Short film: Dirty Laundry (2012)

With all the Marvel movie hype, some less fortunate yet highly intriguing characters get lost in the shuffle. Here’s hoping to the fulfillment of previously unrealized potential.

epic sax battles in the new york city subway

There’s another video showing the guys introducing themselves to each other as they high-five at the end. This is the kind of salt and pepper missing in my commute through Bangkok.

Take it from me, they’re both cuddly and delicious

Guinea pigs at a farm for the animals in Puno, Peru, where they’re considered a delicacy.

Many times I’ve been asked, usually in an indictive and opprobrious tone, how Peruvians like myself could devour such cute and helpless creatures.  I can tell you that regardless of whether it’s a cultural issue or something that was borne out of necessity (gods know there are tons of those things running around the highlands of Peru), when done right, guinea pigs are delicious. That said, it took over 30 years for me to come to this conclusion and were it not for a life scarring experience in my youth, I guarantee that it would have happened sooner. If only, because it’s the Peruvian way.

I was about 6 years old and at my grandparent’s place in Huancayo, in the highlands of central Peru, on an exploring expedition when I discovered a secret room full of these things. Naturally, I deemed my expedition a success, called it a day and stuck around to get acquainted with my cuddly friends. It was great! It didn’t take too long before we were on a first name basis and what had started as a really boring day turned out to be so much fun. I couldn’t wait to hang out with my new buds again the following day.

My grandparent’s home was a massive place. They conducted their business, selling their farm produce, on the first floor while the rest of the family lived on the floors above. I don’t remember how many stories the building extended but it seemed to go on forever. Peru’s own Tower of Babel. We even had a whole floor set for ourselves in case we ever decided to leave the capital and abandon my mother’s side of the family for the coziness of the Peruvian Andes.

The secret room was in the patio on the 4th floor. When you entered the patio from the kitchen, the room would be not too far to your right. Across the kitchen door there was a large multi-purpose sink where they would wash clothes, dishes and skin and clean off cuys to get them ready for dinner.

I stood at the doorway for an eternity, watching the cook grab cuys from a pile to her right, remove their furry hide, slice them open, and pile them up to her left. The little guys never had a chance.

The massacre left blood everywhere and the body count was massive. We had the whole family over for dinner and there was a clear view of the sink from the large kitchen table from which they ate. I took a pass on food that night.

I passed plenty of opportunities to eat cuy since then, up until my most recent (read: only) trip back to Peru. I tried it twice. Once at a fancy Peruvian joint around the corner for the Plaza Mayor in Cuzco, picked out at random mostly due to its fanciness. The cuy was deep fried and mostly forgettable. Also very expensive.  My second time was at a restaurant in Urubamba where I had lunch with some local friends. The cuy was grilled, incredibly delicious and comparatively cheap.

Today I’ve come to find that they are not only delicious but also more environmentally friendly than other meats. I can understand people’s apprehensiveness to consuming a cute little critter like this but since I’m over that phase of my life, I can feel even better about having cuy for dinner. Now I can move onto consuming other cute animals like chicklets and lambs and kittens.

rap nerdology

snapshots of Chennai

A moment on the busy streets of Chennai, India.

in the midst of the unmadness

The Amba Vilas Palace in Mysore is kind of a wondrous spectacle, specially on Sunday evenings when the lights go on.

Notes on Mysore

I never made it to Mahabalipuram. Putting together travel plans off the cuff had finally caught up to me: there were no trains from Chennai to Mysore for a few more days unless I took off that evening. The beach would have to wait.

Mysore wasn’t the elegant city someone once described to me. It was definitely less crowded. Less dodging, more moving. Less stray dogs and ambulant cows eating the trash off the side of the road. You could absorb the landscape without being overwhelmed by the smells, the noise, the fumes and the bodies. But elegant is not the word I would use. Mysore was like other Indian cities I’ve been to but more available and less intense. Less filthy. And it had a pretty palace right in the midst of unmadness.

There were far more women on the streets and the city was much more navigable. I jumped in and out of local buses and auto-rickshaws with ease and walked around a lot, but other than the Ambas Vilas Palace, there was not much to do. Every foreigner I met was disillusioned with the place. It seemed like we’d all read one too many grandiose guide book depictions of this little city and everyone wanted out.

I was slightly let down but not entirely disenchanted. The town might not have had much to offer the camera-toting, adventure-seeking traveler but the food was delicious and cheap. And I couldn’t get enough of it. The street food. The little corner fast (indian) food joint food. The fancy hotel restaurant food. The ‘western friendly’ restaurant food. The samosas, the dosas, the hot chai, the milky sweets, the barfi… Thus far, Mysore has been at the top of my food experience in India. (With the exception of the one meal in Jhalawar back in 2009.) A hot and spicy bowl of crushed potato samosa masala topped with spices and herbs for 20 rupees (about $0.35) is hard to beat pricewise anywhere, let alone tastewise.

Still, man does not live off delicious crushed samosa masalas alone and I really wanted to get to Hampi. So after a couple of days, I was gone.