Blue of All Trades

In honor of tonight's performance, I thought I would amuse you all with a list of jobs I've held (in no particular order; they'll come out in the order I can remember them):

Piano teacher
Organist
Choral accompanist
Music transcriber
Lounge pianist
Dinner theatre performer
Pit orchestra pianist
Sound board operator
Camp counselor
Camp teacher
Camp director
Housesitter
Dogsitter
Babysitter
Waitress
Cafeteria server/dishwasher
Data entry clerk
"Booth Babe" at a technology trade show
Mailroom assistant
Receptionist
Retail worker
Customer Service Representative
Van Driver
Telemarketer
And... graduate student.

Dare you to add your own list! Tag-you're-it-one-two-three-go!

A Good Dress Rehearsal

There is nothing like sitting with a laptop on one knee and a kitty on the other (of course I have a cat -- haven't you all guessed by now?), with my feet in warm fuzzy slippers and a big bowl of chocolate ice cream (with peanut butter and caramel swirls!), after an ideal dress rehearsal.

Nickel and Dimed will be a good show. The pieces have come into place, and we get our first audience tomorrow. The official opening is Wednesday, but tomorrow we are inviting a large group of civil service workers (read: maintenance staff) to attend a special, "honored guest only" performance.

Before I let myself get too... I don't know, complacent or something, I should consider this: my university hosted a guest director this semester, and her play opened last Friday. I saw the matinee on Sunday (between my own rehearsals), and -- although my play is good and I'm quite happy with it -- the difference between the two works was astonishing and humbling. Hers looked like a detailed oil painting and
made mine look like a crayon sketch by comparison.

So... there is always something more to work towards. But, tonight, there is ice cream.

A side note on yesterday's post: I discovered the source of the familiar Indian cooking smell and am surprised no one suggested it in the comments (maybe y'all were just being polite). It wasn't the bags from Namaste Grocery. It was me -- my own skin. Interesting. Now I suppose I'm wondering if it's as obvious to other people. And how that will smash up against (or deconstruct/subvert, if we're playing the lit theory game) the old "Indians smell like curry" stereotype. Because -- at least today -- this gori girl does as well.

And -- if you'll forgive her -- she kind of likes it. It's a nice smell.

Refrigeration is the Key!

A few quick notes on my last post (Nickel and Dimed is going fine, so don't worry... but I've spent seven hours in the theatre today and so I'm putting my mind to another source before I go to bed).

1. Refrigerating the alan ka saag seemed to work. It thickened considerably and tastes... a little oily, but mostly fine. I wonder if the whole problem stemmed from the fact that I had run out of olive oil and used generic vegetable oil instead. Could two tablespoons of a different oil make that much of a difference?

2. There are, in fact, packages of ground chilies. I found them at Namaste Grocery today. I hope to be pleasantly -- but not painfully -- surprised at how hot they actually are.

3. When I was driving back from Namaste Grocery this afternoon, I suddenly noticed a familiar smell filling my car -- something I had not smelled in years. In high school, I used to teach piano lessons to a desi kid. I would go to his house to teach, and his living room was always filled with a warm, cooking-related, distinctly Indian scent. I've noticed garlic and haldi smells clinging to my fingertips, but never this particular smell until today. When I parked the car I sniffed every bag in turn, but everything, left to itself, smelled like plastic. In combination, though, they seemed to turn into something quite pleasant. Very strange.

That's all for now -- goodnight, if you're reading this in the evening, and good morning to those who will read it tomorrow!

Cooking... sometimes happy, sometimes sad...

I've often wondered if I could survive in Hyderabad using only the Hindi I've picked up from Karan Johar film titles.

For example:

"How are you doing?"
"Oh, you know, kabhi kushi kabhie gham..."

Or:

"When would you like to go see the Char Minar?"
"As soon as possible. After all, kal ho naa ho!"

Anyway. I was thinking of that, when I was thinking of how to describe my recent cooking experiments. I've been storing up Tupperwares full of dal or saag paneer or what-have-you on the weekends, and trying to make them last through the week (although I do enjoy the gyro shop, I'm not interested in eating there every day).

And since today was our "dark" day (our one-day-a-week off from rehearsal), I spent a couple of hours in the kitchen and tried to cook up enough food to keep me happy for the rest of the week.

I started off last weekend with urad dal (using Ms. Jaffrey's "Punjabi-style" recipe from Climbing the Mango Trees), hoping that the sheer heaviness of the dal would provide enough punch to keep me going. I also cooked up some chickpeas and yogurt(from World-Of-The-East Vegetarian Cooking) and found it to be the only dish of Ms. Jaffrey's I've cooked thus far that does not in fact improve with age. Probably because it's meant to be eaten in a sort of combination hot-and-cold, with the warmth of the chickpeas spreading into the cool softness of the yogurt. But in my office at school, it was flat and inedible -- especially after I tried to solve the problem by sticking the whole thing in the microwave.

Blue's lesson for the day: don't microwave yogurt.

Anyway, after a week of heavy, heavy dal and curdled chickpeas (and gyros -- the shop has just introduced a "vegetarian gyro" which is essentially "everything minus beef," which I do enjoy), I had the day to cook. So right now my little refrigerator is stacked with tubs of moong dal (which may be my new favorite dal -- it's certainly the only one I've ever made which turns creamy, like the kind I get at restaurants; the urad and masoor dals both stay chunky and lentily no matter how many hours I boil them), saag paneer, and a variant on a variant of Ms. Jaffrey's "chickpeas and okra in a tamarind sauce" recipe. (Since the only okra available in my area is not intended for human consumption, I substitute green beans in this recipe -- only today I didn't have any, so I used peas... not as good a choice, since they turned to mush and didn't provide any kind of contrasting texture to the chickpeas.)

But the tragedy of the evening (the "kabhie gham" half) was the alan ka saag. I don't know what I did that was different than the first time I made it, but the thing just wouldn't thicken. Even after adding chickpea flour. It ended up being an entire stew pot filled with spinach and lentils floating around in a bitter, bitter water. I've put the contents into the refrigerator in the hope that it will magically change overnight into something worth eating, but I fear... well... okay, I probably shouldn't have tried to cook four dishes at once.

The interesting thing is -- well, there are two interesting things. The first is that I've got to figure out how to make lassi, because whenever I sit and eat dal I find myself with the strongest craving afterwards for something sweet. I sit there, finish the meal, and think "I want a milkshake." Which makes me wonder if there isn't something to the dal/lassi combination -- something either chemical and/or biological. But is it possible to make lassi without a blender? (It must be -- India's been making lassi long before blenders were invented. But I can't find a recipe that doesn't call for one.)

The other thing is that I need a stronger spice. Cayenne doesn't taste "hot" anymore, and even the Flaming Lime Pickle I wrote about a few weeks ago now tastes... pungent, but not burning. What else should I use? Ground chilies? Whole ones?

Anyway. Hadn't written a cooking post in a while, so... thought I would. Hope you enjoyed it!

Rose Vacuums The Theatre

Our building's two maintenance staff, Rose and Dan, are just thrilled that we are staging Nickel and Dimed. The first thing Dan said to me when he heard that we had selected the play was "finally we get to see people like us on stage!"

They have come into rehearsals, and every time I see either of them they ask me how the play is going.

Today, as rehearsal was ending, Rose came into the theatre.

"Do you mind if I vacuum? I don't want to disturb you. I just want to make sure it looks nice in here."

This theatre has probably not been vacuumed for five years. It had not been vacuumed once since I began graduate school. We (the students) were told that it was our responsibility to keep the place clean, not the maintenance staff's. Thus, there were a lot of crumbs and old screws and things... well, everywhere.

The stage managers and I immediately began clearing all the trash and chairs and tables out of the theatre, so that Rose wouldn't have to lift and move and throw away things herself. And Rose vacuumed.

This in itself is a testament to the power of the arts.

In Which Blue Really, Really, Really Retracts Her Sympathies for Sen. Biden

Blue needs to start reading things besides the NY Times.

Because about a month ago, there was all that buzz... Biden described Obama as "articulate," etc. etc. etc. and a plethora of editorials and seven-page online articles about whether it was a racial insult or not. Everything focused on the word "articulate."

And then, through another SepiaMutiny link (which actually took me to this page, which I have fact-checked with other online news sources including CNN), I suddenly learn the real quote.

Why was all the focus on "articulate?" Why wasn't anyone nailing Biden for calling Obama "the first mainstream African-American who is clean?"

I think I am going to go bury my head in my hands for a while.

So... how do we do what we do?

Shripriya commented in my Nickel and Dimed post that she was amazed that so many people worked thankless jobs for low pay out of passion/love.

Yet with a quick look at my bloglist it seems like a lot of this blog's regular readers are teachers, writers, students, and artists. Not exactly the thankless work Shripriya was describing (she was talking specifically about production assistants at film studios), but plenty of passion-filled, low-paying work.

So... how do we do what we do? What of our work is thankless, what fuels our passions, and how do we survive (financially and/or creatively)? What keeps us going?

(P.S. -- bad form perhaps to mention finances. If you'd rather, just write about the passion half. ^__^)