Piyush...ehm...Bobby 'Brady' Jindal for Vice President?

The New York Times just reported that Senator McCain is interviewing two candidates as Vice President running mates with the possibility of a third. They include Charlie Crist (Governor of Florida) and the shocker, Bobby Jindal (Freshman Governor of Louisiana). The third possible candidate could be former foe, Mitt Romney (Former Governor of Massachusetts).

For those that don't know of Bobby Jindal, here is a bit on the man.

At the age of 36, he is the youngest Governor Elect in the United States. He was born on June 10, 1971 in Baton Rouge to recently arrived Punjabi Indian immigrants Amar and Raj Jindal, who were attending graduate school. His family is of Punjabi ancestry; his father left India and his ancestral family village of Khanpura in the 1970s. According to family lore, Jindal adopted the name "Bobby" after watching The Brady Bunch television program at age four. He has been known by that name ever since—as a civil servant, politician, student, and writer—though legally his name remains Piyush Jindal.

Indian American Newspapers had praised him for being the highest elected Indian American, in politics. This was not without scrutiny for switching his religion from Hinduism to Catholicism in high school. Some Indian American critics suggested that he is a sell out and doesn't care about the Indian American community. I am pretty sure that if he ends up as McCain's running mate there is going to be a lot more praise for Piyush...ehm...Bobby 'Brady' Jindal from the Indian American community.

This years Presidential Race is pushing the envelope when it comes to women and minorities in politics. Bobby Jindal would add some cultural diversity to the GOP Presidential ticket. Just a bit more than Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice had and are doing for the current administration. The GOP needs to have balance with the possibility of having a woman or and African American as the Democratic contender. Why not a young Indian American so called, 'sellout' like Bobby?

This should be fun if all works in Bobby's favor.

Russell Peters teams with Tourism Toronto as Global Ambassador for Toronto

This is a huge step for the world renown Russell Peters. Congratulations Russell. We wish you success with this latest endeavor, Eh!

Source: Tourism Toronto

TORONTO, May 15 2008/PRNewswire/ - Hometown comic Russell Peters is teaming up with Tourism Toronto to become Toronto's first Global Ambassador. Tourism Toronto today announced the new partnership with Mr. Peters, a Toronto native who plays to sold-out stadiums around the world.

Peters was introduced to more than 700 tourism business leaders at Tourism Toronto's annual meeting today, and pledged to help reveal more of Toronto's untold story.
"Toronto is one of the only cities a Black, an Asian, an Indian, gay, straight, Italian, Portuguese, a Jewish or Muslim person can walk into a bar without a punch line happening after . . . that's just what Toronto is," said Peters.

Mr. Peters will appear at major trade shows promoting Toronto to meeting and convention planners and other travel influencers.

"In our business we compete literally with the entire world. Russell can help us break through the noise and reveal the true personality of Toronto - the diverse, cosmopolitan experiences that make it such a tremendous place to live, work and visit," said David Whitaker, President and CEO of Tourism Toronto. "Russell has demonstrated that sometimes the best way to bring people together is by laughing."

"A city like Toronto needs many ambassadors. I'm proud to be the first to partner directly with Tourism Toronto and I take it as my personal duty to encourage more of our recognizable personalities to channel their Toronto pride as Global Ambassadors," said Mr. Peters.

Smelly Shirts - Car Freshener

This post has nothing to do with Desiness, but I couldn't resist blogging about this goodie that was handed to me at my last Brooklyn car wash stop. I ordered a super wash with wax and under carriage scrub. Never verified if they actually scrub the underside of my car.

Enough about the under carriage of my car. I couldn't understand why anyone would name an air freshener, "Smelly Shirts" and shape it like a t-shirt? I wonder if the Jenray Company did some research before putting these into production? My guess would be that these are overstock items that the car wash scored from a desparate 99 cent store distributor?

Needless to say, I am a little reluctant to open or use this product. I might open it and put it on a painted surface, just to see what happens?

JFK Airtrain

Screen from the JFK AirTrain ticket kiosk

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I have been traveling the AirTrain to JFK for this past year and recently noticed the "language" screen on the Airtrain ticket kiosk. As seen in the image above, there are eight rectangles organized in a tic tac toe fashion, with one lonley spot needing to be filled. What can I say? The symmetry Gods got the better of me.
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They have English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Italian, Chinese (sorry I cannot tell if it is Mandarin or Cantonese) and Korean. What happened to Hindi? South Asians constitute 3.5% of New York City's population and there are a lot of frugal South Asians travelling the AirTrain these days. Just this morning there was a large group of Gujrati people chatting away.

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JFK being a gateway for international travelers to the United States and New York City, one would think that they could accomodate South Asia which only makes up 1/8 of the world's population?
Maybe the Port Authority of New York/New Jersey forgot their numerous South Asian engineer, colleagues when they developed the list? They may have assumed that South Asians speak English pretty well due to all thier conversations with South Asian call centers and decided to exclude them?
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I think the empty spot should be filled with something. Maybe even a welcome note? Hindi could be a nice touch. The addition of the Hindi script would enhance the layout of the screen and add a bit more diversity. It would also make the language screen portray New York City as the multicultural metropolis that it is.
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Well at least we got Alternate side parking rules suspended for Diwali, in New York City. My non-Desi friends that own automobiles in this city thank me on Diwali. It's funny that they will remember Diwali, because they don't have to move their cars on that day.

Interior Design Magazine, a little off

I am sure that there are plenty of us out there that have seen the movie "Zoolander". This is yet another post is in regards to the misconstrued depiction of South Asian culture in the "Pop" world.

We had written about the "Incredible India", events that took place last year in, New York City. The following quote rang in my ears:

'It is a very exciting idea to bring India and the United States closer to each other, and the goals India has to make itself better understood in the US and the goals we have to make us better understood in India,' remarked former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at the inaugural event at the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts September 23, 2007.

I understand that it is almost expected for movies like "Zoolander", to twist perceptions of cultures for virtue of comedy. It's another thing when a serious design magazine writes about it, as if it is a proper portrayal of facts and fantasy.

This is the article that was published for the image above:

Adventures in Fantasyland
by Judith Davidsen
Interior Design · March 1, 2008

"Where else but in Zoolander, a camp fashion-industry comedy with sets designed by Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch, would Hindu deities and Devanagari script cover a skate ramp?"

Firstly the script is not "Devanagari". I would have hoped that Judith Davidson would have done a bit more research and realized that the used, Urdu-Islamic script is distinctively different that the Hindu-Devanagari script that she claims as used. Interior Design, being in New York City, should have opened plenty of outlets for her research. She could have come down from the 17th floor of 360 Park Avenue South, and kept her eyes open for places where the cabbies eat lunch. These places are hard to miss because there are dozens of yellow cabs double parked outside.

They would have been happy to let her know what the script's origin was. A proud South Asian is always ready to give some insight on their cultures. The best part is that she wouldn't have had to pay a dime. She may have even discovered that the "chai" was 25% the cost of Starbucks and tastes a lot better.

As a Hindu I would hope that I could recognize the deity that she is writing about, but can not. Probably because it isn't one? I guess any jeweled adorned woman is a Goddess, in the Western World, but reality suggests that Judith failed to do her research again. Doesn't Judith have a South Asian friend?

Judith in the future, we at Chor Bazaar will be willing to assist you to the best of our abilities, should you ever write about South Asian culture again. Henry Kissenger's quote is brilliant and true. There is a need for cross cultural understanding and there are plenty of willing South Asians to ease the confusion.

Guiness World Record for most T-Shirts worn at one time.

Wow! This guy has quite the collection of tshirts.

Chor Bazaar at the Renegade Craft Fair in Brooklyn 2008!

Yay! We were accepted to be one of the vendors for this year's Renegade Craft Fair, in Brooklyn, New York.

Brooklyn's 4th Annual RENEGADE CRAFT FAIR!! This year's event will be held June 14 + 15 from 11am - 7pm at the McCarren Park Pool! LINK

This should be fun and there are a ton of interesting vendors to check out.

We hope to see you there!