Chilli and curry - the same thing?

Did you know pre-packaged curry powder is just chilli with a bunch of herbs and spices chucked in? All I can think of is the hours of wasted time I’ve spent looking into the pantry pondering the important choice of, ‘should I have a chilli or a curry tonight’. Now I have to decide what Marsala, (a blend of spices), would suit the dish I’m cooking. Much harder.

This factory produced crap is making us lazy. We’re robbing ourselves of true taste experiences. A curry dish should be distinctly different from a chilli dish. If we Westerners weren’t so determined to bastardise every foreign cuisines we come across with generic concoctions, we’d appreciate the differences between the two a lot more. Chilli mixed with spices and herbs? Call it curry for the masses not ‘the authentic flavour of India’.

Try reading the labels on these pre-packaged sauces and powdered mixes sometime. You’d be better off buying the ingredients, fresh if available, and blending them to suit your own tastes. At the very least you wouldn’t be consuming all those anti-caking agents, colours and preservatives, and you just might enjoy food on a whole new level. Nobody will bother. The convenience of the pre-made usually wins.

It’s harder to accept the poor substitute after you’ve had the pleasure of eating real Indian curries made by real Indian people. (I’m not sure about those fake Indian people.) I now rate good old Keens Curry Powder and Clive of India very low by comparison. Learning how to cook with Indian spices properly takes a bit of extra time but, if decent curries are your thing, it’ll warrant tracking down the ingredients.

Despite my love of the taste of chilli I don't understand the need to overdo the heat. I like a medium bite to permeate what I’m eating. Convincing people to modulate the spices they use when they cook for me can be difficult. They must think eating chilli is supposed to feel like you’ve drunk a litre of acid. This would have to be the main reason so many people won’t touch it. They’ve had one bite of something made stupidly hot several years ago and won’t touch it again. Properly prepared chilli should add taste to the meal and should not result in a blistering ring of fire the next day either.

Putting aside the manly feats of consuming the hottest, the biggest, the most disgusting, I don't particularly like having my mouth scalded by molten fire. Neither does my wife. On a chilli scale with 10 being ‘kill me now’ and 1 being plain rice, my wife likes a 2 and I like a 5. This can cause a few arguments when the spoon goes into the jar of chilli. I’ve learned how much she will tolerate. If I’m too heavy handed I’ll be eating chilli leftovers for the next few days.

On a personal note, don't cut up Habanero chillies and then go to the toilet. I was scrubbing parts of me that only like gentle treatment. And by the way, it’s only funny if it happens to someone else, not me.

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Recliner lounges

The wife and I bought a set of leather recliner lounges not too long ago. You really know you’ve made it when you have a recliner. You can sit back, yank out that footrest and relaaaax. There’s something really special about the way they fold back with little effort on your part and cradle a work sore body. Fantastic.

We got the huge, heavy bastards set up in front of the TV. One of us had already decided which person would sit where and, for better or worse, that recliner became ‘theirs’. (This is the same person who has to sleep on a certain side of the bed no matter where we go too.)

We get comfy and are admiring the way they feel when I accidentally scratched the arm of the wife’s chair with my fingernail. She’s so annoyed by this I have to file that action in my brain under ‘things to annoy the wife with’. As I’m laughing and twisting around to prevent being slapped a ‘sproing’ sound comes from ‘mine’.

I stopped laughing.

Surely I couldn’t have broken it that fast. I’m no lightweight but I don't need to visit Abdul the Tentmaker to get my clothes made yet. I tried to find this irritating fault but the difficulty of replicating sitting on it while checking out the underside at the same time defeated me. The wife laughed cruelly at my misfortune.

I was disappointed. It wasn't fair. Once again karma unfairly targets me with bad luck even though I’d done nothing wrong. I craftily thought about swapping my chair with hers. I would have too but she said, “Don't try swapping chairs,” which kind of buggered that idea. I think I’ll just stick something lumpy into her lumbar support cushion.

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Flying

I don't like flying. I’ve never added the total time I’ve spent in the air but it must number in many hundreds of hours. Possibly I have more air miles than some junior pilots. Most of my travelling occurred in the 1990’s to a remote mine site in the Tanami Desert. The mining company maintained a minimal presence after closing the mine and I was one of about 10 men who worked out there on a six week on two week off roster. We flew out in five-seater Cessna’s and other tiny single engine aircraft.

One of these tacked together shit-heaps took about 4 hours to get there and we had to fly low so we wouldn’t suffocate. If it happened to be the wet season build-up we were sure to suffer the bumpiest scariest trip known to man. Flying towards looming black thunderheads with headwinds that slowed us to a standstill then seeing lightning shrieking past the window close enough to touch were common experiences.

Our pilots were kids. The small fly-by-night (hahahaha) airlines our mining company used snapped up all the inexperienced pilots while they were trying to get their air hours up to fly for the big airlines. We got different pilots regularly as they were sacked or promoted.

We got lost a lot. One of my workmates would never sleep on the plane. Not that sleeping was an easy pastime on the bucking bronco ride. He’d watch the ground for tell-tale roads and communities then let the pilot know how far off course he was. We watched the pilot a lot too as they turned their maps around and around trying to make sense of where they were in the featureless desert. They’d tap their gauges like I used to in my Torana. If I ran out of fuel in my Torana I coasted to a stop. I wasn’t as confident we could do that from several thousand feet up. And run out of fuel they did.

I do remember one time a pilot forgot to change tanks over and next thing we know the engine’s coughing and his panic-stricken hands are everywhere. We got going again and, when politely asked, the red-faced pilot mumbled something about not opening a valve.

One flight almost ended in disaster when the pilot landed on the old airstrip at the mine. Trouble was, months before it had been ripped from end to end with a bulldozer for revegetation. Imagine a ploughed field. He actually landed the plane on it. I think he should have had his wings taken off him for the screw up then given back again for pulling it off without killing everyone. I wasn’t on that flight, maybe that’s why I can afford to be magnanimous.

So there are several good reasons why I shouldn’t enjoy flying right there. These days all my flights are on commercial airlines and I still hate every part of it. The not-knowing if your ticket is valid until you get there, the overblown security that forces people to strip every tiny metal particle from their bodies or suffer humiliating searches, the waiting, the crushing in of as many people into the tiniest space possible, the lost baggage and screwed up connections. It all stresses me out. I keep it inside of course. Wouldn’t like to make an embarrassing scene now, would I?

I’m usually tightly wound by the time we land. The wrong person bumping into me or coughing in my face better watch out for the windmill fists of death. Then I usually have to face a nice long drive through heavy rush hour traffic in strange cities. It’s merely another of life’s tortures. There’s little wonder I am known to lose my cool at times. Unlike the plane, at least I am in control of the vehicle which helps a bit. That’s a matter of opinion, isn’t it Mum?

Apologies to the wife for shouting but, READ THE MAP, DAMMIT, and don't add ‘maybe’ every time you give me directions. And don't tell me ‘that’s it!’ as the only exit for the next twenty kays tears past on the opposite side of a four lane highway. I’ve gotta have reaction times like Garth Tander while driving a poxy four cylinder hire car with less engine capacity than a carton of milk.

Robin and I have similar opinions about flying. Our solution, which we worked out on the Vanuatu trip, would be to knock us the hell out as we enter the airport and reawaken us at the other end. Damn straight. (Note: We prefer pharmaceuticals but if required we will accept a punch in the head.)

(Like it? See - Toyota Prius)

Insurance quote

I rang our insurance company to get a quote on insuring the Monaro. Got that done and they offered to give me a quote for our house contents insurance as well.

It went like this:

Insurance company: “We can insure your contents for $426.32 ($200 excess with $10,000 FREE enthusiast cover).”

Me: “No thanks, we’re paying $315.00 with $100.00 excess. Your FREE cover costs too much.”

Insurance company: “I’m sorry sir, I don't think you understood. There is no charge for the enthusiast cover. It’s FREE.”

Me: “No, it isn’t. You’re charging an extra $100 dollars for it.”

Silence.

Me: “You know what I’m saying; you’re just not allowed to agree with me.”

Insurance company: “So, you’ll just be insuring the Monaro then?”

Me: “Yes thanks."

(Like it? See - Buying a new car)

Telemarkets

Since I started working from home I’ve noticed how annoyingly often the phone rings. Normally I’d never answer it, that’s what the wife and the answering machine are for. If you’re programmed into our phone as friends or family, and haven’t disguised your caller ID, I might pick up, but it depends on what I’m doing. Please don't feel snubbed by this. I’m not the sort of person who jumps out of the shower or cuts off a crap to sprint for the nearest extension. Really, it’s no better than me busting into your house when you’re having sex and sitting on the end of the bed for a chat. “No, no, you two go on with what you’re doing, there’s just something I have to tell you.” That's how it feels to be forced to answer the phone. In my mind anyway.

Waiting on call-backs from various people has required me to pick up a lot more ‘private number’ calls lately. Thusly I have been fully exposed to the dreaded telemarketer’s cold calling system.

For crying out loud these people are a special breed. What incredibly successful brainwashing have they undergone? They launch into their spiel and talk straight over the top of your polite disinterest. (Fear of repeated 3 AM call-backs prevents me from telling them to fuck off). How efficiently they ignore everything you say that isn’t a positive response to what they are selling. Mostly whatever they are selling wouldn’t be desirable even with 100 dollar bills stuck all over it.

Previously, when I viewed the phone as a convenience for me to use and not the dog whistle its insistent tone has become, I would enjoy listening to all the hang-ups of thwarted automatic dialling machines. Then I discovered the telemarketer’s auto-dialler is programmed to keep trying at different times of the day until they finally get you. So by ignoring one call you might have subjected yourself to another five. Now I must be even cleverer. Sometimes you get a 2 second window after you pick up and can hear background noise at the call centre before an operator can connect to your line. Hang up quick, the auto-dialler marks your number as having responded and won’t call again. (For a couple of days.)

Many times I’ve fallen into the trap of letting them get started. It’s that critical period where I try to work out if it’s a publisher calling about one of my submissions or if the Indian telephone exchange has accidently re-routed a call through to Australia. What’s with all the Indian people wanting to sell Aussies stuff anyway? When you’ve got a thick accent and can only poorly emulate the countries language, why would you even attempt to sell the natives something? Especially when they are trying to convince you to buy something you don't want or need. Who encourages this? Is it a joke? I’ve just had to listen to one totally incoherent Indian gentleman spluttering and stumbling over himself for about thirty excruciating seconds on a spiel he hasn’t bothered to memorise. I only listened that long to see if he could finish. Then I think I said, ‘Ah, yeah, what? No don't repeat it! I don't think I need any’, and hung up. We were both relieved to finish that call I think.

An interesting fact is that we bring these people on ourselves. Someone is buying the shit they sell. It would only take a week of every person called saying no and these businesses would disappear overnight. I would love to know who supports telemarketers. I have a baseball bat ready for when I find out. If the product is cheap is it any good, have they told you the freight charge, can you get it locally? A cheap holiday in Rio is going to be in the monsoon season. Can’t find a financial investor you trust through word of mouth from friends and family; why don't you give your money to a cold-calling complete stranger? That’s intelligent. Do any of us need more useless and irritating interruptions to our lives? Getting a silent number doesn’t help. Putting yourself on the ‘Do not call list’ doesn’t help. There’s an opening here for someone to invent a phone that screen these calls for you, like spam software does with emails. I’ll be first in line to buy one.

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Coffee

For over twenty years I’ve been happily drinking instant coffee and liking it. The smell of that wondrous ‘fresh’ coffee bursting out of the can or jar from the day you opened it was most satisfying. Most of us don’t notice the way it gets staler by the day. It’s coffee, that’s the way it tastes and that’s the way it is.

If you’ve ever had a cappuccino down the shops and seen the massive, expensive machine seemingly necessary to make a fantastic coffee, you resigned yourself to never being able to do that at home. Let’s face it, nobody wants to screw around ordering special beans, grinding them properly, working out how to get the crema to come out right, and then make the milk micro-froth.

My wife did. Or more to the point she wanted me to know how to. I blame her brother Mark for this. He put us onto ‘good’ coffee. Admittedly the difference is startlingly superior even to a mug slurper like me. At first we tried the stove-top pot that involved getting very hands-on with your coffee. I don't like to fiddle fart around in the morning when merely boiling the kettle is a trial so the wife had to do this. Next we tried percolated and then steeped coffee. There’s good and bad points to these methods.

When I realised the other half had set her mind to ONLY drinking exceptional coffee, and would no longer drink our perfectly mediocre range of instant, I started looking for a machine that would do all the hard work and spit out a cuppa on demand.

We found one on eBay that does almost everything automatically. From the noises it makes everything is happening under maximum duress. It grinds the beans, (1 thousand decibels), packs the coffee, (ram, smash, clunk), slams 5 million PSI of steam through the grounds and then fills your cup if you remembered to put it under the spout. We got one with a separate wand to do the milk manually. I don't remember agreeing to that. Why would I want to do my milk manually? Isn’t there a machine that will do it for me as well?

The machine that would do this was more expensive than ours. We’d already paid several thousand dollars for the technology to get us most of the way there so I had to shut up and froth the milk.

When handing over this sort of money you’d want to feel confident your machine couldn’t possibly fail, right? Wrong. And the bit that stuffed up was the MANUAL milk frother. Coffee without micro-frothed milk is totally unacceptable to half of our household. The manufacturer screwed up though, the machines self destruct device went off too early. It was still two weeks inside the warranty period. That's so rare it’s worth a mention.

I packed the bloody thing up and took it to a repairer. They’d just landed the contract and not long after wished they hadn’t.

I picked it up again 6 MONTHS LATER.

I got the heavy bastard home and made an experimental cuppa. The milk STILL wouldn’t froth. It was EXACTLY THE SAME as when we left it there half a freaking year ago.

Straight back to the shop. What’s the bloody go? To be fair he had a look straight away. The steams blasting out and he’s looking at me as though I’m a retard. It took some time to convince him that the steam pressure might LOOK fine but it wasn’t frothing the fucking milk. They didn’t even have any milk to try it with and no benchmarks to test what pressure was supposed to come out. THEN he tries to tell me that I’m frothing it wrong. Now although I didn’t really want the machine in the first place, I made sure I worked out how to use it properly. I probably sounded like a coffee snob, and I felt like one as I explained the difference between big billowing bubbles made by jerking the wand in and out of the milk and lovely creamy micro-bubbles that is an essential requirement to properly frothed milk. If our positions were reversed and someone said that to me, I would call them a wanker. In the end I wore him down and he rang the manufacturer. They said I was right. In your face pal. Confused at being wrong my repairer did a bit of record checking and realised he’d forgotten to de-scale that side of the machine. There are two circuits with two thermo blocks and he’d only done one. At least he was honest about that. Wanker.

(Like it? See – The oldest can of peas and carrots in the world)

Toyota Prius

On a recent holiday to Melbourne we hired a car to run around in. When my brother-in-law went to pick it up they couldn’t find the car we’d reserved. After they’d fucked him around for an hour he was rewarded with an upgrade. The fact that Avis had given our pre-booked and pre-paid-for car to someone else will come back to bite them a bit later.

We ended up with a black Toyota Prius, an electric/petrol hybrid. None of us had ever experienced one of these before so the novelty value soothed our irritation a little. Some of us were less soothed than others. You just have to let it go or you’ll get an ulcer.

As first impressions go, from the outside the Prius appears to be a small car. Inside is roomy and comfortable, accommodating three adults and their luggage without complaint. The dash is quite plain with a LCD screen dominating the centre. It is a touch screen with fairly intuitive controls that run most of the cars functions like the radio, a/c, trip distance/economy and a few other dinky functions. The warp speed button was broken.

The stubby little gear shift is a bit close to the steering wheel for my tastes but its drive-by-wire operation ensures you can’t slam it into reverse while cruising at 100kph. Starting the car for the first time using its push button ignition was moderately frustrating. Couldn’t get the bastard to go. We tracked the problem to the plastic lump, (that’s the key?), being in upside down! This is a fairly bad design flaw as the car still wakes up and displays that it’s ready to go but won’t select a gear. Quite frustrating really. Wouldn’t it have been fairly simple to make the key either double sided or only fit in the socket one way, huh Toyota? I have since found out the key doesn’t even need to be fitted into the dash; the car will recognise its presence even if you leave it in your pocket.

There are no gears, (look it up if you want to know how the hell that works), so acceleration is unmarked by any hesitations. It pulls quite strongly and keeps up with traffic even if it revs its ring out under very heavy acceleration. Overtaking required the throttle to hit the floor at times. I disliked having nothing in reserve and found myself desiring a little more in the go department. I did manage to briefly achieve 160 kph while overtaking freeway clogging morons. (Excessive speeds were for comparative reasons only.) I could feel a certain amount of feedback/resistance when cruising gently as the battery and petrol engine cut in and out. You have to extend your feelers to be aware of the transition.

Over a several hundred kilometres we averaged about 5litres/ 100 kilometres. It is advertised as getting 4.4litres/ 100 kilometres. I think that would be achievable once you got used to driving like a granny. The mileage came down when I stopped thrashing it and began operating more efficiently. The battery-only function was a short lived experiment. There are so many interlocks that automatically switch it back to normal hybrid operation it became a pain to keep resetting it. I think the computer would prefer the driver didn’t keep on pressing all the buttons leaving it the hell alone to do its job. Using battery-only very quickly drains the charge too. It can actually make the economy worse as the engine has to pull double duty to recharge and propel the car at the same time. It would be a handy device to have if you needed to sneak away from your girlfriend’s home at 3am when her husband/boyfriend/father got home unexpectedly. A cantankerous V8 is notorious for stalling at times like these.

When we gave the Prius back at the airport Avis got all confused. It seems we weren’t supposed to have it. We already knew that you bloody weirdos. They’d really stuffed up their records and had upset numerous other people by giving that car to us. The knock on effect had played havoc with their computers and other customers down the line. Least it wasn’t us getting upset for once, although we did have to stand there while they sorted it. With any luck we might get out of paying the toll road fees

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