Morjes!

Welcome to my blog. I write about fitting in, sticking out, and missing the motherland as a serial foreigner.

June 21st, outsourced

I could have sworn I linked to something like this a year or two ago, but here is a new collection of photos showing a week's worth of food in different places.

Yes, that may have been a dumb answer, but you know what? It was a dumb question: In slight defense of Miss Utah, USA.

Considering how often we go camping in the wild, this is a product that could change my life. For starters, I would no longer need 360 degree privacy coverage when I need to pee (men can get away with 90 or less). Do you know how easy it is to find 360 degrees of privacy in the desert? Yeah. Not very.

It was only a matter of time before Feminist Taylor Swift got herself a Twitter account. [HT Liz]

The complicated copyright history of "Happy Birthday to You." On a related note, I am shocked to learn that "Good Morning to [You]" is an actual song. I thought that was something my mom made up when I was a kid in order to maximize wake-up annoyance.

WATERMELON. OREOS. Somebody in the US please buy these for me before someone decides it was a bad idea and they take them off the shelves.

Now THIS is a use of Pinterest I could really get behind: My imaginary well-dressed daughter. It's Catalog Living, but with kids' clothing. The girl is named Quinoa. Perfect.

Early monsoon rains flood northern India.

An interactive pollution map of Los Angeles. One of the first times I went there as a kid (to visit grandparents), I asked my mom, "why does it hurt to breathe here?" That was when I learned the word smog.

I posted on fb yesterday about taking the kids to McDonald's on an ice cream run. I wanted to try a McFloat (yes, they have those here - Coke, Fanta, or Sprite). I asked them to substitute Diet Coke for the Coke. No biggie, right? Well, they wouldn't give it to me. "There is no protocol for that," they told me. I'm totally over it (not), but at least telling that story on fb led my friend Liz to share with me this video about McDonald's snobbery (fairly mild but not for kids; there's an s-bomb toward the end).

America 2013

Miriam and Harry Potter