Too cool for school

By way of introduction: this is the first of a mostly-weekly email newsletter you'll get from me including links to interesting stories I'm reading as well as stuff I've written this week. If you'd like to unsubscribe, there's a link at the bottom (totally won't be mad. Or will I?) If not (hi! yay!) then here's what I'm reading and doing this week.

Throwback book of the week: Mama's Bank Account by Kathryn Forbes. Found at Daryagunj Sunday books market ages ago. The story of a Norwegian immigrant family in 'Frisco, which revolves around titular "Mama," a woman with five children; who is spunky and wise all at the same time. Did a little research (very little, there's not much out there) on Forbes who died in 1966. Mama's Bank Account was her most famous book but was actually based on the life of her GRANDMOTHER not actual mother. It was even turned into a Broadway play called I Remember Mama. Remember to mine your childhoods for experiences, kids!

Speaking of mining childhoods for experiences, my fortnightly F Word column on the dress code at schools is up and it's all about an incident that happened to me in class 8. Read it here.

How much Trump is too much Trump? Certainly, I get one new news story about the man almost every day. Here's one that caught my interest though. On Trump and his relationship with women. (Yuck, chee, etc)

New in food & drink in Delhi: Tried out Ping's Cafe Orient, which replaces Ploof in Lodhi Colony Market. (I hear Ploof is coming up again where Tabula Rasa is right now. The Delhi restaurant merry-go-round, eh?) Ping's has FAB food and perhaps too-lethal cocktails. Also very pretty.

What's NOT Ping's is Khane Khas in Bandra, Bombay. I wrote a piece on how it basically held me together on my most homesick Bombay days.

Technically this scuffle happened not in Hauz Khas Village but in the nearby Aurobindo Market which we go to more and more because we don't like sitting in the car for twenty thousand hours waiting to pull into HKV. Still: shocking.

Song of the week: The Return of the Sugar Plum Fairy which is this amaaaaazing remix of the classical version. I dare you to listen to it without going all ninja-ballet dancer-fairy. (I found it via Apple Music--and no, they're DEFINITELY not paying me to put this here [I wish] but is a great music subscription service, Rs 120 a month for unlimited music you can even save to listen for later. Plus playlists. Works on both Windows and Mac and I used it with great success to make a huge-ass party playlist last month.)

New book of the week: First Hand, the Yoda press graphic anthology of non-fiction. Some excellent work there, plus everything is easier to understand if it's a comic! Buy here. (Out of stock, says Flipkart, so check directly with the publishers.)

Speaking of books, here's a bookish live tweeting sesh while watching You Got Mail (which continues to be one of the best movies ever made) (Don't cry, Shopgirl.)

Yes, yes, smoking is really bad for you etc, but has a cigarette ever BLOWN UP IN YOUR FACE? I thought not. However, it can get you thrown off a flight and/or make your plane crash so please don't do this.

That tiger temple in Thailand has always seemed like such a scam. (Never mind that I was really excited by the idea before I actually did some research into it.) Finally though, it looks like tourist's days of feeding baby tigers with bottles are over.

Not a spoiler vid: Watch TV and movie villains (including Ramsay Bolton) sing about the hard life of being bad guys.

Speaking of TV, I've been binge-watching a show called Mercy Street for the past week now. It's about a Union hospital during America's Civil War and two nurses who work there who are on either side of the battle. Starring also haaaave you met Ted in a much more nuanced role. God, I love historical fiction television.

Also for the past week, my Facebook app on my phone keeps crashing. Uninstalling and reinstalling has not fixed it. I did some Googling, and then I read this article from January which says Facebook was doing it on purpose to "test the limits of consumer endurance." Say what? I'm uninstalling immediately. (For a while anyway.)

You know who's probably not very active on Facebook? The older man. My as-yet nameless relationship column this week is about why we date the men we do.

BTW, browsing the internet aimlessly makes you a worse writer, now PROVEN.

Now you can freeze your beloved pet. (Honestly, the worse thing about having animals is knowing that you'll outlive said animals.) Although I'm not sure how I feel about cyrogenic freezing. I feel like if I died from some terrible disease, I'd just be dead, no point in chucking my body into some frozen storage locker to see if it can be fixed one day. Considering I even have an old TV which we've never repaired and is lying in my room collecting dust, I shudder to think what could happen with my corpse.

This is now very long, so just links: Really want to watch Thithi. Ugh, gross, Bombay. NYC's pish-posh people who live at the top of skyscrapers. Now you can adopt a patient at AIIMS. Quiet ambient music on a free playlist to work to/do yoga with. SQUEE! NEW PANDA BABY!


Have a great weekend!

xx
m.