Posted on Dec 18, 2003
Why has it taken me so long to find out about Chilli Flavoured Ice Cream ?!!.
Well bless the Purbeck Ice Cream Company for coming up with it but dammit why did they have to be out there in Dorset? now the Tesco out somewhere in Poole stocks this new food of the gods but is there anywhere near Brum that has it? … Of course not! Typical ‘Ignore Brum in our plans for World Conquest’ marketing mentality — I mean we are talking one of the largest concentrations of devoted chilli eaters in Western Europe but still no Chilli Red Ice Cream for us.
Apparantly, somewhere in London stocks it as well, (now there’s a surprise), so I feel a special Chilli Ice-Cream shopping trip down to the smoke will be necessary before too long.
(Urm … does anyone out there have a refrigerated van they could lend me for a day?)
Posted on Dec 12, 2003
Back in May I made a note to myself reminding me to get tickets to see Akram Khan’s performance of Kaash in December — I did and I saw it yesterday.
Well, I’m just a brummie pleb so I won’t trouble this posting with a detailed review of it, suffice to say, “it was really bostin”. (Yeah — I can just picture that quoted at the bottom of their publicity materials)
At the end of the performance Akram came back onto the stage and answered a few questions put to him by the audience.
Man! what a bunch of pretentious attention seekers they were, (the questioners that is and not the audience — of which I was obviously a member and therefore could never by any stretch of the imagination be considered pretentious or attention seeking … ahem!)
One questioner began,
“Akram, it’s been quite a while since we studied Khatak together …”,
as she smiled sweetly and flicked her hair back. I so wanted Akram to answer ‘Sorry but who are you?’ but he’s a nice bloke and so didn’t. Though when somebody else asked,
“Did you study Bharatanatyam ?”
his curt reply of,
“No”,
was quite comical.
Another questioner asked,
“Are you going to India to perform?”,
to which the reply was yes, the questioner then followed up with,
“Where and when will you be performing there?”, Akram being a dancer and not the British Council Website hesitated a bit but his tour manager shouted a few dates out from somewhere else in the hall. After receiving this information the questioner clearly in thrall to his own smugness proceeded to announce,
“That’s great because we’re flying there tommorrow”,
and sat back down next to his asian babe trophy girlfriend.
[UPDATE : 02/01/04 - Akram Khan performed Kaash in Bangladesh yesterday according to a Daily Star review of it]
Posted on Dec 10, 2003
Just catching up on my blogroll and noticed that Rezwan had posted up an article from the Bangladeshi Daily Star about a bunch of hapless Bangladeshis who got banged up in jail on suspicion of being terrorists … in Bolivia!
I was looking forward to going abroad at some point next year but am having second thoughts. Let’s face it I’m a British born Birmingham based Asian man with a Muslim background who has Bolivia, Pakistan and Dubai visa stamps glaring out of my UK Passport!
Talk about your racial profiling! It’s enough to swing my paranoia into overdrive.
Posted on Dec 9, 2003
“The only reason anybody works here is cos of the people”, so said one of the people who I’m selling door-to-door guilt with.
It’s true I guess. I haven’t been there long enough to be completely unmoved by random strangers’ generosity or to know the other’s in my team well enough to say otherwise. But they are an interesting bunch.
The Team Leader is originally from Pakistan and a cool character, gently encouraging us to go and get ‘links’. He started doing this job whilst studying for a Master’s in E-Commerce and has stuck with it even after getting this rather marketable qualification — he listen’s to The Doors and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. The ‘daddy’ of the team is a larger-than-life character who holds the company record of 10 links in a day. He always has something to say and has that ‘Robbie Williams’ cheeky chappie thing going but not in an annoying way — he writes poetry in his spare time. The ‘mommy’ of the team is a woman who walked out of her management position job four months ago — she once drove at 130 mph on an empty motorway before being overtaken by two police squad cars racing each other. There’s a trumpet playing music grad as well — he sleeps a lot in cars. A Frenchman who graduated in a business-related degree in Birmingham — he’s a rubbish dancer when he’s drunk. A Maths & Physics student who is a good friend of the ‘three month old veteren’ — he’s a DJ at the Uni on the weekends. Last but not least is a Staffordshire lass, a single mom who’s just bought her son his Christmas presents with her first months wages — She finishes every sentence with the phrase ‘innit’ … and she’s not even Asian!
