19 January 2025

I think I have met my kryptonite

Remember how I always talk about me trying to stay honest with minimalism and decluttering? Of course, everything is on a relative scale. Recently, I have noticed a bit of hypocrisy in that espousal that I do.

I am taking out fountain pens from this discussion since I do not collect them with an excuse to use them. I collect them so that I can collect them. But other such things like running shoes matching with colored running shirts and all that – I have been able to bring them down dramatically. In fact, when it comes to clothes, I take my minimalism bit a little too over the edge, perhaps.

Except that when it comes to island shirts made of cotton, I absolutely turn into an epitome of hypocrisy. I cannot pass up on any design and I cannot pass up on any color. Remember last year when I was in Guatemala how I took a car from Antigua to Lake Atitlan and then took a boat to one of the seven villages where they make cotton shirts? Once I liked a design, I bought seven of them! My only constraining factor was that they did not have more than seven colors! The next bigger constraining factor was getting XL size (cotton shrink and I like loose fit; Guatemalan structures are short and stout relatively). It did not help that they asked for only about $15 per shirt (that too before applying volume discount!)

Or in Valladolid in Mexico – where we drove 200kms from Cancun to find the black and white cotton shorts? I think it was $20 there.

Well, In Fiji and Samoa, I fell for the same thing. In the Caribbean islands, they do not make much cotton shirts. But in the Polynesian islands, they do. Sharmila was patient enough to let me visit the cotton shirt shops every single day of our trip! If I had a chance, I would have picked about a dozen in-your-face bright colored “Bula” shirts from Fiji.

After 7 days, I finally settled for reasonably muted designs. But could not resist picking half a dozen of them. There the problem was that they had way too many designs I loved but not many in XL sizes. The Samoan and Fijian physical structures meant I could get even 5XL easily. But for a particular XL shirt, I had to wait for them to get it delivered from another part of the country! Good news is that the country can be traversed in about three hours by car.

Taking them out of the suitcase in Atlanta, I realize this is total madness.

I have met my kryptonite.

(P.S. I did give up 6 existing shirts to charity to make space for this. Now I might have to wait for summer to go to office 🙂 )

18 January 2025

For my boater friends – can you help me? Why is red and green color reversed?

When we took the boat out in Fiji to visit the nearby islands, I noticed something that seemed very unintuitive. At least, to what I thought were boating rules.

The top picture is when we were going to the islands (in fact you can see one of our destination islands in the picture). We had just left the main dock. We were cruising out of the main area thru the channel that put us in the ocean.

Notice the nearby boat on our port side. And now notice the markers denoting the edge of the channel. Why is it green in color? Should it not be red? The rule is Red-Right-Return right?

The lower picture is from the same channel when we were returning. Note that the red markers were on our left side. Those should be green right?

Does anybody know what is happening here?

17 January 2025

From the bartender’s corner: Gin from the 19th country – Fiji

During the heydays of gin research, I had experimented with nearly 50 different gins procured from very different countries. Gin and tonic is still Sharmila’s favorite drink. Whereas I have proceeded to experiment with other alcohols like mezcal.

This gin is really good. Got a very unique, soft and sweet aromatic nose. The botanicals are mostly local. Interestingly, it has Yaqona – which is used to make Kava. The native ginger Layalaya, “ugly lemon” Moli Kula and fresh curry leaves add some nice tones to the palate.

The juniper berries are not grown in Fiji though. They are brought in from Macedonia.

Not sure if this is easy to procure in the USA, but I highly recommend it, if you can get a bottle.