As I learned by looking it up when I first discovered this song about two months ago, aloo gobi (variously transliterated) is a vegetarian Indian dish, the name of which translates to "potatoes and cauliflower." I've been to India and like Indian food when I can get it -- which is not very often, Indian restaurants being few and far between in Taiwan -- but I'd never heard of that dish before.
The title of the song comes from a line in the chorus: "Same old dull routines / Same aloo gobi" -- eating aloo gobi all the time apparently being one of those dull routines.
I had some things to do in Taichung this morning, and when noon rolled around, I though, Well, since I'm here, I might as well go to that one restaurant and then that one used bookstore. "Aloo Gobi" was still in my head, though, which made me change my mind about those "same old dull routines." Instead of eating the same thing I always eat when I'm in that part of the city -- my personal equivalent of the "same old aloo gobi" -- I decided I would eat something completely different. Such as . . . ? I suddenly thought of a Tibetan restaurant I'd been to with some friends maybe 10 years ago, which had been inexpensive and had had remarkably good fish. Why had I never been back to that place? I couldn't remember the name or where it was, but I soon found it on Google, and it was within walking distance of where I was. Great.
I went there and ordered the fish, and it was just as good as I'd remembered. After I'd left, it occurred to me that it would be a good place to take my wife sometime, since it serves both vegetarian food (for her) and normal food (for me). I hadn't looked at the vegetarian part of the menu -- I'd known in advance that I'd wanted the fish -- so I got out my phone to look at photos of the menu online and see what sort of vegetarian fare they had.
I hadn't been expecting that! It turns out it's actually a "Tibetan and Indian" restaurant.
In keeping with my intention not to follow the "same old dull routines" I decided that instead of going to the used bookstore as usual, I would -- uh -- go to a different used bookstore! I googled used bookstores near me and scrolled down until I found one I'd never been to. It was an hour away on foot, but that was fine. I set off.
As I've said, there are very few Indian restaurants here, even in a major city like Taichung. Nevertheless, as I followed the Google Maps directions to the bookstore, walking down unfamiliar streets, I found myself face to face with an Indian restaurant menu. They had put the menu on a big easel and set it up right in the middle of the sidewalk, blocking foot traffic. It's not that I happened to pass an Indian restaurant and decided to go in and take a look at the menu; no, it was right in my face:
Alou gobhi again! It's never spelled the same way twice, is it?
I've got lots of other syncs unrelated to potatoes and cauliflower, but I think I'm just going to put them all together in this post.
As those who remember "Leo, Egbert, Peter" will know, my school has a "shoe room" where students and teachers have to leave their shoes and change into slippers before going upstairs to the classrooms. Yesterday, I had a one-on-one tutoring session with a high school student. He arrived and went upstairs first. When I went into the shoe room, I saw the shoes he had left there -- not on the shelves where they should be, but right in the middle of the floor:
No one's ever worn shoes like that to my school before. I go in the shoe room several times every day and would certainly have noticed. The left shoe is blue with white laces, and the right shoe is yellow with red laces. A very similar pair of mismatched shoes -- those of Russian guitarist Sergey Kashirin -- were recently featured in "Fools and wise men on hills, planetary shoon, and a literal Blueberry Hill."
Although one doesn't usually associate shoes with four-legged animals, that post also featured pictures of a cat wearing different-colored shoes:
While I was walking through Taichung today, I passed someone walking an old white dog that obviously had serious health issues. It had medical tape wrapped around its forelegs -- red tape on the right, and blue-green tape on the left.
Not shoes per se, but obviously a related concept, and with the correct color coding. Note that a white dog is in a commonsense way the "opposite" of a black cat.
In recent syncs, the mismatched shoes have been closely associated with spectacles with mismatched lenses -- red for the right eye, blue or blue-green for the left. When I finally arrived at the bookstore, I found that it only had a tiny English section, with probably fewer than 100 books. That very small and completely random selection included these two, though:
I also found a book with the one-word title With:
"With?" What kind of title is that?
The red-and-blue spectacles have been associated with the breast marks on the Garment of the Holy Priesthood. These consist of a square on the right breast and a compass on the left, but these look like the letters L and V, respectively. When you look at the Garment (so the right breast is visually on your left), it looks like it says "LV." (That's the meaning of the reference to "Louis Vuitton undershirts" in the "Cold Brother" dream.) While walking in Taichung today, I passed this billboard:
It's an advertisement for a product that's supposed to give you a face lift without the need for surgery. Notice the big white L and V in the background. Although the product is for the face, they made sure to get the model's breasts in the shot as well. She's wearing a lacy top that looks like it could be underwear. It goes over one shoulder only -- what we Mormons used to call, with reference to Arnold Friberg's iconic paintings of Book of Mormon scenes, a "Nephi top."
The Garment top is similar to a regular T-shirt, but the robe that is worn over it in the temple is on one shoulder only. (The robe on the left shoulder, displaying the square, is associated with the Aaronic priesthood.)
This one is for one of my readers. I'll explain further in an email.
And this last one isn't a sync. I just thought it was funny.
Good thing they labeled that building so we would know what it was.
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