India and Sweden, a kitten and kale

At the moment I am exhausted, hungry, and happy. I am washing kale in the hopes of replicating a dish Phoebe made for me once last year. I don’t actually have the recipe, and only sort of remember what was in it, but I don’t intend to let that stop me. Delicious kale, here we come.

The stress of culinary uncertainty is not the cause of my exhaustion. I’m tired because last night I went out to a Bollywood dancing night with a new friend from work, Ruchi. We had an awesome time. Ruchi’s a really good dancer—she’s part of a Bollywood dance troop, and teaches and performs on a regular basis. We were, in fact, at the club with the rest of her dance troop. Most of their dancing was choreographed and well-practiced. Needless to say, this was a bit intimidating, but she says I did fine. I’m hooked—I’ve been energetically bobbing my shoulders and flitting my hands all day. Despite only coming home at 4 am, after even more dancing and chocolate cake.

Erika and I spent most of the day biking around the city. We first went to visit a kitten that she’s fallen in love with at a nearby pet store. Big surprise, it’s a curious and energetic tiger-striped little Scottish wildcat. Not that she’s consistent or anything. Kittens here cost about $300 and are in great demand, which is bizarre to us, coming from a place where you often can’t even give them away for free. All ‘shelters’ here are swift kill shelters, since feral cats and dogs are the biggest threat to native Australian wildlife. The Aussies value their native animals much more than do stray pets. While I agree with that, it’s still sad to think about, and it does lead to a shortage of kittens. (Don’t worry, we’re not actually getting any pets. Just visiting pet stores.)

After that we went to worship in the blue and yellow temple of economy and design. Ikea is such a wonderfully respectful store. You only have to walk in the door to feel accommodated and catered to. And encouraged to spend money. Today the place was full of adorable babies, which was very distracting. We successfully escaped with the picture frames we came for and only one additional unplanned purchase of a small plastic cup. The highly discounted red leather couch was very tempting, but would have been difficult to carry home on the back of our bikes, and we really really don’t need another couch.

This evening we’re going to watch movies, eat (hopefully delicious) kale, and go to bed early. As glamorous as it is to live abroad, it’s nice to have a little mundanity now and then.