You bet your enormous ass cheeks it is!  I will never eat it again. 

After 1am I was probably ready to shove my hand down my throat and rip out my stomach.  It would hurt much less than it did, but I refrained from making a large scene.  It wouldn’t have been too bad if I got a case of the runs… that would be amazingly forgiving because you always feel better after the first occurrence.  This was just a gnawing at the pit of my stomach.  As if Satan’s evil baby was growing in my stomach – preparing to burst out – Alien Style – it churned.  I couldn’t do anything, and my body wanted to regurgitate.  I have problems with that – I don’t regurgitate unless my body makes it mandatory.  This was just a strong suggestion.  I imed by boss in New York and asked him two questions.  The first being work related (I had to keep this professional).  The second involved the nature of my leaving early and how the cheeseburst was more evil than Hitler was. 

He knew of the cheeseburst and its powers so I return to my hotel and ran to the bathroom – I won’t discuss that terrible ordeal, but I didn’t feel better.  I wish it would all just stop.  I hate you, Cheeseburst.  You’re evil incarnated in delicious cheese and bread form.  This is a case where it was better to have never loved – than loved and lost.  Go figure American food is the only thing that makes me sick.  I should have just stuck to the chicken popiscle that scrawny dude sells from his cart.

JJRC

Mumbai – What a place!

I departed from New York City on a pretty day in the middle of May.  Go figure they send me away when the weather is getting nice.  The sun was out, and the air was feeling cleaner than usual.  I landed in Mumbai in the following afternoon – technically it was Saturday Morning – NYC Time.  The airport there was much warmer than JFK – I preferred JFK to Mumbai’s international airport for not only that reason.  The lines were in disarray and people’s luggage was everywhere.  Those were only the first differences I noticed once getting off the plane.

The People:

The population of Mumbai is different from the New York and even the Peruvian population in several ways.  First is personal hygiene.  It’s not to say that hygiene is of the utmost importance everywhere in the world, but here it is lacking in every which way.  If the office were not air conditioned – I would probably have to leave the country.  Luckily the air conditioning keeps foul odors down to a minimum.  Also, the office planning has banished me to the farthest region of the office space.  I have no neighbors which is a blessing and a curse.

Also, the people in India have this very odd mannerism.  They bobble their heads from side to side. This simple gesture means absolutely nothing, but it is infuriating.  You could be speaking to anyone and their head starts to bobble.  Does this mean you’re ignoring me?  Do I bore you?  Are you in pain!?  Tell me what it means!!

I have no idea.   My computer stopped working, and I called IT.  This woman came by and looked at the computer for a hot minute – made two quick adjustments and then looked at me, smiled.  I smiled back and she proceeded bobbled her head.  Do you think you’re better than me, woman?!?! If she wasn’t a woman, and if we weren’t at work – I would have socked her in the face.

The Food:

The food is amazing!  Well spiced and delicious – unlike the bland garbage white people call “fine dining”.

The Transportation:

The cabs are the scariest things I’ve ever hopped on in my life.  I thought New York cabbies were crazy muthafukas.  No.  These muthafukas take the cake and blow it out of the water.  Though there is so much traffic that speeding is difficult, these gentlemen find a way.  They don’t speak English so, “Umm could you please slow down and not scare me like that.” does not work.  They weave in and out of traffic.  They tempt fate to kill them as they drive towards on-coming buses with you in the backseat. 

Thus, the bus driver that is hired by the company to get us home is by far the craziest SOB Mumbai has to offer.  He’s not well rested because he’s usually sleeping before someone taps on the glass to get him up.  This morning he was slumped over the wheel just waiting to go.  Once that tap came on the glass – he popped up like soldier and sped off into the night.  The men there with me were more than used to him sleeping.

Tonight he hit a moving cab and kept going.  Since I’m the last one to get off – he always eyes me and grunts when he sees I’m not leaving the bus.  He backs into traffic and peels out.  Periodically his bus stalls out in the middle of the road, but he’s a real man – so without stopping the bus completely – he revs the engine and makes it cry.  Meanwhile we’re coasting into a busy intersection.  Red light?  That’s something they put up to make you think you need to stop.  He just keeps going.  He gets me home every night – hopefully that keeps happening.  I don’t think my company, family and friends would be too pleased to find out I was killed on a business trip where I was outsourcing most of my responsibilities.

JJRC

Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the… Poor Acting?

Transatlantic travel is probably one of the most amazing things I have ever experienced.  Not only do you lose a better half of your day, you are sitting for most of it.  Luckily Emirates offers fantastic accommodations to keep even the most suicidal passengers from killing themselves with the plastic spoons.  The first 12 hour plane ride could have been fantastic.  Emirate offers fantastic service.  In one flight, it has become my favorite airline. 

It would have been great – but sadly God was not smiling on me when I checked-in.  He had assigned me to seat 27 J.  It was the middle seat between the window and the aisle.  I was sitting next to a chatty Cathy (he shut up once I started giving him the “that is interesting, but please you need to shut up” look) and some large man.   Now, I’m not the smallest man by any means.  But this guy… oh good Lord.  He was not only spilling into the aisle… he was spilling onto my leg.  It was uncomfortable because then he started to get sweaty.  I would ultimately have to shift into Cathy’s space, and I prayed that would not get him started again.  Every time a cart rode by on the plane, it would hit him hard, and the flight attendants would apologize.  I am sure they were secretly laughing at him when they went to their Flight Attendants’ No (wo)man’s land.

I passed the time watching a variety of movies.  The Illusionist was fantastic, and it really made you think.   The worst movie I saw was The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.  I thought this movie had some great potential… the key term in that sentence was had.  You see children; I read the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when I was a child.  What better way to learn about sacrificial lamb analogies than Aslan resurrecting.  Oh, C.S. Lewis, you are a sly one.  Somehow, these people over at whatever company mad that crap managed to throw a fork into the works. In one scene – the littlest girl actually falls down for no reason – I had to rewind the movie to see it again.  Great editing.   It was actually pretty funny because the next seen – she’s up!  What a little trooper.

The actors were terrible – which is upsetting because there is a wealth of talented child starts floating out there.  Look at Dakota Fanning – annoying, true, but she is very talented.  By talented I mean she is very good at portraying precocious children who use big words and will not shut up.  This is especially true when they are speaking to their adult co-stars.  For some reason precocious movie children are usually better adjusted and more intelligent than their adult guardians are. These kids did not have that going for them.  I was very aware that there was a script. 

What bugged me the most was actually that little girl.  What was Dakota Fanning doing that they couldn’t get her to play Lucy?  Probably making smash hits like Uptown Girls.  Regardless this girl really did enjoy crying, but it was not very believable.  It looked like they had hit her mother in the face to make her do that.  The agony she portrayed was intense, but never really appropriate for the scene.  The way you cry when your favorite pet lion dies is not the same crying you do when your mother tells you you’re adopted (trust me – they both hurt, but in different ways).  She cried when no one believed her about Narnia, when her friend the fawn was kidnapped, when Aslan died, when she saw her fawn friend made of stone… it all looked the same.  There was nothing subtle about it.  The emotion was painful to the point of looking torturous.  I am no thespian, but isn’t there theory involved in acting?  If so, sign that bitch up for some lessons.

I actually made the trip a little more bearable by thinking of ways to hate on that movie.  I watched it intensely to see how that little girl managed to make me aware that she was on set somewhere.  If she was good, I would have been in Narnia with her not with some sweaty man making my thigh uncomfortably warm and a little moist. 

JJRC

P.S. Dakota Fanning is annoying through the roles she chooses.  I’m sure if she played a less annoying characters periodically – my opinion of her will change. 

Part 1 – Leaving the House

This is part one of a three part series… all this actually happened in the span of 24 hours.

We went to Peru periodically until I entered college.  My sister who was much more savvy with her money (i.e. – she didn’t buy nearly as much booze as I did in college) would frequent Peru every other year.  I slowly wallowed in my own debt.  It was a good four years.  It was not until recently that I decided to return to the mother land.  It was long overdue, and my grandparents were starting to think I hated them (not the case… I just loved boozing a little too much – but that’s behind me – and no AA interventions here – no sir).

The morning of March 16th 2007 was unnatural.  Two days previous it had been a beautiful spring day.  You could tell it was warm because all the white people who attend Columbia were parading around with their flip flops and board shorts.  It doesn’t need to be overly warm for them to do that, but it does need to be nice for them to do it without a heavy jacket.  It was that nice, but the day we decided to leave… it was snowing hard.  Delays were going to happen.

My father was getting his bag ready, and my half sister was talking to her “roommate” of 10 years on the phone – assuring her everything would be ok while she was in Peru.  She was letting her know that she remembered her (the “roommate’s”) birthday, and that she loved her… as a friend.  Whenever she slipped like that – her eyes would dart to me worried – I would smile and she would smile back, get up and leave the room quickly.  My father was messing around with her bag.

Dad: “Your bag isn’t good enough” 
Half Sis: “It’s fine! Don’t touch it!  Oh, not you Janet – wait I’ll call you back.”
Dad: “You packed this wrong.” (And my father is never wrong… ever :-/).
HS: I didn’t… leave it alone – please…

At this point I call my sister to let her know the shit was going to hit the fan.  She decided she was going to her best friend’s birthday party.  She showed up about an hour before we left smelling of Rum.  Meanwhile my father and half sister are about to claw their eyes out, and I am more frustrated than a human should ever be… people can die from being THAT frustrated.  My father changed my half sister’s bag completely and placed it in three different bags.  My sister (to avoid conflict) let this happen.  It was now 2am and we had to get to JFK for our 6am flight.  I began to carry our extremely heavy luggage down the stairs… needless to say, you should carry 9 seventy pound pieces of luggage down the four flights of stairs if you haven’t slept in 22 hours – you might hurt yourself. By the time I made it all the way down – my arms and leg s felt like noodles.

We make it out and my sister collects everyone’s passports and tickets – she’s the responsible one.  My half sister wanders over and asks about dad’s passport.  My sister pulls it out and looks at it.  Her eyes get large and dart up. 

Sister: PAPA! Your passport has expired.