From the day they are born, all humans are plagued with a chronic malady called Hunger. Now, the field of Medicine has progressed leaps and bounds (it must have if a walking foetus like Trump is alive at 70). But no amount medical research is able to find us a cure for this vile disease. All that it has to offer us is a highly inefficient palliative care treatment that people call 'food.'
Most of my problems as a working student arise from this abdominal infirmity. As I just mentioned, 'food' is such an inefficient medicine that you need to take it 3 times a day to get any form of relief. And if you're expecting some cute paracetamol-sized tablet, prepare yourself for a huge let-down. They don't come in small bottles or packets, oh no. Each dose requires a plate!
Now, Hunger is one uncompromising and relentless bugger. If you so much as decide to skip one 'meal' (one of the three daily installments of said treatment), some uncouth offspring of a T-Rex and a chainsaw will begin growling and throwing tantrums from the depths of your stomach. And you thought your girlfriend was high maintenance?
Obviously, I am not exempt from this ailment, and I deal with it everyday like so many of my brave comrades. Since I am at work from 8 to 5, I only get a small amount of time at home. And a large portion of this time is spent in my local palliative care center, commonly called a 'kitchen'. My kitchen is stocked with many popular medicines from Chennai. With rice, rotis, pastes, podis, oorgas, dosa maavu, and other such homemade Indian remedies, I am usually well-armed to deal with Hunger, no matter the time of day.
I am by no means a parochial person. No sir, not at all. Just like there are some people who believe in Ayurveda, Homoeopathy and Accupuncture, I too subscribe to other branches of the "food" industry, such as Chinese, Italian, and American food. Proof of this can be be found hidden inside a chest of drawers in my room, which contains such alternate remedies as noodles, pasta and Lays chips. While Indian food is far superior in 'taste' (an expected side-effect of food) to these other cheap, inferior drugs, it takes a longer time to prepare ('cook'), and so I typically cook in bulk on the weekends and store it in my low-temperature medicine cabinet.
Ordinary medicines can be found in pharmacies, I'm sure you know. But food products are now available in such variety, and purchased in such quantity that they require their own larger, dedicated pharmacies, commonly called, 'grocery stores'. Knowing the tribulations that I would face this year, I cleverly chose to rent an apartment near a famous grocery store called Walmart. This means that whenever my kitchen runs out of ammunition, and Hunger starts getting the upper hand, I need only hop, skip and jump to Walmart, buy some food, and make the avaricious ass shut up.
So let me now tell you about Walmart, which is basically a large-scale commercial solution to Hunger. Walmart is a magnificent store; I typically go there on weekends. The moment you enter Walmart, the first thing that strikes you is its sheer size. It's actually great fodder for "big" jokes. Many Walmarts have their own gas stations, and looking at the size of their parking lots, you can see why. When you go inside, you'll see that Walmart is home to an entire population of friendly people clad in blue, that call themselves, 'shop assistants.' The store is filled with multiple parallel highways (called "aisles"), each lined with shelves of food. You'll often hear, "clean up on aisle 747", followed by a discussion among the locals on which assistant has the appropriate visa to go there.
Upon entering, I grab a grocery cart from near the entrance, and drag it inside. I say 'drag' because these lovely Walmart employees always pamper their customers with carts that have one broken wheel, so that we can shop and get a solid workout at the same time. Now that's customer service! I walk for a few weeks, and eventually reach the different aisles I need to go to. I typically buy some bread, milk, cheese, juice, fruits, vegetables and Greek yoghurt ('extremely getti thayiru' for my Chennai peoples).
Note:
The reason that I buy so many different things is actually quite complex, so stick with me. Despite the fact that all food cures (stalls) Hunger, and thus is innately healthy, people have still redundantly decided to segregate food into healthy food and junk food. Let me make it clear, it is all an elaborate machination to make money! Did you watch The Martian? Mark Watney survived one-and-a-half years on potatoes grown in his own shit. Walmart could easily have been just a shitty-potato factory. But no, it isn't. It's because, from Day 1, they tell you this incredible lie: "you have to eat a 'Balanced Diet'".
Balanced Diet is basically a game where each food product is assigned a certain quantity of vitamins and minerals, and you have optimize which ones you ingest each day to get a high score. If you get too little of any one vitamin or mineral (there are some 50), game over. You fall sick and die. In this manner, they ensure you spend more money on lots of different things. The US, to its credit, is very skeptical of this balanced diet theory, and so you'll see that many households simply subsist on potatoes (just eaten in different forms). But the rest of the world, including India, naively believes this theory. My parents seem to be almost religiously attached to this idea, and they constantly give me strict prescriptions on what kinds of food to buy. So, that's the tale of why I'm buying all these "healthy" things.
Anyway, back to Walmart:
After finishing my grocery shopping, I drag my cart back towards the entrance. The cashier is another member of the population who scans my stuff and puts it into bags. I grudgingly pay this agent of the Balanced Diet conspiracy, take my bags, and jump, skip and hop back home. Once home, I sort the Hunger medication by type ('healthy', 'digusting', and 'only bought it to appease my conscience'), after which I proceed to the hardest task of the day. I cook.
So, in this manner, I have managed to keep Hunger at bay for the last 4 weeks. Let's hope that this strategy continues to work for the coming months. I was told to limit the length of posts, so I'll stop here and describe the act of cooking itself next time. Stay tuned.
Most of my problems as a working student arise from this abdominal infirmity. As I just mentioned, 'food' is such an inefficient medicine that you need to take it 3 times a day to get any form of relief. And if you're expecting some cute paracetamol-sized tablet, prepare yourself for a huge let-down. They don't come in small bottles or packets, oh no. Each dose requires a plate!
Now, Hunger is one uncompromising and relentless bugger. If you so much as decide to skip one 'meal' (one of the three daily installments of said treatment), some uncouth offspring of a T-Rex and a chainsaw will begin growling and throwing tantrums from the depths of your stomach. And you thought your girlfriend was high maintenance?
Obviously, I am not exempt from this ailment, and I deal with it everyday like so many of my brave comrades. Since I am at work from 8 to 5, I only get a small amount of time at home. And a large portion of this time is spent in my local palliative care center, commonly called a 'kitchen'. My kitchen is stocked with many popular medicines from Chennai. With rice, rotis, pastes, podis, oorgas, dosa maavu, and other such homemade Indian remedies, I am usually well-armed to deal with Hunger, no matter the time of day.
I am by no means a parochial person. No sir, not at all. Just like there are some people who believe in Ayurveda, Homoeopathy and Accupuncture, I too subscribe to other branches of the "food" industry, such as Chinese, Italian, and American food. Proof of this can be be found hidden inside a chest of drawers in my room, which contains such alternate remedies as noodles, pasta and Lays chips. While Indian food is far superior in 'taste' (an expected side-effect of food) to these other cheap, inferior drugs, it takes a longer time to prepare ('cook'), and so I typically cook in bulk on the weekends and store it in my low-temperature medicine cabinet.
Ordinary medicines can be found in pharmacies, I'm sure you know. But food products are now available in such variety, and purchased in such quantity that they require their own larger, dedicated pharmacies, commonly called, 'grocery stores'. Knowing the tribulations that I would face this year, I cleverly chose to rent an apartment near a famous grocery store called Walmart. This means that whenever my kitchen runs out of ammunition, and Hunger starts getting the upper hand, I need only hop, skip and jump to Walmart, buy some food, and make the avaricious ass shut up.
So let me now tell you about Walmart, which is basically a large-scale commercial solution to Hunger. Walmart is a magnificent store; I typically go there on weekends. The moment you enter Walmart, the first thing that strikes you is its sheer size. It's actually great fodder for "big" jokes. Many Walmarts have their own gas stations, and looking at the size of their parking lots, you can see why. When you go inside, you'll see that Walmart is home to an entire population of friendly people clad in blue, that call themselves, 'shop assistants.' The store is filled with multiple parallel highways (called "aisles"), each lined with shelves of food. You'll often hear, "clean up on aisle 747", followed by a discussion among the locals on which assistant has the appropriate visa to go there.
Upon entering, I grab a grocery cart from near the entrance, and drag it inside. I say 'drag' because these lovely Walmart employees always pamper their customers with carts that have one broken wheel, so that we can shop and get a solid workout at the same time. Now that's customer service! I walk for a few weeks, and eventually reach the different aisles I need to go to. I typically buy some bread, milk, cheese, juice, fruits, vegetables and Greek yoghurt ('extremely getti thayiru' for my Chennai peoples).
Note:
The reason that I buy so many different things is actually quite complex, so stick with me. Despite the fact that all food cures (stalls) Hunger, and thus is innately healthy, people have still redundantly decided to segregate food into healthy food and junk food. Let me make it clear, it is all an elaborate machination to make money! Did you watch The Martian? Mark Watney survived one-and-a-half years on potatoes grown in his own shit. Walmart could easily have been just a shitty-potato factory. But no, it isn't. It's because, from Day 1, they tell you this incredible lie: "you have to eat a 'Balanced Diet'".
Balanced Diet is basically a game where each food product is assigned a certain quantity of vitamins and minerals, and you have optimize which ones you ingest each day to get a high score. If you get too little of any one vitamin or mineral (there are some 50), game over. You fall sick and die. In this manner, they ensure you spend more money on lots of different things. The US, to its credit, is very skeptical of this balanced diet theory, and so you'll see that many households simply subsist on potatoes (just eaten in different forms). But the rest of the world, including India, naively believes this theory. My parents seem to be almost religiously attached to this idea, and they constantly give me strict prescriptions on what kinds of food to buy. So, that's the tale of why I'm buying all these "healthy" things.
Anyway, back to Walmart:
After finishing my grocery shopping, I drag my cart back towards the entrance. The cashier is another member of the population who scans my stuff and puts it into bags. I grudgingly pay this agent of the Balanced Diet conspiracy, take my bags, and jump, skip and hop back home. Once home, I sort the Hunger medication by type ('healthy', 'digusting', and 'only bought it to appease my conscience'), after which I proceed to the hardest task of the day. I cook.
So, in this manner, I have managed to keep Hunger at bay for the last 4 weeks. Let's hope that this strategy continues to work for the coming months. I was told to limit the length of posts, so I'll stop here and describe the act of cooking itself next time. Stay tuned.
