The Internet Personified: You are my sweetest downfall

This week I have nursed a cough, gotten much too familiar with the Bombay Domestic Airport (and its food offerings) and also developed a stiff neck which makes it impossible for me to bend. So this is old age. It's not pretty. This morning though, I felt a return to my old energy, and since for the last week I've basically been lying around moaning when I'm not travelling, I practically bounded out of bed and ignored the last vestiges of my cough. However, as soon as I left the bedroom, there was this massacre scene, with pigeon feathers and blood everywhere. But no sign of an actual pigeon. The cats couldn't have eaten a whole pigeon, bones, feathers and all, right? But then where is pigeon? Remains a mystery. So are the actual remains.

Thanks to being ill and going back and forth a lot, this feels like it's been a really long week, but not much has happened. Therefore, updates are a bit thin on the ground.

This week in hobbies: Writing used to be what I did in my free time like a thousand years ago, fitting into the cracks of my day like the gold the Japanese used to use to mend broken crockery, a thread, a sliver, a filament, holding things together. How did I know what I thought and felt and saw until I strung the hours onto a sentence like beads and watched it come together? Ohhhh, so that's how that is. But writing is now work and I mean still a Joy and a Delight, because I'm Professionally Distilling instead of being just a home chef, which means the odd spurts of creativity I have between writing gigs and thinking about deadlines needs to be filled with something else. In my case, I like to draw, I always have--back when I was a wee girl, I illustrated the stories I wrote, wee-er than that and my stories were just pictures, no words at all. Cave men communicated like that as well--here is Horse, here is I killing Horse, see my beauty, see the beauty of Horse.

But then you grow a little older, and you decide it would be more worth your while to focus all your attention on the thing you're best at, you're not in school any more, you can't join the drama club and the debate team and the philately club (yes, really) and choir practice and piano and sculpture, you do the thing you've always been able to do with ease, which could be a lazy way out, but I chose to focus just on the writing, and I got better at it and jobs doing it, and everything else was just a thing I had tried out. A "hobby." A co-curricular, instead of the curricular itself. Drawing wasn't even something I did as a hobby, I usually laugh about it before anyone else can, I doodle, I draw little people doing things. I'm really not great at it, and yet, it makes me happy.

So, this whole long winded story to say that I wanted a Wacom tablet so I could illustrate more things, and Kian bought me one for a Non-Valentine's Day present and I have done two comics on it, which are below and which you've probably already seen if you follow me on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook, but if NOT, then here they are! A word on the Wacom: what's hardest is not looking at your pen while you're drawing, instead you have to look at the screen, but with a steady hand, and a little practice, you'll be doing quite well quite soon. Also a lot boils down to the software you're using, we found me an open source one called Krita, which is a little hard to get the hang of, but has all the bells and whistles which makes the pay off worth it. (you may already be able to see a difference between the first comic and the second one, the smoking one is the second one I drew and you can see I've discovered different pens to write with and my lettering is slightly less wobbly.)

This week in food and drink: We went to Little Saigon for lunch today, which is this teeny little Vietnamese canteen, almost, just one couple, a small kitchen and a crowded room. The woman was everywhere, taking our orders, busing tables, making suggestions, and the food was fantastic, and all pretty reasonably priced, and walking to Hauz Khas Market and back made up my Mi Band step count for the day, so these are all excellent things. Highly recommend Little Saigon. There's another tiny authentic looking South Indian dosa/chicken type place in the same market, so I think I will have to return. Aren't you glad South Indian cuisine as a whole is having a moment in Delhi? I'm very pleased that there are at least FOUR places in my immediate neighbourhood where you can get your beef fry and Malabar parotta if you so desire.

This week in books: Tana French, Tana French, Tana French! Why has it taken me so long to discover this Irish crime writer? The Dublin Murder Squad series isn't just crime writing though, it's psychology, it's littered with observations about life, and each book has a different set of protagonists so it's not just the one trope. READ. Begin as I did, with The Likeness which is Sue Grafton meets Donna Tartt. (One day I will write my long essay/love story about Kinsey Millhone.)

Reading list: Demonetization baby is now two months old. ** Ugh, Ivanka. ** Suketu Mehta with a massive long read on a marijuana delivery system in NYC which makes me slightly nervous for the people mentioned. (How they work is very High Maintenence, which I guess, had to get its concept SOMEWHERE.) ** Do nature docs actually help or are they really just something you put on to show off how hi-def your TV is? (PFFT PLANET EARTH II WAS AMAZEBALLS.)

Have a great week!
xx
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