How (not) to make a Milkshake

Just as a word of caution, both my wife and son thought that I was exaggerating the incident below. But trust me it happened as I have written - and please be alert because “idiots walk among us”!

As mentioned in my previous blog I have been suffering from TMJ, though it has been getting better. During this period I have had to subsist mostly on a liquid diet resulting in some loss of body weight, and of course eating out has been a challenge. In this state last week I inadvertently scheduled separate meetings in offices, which are more than a hundred kilometers apart. Having finished my morning meeting I was looking at over an hour and a half’s drive. With no lunch packed I decided to pick up a milkshake on the way.

Spotting an outlet as soon as I exited the Ajman Free zone, I pulled in to look at my options. It was a mini food-court, and as I entered I seemed to be the only customer around. The sort of place that makes me uneasy as I fear that the food could be stale. There were four outlets, but only one seemed to be manned. Hence having no alternative I walked across and asked for a Strawberry Milkshake. The guy turns to me and says "Sure Sir, but it will take a while as I have to finish the previous order". Having never heard that response from a "Fast Food" outlet before, I looked around to see who he was referring to. I spotted a man sitting afar, and deduced correctly that his would be the order before mine. Since I was in no hurry I agreed, and then decided to lounge around the counter to put pressure on him.

The poor guy was alone and hence had to man the counter, prepare the food, and serve the customers singlehandedly. It took him a while to finish with the previous customer but, understanding his plight, I was patience personified. At last he turned to me and repeated my order, but it was more in the form of a query – like, “Am I sure I wanted a milkshake?” I responded - Yes, and that is when things started going wrong.

He was either new on the job or had not been asked for a milkshake before, because he looked as if he did not know where to start and what to do. I could literally see him frantically trying to recall his training (if any) as he started taking out the ingredients. His actions did not inspire a lot of confidence in me, and I debated cancelling and walking away. It might have actually eased his stress!

Anyway with all the ingredients out in front of him, he opened the blender, took out the stainless steel container, and then decided against using it. This blender is the sort where the cover hinges upwards from the side, and a hanging rotating arm blends the mix, after the container is slotted in. Don't ask me why, but he just put it aside and started dunking milk, strawberry syrup, and dollops of ice-cream into the plastic glass that he would eventually serve me in. Clearly there is a reason why the mixer comes with a container. It was obviously not apparent to him and I just idly continued to watch him. Having filled up the glass he put it in the mixer and then realised that the glass would not slot into place (since it was not made for it). Now he had a quandary - how does he blend the concoction? He did not want to start all over by transferring the ingredients into the correct container - especially with me watching, so he did something even stupider. He decided that he would hold the glass, while the mixer was blending.

As stated earlier, this mixer had a cover that hinged shut when the mixer is in operation, to avoid things splashing out. Obviously with him holding the glass inside, the cover would not close. I thought that this is it - he would ‘have to’ empty it all into the proper container, as the mixer will not work with the cover open. But apparently the mixer was not idiot proof, and it started. Keep in mind that this is an industrial capacity mixer, not the small geeks that we keep in our houses. Compound the fact that the cover was open with the glass he was using already brimming over to start with, and you can imagine the carnage!

I literally had to leap backwards to avoid the literal rain of blended ice-cream all over. The poor guy was of course in the center of it, and gamely hanging on. He was being splattered in pink and struggling to contain the overflow. The mixer had turned into a wet dog shaking off water, and looking at the condition of the counter I could only imagine the state of the floor.

But this guy was not one to give up. After a minute or so of holding on through this deluge he coolly took out the glass, wiped it down with tissue and put it on the counter. At that moment I do not know what got into me, but I asked him to add cream on top, pointing to the photo of the milkshake as advertised. I normally never have cream, but that day I wanted to see where this situation would go. This was a guy who put me to shame in the clumsy-in-the-kitchen department - and that is saying a lot. And some gut instinct was telling me that the story was not yet over.

He clapped his hand to his forehead and apologized for not asking about the cream and started looking for the canister. Opening and closing all the closets and drawers but failing to locate the cream, he eventually walked to the back of the store and returned with a tall canister of cream. On the top was attached a contraption that looked like a cross between a paint gun and a pressurized injection dispenser. He shook the can, carefully pointed it into the glass and pressed the trigger. There was a huge puff of air that came out and nothing else. He tried again with the same result, but this time there was a small splattering of cream droplets around the glass, but not a single drop on the shake itself.

Now he does something even stupider (if that is possible). He turns the can around and looks into the nozzle to see if there is any blockage apparent to the naked eye. And then - I kid you not – while looking into the barrel of that contraption he presses the trigger to try again. This huge dollop of cream spurts out on to his face and cap. He must have been born with the patience of Job, because without batting an eyelid he just grabbed a tissue and wiped his face. If it had been me I would have been gibbering like a baboon by this time. I would have taken that glass and hurled it at the mixer – no - I would have torn the mixer off its stand and thrown it at the customer. Anyway without saying a word, he layers some cream on to my glass, caps the glass, inserts a straw and hands it over to me.

He gave me no chance to ask for any other toppings, just silently handed over the glass with an air of finality. Something in his mannerism indicated that I should remain similarly silent. So I gave him the money and walked out with not a further word exchanged.

And as I walked away from the devastation behind me, I thought that it might be worth another visit to this place when there were actually a few customers around. If this was the mayhem created for a single milkshake, it might be interesting to see what happened when there was crowd.

And just in case you are wondering - the milkshake was quite good!

Last of the Flawed Generation!

Our trip to Australia last summer, recent visits to my son’s new school (which is much more densely populated) and our holiday to Bombay in winter, opened my eyes to a new aspect of modern life. Everywhere I turned I saw perfect looking kids. From infants in prams, to children going to school, to teenagers lounging around, they all looked good.

Modern day kids are just so much better groomed and presentable than we ever were. They are all so perfectly coiffed and dandily dressed (there is effort and serious money even on the raggedy look). Most of them have the perfect smile, shining hair and uniform good looks.

 

When I contrast that with what I see when I look in the mirror - I realise that we are the last of the flawed generation. Our parents did not make the same investments into our faces as we do for our kids, and we ourselves were definitely not too bothered about our bodies. And because as kids we did not have this huge emphasis on our looks, even today we try to get by with the minimum of fuss. There are some basics that we can do to help ourselves, like wearing decently fit-out clothes, exercise, spend a bit more on decent haircuts etc. - but we want to defy the world and current convention.

Last week at the local supermarket, there was a competition wherein you got your picture taken and they transposed it onto a digital magazine cover. If your picture eventually gets selected (for whatever), you get a prize. Anyway, just for the heck of it, my daughter, my wife and I agreed to pose for the camera. It was an open booth with a touch screen and after each person’s snapshot was taken we had to input our respective email address, to which then the picture is emailed. I got mine the next day and as my mug flashed up on screen; my first thought was that I had been standing too close to the lens.

Further scrutiny bared the reason for my aversion to posing in front of a camera. Up close and personal, my entire face looked lopsided. One cheek looked rounder than the other, my nose leant more to the right and my chin was not centered. To compound that - my teeth are crooked and my eyebrows, in addition to being part of the non-aligned movement, burst out in all directions. Due to the absence of any orthodontic treatment in my youth, my entire jawline looks out of kilter – like a ship yawing in still waters!

My first justification was that it was the angle at which the photo was taken – but then pictures do not lie. On acceptance of that fact, I resorted to some positive reaffirmation – telling myself that that was the way nature intended me to look, that all of the above physical quirks added character to my personality. But somehow, that did not make me feel any better.

In short I am a male, bred and cultivated in the 1970's. And that too in India where brains mattered - not looks. In fact at that time, one actively worked on not creating too dandy an image – else one risked being taken too lightly. There was absolutely no emphasis on sartorial elegance, body shape or any other (natural or artificial) enhancements. Actually we tended to take personal grooming extremely lightly. Our only maxim was "Cleanliness is next to Godliness" and that basically came down to Lifebuoy soap for the body, Shikakai soap for the hair and Bar-soap for the soul!

 

Today – most kids get braces put, go to a hair dresser, wear coordinated designer clothes and carry the latest gizmos. Even if they are not the sportiest, most will put an effort into toning their bodies to look good. They have shoes for every occasion; my God do they have shoes! We still make do with mixing and matching the two basic colors (black and brown) with every outfit.

To this day I have a repugnance for haircuts (I have written about that before) and will procrastinate on getting one until I am at risk of looking like a hobo. When I am eventually pushed into getting one – I will frequent the cheapest barber this side of the Maginot Line. It is not that they are cheap that draws me to them - it is the speed at which they finish the cut and eject me from their chair that attracts me. The ones who cut my hair, one hair at a time, terrify me. I mean it is only hair and it will grow back anyway!!

You see, guys of my generation are the types who think -"this is the way I am - accept it!"

Our teeth are crooked, noses are bent, eyebrows askew. Our hair does not need styling, gelling or blow-drying. Glasses are cool, makes one look mature! I did get Lasik done, (but that is hardly cosmetic, is it?) and even that is looked askance by some of my mates who prefer wearing glasses which (according to them) give them charisma (quite sad isn’t it?).

Most of the males of that era consider the use of deo's and perfumes as unnecessary - much to the dismay of anyone who stands close enough to suffer the consequences, especially on a hot day. From my grandmother down to us grandkids, our last and only line of defense against body odor was Tata's Eau De Cologne, to be splashed on, either to battle a raging fever or when going somewhere posh - like the neighborhood deli.

 

We take pride in donning the cheap, the frugal and the bargained - our values do not allow us to spend money on fripperies (that indulgence is left for our spouses and our kids).

If we skip one generation further back – the generation before ours were even more 'in your face'. Their wardrobes could be completely dysfunctional, and it would not be uncommon to see styles from the 1800's still in use. There was often no sense of occasion in their choice of outfit worn. (I have known my Dad to wear his most formal clothes to the local market in the morning, reason being that having worn them the night before to a function, they anyway needed to be washed. So might as well wear them one more time.) Their teeth (at least the ones left) would evidence a lifetime of abuse, being chipped and broken. The others would have been lost in battles on the playground, or been rooted out in the dentist's chair. We will not even talk about the facial hair (nose, eyebrows and ears) growing profusely in all directions, like weeds in an untended garden.  

But then who is correct?

I think the younger generation is right. They love themselves, and as a consequence see nothing wrong with projecting that love through self-indulgence. They are more confident, clearer about what they want and more importantly what they deserve.

 

This last is important because, while growing up my generation believed that they deserved no better than what they got.

 

Earlier generations believed (no, knew) that every day was a miracle in itself, and with this gift of life felt neither the need nor the desire for anything else.  

Where has all the body hair gone?

There has been a recent phenomenon, and I wonder whether you have even noticed it? Men have lost their body hair!

 

To me, it is almost as if I blinked, and the world of men changed radically. When 'did' all the men in the world become hairless? It is as if suddenly all over the world, evolution took a giant step in the midst of one generation, and men lost their hair. This seems to me more apparent in the twenty-something’s. Go to the beach and from afar one cannot make out between the sexes anymore. Glossy smooth skin is on display everywhere, completely devoid of hair.

 

If you see men in adverts, music videos or movies, they are all hairless. Their torso, legs, back, armpits and (I am sure other unmentionables) are all devoid of follicles. Strangely enough the same applies in India, home to the hairiest people on Earth. Walking the streets of Bombay one sees enough evidence all-around, of men with hairy arms and legs, dense moustaches and scraggy beards. But adverts and movies seem to ignore this lot. Movie stars prance around bare-chested and without hair. Hairless male models preen in front of the camera, again sending the message that to be hairless is cool ...

 

Gone are the days when macho men walked the earth - with their shirt open to the waist and tufts of chest hair proudly on display. Large whiskers, beards, and Elvis-style sideburns all have disappeared. Actually the modern macho man is completely bald! My son, who like most boys his age, does get influenced a lot by trends and 'lists' thinks that bald men look tough. I politely ask him how long he thinks any of them could last in the sun, or the cold, without a hat?

 

As a man, this is an important question. I still seem to have the same amount of hair all over (actually an increase on my eyebrows and ears) with the only exception being a dramatic decrease on my head. I cannot help wondering whether my family tree has missed a big evolutionary leap. I never considered myself as particularly hairy, but on the beach I often feel like an Austin Powers type throwback!  

 

A couple of days ago I had an “aha” moment. We were watching the original 'Die Hard' movie – you know the one with Bruce Willis. There are a few scenes where he is running around in the building without a shirt, and his chest hair was pretty evident. There was no embarrassment, no hunching of the shoulders to cover his chest and hide his chest-hair with his hands. (I wonder how long he would have lasted with the bad guys if he did that.) He was proudly displaying it – proclaiming to the whole world that here is a man, and that a man and body hair is a package deal. I will have to see the sequels to check whether the later versions will show him as more ‘evolved’.

 

Anyway coming back to hairless bodies I can think of only two reasons for this. It is either evolution or grooming. Evolution (even on steroids) cannot work this fast and hence it has got to be grooming. I struggle to think that men would be spending time grooming themselves to remove body hair all over to become smooth and silky. This is metrosexualism stretched to its limits, with the clear winners being the Philips and Braun Men Care Divisions.

 

I know that today’s youth put a lot of emphasis on looks – and use of lotions, gels, face washes and creams among the teens is growing, but this is a step too far. Growing up, we had a word for guys who indulged their looks a bit too much, and these boys would not have lasted long on the playground. We used to call them – PANSIES!