BIRYANI BLUES

Got up with serious ambitions to finish a particular section of this chapter on sampling South Asian music--the boring bit before I get to the fun of Timbaland & Missy Elliot getting their freak on. But exercise was first. So hopped across the road before 8 am (not bad), jogged around the three pitches of Fowlds Park four times and then returned home to do some stretches and squats and press ups after guzzling a couple of pints of water. Very noble beginning to the day. Still doing penance for a long weekend of excess. Then I showered and checked emails and fiddled around trying to make an electro playlist on iTunes while Shuchi answered tons of film production phone calls. Her 5-day shoot begins next Tuesday.

I've had my mind on doing something with a ton of rice left over from last Thursday. I overestimated for a function so loads languished in the fridge. So waddya do with a UN consignment's worth of rice. You fry onions, garlic, ginger, green and red chillies, stick a load of biryani masala in it, fry till brown and then add vegetables and then the rice. Mix it really well so the rice takes up the masala and turns reddish brown. Did that and fired up a couple of sticks of incense to cut the chilli and fried onions in the air. I think the neighbouring cats that use our back garden as no-man's or no-cat's land were choking. I really did want to save that rice. Can't chuck it away. Shuchi couldn't eat a bite because it was too mirchi and the masala was kachcha (uncooked). I thought I'd seriously bhunafied the onions with it, but hey, I've never made a biryani from scratch. This was just a patch up job. Shuchi opted for opening a can of kumara & vegetable soup while I worked away on the biryani. It was OK but I felt compelled to eat it more because it shouldna go to waste. The seagulls and pukeku in Western Springs wouldn't go near this stuff, so dumping it for fowl was out of the question. I ate about 3 maybe 4 bowls of the stuff while surfing TV.

There wasn't any football on, but I managed to catch bits of the film Priest--male melodrama from Jimmy McGovern, Marlon Brando's Marc Antony's Lend Me Your Ears speech in Julius Caesar (fantastic) and the end of my alma mater University of Michigan's basketball game with Notre Dame where they won with a three pointer in the second overtime. I don't usually watch basketball but it was strange to see so much yellow in the Michigan crowd. It seems that the yellow is more prominent than the blue which was paramount in my day circa 1990.

Back to the biryani. It really made me lazy. Couldn't be arsed to move my arse. Just sat there surfing the television. It's also very humid here. We need a good rain. So the thickness of the air made me feel even more inert. That's an excuse I think. So much for that exercise. My carb intake has defeated me again. I think I'll lie down and nap. Another excuse: maybe it's the post-daylight savings melancholia that hits like jet lag after flying from Summer to Winter. Summer will soon be a distant memory. Looking at photos from January that seem like they were taken ages ago.

Will try and write a paragraph or three after I've dropped Shuchi at her pottery lesson in Onehunga. Must have some output. Must have some output. Must have some output.