“My grandma’s coffee-readings are legendary in my family”

A commenter left the following comment in the comments section of this post. (Jeez, could I use the word ‘comment’ more in one sentence?)

Although I was born in Belarus and my family is Russian, Turkish coffee is quite popular over there and my father drinks it religiously still even in Australia.

My grandma’s coffee-readings are legendary in my family. According to my mother she used to do it regularly but had to quit because “she was getting too good”. Apparently she once predicted that some family friends would have a baby. Ie. she read the cup and said “I see a baby” and they found out that she they were pregnant a week later. After that she decided she didn’t want to mess with destiny any more.

I could really get into coffee-reading, that’s for sure.

Clouds in my coffee, or reading the tea-leaves, sort of

At dinner the other evening, one of my colleagues, a doctor from Turkey, showed me how to ‘read’ the coffee grounds. Sort of like reading tea-leaves.  A lot of the others had ordered Greek-style coffee, hot, dark, bitter liquid in small white cups. They drank the coffee quickly, in a few gulps, and then my colleague said, “we used to read the coffee grounds, we did it all the time!” And all the others, doctors from Turkey and Syria, then recalled how mothers and grandmothers would tell the doctors’ futures from what the mothers and grandmothers saw in their morning coffee cups. My colleague showed me how, because I was curious about all of it.

When you’ve finished your coffee, there is usually a thick ’sludge’ at the bottom of the cup. You turn the cup upside down onto the saucer and wait for the cup to completely cool. We kept checking to see if the cups had cooled and I kept asking, “can we turn them over yet? Are they ready?”

When the cups have cooled completely, you turn the cup upright and the coffee grounds (or whatever the stuff is in the bottom of the cup) forms a kind of pattern on the sides of the cup. You are then supposed to look ‘into’ it and tell the future of the person who drank the coffee. Usually, my friend said, it involved future loves, spouses, and children. I tried my hand at it. “Oh, look,” I said, “I see you and your husband. And, oh look, here are your children! You and your husband are dancing!” And, I did see shapes that looked just like that, little happy dancing figures. “I like that,” my friend said, “you’re good at this!” Well, I like to imagine things, who doesn’t?

“Culture is for amateurs. I can’t run my shop at a loss. Shakespeare was a professional!”

From Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop.

Punchkis! Or, Pounchkis! Or, however you spell them…..

One of the doctors ran up and down the hallway today, peering into different offices, saying, ‘go get a punchki! There are punchkis!”  Meaning, there was food for everyone in one of the conference rooms. Boxes and boxes of food, actually. 

This particular doctor very nicely brings our department ‘Polish’ donuts a few times a year. She brought different flavors, including blueberry, rasberry, strawberry and peach. I had peach. Utterly delicious, but, of course, utterly fattening.

As long as we are on the subject…..

of music and stuff, how about Meiko? I came in to work last Saturday (and, sadly, Sunday) and listened to Boys With Girlfriends about a million times.

Adele has described her musical style as “heartbroken soul”

From the Adele wiki. Oh, that voice, it’s lovely!

And, there’s this, too, from the wiki:

“The album was written about a former boyfriend. The song “Chasing Pavements” refers to an incident that occurred after she was thrown out of a pub for punching the former boyfriend in the face after she discovered him cheating on her. As she was running down the street she thought to herself “What you’re doing is you’re chasing an empty pavement.” According to Adele “When I got home I sang it into my phone, went home and got three chords together.” “

Are you a complete paranoid?

What does it say about me that I saw this item at Geeksugar and thought, huh, I would totally buy that.

Why am I always so argumentative? It’s really annoying.

I had dinner Friday night at a Greek restaurant with a bunch of work colleagues; it was a ‘good-bye’ party for a colleague who has worked for years at our hospital. We are sad to see him go, but wish him the best, of course.

A doctor sitting to my left, who is from Turkey originally, leaned over to the colleague sitting to her left, and said, “I still want to see that movie!” The colleague made a little face and shook his head. They were talking about Slumdog Millionaire.

“Oh, I loved that movie, my mother and father saw it and they loved it too!”  As I speak, he makes a little face and shakes his head. I’m a born-in-India-raised-in-America American, the doctor making the face is a born-in-India-raised-in-India American, and I suppose we have strong feelings about this film for all kinds of reasons.

“It’s not very good,” he says, or something like that, I’m not sure exactly what he said, and I cry, “I DISAGREE!” He looks a bit surprised at this, but maybe I was a bit strong in my reply. He continues, “a Bollywood movie is something you can really enjoy, but….” Meaning, a  real Bollywood movie and not this Bollywood-lite Brit Asian fusion product called Slumdog Millionaire.

“Yeah,” I practically yell, “but sometimes I watch a Bollywood movie and fall asleep an hour into it!” Oops, why did I say that? I really like Bollywood movies, I like Slumdog Millionaire, I like everything, I’m a terrible critic. I’ll find something good in everything, I can’t be properly critical.

Later, to my Turkish colleague, I murmur,”why can’t I just let things go?”

“Oh, you’re fine, you’re fine just as you are,” she replies, which makes me feel better.

‘It started so innocently. We were introducing SD to one of the finest cuisines this great nation has to offer, and he had never had the good stuff. I can’t remember now why he spelled it out, but spell it out he did. And once we heard him say, “P-I-Zed-Zed-A,” that was it. We were done for.’

“It started so innocently. We were introducing SD to one of the finest cuisines this great nation has to offer, and he had never had the good stuff. I can’t remember now why he spelled it out, but spell it out he did. And once we heard him say, “P-I-Zed-Zed-A,” that was it. We were done for.

To this day, my brother and I do not use the word ‘pizza’ with each other. When in each other’s presence, that word is always spelled out, and the “Zed”s are always overexaggerated and celebrated. So stupid really, but as I mentioned earlier, it doesn’t take much to get us laughing.”

Brimful, of course.

*Hey, I gotta go, a ton of stuff to do, but happy Valentine’s day, okay?

Oh, you want something for Valentine’s Day? Sure, why not.

“A group of young Indian women plan to send pink knickers to a Hindu radical organisation that attacked female students in a pub last month and is also threatening to target unmarried couples celebrating Valentine’s Day.

The Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women – which had more than 10,000 members by last night – is urging Indian women to defy the radicals by enjoying a drink at their nearest pub on Saturday.”

The Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women! (via Mick Hartley, Politics and Culture blog).