Being a dutiful employee I promptly searched out the nearest Radioshack to my home and began planning a timer buying spree (they wanted 10 for some reason). Then someone made the mistake of sending me a second email saying she had been to the Radioshack near her home and was unable to find any timers and if I couldn't not to worry about it since it was not really her job or mine. Motivation is a problem on the best of days and that pretty much ended any hopes of me importing timers. Instead I bought beef jerky at the airport in case I had to go 6 weeks without eating beef. I'm not completely retarded so I know that you can still eat beef in India (despite dissenting opinions from Mark) but I didn't know how readily available it would be. I was careful to keep this beef jerky out of plain sight on my flight for fear of offending someone (I realize now this was completely unncessary and dumb).By now you are probably thinking surely this post isn't entirely about him bringing beef jerky to India, that's boring! Not to disappoint, my true import to India is of course a method of consuming liquor. So what did I import? None other than the notorious jello shots, which few had heard of and none had tried. From the first time I heard of this mystical creation I had been interested in learning how to craft them, also people in my house were notoriously lazy and so when it came down to the wire I had to step up and pull through. I can't remember the first occasion for us making jello shots but I remember it wasn't a particularly large group of us but we were very determined. Unfortunately none of us had ever made them before and our only true source of information was none other than Steve. For those of you who don't know Steve he knows how to do many things of all different types but sometimes his enthusiasm gets ahead of his knowledge. So it was with a bit of skepticism that Jared Magee and I went to Albertson's to pick up the necessary supplies with Steve and set to work. After some careful work with fractions we discovered that 1/3 of 2 cups = 2/3 cups (something that took me WAY longer to convince others of than should have been necessary). While I don't remember the occassion I remember the result and there are a few hilarious pictures from that night. There is one of about 6 guys in a pile on my bed when someone decided that tackling everyone in the room would be easy to pull off since none of us had a very solid connection to the ground (or earth). I'm pretty sure the only part of me you can see in the picture is my right leg since I happened to be standing on the wrong end of the room. The next picture in that photo album is Megan, Katrina, and Sarah spooning on my floor, which was about a week after they had met Sarah. No clue why but I think they were sharing the lack of ability to stand properly. The final picture from that night features me proudly holding what looks to be about 30 empty jello shot containers and a shit eating grin on my face. Subsequent jello shot nights caused even more outrageous events including but not limited to: drunk people writing in marker all over the living room walls, whipped cream fights, theft of ketchup containers from the cafe on a truly epic scale because we couldn't afford the cups, girls dancing on bars, and girls giving other girls lapdances.
Anyway somehow jello shots got brought up in conversation with my friends Nitin and Anantha and it was decided that I should share this wisdom. This task became slightly more complicated when I realized that the neighborhood market may not have jello in a box like I am used to. My friends accompanied me to a grocery store about half a mile away and we were able to track some down eventually, although it is called jelly here. Keep that in mind if you ever try and order a peanut butter and jelly you are going to get something more disgusting unless you call it jam. It had been a while since I had made them and I was understandably nervous with the unfamiliar packaging and the lack of sophisticated tools in my apartment (they use the metric system here which is based on the number 10. Who in the world thought that would be a good idea...). I told people the general plan and set out to make the first batch.
After putting this batch in the fridge me and my friends left and went over to some of our Chinese friends apartment where they had prepared a delicious array of dishes for us to sample. They also gifted us each with a set of chopsticks, which while appreciative I was a little confused by, until I realized that most of the people had never used chopsticks before. While I'm sure it wasn't their intention to create a spectacle of us, watching about fifteen of my friends try and and pick up vegetables with chopsticks was absoloutely hilarious. I got to give everyone credit though, even the people that could barely even hold the two sticks at once kept going until they finally managed at least one bite. In the spirit of also looking like an idiot I attempted to learn the correct way to eat with chopsticks with my right hand (I currently use an "incorrect" but functional way with my left). I was moderately sucessful at best. After a while I informed people that I had prepared jello shots and to proceed back to my apartment if anyone was interested. To hedge my bets I stopped off at the liquor store and picked up to 2 of these which if you can't tell are 660ml (again this damn base 10 system instead of random fucking numbers with no logical progression)
I got back to my apartment to find 4 people were already there and one immediately grabbed one of my Kingfishers and began drinking it. I am not sure what I did to encourage such larceny but I was confident my remaining Kingfisher plus my jello shots would be sufficient. When I stepped in the other room for a moment someone immediately spilled my remaining bottle emptying about half of it. I of course began crying. Everyone was laughing pretty hard when I came in, and they eagerly told me that when they had rang the bell to my apartment no one had answered until the third ring. My roommate Anantha who had not been feeling well had finally stumbled to the door wearing only his boxers. When he saw four people he remarked "oh I thought it would be Kevin," which everyone immediately seized upon as proof that we were involved in homosexual relations. This theoryhad already existed due to the fact that my loaner phone was bright pink and that we had gone out to a bar one night and talked for quite a while. Despite not feeling well Anantha cheerfully tried to kill Kaushik, to very little sucess.The others had already taken up the noble cause and were merrily slugging away at a particularly amazing Indian tradition which is consuming a type of rum called old monk.
Don't let the classy picture fool you, the bottle I observed was covered in dust and I had the vague suspicion they were actually drinking drain water. I had heard other uses for this liquor were poisoning people you don't like, cleaning bicycle gears, and sterilizing battlefield wounds. Despite this reputation and appearance when it was offered to me I eagerly tried it. Someone passed the bottle and I started to take a swig, immediately Nikhil started saying NONO don't do it like that mix it with some coke. Of course this offended my pride, I am a hard working ex-college drinking expert don't tell me what I can and can't do. About halfway through this thought, as I was taking a swig I reflected on my innate stupidity. It actually deserves almost none of its reputation as it wasn't half bad. It has a strong flavor but its not a strong ethanol flavor so it was really pretty good. Before I had a chance to feel too cool about myself someone returned from the kitchen and informed me my jello shots were still in liquid form, despite having moved them to the freezer earlier. I was pissed and slightly embarassed, I mean I have been making these things for years what the hell happened?
Turns out jelly in India comes in 2 packets, which was something I was unaware of. So instead of making jello shots I made an entire batch of food coloring /fake flavor crystals + vodka and put no gelatin into the mix. I thought the tiny white packet inside was just to keep the packet fresh or something.... you know like those little tiny freshner packets in the bottom of some food. Yeah it was dumb, I may have been a few beers in at this point but thats no excuse. After my friends assured me that the shots were good despite their liquid form I decided to try again with a second batch, because shooting vodka straight is about as fun as pulling finger nails. This time Nitin helped me out and quickly pointed out that the tiny white packet was in fact the essential ingredient. I felt dumb but was overjoyed that the next batch would actually have a chance of working.
At this point some of the Chinese guys came over and the now slightly drunk inhabitants of my apartment pounced on them immediately to try some old monk. A few vodka shots and glasses of old monk later they all turned bright red (a common genetic reaction among Asians to alcohol) and Yuan was yelling hilarious things and laughing loudly (he does this sober so it was hard to tell his exact state). The second round of jello shots was pulled out, but while solid, they had not cooled down from when they were made. I was all for waiting until they cooled but it was not to be, and in case you were curious hot jello shots are fucking awful. Luckily they were excited that they were solid and didn't focus on the awfulness.
I made someone else make the third batch to prove that they could carry on my teachings after I ascended back into heaven (Chicago) but was quickly summoned when Nitin determined that Kaushik was trying to increase his level of drunkeness by adding more water to the mix so it would produce more jello shots. This logical fallacy had little affect on him when Nitin tried to explain it to him so I was summoned to mediate the dispute. After assuring him that I would make this batch stronger he calmed down and allowed me to finish. The third batch came out perfect and there was much rejoicing. Yuan was laughing even more and running about the apartment much to everyone else's amusement. Unfortunately we had massively underestimated the amount of jello we would need and ended up finishing very little of the vodka so people's general state depended on how much old monk they had consumed. Then six of us went and sat on my tiny ass balcony and smoked and talked for quite a while. The Chinese guys decided to pick American names and the only one I really remember was someone picking Alfred after Alfred Hitchcock. We asked Yuan to choose a name and he settled on fucker, which fit the letter of the agreement I suppose. I think he wanted to repick but didn't quite get around to it. The nickname has not stuck due to not being really something you can call someone in public and the fact that he started saying Maharaja every third word a few days later (it means great king or something similiar) which stuck instead.
In other news I remebered the other thing I was going to add to my disturbing things list but forgot a few days ago. It was a used condom laying in the middle of the road. I am not sure where someone was having sex that discarding that condom right there made sense, especially since on the other side of the road is the open sewage line. I sincerely hope someone was on a sevventh floor balcony and fired it rubber band style, otherwise someone needs to pick a new romantic getaway spot.
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