When life gives you lemons

You just take it to Seattle..

No. I am not making that up. The MIL is in Seattle now, spending time with her new Daughter in law, and of course her son.

Unfortunately, neither of them blog and the unique MIL-DIL bonding relationship which is something as primordial as a man woman relationship, will not be chronicled! We are guessing that many SUN TV episodes worth of material may have been created by now. As usual, I digress..

This has been an extra long two weeks at work for me and a real hard time for San, who took the brunt of the kids boredom attacks, but we have "Prevailed"!

Now for the title of the post. When the MIL went to Seattle, not only did she take some lemons from here, which had to be moved around the bags, but she decided to take a "thenkuzhal maker" (refer this post.. the thing on the bottom right in the photo).

After opening her hand bag, the screening dudes were shocked. They had never seen an assorted item list like this. The MIL freaked out and she waved for me and the little one to stay a little longer outside the screening area. A team of people were now working on her with hand held gizmos that beeped all over the place. They checked her bangles, her thali, aranakayar, etc. etc. and finally after making sure that she is just another heavily jeweled middle aged desi woman, moved her aside.

We breathed a sigh of relief and started to wave goodbye, and she gave us the "Stop" sign with her palm, again! Now a lady started to wear gloves and walked towards the MIL. While we were worried that they were going to put her through hell, we saw a sigh of relief from the MIL. They were just wearing gloves to go through her baggage. That is when they pulled up the "thenkuzhal maker", for everyone to see!

To the untrained non-desi eye, it looks like some instrument that would be more at ease on a shelf in a physics lab, and the inspector (who looked like he was of Korean origin) was absolutely clueless. Somehow he let her go after a brief conversation.

Once in Seattle, we asked the MIL, "So what did you tell him?"

"I told him it is a mini pasta maker and he was convinced!" was the answer.

Mini pasta maker, indeed.

Note to self : Screen MIL's baggage at home when traveling with her the next time.

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SSDP an update..

Same Shit Different Place : An update from the previous post.

I was reading the links provided by the anonymous commenter on the area that is the center of the controversy over the new Chennai airport location. I also got an update on the situation of the immigration protests on a followup news item on NPR today!

This is Deja vu of SSDP in slow motion. You wouldnt believe the similarity of the way people are treated by governments across the globe and how people treat the government !! Maybe most of you readers are worldly wise to know this. But I can write about this because I am just growing up!!

Why the comparison ?

Apparently the people in Chennai in that area were encouraged by the local politicians and MMDA (Madras Metropolitan Development Authority) to put their life savings and build houses in that governmnent owned land! How could people build houses with their life savings in a land where they do not own "patta's" a.k.a "title deeds". Maybe I should find some spot in Madras and start building!! I thought it was the poor people erecting tatched huts (something that can be done in a day or two), but NO! There are brick and mortar buildings that would take months to construct. How could someone be so naive and build a house in land that they couldnt possibly own? And if they have been given some certificate by the government or its agency, they should be able to defend themselves legally against any attempts to evict them. But I am really torn because,
a. Today, the bad guys seem to be able to manipulate gullible folks with effortless ease!
b. These guys could have been led on by the same local politicians who are tryiing to make it look like they are protecting these people today!

Anyways, the links were informative. Next time please put your name when you comment.

Now back to San Francisco :

Apparently the IRS has set up a website, hotline so that the "illegal aliens" like a commenter pointed out, can PAY THEIR TAXES !! We dont want these guys in the US but we want their money!! These folks are paying their taxes to show that they are "law abiding" and they do it to win some brownie points with the INS in case they are legalized later! They actually played a piece from the automated IRS (Internal Revenue Service) which says "if you are unable to get a TAX ID number because you are here as a ....., do ....". The article also interviewed some dude who spoke in Spanish and said "no American wants to do what I do here. I have been working here for 10 years because of that". Then the reporter went on to say that if only these people could be legally brought into the US to do these jobs ("sheetrocking, painting, washing dishes in restaurants, etc.), there would be no issue!

I thought we get our news from the media. Looks like they will take alternate sides every other day on issues like this!! One day they will do an expose on the poor folk. The very next day on the government!

I will toss a coin for tomorrows news updates. In the meantime the lesson from this for me is "Governments will be governments, and gullible people will stay gullible! The poor (including the lower middle class today), will always get the shaft!".

I think I have finally figured out why I still have these takes on these "isssooos"! All said and done I have "lower middle class values", something that was pointed out a few years ago by a friend in the USA!! Now that will be a post for another day, when I am fully awake and in a good mood and can proofread before I hit the publish button!!

Acronyms and more..

YIMBY !

(Yes, In My Back Yard. I thought I was being creative and had coined YIMBY based on NIMBY. Went to WIKI and YIMBY is not just there, but there are YIMBY movements across the USA to bring affordable housing to certain areas !!)

The mouth watering goes on..

SSDP : (This one didnt turn up any WIKI hits. SSDD stands for "Same Shit Different Day". SSDP is Same Shit Different Place! (I will take all credit for coining this one). Why SSDP ?

Two different events in two different places.

Chennai:

We are flying from Chennai to Singapore on our way back, and they give us some Malay Straits newspaper in Tamizh. The newspaper was obviously pro Jayalalitha(opposition party) and was pretty much a government bashing propaganda machine. The headlines was about how the Airport Authority of India had spotted a location for a new Chennai airport but they couldnt go through with the plans because
a. some people had illegally erected huts in that location and
b. a political party called PMK had threatened to protest, move against the local government, etc. etc. they tried to evict those people or even try to relocate them and pay them monetary compensation.

I was planning to write about this, especially after my experience at the Chennai Airport where the place is operating at pretty much maximum efficiency just to keep the existing number of flights moving. If they add more flights in and out of the place, they will have to expand.

San Francisco :

Was listening to KQED (local public radio station) last week and the headlines ? A whole bunch of people protesting outside the Immigration office in San Franciso (Dept. of Homeland Security which encompasses the former INS or Immigration and Naturalization service). They were protesting the raids that have been taking place over the last 9 months where 13000 illegal immigrants have been caught and deported. The DHS says they are specifically targeting repeat offenders who are illegal and are involved in shady activities. The people outside are saying (and I kid you not):

"people are scared to send their kids to school or go to the local doctor because they are worried that they might be picked up by the DHS". If you are living illegally in a country, shouldn't you be worried anyways ? They were claiming the raids are a slap in the face of the immigrant community, especially after all the immigration reforms promised by the newly empowered democrats. But the bottomline is, legal vs. illegal!

Before the illegal immigrant community decides to flame this post, I would like to mention why I even put this in the blog. A couple of years ago, San and me were going towards downtown San Jose. The car in front of me was swearving, speeding and we could make out that it was either a bad driver or someone who was not aware of rules. Just while we were talking about it, the driver sped up to cross a light which had already turned yellow. Problem was that this was a light where the perpendicular road was a highway exit, that too at an angle and the people standing at the exit had already started turning. This driver went and hit the first car that came out, smack in the middle. The car spun a few times and came to a stop. The middle aged lady who was hit had to break open the window and get out. She was bleeding from all the cuts and bruises. San and me went to help her. The cops came and we were held as witnesses.

The car that ran the light was actually being driven by a lady. The minute she realized that she had hit the car, she ran out and the guy who was with her in the passenger seat went and sat in the driver seat. Later while we were helping the lady go to the ambulance, this guy walks up to me and says "please say you saw me driving the car!" and walked away.

There were other witnesses as well. All of us told the cops the same story! That the driver was actually the lady and had given a description of the lady. 10 minutes later the cop told us that she had been picked up and was an illegal immigrant and that is why the guy was trying to cover for her!! My take on it was that if you are illegal, by the very definition of the word, you have no respect for the law and you are going to be a menace to others intentionally or otherwise.

But Chennai or SFO, people who do things that are illegal, still think they have a right to do what they want and actually protest, strike, etc. and get to bully the guys who are actually trying to do their job. SSDP !!