I've been hankering to build a small "authentic" cottage for some time now

During the last week I seem to have developed insomnia. The longest I’ve slept through the night so far was five hours, and that was only with the help of expired over-the-counter sleep aids. I thought I had it kicked last night when I drifted off of my own accord at 11pm, but I woke up again at 3 this morning. Maybe I should just start drinking.

I was rooting through some bootlegged DVDs yesterday when I came across the best plot summary of a film I’ve ever seen. Usually when the summary is included it’s cut and paste from the real DVD case, but this synopsis of The Holiday seemed to be cut and paste from the IMBD user comments:

"Like a lot of films, it gets better and better with each viewing. Love Rosehill Cottage. I wonder how I could get the blueprints—I’ve been hankering to build a small “authentic” cottage for some time now. This movie is amazing!”

Amazing indeed. This reminds me of a certain open call for dates to go see the Prince Caspian movie off of the Baltimore Craigslist personals. “You KNOW you will have a good time because (1) it is an awesome movie and (2) I am a really great date.”

There was also an article in Outlook (a weekly news magazine) this week about Indians living in Beijing which was entertaining in the writer’s obvious assumption before interviewing anyone that leftover tensions from the war of 1962 (1962!) or Tibetan politics shaped the experience of these Indian expats. It turns out, the Chinese just really love Bollywood and are waiting for every Indian they see to burst into song and dance, just like I am. I love Outlook most of all because in every article they feel the need to provide bullet takeaway points for every major article. When listing the pros and cons of Musharraf’s time as president, this works, but this article on NRIs (non-resident Indians) in China highlighted such great salient points as

• What Indians like about China: security, business ethos, determination, discipline
• The problems Indians face: language barrier, cuisine with dog, donkey meat

This article is only a page and a half but mentions the damn dog and donkey meat three separate times. Get over it, folks. I also learned from the paper today that my late grandfather’s Bollywood doppelganger, Sanjay Dutt, is running for an MP seat. Get excited.

I'm meeting today with the Secretary of the NGO I'm partnering with for this project... hopefully, after today I will have some sort of direction and I can start writing about things that are actually interesting... apologies. But I suppose if you're still reading this then the joke is on you. Ah, structure. How I miss thee.