March 18, 2026 – The Cat’s In the Cradle

March 18, 2026 / / 0 Comments

I was born in 1975. The era of folk songs was wrapping up. The Vietnam war was over, the youngest hippies were starting to grow up and become adults. The age of the Baby Boomer was accelerating at a rapid pace. Modern folk music was born out of political rebellion of the 1960s. It included artist such as Bob Dylan, The Beetles, Peter, Paul and Mary and many, many others.

It was melodically slower, much different than be-bop and the Elvis inspired Rock and Roll of the 1950s. It contained hard hitting messages about politics and culture of the time. Just because I missed it doesn’t mean that I wasn’t aware, it was all around me. My parents radio station was perennially tuned to what I would have called ‘soft rock’ of the era. We were not allowed to touch it without consequences.

I have heard this song a million times on the radio. In fact, when I was in grade school our music teacher even made us learn the lyrics during music class. It’s funny, you can know something and pay no attention at the same time. It wasn’t until much later that I actually realized that this was actually a song about my life.

I was in my second professional posting. I was actually working at the same company and building as my Dad. Even so, it could be weeks in-between seeing each other. I remember talking with my uncle one time and he was saying how nice it was that we could have lunch. I played it off by saying something like “yeah’ however I was kind embarrassed inside. We never had lunch together, let alone barely see each other.

My Dad invited me to join his elk hunting party and I made some excuse about how I didn’t have the time off accumulated. The group was primarily all people that worked in that office. That was the one and only time I got invited. The truth is, I thought that I would get invited again in the future since we were all peers of sorts. It was only this year that was the problem.

I moved on to another job the following year and got even more involved in my career. Now, I didn’t just not have time to go elk hunting but it seemed like I was barely home. Not only was I not spending time with my parents but I was also too busy working for my own wife and kids.

I didn’t just come across being a work first, father by accident. I had a good example. He was travelling for work a lot when we were kids. Occasionally, when he was home my brother and I would ask him to play catch with us. I remember how special I felt that he would actually do it. It was so rare that he would stop doing things that he was doing and just spend time with us.

The other day, my parents came by and helped us take a load to the beach. Really, they wanted to see this place that we were about to purchase. But, that is OK. He left a tarp behind by accident and I made a plan to drop it off with other errands that I needed to run. I really had a full day of packing planned but I ended up sitting down for almost two hours talking about computer problems and other things because Mom was gone.

The song Cat’s in the Cradle played in my head as I was sitting on the couch. I don’t know what it is with my drive to do things but it is very difficult for me to stop or postpone what I had planned to spend time with other people. It is not just my Dad but my Wife and kids and anyone else for that matter.

My wife is very fond of saying that I will never say on my death bed that I wished I had spent some more of my life working. That is probably true. In the same turn, I am not sure that I am going to say that I regret doing what I thought was the right thing to do. It has provided the life that we live and giving my family an opportunity to be who they want to be, not stuck in limited options. That being said, I do recognize that I need to be a more attentive and flexible.

One of my days off my wife insisted that I make a dinner date with my grandmother. This is another one of those times where I have been stressed about packing and the move. It turned out to be a really nice visit. I am pretty sure that there are not going to be too many more of those, especially when I don’t make the time. No promises but I am going to work on that.

End Your Programming Routine:

March 17, 2026 – Forgotten In Time

March 17, 2026 / / 0 Comments

If you were listening yesterday, then you will know that my life is in limbo. What was supposed to be the final push and a move to the new house turned into more uncertainty. Because we are renting the new house, we certainly could have moved anyway however I made the call that we were not ready. Truth be told is that we were not.

A huge effort has been made, my shed, shop and garage are 100% ready. Most of the rooms that we live in are somewhere between zero and 75% ready. I am still selling things and 100% focused on getting ready. So, it is not all a bad thing that we didn’t just jump off of the cliff.

In my shed, there was a bucket. It was full of chain and garden stakes. This was all stuff left when we moved in or I picked up in the yard. I put the chain the bucket and it was shoved in the back of the shed. When it came to packing, I decided to take the steel over to the neighbors for scrap purposes. At the bottom of the bucket, but above all of this chain was these old advertisements.

One is a monthly mailer from a regional chain and the other is the weekly Sears advertisement from the Sunday paper. I had known that they were there there. It is one of those things that I saw once every couple of years. I don’t know why I never threw them out. I know that I have thought several times that they didn’t belong in the bucket, but I never did.

While packing, I finally got to the point that I was no longer going to store this trash. Before I threw it out, I decided that I would check the date for fun. The best that I can surmise is that this is from mid-September 2005. I know this because the coupon book below, the prices would run for a month. So, because it says that it is valid through October 9, it had to be September 6. They run their prices Tuesday through Monday.

I know what was happening in my life at that time. That was immediately following Labor Day. That particular Labor Day Sunday, we had returned from Hawaii because my brother had just gotten married. I picked up some kind of crud and I ended up spending three more days in bed following a week of vacation on Oahu and Maui. This was the beginning of life as I know it now. We had only lived in that house nine months and we had yet to learn that our first son would be delivered the following July.

I thought it would be interesting to see how time has changed. First of all, Sears no longer exists for all practical purposes. The one page that I thought would be illustrative was the electronics page. A 30″ ‘widescreen’ was $800 on sale! I have a slightly newer 32″ that I paid $12 for two years ago. New TVs of that size are $99 all day long, granted they are Toshiba but even those I see are going for $109 on Amazon.

The past was certainly the golden age of ammunition. I see that 12 gauge game loads are $3.29 a box. That very same load is $10.99 at Sportsman’s Warehouse. OK, that hurts but nowhere near the price of 38 special. I see that same box going for $35.99. If you are doing the math, that is over a four times price increase in twenty years. Things aren’t so bad if you are a 9mm shooter. The sale price of $5.99 is today $14.99.

That is comparing apples to apples, if I just want to compare cost, I can see CCI brass 9mm at $9.99 on sale. So that is less than double what it was. I will also admit that Sportsman’s Warehouse will never compete dollar for dollar against Bi-mart but it is a place that I can go locally and purchase the same brands and they have a website that I can reference prices. What is more lost in time is not the prices but what was on sale.

When is the last time you saw 25 Auto on sale? That is something I never paid any attention to in the first place. But what I will comment on is when was the last time I saw 38 special on sale. I have to say that it was probably pre-Obama 2012.

End Your Programming Routine: Times change, I get that. I still wish that there was a Sears and TVs were more than disposable item. Sure, image quality is better today but they certainly don’t function as well or last as long. If we are judging our society, the metric I would not pick is TV prices. A proliferation of TVs really has not helped our society become better. It has just helped us surrender to the tech giants. We have given our privacy, our data and with it a part of our souls.

March 13, 2026 – The Talent Code: Conclusion

March 13, 2026 / / 0 Comments

I have to say that this is one of those books that I haven’t struggled to get through lately. Despite the fact that I got way behind in my writing and reviewing, I had no trouble finding time to read it. A lot of the books I have chosen in the last couple of years seem like an obligation to read rather than a desire. I guess that is what happens when you sign up for a weekly deadline.

I think that what is great about this book is that it offers hope. There really is the ability to do anything that you want to if you go about it with the right approach. I also find it empowering to learn that it isn’t just luck to become what you want. Of course, if you wait too long like me then you start to lose that ability. Age catches up with us all eventually.

What I would say about the Talent Code is that this is a worthwhile book to read. Even if it doesn’t work, it offers a different way to look at things. I tend to believe that it actually does work based on my experience. My example is as follows.

A mark of a young programmer is that when code executes and it doesn’t do what is expected there is a tendency to defend the code. This is especially true when the problem cannot be duplicated. What I believe is that code does not just behave randomly, the conditions have not been created so that it can be duplicated. I have seen things that I find very hard to believe, but I have seen it, so it is true.

The act of trying to figure out what those conditions are is deep practice. This is running test conditions that do not duplicate the problem until you can identify the problem condition. It is kind of the opposite of the musician problem but no less viable. Once you can change you opening position from it can’t be duplicated to what is happening differently, you become a significantly better programmer.

Sorry that I don’t have a great story that I tried real hard and became some kind of high paid athlete, programming is the world I know. But, I think the story works, it is what I did anyway. Actually, the act of programming is a good exercise in deep practice. You code, you test, you analyze, code and test again. It does make a person become fairly effective, relatively quickly.

If you will recall, this was not the book that I thought I was going to read when I started. I stated that in the Part One a few months ago. It actually turned out much better than what I thought. The Talent Code is a method to do nearly anything better, not just lead a team or be a better manager. I thank my former co-worker for suggesting this book to me and I am sorry that I put it off for so long.

This isn’t a book that I am going to put on my must read list. Those are reserved for very special books like 1984. However, if I were Dave Ramsey, I would put this on my reading list. It falls in perfectly with Who Moved My Cheese and Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It is part of a collection of books that you can use to make your life better. To be honest, anybody should be interested in that.

As I stated last week, we are going back to CS Lewis for the next book. I highly suspect that there will be a couple of weeks before chapters 1-3 appear. We are in the midst of moving right now and to be honest, I haven’t even started reading the book yet. Clearly you don’t need my permission but go ahead and read whatever you want until I am back.

End Your Programming Routine: It is very easy to believe that the elite come from some special stock. You see certain demographics repeatedly in sports. But, you too can can be elite if you combine the right factors. Without a doubt, you can be good enough. That is good to know.

March 12, 2026 – Buyer Beware

March 12, 2026 / / 0 Comments

What we’ve got here is a genuine 1971 Thomasville dresser. Built in the USA and solid wood. Boy it is heavy too. Even with the drawers out, it was all I could do to lift this thing out of the basement. You may recognize this dresser from the post Tacticool Thursday post in 2020.

Like everything in my life, it has a story. My wife purchased this used somewhere. In that era it was probably Craigslist. But, I drove down with my nephew in the pickup to load this and a nightstand in the back. I remember that we paid $200 for it. It’s purpose was to go into the Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU). We were in between tenants and actually I was considering not renting at all. My wife wanted to setup the ADU as a guest house.

Guess how long not having a renter lasted? About a month. Because it was already there and it was heavy as heck, it got left in the bedroom. That is when it changed from a used with no blemishes to missing hardware and finish. Eventually, we got a tenant that no longer wanted a dresser missing hardware and so I moved it into the basement (to die).

I used it to store things in. That was the whole Tacticool Thursday post that I wrote about. Fast forward to moving and we no longer have the luxury of inaction. I know… I will donate it. I was thinking that I would refinish it and sell it. If I donated it, maybe someone else would do the same thing.

Little did I know that donation centers have the right to pick and choose what they accept. I’ll be the first to admit that it is not in tip-top shape, missing hardware and finish and a hole in the back. I will also admit that it is not a fashionable piece. I would have almost killed to have this in my early days starting out. Aside from cosmetics, all the drawers operate as they should, it should have some value. After seeing multiple items for sale in the under $50 range for weeks on end, I determined that there really was no market for 1970s furniture, in better shape I might add.

My son and I took it to two different donation places and were soundly rejected. When we got home, my wife was not happy because I didn’t call before we went. I reluctantly agreed that I will cut it up and throw it away in a couple of days. Right now, our trash was full. I said in the meantime, I will post it for free.

Wouldn’t you know it, I hadn’t even finished posting it on Facebook Marketplace and someone asked for it off of Nextdoor. They also asked if I could deliver it. They were literally six blocks down the street. Of course, I said yes even though I had just taken it out of the pickup and hour earlier. My wife did not want me to do this, but I told her that delivering it was going to be way quicker than cutting it up and managing the trash.

It did not end the way that I had anticipated, I was expecting to donate it. But the fact that someone wanted it as is and was happy to get it was a good ending. This whole experience has got me to think about the whole lifecycle of stuff. I don’t think that we ever intended to put this dresser in the ADU to then take it out and store it in the basement. But, this thought line has happened a lot in the shop already.

Last October we went to an auction and there were some steals. An 8″, long bed joiner went for $150. I could have sold my 6″ joiner and made money on that deal. But, I simply did not have room in my shop for it so I passed. A deal is really only a deal when you can take advantage of it. Otherwise, I would say that it is more of a burden than a deal.

I see this all the time. People acquire things because they are cheap or free. Without a need, a place to store the items simply become accumulation. Then, more often then not it often becomes garbage when it is actually useful, it just didn’t end up at the right place to begin with.

Obviously, not everyone has the same consciousness about throwing things away. I know people that think the trash can is where things go when they are unwanted. On the other hand, I go out of my way to make things go to a better home, i.e. delivering the dresser. Maybe, I put too much effort into it but it is because I care.

End Your Programming Routine: I am convinced that this is a God moment. I was actually mad that I couldn’t donate the dresser and I had resolved to cut this piece up and throw it away. I couldn’t leave it, I didn’t want it and I couldn’t even give it away. I was heard trying to do the right thing and a solution appeared. The right solution.

March 11, 2026 – The Original Pronto Pup

March 11, 2026 /

You know, you think that you are pretty educated about the world around you until you run into a surprise. A few months ago, I ran into an article about a little, fast food shack on the Oregon Coast that claims to be the originator of the the Pronto Pup. They claim that a Pronto Pup is a corn dog that has lighter batter. I always thought that it was a name for the same thing. Of course we had to try it.

A little back story here. I begrudgingly go to the state fair every year. My wife loves it right along with corn dogs. She has even gone to the point of stating that she would like to visit every state fair and trying her hand a being a ‘carnie’ in retirement. Me, I could definitively leave it, but of course I take it. So when I saw this article I said this is a place that we have to visit, even if it just to say we did.

I ordered the giant which is really a foot long hotdog. It was after 1PM and I didn’t eat again the rest of the day. Not that I am a huge eater but that is the scale of the giant. I found it to be difficult to eat due to the size and it being straight out of the fryer. The place is small so be ready to share space with strangers if you are going to eat inside. They have more seating outdoors than inside but this is the Oregon Coast. The day we went, the wind and rain were howling. I am not a fan of eating in the car either.

Honestly, if you handed me an original Pronto Pup and a convenience store, corn dog, I could not tell the difference. The ambience was kichi and it was family run so those are pluses. They have other flavors than just the standard such as jalapeno or cheese. I stuck with the original because I always want to evaluate on the merits, not gimmicks and we crowded onto a wall mounted bar table with some other strangers.

It kind of had the Geno’s vibe if you have ever been to Philadelphia. The place was crowded and sparsely furnished and there was a line out the door. The order took a while to prepare. I would say twenty minutes but it gave us time to chill out. This place is a long ways from home and about as long to the new place. My wife was presenting at a conference that day so this was on our way home.

My wife ordered a regular corn dog, we split an order of fries and had a fountain drink. For $21, we were stuffed for the rest of the day. That is pretty darn cheap, I don’t hardly think we could have ordered fast food for that price let alone not feel like eating again. I am no health Nazi, but it was pretty good value for a novelty meal.

Let me bottom line it now. In my opinion, this is one of those places that you go to for the experience. I kind of feel the same way about Genos as well. It didn’t entice me enough as a must stop each time passing through. Of course, I would much rather have a ball park hotdog than any sort of corn dog any day of the week. Even my wife the aspiring carnie kind of agreed that it was good but not sensational. That doesn’t mean it is not worth a stop, now that I have done it, I wouldn’t.

If you want to check it out yourself, you can visit their website for details.

End Your Programming Routine: I am a sucker for nostalgia, you should know that by now. Planning a stop also earned me some points with my wife. I need all of those that I can get. I wouldn’t go out of my way just to try it but if you happen to be passing by, sure stop in particularly if you are a fan of fair food. It won’t hurt you wallet too badly and you can fill up for the rest of the day.

March 10, 2026 – Austerity Measures In Place

March 10, 2026 /

You could probably say that this is a companion to yesterday’s podcast. This is also part of my moving fatigue. Because we are renting the new house as well as addressing all of the existing house concerns, we are on a severely restricted budget. One of the consequences of that is my recycling bin, pictured below.

I value the recycling service. I consider it an equal partner to my garbage service. If we didn’t have recycling, all of that stuff would end up in the trash can. They pick up our bin every other week and when they do, it is almost always fuller than our trash can. In fact, there have been times that the recycling bin was full the next day after pick-up and we would have to wait another two weeks.

Fortunately, we live very close to the recycling center which is open 24 hours a day. It was not uncommon for me to make multiple trips to the recycling center per cycle. That means that our bin was too full and we had to wait until it was picked up but in the meantime, I was getting rid of the excess.

I have made it a habit of managing the recycling. This means breaking down everything into it’s smallest and basest form. When I go to the recycling center, I often see the bins full of boxes that just had the contents removed. This is a very inefficient use of space. I say all of this to mean that I am not filling up my bin with two or three items. it is lots and lots of things.

I took a picture of this bin on trash night. This is the amount of recycling that we have generated in two weeks. I know that it is a little out of context but this is a 96 gallon container with about a foot of recyclable items. In fact, I think that this is the very first time in over 20 years that I did not take the bin to the curb. I didn’t see the point.

In full transparency, we are paying for garbage service at the new house. A small percentage of our needs are left there. But again remember, we are only at the new house one or two days a week. Anything that is getting ordered is coming to the current house. We are primarily buying and leaving condiments and such at the new house. To go from needing to take cardboard to the recycling center mid cycle versus opting to not put the recycling out at all is a huge change.

I am taking advantage of the trash service however. I try to make a habit of taking stuff over whenever we go so that we can utilize what we are paying for. At some point the need is going to overtake our capacity but it makes sense right now to utilize what we pay for. Overall, I would say that it has not been a good value to pay for trash service at both houses, they both have recycling as well.

I do make an effort to follow the rules so that I can keep having recycling service. This is not just a granola theology but a practical one as well. That being said, we should all do our part. In years past, I have read stories about people who experimentally reduce waste to a shoebox for a year. Talk about difficult. I don’t think that recycling counts against them either.

As I was boxing up my shop, I ran into several empty tool cases. Because our recycling is limited to #1 and #2 plastics, I think they are probably trash. I am never going to keep tools in them, it is just too impractical. I strongly wish that toolmakers would stop offering cases for tools in the first place. Sure, waste is generated by throwing away unwanted items, but in my experience more waste is generated by purchasing new things.

This is the real reason that our recycling is empty. We have stopped buying new things because we cannot afford them. When I was cleaning up after my last range trip, I really could have used a brush style called a tornado brush. They are much more rigid than a traditional bronze, bore brush. Because I have sworn to only purchase needed and necessary items, I made due.

End Your Programming Routine: It really does bother me how much waste we generate. I feel pretty good when it is cardboard, steel or aluminum as the process to convert is simple and effective. But when it comes to all the plastics, it is tremendously wasteful. Not to mention, if it isn’t a bottle or jar greater than 12oz my service won’t even accept the plastic even if it has the right number on it. Just because something has a recycling emblem doesn’t mean it can go in the bin.

March 9, 2026 – It is the Last

March 9, 2026 /

This is a swan song to my podcasting in my office. Man, I am going to miss this place when (if) we move. There very well may be one more podcast after today but I don’t know where I will record it. I expect that there will be a hiatus while we move so this is why this podcast is titled the last even though there is a chance it wont be. There is a brief mention of world politics but I use it as an illustration to my main theme; Do Things That Matter.

March 6, 2026 – The Talent Code: Part 3

March 6, 2026 /

I am sorry about this one. I should have just bit the bullet and written Part Three in a timely manner. I finished this book in early February and it was just my life getting in the way. Now, I have to go back to the time machine and try to remember what was going on in the book because now it is packed up in a box somewhere. Fortunately I took some notes weeks ago to kind of jog my memory.

Since it has been so long, I could spend a few words trying to summarize where we have been. Part One was all about how greatness is built. Part Two is about where to find talent and now Part Three is about harnessing it. Or said another way, it is coaching greatness.

I think the timing on this is pretty good. It would have been even better if I was actually writing this to come out during the Olympics like I should have. Nevertheless, I was watching one of the twenty something, American, gold medal athletes talking about how it is a dream come true and that this is what they have been working their whole life for this when it hit me. This is where this Part of the book comes to life.

Actually, what really hit me is that these athletes were enabled by choice or by circumstance. Circumstance is what the book talks about but I have to think choice is just as helpful. What I mean by choice is that a gold medal may be an athlete’s dream but it started well before this moment. The winners didn’t just show up to the Olympics and win. There was years of practice going into this moment. And to be frank, an eight year old is not getting to the mountain alone. Somebody opened the door and kept it open at least until emancipation.

OK, I was talking about the parents and not exactly the theme of today. But, coaching is what Coyle asserts as the third component of greatness. Chapter nine deals with a study of John Wooden and his habits. For those of you that weren’t around in the 1960s and 70s you don’t know how UCLA won ten of twelve championships. That is dominance.

What did Wooden do? He had two traits that were effective. The first one was that he did not treat players equally. The ones that needed riding got that treatment and the others were left alone, even if it seemed crazy. The second trait was constant but short feedback. Those two things were his keys to success.

Chapter ten was different but the same man. A good coach is able to navigate the matrix of relationships and performance. They are some how able to figure out what is important in the big organic blob called a human being. They are able to get to the root of motivation and correction. And they do it with theatrical honesty meaning that it is load and very readable.

Chapter eleven is one of those that probably would be re-written today. It was all about the (Las Vegas) Raiders evaluation of Jamarcus Russell prior to drafting him as the number one pick in 2008. I hope that they are reading this book this year as well. Russell had tremendous physical ability, it was said that he could throw a seventy yard pass on his knees with precision.

I think today we would look back and say that while there was no doubt Russell’s athleticism was unparalleled, however he was a terrible quarterback only lasting two seasons. The second of which he was benched early in the season. He had no ability to lead the team resulting in poor performance. After being dropped by the Raiders, he never played professional football again.

This book was written as that was all unfolding and I suspect that Coyle (as we all did) thought that he was going to be one of the greats. However, something so poignant was said in the book by the pro scout. Even greats need coaching. And, this is why Russell failed, coaching with the Raiders has been abysmal (mostly).

You know, you don’t have to look very far to find coaches and success. Think about who is considered one of the greatest current quarterbacks, that would be Patrick Mahommes of the Kansas City Chiefs. And yet, who is the coach, Andy Reid someone that has been perennially successful wherever he has been employed. Coincidence? I don’t really think so.

End Your Programming Routine: So, this is the book. It makes a lot of sense to me. Next week I am going to wrap up “The Talent Code”. Looking forward to what is next I am planning “Surprised By Joy” by C.S. Lewis. It seems to be a memoir from what I can surmise. I will plan to cover three chapters per week. I am relatively certain that next week is going to happen but I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a gap after that.

March 5, 2026 – Eating India: An Odyssey Into the Food and Culture of the Land of Spices

March 5, 2026 /

Five years ago, I worked for a North American company. We were a specialized outfit that did specific work with primarily North American clientele. That all changed when I signed on with a multinational, conglomerate service company. It seems like these days nearly all of my interactions are from people in India or from Indian descent.

Eating India was the February Left Coast Culinary Book Club selection. We chose it because in our eight years of existence we have never looked at Indian food. But secretly, I wanted to learn more about this culture that I interact with every day. This book is not a cookbook but a book about food (and culture). The author makes deliberate trips to different regions of India and then writes about it. It is kind of a targeted and less sensational Parts Unknown.

After reading about half of the book, I began to realize that India is way more diverse than I originally thought. When we go to a ‘Indian’ restaurant, we are getting an amalgamation and interpretation of the entire country. The largest factions of India are the Hindus and Muslims. I thought that the Muslims of historical India were in the north (and became Pakistan) and to the west which became Bengal leaving India largely Hindu which is not the case at all. India is very much still a mixture of the two.

Hindus are by default vegetarian. For that reason, much of Indian food is actually vegetarian. The Muslims are not, so any meat dish has at it’s roots in that side of the culture. While not prevented, generally Muslims in India do not eat beef as a cultural nod and why most meat dishes are seafood, goat, lamb or chicken.

The Portuguese colonized India in the 1600s. They brought with them new world foods such as potato and tomato. More so than that, they brought the mechanisms to transform sugar into desserts and confections. I never really realized it but I have noticed many a prolific, sweet tooth among them.

The latest colonizers, the British added very little to the cuisine. But, what they did do was take and promote Indian cuisine throughout the world. It was said that one queen had a propensity for tea. Because of that, it popularized tea in Briton and the western world. I would say Indian cuisine to a lesser point than tea. However, I was stricken by how popular Indian restaurants were in London. It kind of reminded me of how prolific Mexican food is in the southwest.

Those were the well known factions and influences. What about the Jains and the Sikhs? Or how about the Indian Jews? I suppose that in today’s world, anybody can be anywhere. I remember that when I was working in China one of my co-workers is Latter Day Saints and he found an active church. I found it interesting that the Indian Jews are amongst the most orthodox observers of religion. The Sabbath and Kosher are two examples. It actually struck me about how similar Jews and Muslims are when it comes to religious practice.

To me, the book was pretty interesting. I am not sure everyone would feel this way as it strays away from our traditional titles in the book club. It wasn’t a cookbook or even a fictional story with an plot. It was someone’s travel observations. I have one criticism and that is the author Banerji writes as if the layman knows all of the vocabulary. There were a lot of food names that quite honestly, I have no clue about.

I think that it would also be helpful to read this book with a map in hand. In terms of spatial relationship, I have no idea about the places that were mentioned. Yes, I have heard of Bombay and Calcutta but I couldn’t point to where they were in India. A book all about regional differences should have some context about where those regions are in proximity to each other.

This book is for people that want to know more about India, particularly the nuance of culturally influence food. It would be a good one to read the e-version so that you can constantly look up definitions of unfamiliar words. I was entertained and educated but I could really only read one chapter a night. There was a lot of information that I was digesting.

End Your Programming Routine: I heard while I was watching the Olympics a few weeks ago that India is now the most populous country in the world with 1.7 billion people. I had no clue that China had been overtaken. I think this makes it all that more important to start learning about the world’s largest country. That is not to say that Indian food is extremely delicious too.