A Day in Punjab

— पांच हजार आठ सौ सत्तावन — The Big Event over this past weekend was something Shobhit and I were at for only about forty minutes: "A Day in Punjab," in Seattle Center's Armory building—part of "Seattle Center Festál," their year-long series of 25 cultural festivals. This makes four of these cultural festivals I have been to at least once: Evan and I actually attended the "Live Aloha Hawaiian Cultural Festival" twice, once in 2015 and once in 2019. (This means Festál has been going on far longer than I realized: more than ten years.) I've now done the Dia de Muertos Festival at Halloween time twice (2023 with Shobhit; 2024 with Tracy and Shobhit). I went with Shobhit and Karen to the Diwali Festival in 2023; and now Shobhit and I went to the "Day in Punjab" festival this year. Not wanting to put "A Day in Punjab" in the "Miscellaneous Local Events" collection on Flickr, this weekend I created a new collection: "Seattle Center Festál - Culture Festivals. I can't remember when this happened—maybe last year when I bought the tickets to the Seattle Christmas Market, maybe earlier—but I've been on the Seattle Center mailing list for several months now, which I actually find useful as it is often how I learn of cool events happening there. Shobhit learned about "A Day in Punjab" independently, though, and he was the one who suggested we go. He even said I should budget for food we might buy there. Naturally we assumed there would be several food vendors, as that's what they had at the Diwali Featival in the fall. We were surprised, when we got there, to find no food vendors on the main floor at all. Then we got upstairs, and discovered one food vendor. We were then surprised again, to find that they appeared not to be charging for it! We got in the back of a pretty long line, though it moved steadily, wrapped around the corner and toward the east hallway of the Armory's second level. That was when we saw the signage indicating this was a "Langar sewa, which translates to kitchen service and is traditionally used by the Sikh community as an offering of a free communal vegetarian meal. This was sponsored by Daawat Indian Grill & Bar, their restaurant actually located on Pike St in the Seattle Convention Center. I have no idea how normal this is or if others thought of it this way, but that seemed pretty generous to me and made me more inclined to go back to that restaurant sometime. The food was quite good, too. They had rice, one paneer dish and one lentil dish, along with two pieces of naan. Shobhit told me, and I learned this for the first time, that naan is actually originated from the state of Punjab; it's not as common in other regions of India. I totally thought naan was just eaten everywhere there. Shows what I know! But whatever, I love early all the many forms of Indian flatbreads. The only one I don't really care for as much as idli, which isn't a flatbread anyway—it's more of an absorbent rice cake used to soak up whatever vegetable dish is eaten with it. Not my jam, but basically all the flatbreads are. There were live performances on the stage too, and had there been any real show going on while we were there, I'd have gotten more than just 14 shots. We spent most of our time there either in line for or eating the food, though. There was an area of dining tables in the back on the second level, where a movie with very bad actors was being projected onto the walls. When we went back downstairs, there was just a guy doing what seemed like some kind of lecture on the stage. Not very photogenic. Then, right after we got outside the exit from the Armory, Shobhit realized he had forgotten his string backpack-bag on his chair. We went back inside to fetch it, and I got four more photos. Otherwise the album would have just been 10 shots. — पांच हजार आठ सौ सत्तावन — — पांच हजार आठ सौ सत्तावन — We had thought about going down to watch the Blue Angels air show yesterday afternoon, and it was even part of the plan, but on Sunday morning we both decided to skip it this year. I noted that, much like the Washington State Fair, the Blue Angels are fun but not something I need to do every year. In fact, I just noticed this morning that if we had gone yesterday, it would have been the first time I've gone two years in a row since 2010. As it stands, at the most frequent I have gone since then is every other year; if we go next year, that pattern will have held for 2022, 2024 and 2026. And actually, given that I went by myself in both 2009 (when Shobhit tried to meet at a different location due to cross communication) and 2010 (when Shobhit was in New York), Shobhit has never gone two years in a row. Anyway! This gave me a lot of extra time yesterday to finish up the video project I was working on. Now I just need to give it a few days of time and distance before looking at it again, in case there are any tweaks I want to make before exporting it. But, it's basically all set now. I got a bit of a late start on that project but am feeling really good about it now. — पांच हजार आठ सौ सत्तावन — As for Friday? Shobhit was going to go to an event at a local bar that I wasn't interested in, so I went to Steamworks. I won't say it was a bust, I've had much worse visits in the past, but it also wasn't quite what I was hoping for. It was fine. I was there just over a couple of hours. When I got home, Shobhit was just watching TV, and he had decided not to go to his event after all. I made myself a cocktail. We caught up on Foundation on Apple TV. I didn't realize until we caught up that the third season is currently airing: we'll have to watch the rest week to week. Thankfully we have until October with the free three months' subscription that came with Shobhit's iPhone upgrade. We've already started Stick, just one episode anyway, the new dramedy with Owen Wilson and with Marc Maron in a supporting role. — पांच हजार आठ सौ सत्तावन — [posted 12:34pm]