Lemony Snicket's and the Fighting Irish

Last week was mostly spent at a conference at the University of Notre Dame. This University is in a place called South Bend in Indiana and the best way to reach it is to fly to Chicago and drive 2 hours from there on three or four different freeways. 

My first stumble was with United Airlines. They were 45 mintues late. Apparently they were waiting for the incoming aircraft. No sorry. No apologies. 5 minutes before boarding time, they pushed it out 45 minutes.

My plan was to drive from O'Hare airport to my sister who lives 20 minutes from the airport, get some rest and start driving first thing in the morning. The flight which is supposed to land at 10:15 in the night, lands at 10:50 and the pilot announces "There seems to be a traffic jam at the gate with three planes stuck in our area. So this will be a few minutes". After doing three rounds around terminal C, he finally gets us in. It is 11:10! Traffic jam in an airport?! Experiencing this for the first time after so many years of flying. 

Raced out of the gate to find the Budget Car rental, only to realize the one has to catch a Budget bus that takes you offsite and then you get your car. The Budget bus guy circled the airport twice to fill up the bus before deciding to exit and there is a jam at the airport! It takes him 20 minutes just to get to the office outside the airport somewhere.

Then the fun begins. I am 15th in line and there are a whole bunch of simply frustrated people standing in line in this middle of nowhere place. The guy in front of me says he has already been in line for 35 mintues. Apparently the new cars that were being returned were not automatically showing up on the computer. So after doing paperwork, the guys at the counter were manually going out to the lot, assigning a car to the contract and sending the customer on their way, a process that took 10-12 mintues per customer. 

There was no sorry, no apologies from the counter folks. "If you want a car you can wait for however long it takes. Your other option is to call corporate and get a refund." is what this guy told a very frustrated lady with two small toddlers.

I watched helplessly, as a few other angry folks in the line moved over to Avis, which was the only other counter in that area. To their credit, they were in and out in 15 minutes.  Before you know it, the Avis line was full and by now I had already waited an hour!

My sister has almost given up on seeing me that night and she texts me to say "just call us when you get to the parking lot". Finally got a car assigned to me at 12:55 AM after a sudden improvement in the counter speed for the last four customers in front of me. Made it to my sisters place at 1:20 in the night. We chatted for a few minutes and my sister said "I will get up in the morning and make you some breakfast!". I almost teared up. It was already 1:45 in the morning. 

So set the alarm for 5:30 and my sister is already up making me idli's for the on road breakfast (and lunch) and she has packed me some stuff for dinner and the next days breakfast given my allergy history. In short enough to cover me till the return trip through her house to O'hare!

Gladly took all the food and started driving over to Indiana. Then came sequel to Lemony..

Google maps put the time at 1 hour 55 minutes and gave me nice directions. So given that, and the fact that it was raining like crazy to the point that using the windshield viper at max was still useless, drove at a steady pace. Just 10 minutes before I got to the exit for Notre Dame, got a rude shock! The time jumped an hour from Central to Eastern time! Almost cried. Why would any state have some counties on different time zones?! Why?!

Unlike flight timings where they tell you the arrival time with the local time in mind, Google Maps is not smart enough to tell you that when you arrive at your destination you will lose an extra hour.  Luckily there was enough time for me to go do the formalities there. 

There was a short break from all this angst when spending time on the campus. What a beautiful campus! Apparently, it was the day they showed all the new kids a tour of the football stadium. Thousands of kids all wearing green "Fighting Irish" T-shirts crossed the roads as the few conference goers waited patiently to find their parking lots.

Checked in later that evening into the Inn at Saint Mary's. Given that this place is in the middle of nowhere, this hotel was awesome! The best room I have had a chance to stay in to date on any business trip. For 100 bucks (with a discount for being part of the conference) I got a room with a Jacuzzi! 

When it was time to come back stopped by my sister's place again. My Chai buddy who still lives in Fermi Lab after all these years showed up and we caught up. It is amazing how you can catch up on 3 years in 30 minutes with friends.

When it was time to leave, United did it again. Boarded early morning in Chicago and they pushed the time of the flight by 40 mintues, shortly after boarding. The announcement was brief :

"There is fog in San Francisco and that is causing delays in air traffic control. So the flight is delayed, ONLY by 40 minutes. We might make up some time in the air. Thank you". 

No apologies. No sorry. Nothing. The old lady next to me said "ONLY by 40 minutes. See, they know we all cooped up here like rats and we got nowhere else to go! That it why she takes that tone".

We discussed in bullet points, how:

- SFO being two hours behind will almost always have a pre dawn fog

- by the time our flight gets to SFO 4 hours later, the fog should be gone

- what a pathetic excuse etc. etc. 

Somehow the talking moves to how often I travel and we get to "how is traveling in India"!

I told her about an India trip two years ago, when our flight got cancelled and we were offered seats on a competitor airlines flight to the same destination at no charge. She went "What?!" and I said "Yes. There is competition now in India and customer service is getting better because they know if they do that, the folks will remember what they did and come back!" and now we have gone from "We are extremely sorry that the flight is delayed by 10 minutes" just a decade ago to "It is ONLY 40 minutes delay".  

We both agreed that we live in interesting times. 

Finally made it back home to kids who rushed into my arms. Lemony Sicket's was over!

Both United and Budget car rental want feedback on my user experience as of yesterday. It should be fun giving them radio button answers on a scale of 1 to 10, not that I think it will make a difference!

Life is an adventure. Get to go to new places, meet a lot of new people, experience different things that improve  understanding of the surroundings and open my eyes to the world and if I am lucky enough to keep traveling, see changes and patterns. 

This was one interesting trip!

Make vadaams when the sun shines..

It has been hot outside. Temps are topping 100F. 

We have been staying indoors for the most part and enjoying the cool dark house with Kulfi's etc. 

When you get this kind of sun, it would be criminal not to use it wisely. Was reminded of my grandma yesterday and how she would make us watch the Vadaams in the backyard. She would boldly go into the project knowing that she had excellent security guards in me and my brother to ward off the crows, sparrows and squirrels.

This morning we made Vadaams.. 

So far so good. My little security guards are not taking as much interest in holding a stick and chasing away squirrels, bunnies and blue jays! So we have a new approach thanks to an idea from the MIL.

A disney Simba is watching over the vadams.

So far he has been good. The birds are on the trees but have not dared to venture down. We will let everyone know in a week how the vadams turn out!

From Madras to Monsanto...

When we were young, the tradition in South Indian brahmin families was to give newborn kids something called "Urai Marundhu". Urai is grinding and Marundhu is medicine. The recipe for this medicine was handed down from generation to generation and it was not something that was written down as far as I know. 

Pretty sure that with the modern generation of "all knowing" women who simply dismiss tradition thanks to their Westernization and belief that Google has all the answers you need to raise a child, these recipes will be gone. Even if the recipes survive, the select roots and seeds that one needs to make this medicine will disappear from the planet. 

Now coming to the details of said medicine, it is a combination of 7-8 seeds, dried fruit pods and rhizomes that are ground into a paste, then put in a bath of cow dung (that is the best way to describe it and the Tamil term they use is "padam pannaradhu"), and finally a small part of this paste is given to newborns along with mothers milk.

Grandmas will say "this will help the babies with digestion for the rest of their life". They also have another quick fix recipe for babies with gas problems using "Omam sorasam" which is an extract of a seed that is similar to Thyme called Ajwain or Omam.

Modern mothers will prefer to give drops of Mylecon or Woodwards gripe water. I am reasonably sure that the mechanism for instant gas relief is similar in the store bought medicine and the natural remedy if you study it using the typical western scientific method. 

Now if you pop quiz grandma on the details of why the medicine has to be kept surrounded by cow dung, they will tell you that the cow dung imparts certain digestive qualities that come from the cow's intestines to the babies and it is essential for the kid to help digest food, in this case mostly plant food!

Maybe the term for bacteria didn't exist in their vocabulary! You can go ask your doctor and it is a fact that folks who are vegetarian all their life will have issues when they suddenly try eating meat as they might not have the bacteria to digest meat in their gut.  It is also true ( I don't need to publish a study to prove this) that antibiotics do a number on vegetarian stomachs as they kill good and bad bacteria in the process. My family doctor used to prescribe a "only thachi mammu" (rice with home made yogurt.. read bacteria!) diet when we were on antibiotics to bring our digestion back to normal. I am not sure how much these antibiotics affect folks who eat a predominantly meat based diet or how their sensitivity to a bacterial imbalance is different from vegetarians. If you know of studies, do let me know. If you are a predominant meat eater and you get a loose stomach when you take antibiotics, that is enough of  a study!

Why bring this all up and why drag Monsanto into this? I do not hate Monsanto, but don't love them either. Now, I don't hate Monsanto because they did come up with many new technologies that help feed more people in a planet where the resource distribution is screwed up (a man made problem that was not Monsanto's creation).

However, with the amount of money and influence they have, they do get away with experiments that affect the entire planet, with little or no oversight. This is not just Monsanto.

Take Novartis for example. They came up with Dichlofenac. There are eagles and vultures that are considered holy (as scavengers for dead bodies in certain communities) and as gods representatives in other communities and they are all now on the endangered species list because dichlofenac which goes from dead cow carcases to these birds causes renal failure in the birds. Would they have predicted this? would they have been required to study the effect of dichlofenac containing meat on scavenging birds? Probably not. Should they? 

Monsanto is now synonymous with "Genetically modified" crops. This whole modification seems to be a loose term. The devil is in the details. What exactly is the modification? How does that affect the end product? How do these modifications impact things downstream? On who in which way? Will the "studies" that are required to make these products available to the public be required to test these and to what level of detail? You have to be fair to the Monsanto guys as well. You cannot say "test this on every human genotype and only then we will approve". The world is supposed to work with the greatest good for the greatest many principle. 

That said, just like all crops are not created equal, all people are not created equal either! Our genes are different. A big part of what makes our body is millions of bacteria that have a symbiotic relationship with us. So while it is not possible to test the effect of a Genetically modified crop on "all humans" one has to do enough work to understand what goes downstream. 

Will specifically bring up corn, which is a topic close to my heart. When I came to this country 20 years ago (yes it has been that long in the US), corn was a new thing to me. We did not have corn as a staple food in India. It was something we ate as a treat when we visited the beach in the form of roasted corn. Later we got introduced to "popcorn" which again was not that popular compared to sandwitches, samosas, vada pavs and chai when we went to the movies!  Over the years have seen a proliferation of corn here that we can call it corniferation!

Twenty years ago when you got a cup of Hot Cocoa or Hot chocolate you would assume it contained Milk (or milk powder) and chocolate, and you would be right! Today open up any brand of Hot chocolate and it will have a label which goes something like "As much calcium as a glass of milk" or some such thing to mislead you into thinking that it is comparable to milk. Most of these packets will not list ingredients. If you do get your hands on the big carton itself, the ingredients will show "Corn Syrup, Sugar, etc. etc. and as the fifth or sixth ingredient Whey Protein(some will say from Milk, others won't say from where)! In other words, the hot chocolate of today is nothing but flavored corn syrup. The issue is that over time the messaging and the obfuscation get you to let your guard down in a very systematic way. 

Take Yogurt. Go read the ingredients. Corn starch is now a major part of Yogurt. Why bother feeding corn to the cows, let them convert that to milk, take the time to make cultured yogurt out of it when you can just take corn starch and make that more than 50% of the yogurt?! Now the thing that upsets me is that if this is the logic for economics of scale, then why feed a lot more corn to the cows to get meat! Make corn taste like meat and have it as 50% of sausages or hot dogs. I will bet you money that there will be a revolution in this country if that happens. 

In my opinion, next to guns, the second thing that Americans in general defend as part of their way of life to the outside world, is their right to eat meat and lots of it! Used to think that it is probably part of the amendments because getting veggie food on the highways was a lot more difficult than getting meat of some kind in my early days here.

That meant french fries and milk shakes at McDonalds or Burger King when traveling.  Guess what? Go to the fast food places today and you will see a "subtle" change in the menu board. The Milk Shake with Vanilla, chocolate or strawberry has quietly been replaced with Shakes. I am guessing that these shakes are not milk based anymore and my second guess is that it is also more than 50% corn syrup. There is no ingredient list for this that I can get my hands on, so if you know I am right or way off base, do drop in a note.

Being a vegetarian, my main source of protein is Milk, lentils, the vegetable(singular by intent) that is part of lunch and dinner and the occasional fruit and fruit juice from the local Jamba. The milk that was part of the diet at places outside the house has been replaced by corn. As long as that corn does not have any side effects and the product folks come out and are honest about what is there in the ingredients, then one gets to control the intake. 

Too much of anything is not good for the body. They say in Tamil "Alavukku minjinaal amirthamum visham!" which translates to "When taken in excess, even the nectar of the gods becomes poison!". It is one thing to have corn as part of your diet. It is another thing altogether to have it as almost all of your diet. 

It is just a question of time before my wine drinking friends will find out that their wine is now replaced slowly with 80% corn syrup, 15% paint thinner, 3% grape extract and 2% of other unmentionables! Then you will be buying Organic wine at $2,999 a bottle!

Going back to the topic of Urai Marundhus, not sure how many other communities do something like that. For the record, we did give both our kids the marundhu. Chances are they are more immune to "overcorning" (I should copyright that term) as they were born and raised here but one never knows.

What is more interesting is that western research is slowly catching up to some of this stuff..

Here are some recent links..

a. oral bacteria

b. Dicholfenac causing vulture extinction and why watching the birds at Thirukazhugukundram might be history (My grandpa took me and my brother to see the pair of birds come feed when I was about 9 and still remember it! the photo in wiki is from 1906.. guess it is true that they have been coming for 100's of years. It is always 2 birds and that still makes me think how. there, I have digressed on a reference thread. No wonder I get lost on freeways!)

b. Pacifiers that transfer bacteria from parents to children

c. a study on gut bacteria to which I am ready to go become a specimen

d. Trillions of bacteria that make up human bodies and more on them

e. want to know about "fecal transplants" that might save your life? Well, looks like these guys don't know about Urai Marundhu and Padam parthufying! 

My grandmother would be worth many Ph.D.'s if one tenth of the stuff she knew that was passed on from generation to generation was translated in western scientific jargon! 

I do not expect Monsanto to do a study on the effect of Genetically modified corn( don't know which of those modifications passes on a natural herbicide to the corn itself) on a south Indian vegetarian gut. Even if this thing is extremely hazardous to a very small population, don't think the world would care. It will be collateral damage because that is how the world works these days. For now, if they at least say they have done something drastically different, can at least reduce the intake of the new stuff, see how the body reacts and make a decision to avoid it.

As a person who is allergic to peanuts and sesame seeds and who watches the ingredient list on anything and everything, the new corn variants could have an impact. I do not know for sure, but the only way to protect myself is to do a controlled study (on myself) and then decide!

On yet another side note, Omam (mentioned earlier in this post) contains 50% Thymol, which is a bacteria killer! Apparently european scientists started talking to Egyptian, Iranian and desi grandmas in the late 1700's and finally isolated Thymol as a chemical compound in 1800's and promptly patented it, and found applications to use it as a cure for gum disease, preserve paper, be added to cigarettes for a great flavor and even make shit smell nicer!

Sarcasm apart, the regulatory bodies that allow these modifications can only go so far. The rest is left to the users as a buyer beware. This buyer wants more information to be aware! That is all...