Parathas and Instant Gratification

From my 2005 year end summary to complete minutae. Oh well. Also, no photo with this post: my camera is unhappy again.

I made some Indian food tonight: chicken vindaloo from a jar mix, carrots and peas with onion and cumin seeds, and basmati rice. As a side dish, I realized that I had some frozen prepackaged parathas stashed away. They were quite yummy. But I looked at them as they cooked: they're green. I looked at the ingredients: Wheat flour, water, vegetable shortening, margarine, sugar, salt. Are parathas supposed to be green? Should I be worried? Are they using green shortening?

I went out to the local art house theater tonight to see Good Night, and Good Luck (Edward R. Murrow's battles against Joseph McCarthy). Very good--I'd recommend seeing it. But one of the things that struck me the most was the jazz soundtrack--the film showed a combo with a singer performing in a nightclub, and my first thought was, "Hrm... that sounds perfect... which of the great ladies of jazz from that era are they lip-synching to?" However, that was my bad: it is the jazz singer Dianne Reeves; my reaction when I found out was, "Why the hell haven't I heard about her before?" Anyway, the instant gratification came in the form of buying the soundtrack off of iTunes Music Store minutes after I got back home... definitely a worthwhile buy. However, that instant gratification of using iTunes was only possible due to significant planning and effort.

<rant>

You see, I had an iTunes account in the US; then I moved up to Canada, and all my credit cards went to my new address. I quickly discovered just how US-centric most of the web's purchase engines are (for instance, ON is typically not on the pulldown list of states). Therefore, I had to switch to the iTunes Canadian store (which, incidentally, has a smaller selection). When I tried to enter my credit card information, it told me that my credit card was not a valid Canadian credit card. Yes, it's drawn on a US bank, and was started in the US, but it has a valid Canadian address. Grr.

So I got myself a Canadian credit card with my bank, which was an effort all in itself: since all my assets are in the US, and I'm making grad student wages, they would only let me have a credit card if I put down a security deposit. Good grief. At a later bank transaction, the teller looked at my account, and said, "With this much money in your account, why do you have a secured card?" ("Because you wouldn't give me a card otherwise, eh?"). He kindly issued a new unsecured card to me, so that I could cancel my old card and get my deposit back. The new card showed up about a week later. I then spent about half an hour on hold and being passed off between several customerservicebots before being told I needed to fax a written signed request to cancel my old card. Went ahead and did that, and it turns out they cancelled my new card. Swell.

</rant>

I decided to bypass the Canadian iTunes store entirely; due to some clever arrangements, my old accounts now works. Heh. Go me.