Am I alone in adoring cold cucumber soup?

Hey India, release some good films already! I feel like there's been a drought these past few months.

The thing that I love so much about "Culinary Class Wars" is that the thrill of it, for us and for the contestants, is the craft itself.

Fun Indian colloquialism of the day: “creamy layer.”

Loving all the pre-Oscar podcasts.

How did I get to 50 without knowing about the Savile Row fold?! (YouTube it if you own trousers)

Yay, starting to get voice agent sales calls now. The future is bleak and full of interruptions.

Is it just me, or are the guys who have "sartorial" YouTube channels generally extremely quirky individuals?

I’m having dinner in a pub and listening to a woman talk about how she used reiki to heal from her divorce. I might need reiki to heal from listening to her story.

50th anniversary wine to celebrate my 50th. Unlike my life, it’s sensational and perfect.

the sort of freewheeling vibe that I enjoy in 70s and 80s genre films. The plot is basically irrelevant and there's never any doubt how it will end, yet the joy is totally in the film's attitude, wonderful veteran performers and general sense of camp. That opening number alone...

My second recommendation is Rifle Club, a pretty freeform, wild romp that came out last year. It was buried by being released at the same time as Marco, an awful film that was a huge hit. Rifle Club is a lot more interesting, and is one of the few Malayalam films I've seen to tap into...

Such a stylish and clever film, so knowing, and I love the way it plays with the audience's pre-existing relationship with Mammootty (the star) to complicate our feelings about what Mammootty (the actor in this film) is doing.

The first is Mammootty's new film Kalamkaval. Just imagine if the biggest, most "establishment" Hollywood star made a film in which he is a brutal serial killer totally beyond redemption. Just a killing machine. That's basically what Mammootty has done by making this film.

For those genre enthusiasts out there (and I know there are a lot of youse), here are a couple of "can't miss" new-ish movies from the Malayalam film industry: (cont...)

Sitting in the warm sun is glorious.

Bangalore’s dining scene is going to collapse overnight when people finally realise “pan-Asian” food is shite.

From where did the superfluous use of "off" in cooking parlance originate? "Cook off," "brown off," etc?

If you can’t find an emoticon to match how you feel then your feelings aren’t valid.

I respect your trauma but not as an excuse to do shitty things.

Oh I’ve had those too, on and off, for years. Horrible feeling.

I have no idea how she learned to make them but my mother's scones were next level.

But I will make an exception for any sort of jam-filled doughnut. Oh my.

I am a cake doughnut person.

One downside of streaming is the loss of the weirdness that was late night television programming.

I miss the openness, ability to radically connect across boundaries, the sense of discovering a whole world of people, opinions, points of view. And I miss the ability to have a conversation within that space.

I remember the early days of Twitter, at least my feed, used to be discursive. A lot of conversation, debate and learning. It's been a long time since these platforms became simply declarative. People positioning, aligning to specific political or aesthetic positions. That's all.

I am living in a Hitchcock movie 😕

Please tell me it’s not just me.

The thing about living in a tropical climate is the days are unbearable but the mornings and evenings are incomparable.