How I Made Pho A Friend

They say that if you ever fall off a horse when learning to ride, you should try to get back in the saddle as quickly as possible, otherwise the fear of failure will never go away.

Last week, one of my Facebook friends posted some appetising photos of (the Vietnamese dish) Pho that she had made. Inspired, I got the recipe from her and attempted to make the dish myself. Alas, it was such a catastrophic failure that the whole pot had to go straight to the compost bin. (Yes, it really was that bad.)

Looking to get back in the saddle as quickly as possible, I enlisted the help of my better half to make a second attempt the very next day. Even though she had never made Pho before either, she had the benefit of a few decades of culinary experience, and the wisdom that brings with it.

We went back to the drawing board together, and studied (vegetarian) recipes from more than one source, just to get a feel for the philosophy of the dish. Actually, I would call it the architecture of the dish.

Pho consists of three architectural components.

1. The stock, or broth. This is a clear liquid that acts as the base, and is responsible for giving the dish its distinctive flavour. All the ingredients that go to make up this stock are to be filtered out and thrown away once their flavours have been infused into the liquid.

2. A set of "global" ingredients that will be compiled into the stock and made available to all "users". Usually but not always, these will be cooked vegetables.

3. A set of "run-time" ingredients that each user will configure for themselves when they download the dish into their local environment (bowl). Usually but not always, these will be raw vegetables, noodles and condiments.

Once I understood the architecture of Pho, I realised why my previous attempt had been such a dismal failure. As we say in the IT Architecture profession, "Architecture without implementation is a daydream; implementation without architecture is a nightmare."

I had jumped straight into implementation like an immature developer, without bothering to understand the architecture of the dish. No wonder I had ended up with a nightmare.

Hopefully, now that we had an architecture and were going to implement it, all would be goodness.

And it was.

Here's a sneak preview of the final result.

A bowl of Pho as deployed to a particular user's customised environment

On with the recipe, then!

1. The stock or broth

The main ingredients required to make the stock are these:

One or two sliced onions (depending on the quantity of water used), roasted and slightly charred, so as to acquire a mildly burnt flavour.

Chopped ginger, also roasted and slightly charred.

A few garlic pods, chopped and fried in oil

Spices, dry roasted:

A stick of cinnamon

Two whole pieces (stars) of star anise

A teaspoon of fennel seeds

A few cloves

A few cardamom pods

Any other vegetables except brassicas (i.e., avoid cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, etc.)

Put 4 cups of water (or 8 cups if serving 4 people) in a slow cooker and add all of the above ingredients in suitable quantities for that volume of water. Cook at high heat for about 4 hours, then filter out all the solid ingredients, leaving behind a clear liquid. This is the broth.

Taste it, and add salt and soy sauce in judicious quantities.

2. Global ingredients

Place pieces of cauliflower, carrot, beans, edamame, etc., in a steaming tray and cook until they're the right mix of crisp and tender.

Cut some lemon slices but do not cook them.

Add all the global ingredients to the broth. This is what all users will get.

Global ingredients floating in broth

3. Run-time ingredients

Add rice noodles to boiling water, cover with a lid and leave for a while until fully soft and expanded. Wash in cold water, filter and set aside in a separate bowl.

Chop mushrooms, fry in oil and set aside in a separate bowl.

Set aside bowls for each of the following ingredients:

Chopped spring onions/shallots

Chopped coleslaw vegetables (cabbage, carrot, onions)

Chopped mint and basil

Sprouted moong beans

Chopped jalapeno peppers in a mixture of vinegar and soy sauce

Some hot sriracha sauce

Run-time ingredients, each in a separate bowl, ready for users to optionally add to their individual servings of broth (which already contains all the global ingredients, of course)

It turns out that this architecture is highly democratic. Those who don't like mushrooms don't have to add them to their bowls. Those who wish to avoid carbs can ignore the rice noodles. Those who can't handle spice can skip the jalapeno peppers and the sriracha sauce.

With this componentised architecture, users get to eat a dish customised to their taste, and everyone is happy.

I thanked my better half for helping me get back in the saddle, and she thanked me for introducing her to a new horse.

The Perils Of A Post-Trump World

Ding, dong, the witch is dead!

Much of the world, not just the blue part of the US, is celebrating the exit of the obnoxious Donald Trump. This was a man who managed to offend practically everyone, while appealing only to the insecurities and base emotions of his supporters.

But now that he's gone, what can we expect from his successor?

I think it would be a good idea for those who wanted to see Trump gone to step back a bit from the polemical view of Trump as the devil incarnate and Biden as an angel in white. The situation is far more nuanced, especially for those of us in the rest of the world outside the US.

What I wish for is a geopolitical stalemate where the US and China keep each other honest, and the rest of the world stays safe as a consequence. What I fear most is a cosy backroom deal between Biden and Xi that carves the rest of the world up between two rapacious superpowers.

For a start, Trump was a refreshingly different president from all of his predecessors, because the ugliness and naked self-interest in US foreign policy was laid bare for all to see. There was no pretence that the US stood for anything higher than its own self-interest. In being so famously transactional, Trump reduced the image of the US from its historical projection of exceptionalism to one where it was just another country with its own axe to grind. It was a bit of unwitting honesty from an American president not seen since the days of "Honest Abe".

That image may not altogether vanish, since the world cannot unsee what it has once seen.

Biden and his team will of course do their best to show that the US is back in the hands of the adults in the room, and the old, familiar lectures on freedom, democracy and human rights will once again be selectively heard whenever the US wants to effect a regime change to its advantage.

Even as things return to the old normal, disquieting aspects to the Biden administration are already beginning to be seen.

The first few appointees of Biden's team have been lobbyists and insiders of the Pentagon and the arms industry. His secretary of state is a known hawk. 

Watch the easy camaraderie between Antony Blinken (Democrat), and his interrogator Sen Lindsey Graham (Republican) during the former's confirmation hearing as incoming Secretary of State. US foreign policy stays constant, with bipartisan consensus.

For those with hopes of a more peaceful world, this is bad news. The arms industry thrives when there are conflagrations around the world, and so it is unlikely that President Biden is going to wind back the wars.

Right on cue, there have been bomb blasts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Algeria, Yemen and Syria. If an American president ever wanted an excuse not to draw down overseas troops, he will not want for options.

That's not the only piece of bad news.

One of the things that Trump should be given credit for was his recent approach to China. After some leniency in the earlier part of his term, Trump swung around to suspicion and hostility towards China, especially after Covid. He began to push back on China in every sphere. He did not blink on trade, and he began to unabashedly cultivate "the Quad" (consisting of the US, Japan, India and Australia) to signal his willingness to confront China militarily. His accompanying rhetoric was harsh and aggressive too.

China under Xi has been a bully, and in the manner expected of bullies faced with credible threats, the dragon blinked. Surprisingly meek and conciliatory statements issued from Beijing. The wolf warrior diplomats went into retreat.

China has no intention to pick a fight with the US
-- Wang Yi, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister - Dec 18, 2020

It remains to be seen whether Biden will keep up that pressure. As a realist, I try to follow the money. The US arms industry gains from the forever war in the Middle East. China wants the freedom to expand its tentacles throughout Asia and up to the doors of Europe through its Belt and Road Initiative. It's not so much "free trade" as the ability for China to sell to every corner of the globe. The trade war between the US and China is hurtful to both.

A new administration in Washington is an opportunity for both countries to reset their relationship to mutual advantage. What I fear most is a backroom deal to avoid the trap of a new Cold War and to instead establish a cosy duopoly. The US keeps its existing backyards of the Americas and Europe, and gets to play its deadly war games in the Middle East. China gets untrammeled overlordship over all of Asia, including the Indian subcontinent. A new agreement is signed between the two superpowers of the East and the West that ends their bruising trade war.

[For countries like India, this would be unqualified bad news. The US has been an unreliable ally to India even at the best of times. (At the worst of times, it has been a vicious and vindictive enemy, as Nixon and Kissinger demonstrated during the 1971 Bangladesh war.) Abandonment of India by the US following a duopoly deal would mean that any putative hyphenation between India and China would disappear at a stroke. With the role of the US abruptly switched from security guarantor to the ally of an adversary, India's strategic options would narrow precipitously, and its fate would be left to the tender mercies of China. India would have to make significant territorial amends for its recent show of resistance to China's border incursions, and would have to very publicly accept China's suzerainty over all of Asia, including its own neighbourhood. It would be an unprecedented cultural humiliation in addition to being a permanent economic impost on future growth.

Australia, as part of the Anglosphere's "Five Eyes" alliance, will probably continue to receive US protection, but India will be jettisoned without a second thought. The fate of Taiwan and Japan is uncertain.]

Not all aspects of the US-China duopoly deal are likely to be settled quickly and amicably. The most interesting item on the negotiating table would be Africa, I imagine. There is no clear early winner between the US and China in terms of influence over Africa, and the continent could turn into a battleground. I see Africa as the new Poland for two schemers to pretend to agree on, before one of them betrays the other.

To sum up, it may be too early to go, "Ding dong, the witch is dead!" The main peril of the post-Trump era is the possible start to the new joint reign of the Wicked Witch of the West and the Wicked Witch of the East. The rest of the world should hunker down for a long and harsh winter.

Teflon Modi And The "Infallible" John Howard - A Chin Up To Indian Liberals

What do Indian PM Narendra Modi and former Australian PM John Howard have in common? A lot. Not just their apparent invulnerability, but also their unapparent vulnerability.

A recent poll by the India Today group shows that 74% of Indians believe that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's performance is "good or outstanding".

Only 6% of survey respondents see Modi's performance as poor

A number of other Indians are simply incredulous at these results. As journalist Aakar Patel tweeted while referencing this poll, 

We are in the 37th month of sequential decline in GDP growth. This is our fourth year of decline. Indians were poorer in 2018 than they were in 2013, and that was before this 37 month decline began. This is Govt data. Modi era has set us back 10 years.

Of course, as the comments following Patel's tweet show, many people simply don't believe these survey results. They consider India Today to be part of the "sold media" whose function today is to subtly push the government narrative onto an unsuspecting populace.

In the absence of evidence to support that accusation, let us assume the survey results to be genuine and accurate.

Harking back to Aakar Patel's points, just how does Modi manage to retain his stratospheric levels of popularity in the face of such a dismal performance over the past 7 years? Some of my liberal friends were despondent at these survey results. If the Indian people were willing to give high marks to a government that had clearly failed to deliver, what did that mean? The implication to them was very clear, i.e., that the majority of Indians had bought into the Hindutva ideology and were in fact expressing their satisfaction with the progress of Modi's majoritarian agenda, with no regard to the economic hardship they have had to endure. Some of these friends were despondently resigning themselves to three or even four terms of a Modi government, and the seemingly inevitable prospect of India becoming a theocratic Hindu state with a permanently fascist polity.

Having lived in Australia since 1998, I recollected a parallel from Australian politics, and I put together this piece to provide them some cheer.

Former Australian PM John Howard won four consecutive 3-year terms (in 1996, 1998, 2001, and 2004) before losing in 2007, when he even lost his own seat.

What suddenly happened in 2007?

Nothing happened. That's what was so surprising. Howard was an extremely successful prime minister and a sure-footed politician who always seemed to sense the public mood, and invariably did things that gained popular approval.

In 1996, shortly after his first victory, the Port Arthur massacre took place - Australia's worst mass shooting tragedy. Howard reacted with alacrity, banning all automatic weapons and implementing a buyback program. That made him very popular. (In the US, this would have contravened the Second Amendment.)

This was also the term when Pauline Hanson, then a newly elected independent MP, made her maiden speech, a sensational diatribe against Aboriginal people, Asians, and immigrants in general. She suddenly gained popularity with a section of the electorate that was feeling threatened by Asian migration. Most other politicians condemned her speech, but John Howard stayed completely silent. He in fact very quietly started implementing aspects of her demands in immigration policy, and stole the wind from her sails. He swung the racist vote to his party without saying anything! This is exactly like Modi's strategy of staying silent and pointedly not condemning extreme and bigoted statements by others.

Howard won again in 1998, but with a reduced majority. He took a big risk when he pushed through the GST in 2000, which was unpopular at the time, but which turned out to be visionary and, in retrospect, one of Australia's great success stories (One flat rate of 10% on all goods and services, period). Just before the 2001 election, he famously refused entry to The Tampa, a Norwegian ship that had rescued boat people from a capsized vessel. Once again, that act appealed to the immigration hardliners and he won his third election. This is again like Modi and his Balakot operation just before the 2019 election.

Howard's third term saw the 2001 WTC attacks, and he joined Bush and Blair in sending troops to Iraq, which became very unpopular later. He was at his weakest before the 2004 election, but he got a major reprieve because Labor's leader at the time (Mark Latham) put off many people. Latham was a known goon and a hothead who had once broken a cabbie's arm during an altercation. Howard won his fourth term in 2004 because of the TINA factor. This is exactly like how people see no alternative to Modi because Indian opposition parties are such a disaster.

Mind you, Howard's stewardship of the economy during his four terms was beyond reproach. Not only did he run surplus budgets, he also paid off the national debt. During his tenure, Australia built up a huge surplus called the Future Fund (which came in very useful for Kevin Rudd in 2008-2009 when he had to provide a Keynesian stimulus after the GFC). Also, under John Howard and his Treasurer Peter Costello, Australia neatly avoided the recessions that hit the rest of the world, first during the Asian currency crisis in 1997-98 and then during the Tech crash of 2001.

It's good to have a surplus like that as a buffer for the future. Well, the future is here. -- Kevin Rudd, unlocking the Future Fund to provide a stimulus package in 2008

Impeccable economic management credentials. Expertise in dog-whistling hardline right-wing messages without actually saying anything that people could point at.

Yet John Howard lost in 2007. How? Why?

Analysts have been searching for reasons, and they usually come up with three. The first two are very weak, IMO.

1. He tried to tinker with labour legislation with a new policy called WorkChoices, which reduced employee rights, but he backpedalled on it after facing opposition.

2. There was a feeling that Australia needed to do something urgently on climate change, which Howard (as a conservative) did not think was important.

3. There was a sudden and inexplicable "shift in the wind", with people just feeling that he had overstayed his welcome and it was time for a change.

In fact, Kevin Rudd followed a very clever policy of not differing much from Howard except on climate change. He portrayed himself as an economic conservative too, so on paper, there was really not much to choose between the two opponents. Rudd deliberately made it hard for Howard to attack him on policy, since he mirrored Howard on all his policies. He just happened not to be John Howard. He banked on voters' weariness with Howard. And it paid off.

Howard did not just lose the 2007 election. He lost his own seat. He was only the second sitting Australian PM to lose his own seat.

Such a dramatic and swift fall, and for no apparent reason. Howard did everything right, and even his critics had to grudgingly admit that he was one of Australia's best economic managers. Ultimately, the wind just shifted and, in the words of a columnist, "John Howard was yesterday's man".

Modi is not going to rule forever, even if it seems that way. One day, for no reason at all, the wind will shift, and that will be that.

Squinting At India From Down Under

1. Proud Filer

Of late, some Indian friends of mine have started applying a badge to their profile pictures that says "Proud Filer". This refers, of course, to the fact that they have filed their taxes. The badge shows that India's Income Tax department is trying to provide positive reinforcement for this desired behaviour. All good and wholesome stuff.

It's just a bit amusing to me. I'm sure people will call this snobbery on my part, but I see nothing to be proud about in doing what is expected and the norm. I have been filing taxes all my working life, both in India and in Australia, and I never thought it was something I should pat myself on the back for, with a badge on my profile pic and everything.

A typical profile pic with the badge of honour

In Australia, one is allowed to start working (part-time) after the age of 14 years and 9 months. (Until that arbitrarily defined age, I suppose it would be considered child labour and hence illegal.) My son started to work part-time at a library at around that age, and he filed his first tax return at the age of 15. Of course, since his earnings were well below the taxable threshold, he paid no tax that year. This continued until he got his first full-time job after graduation at the age of 23, at which point his income crossed the tax-free threshold and he began to pay income tax. But he had had to file his returns every year from the age of 15! It's an offence not to file a tax return if you've earned any income during the year. Whether your income crosses the tax-free threshold or not is beside the point.

I can understand that in a country with a low tax base and a low level of tax compliance, it's necessary to encourage the filing of taxes with a feel-good incentive like a badge. I suppose it's "one small step for an individual taxpayer, but a giant leap for the tax department and the economy".

What other expected behaviours can one reward with badges, I wonder.

"Proud Non-Litterer"
"Proud Follower of Road Rules"
"Proud Non-Payer of Bribes to Officials"

Apologies again for sounding like a snob. I'm still not able to get over my amusement at this.

2. Jobs for Kids

That reminds me of another interesting difference between parental attitudes in Australia and India. Kids in Australia are expected to start working part-time from the allowed age of 14 years and 9 months, both to earn their own pocket money and to gain valuable work experience. The most valued jobs are customer-facing ones, since such experience is highly useful in a service economy. You will see high-school and college kids working at supermarket checkout counters, as clothing shop assistants, waiters, etc. It is not looked down upon.

I don't know what the attitudes of middle-class India are like today towards children from educated families working at such service jobs, but I certainly remember what it was like in my youth.

In 1984, one of my IIT classmates had applied for a graduate course at a US university and had also applied for a teaching assistantship to help cover his expenses. I was present when he read out the letter he received from a professor at that university. The professor regretted that there were no paid assistantships available, but he promised to help my friend get a job driving the university bus. We all had a big laugh at this, and my friend emphasised the point, saying, "My dad will never let me go to the US if he knows I'm going to be driving a bus!"

Educated, middle-class Indians used to consider it beneath their dignity to do anything but a white-collar job. I certainly hope those attitudes have changed.

3. Dignity of Labour

And this in turn reminds me of another interesting difference in value systems I have seen between India and Australia, viz., the position of tradespeople. Plumbers, electricians, pavers, roof restorers, tree loppers and others are very highly paid in Australia, and these professions are no less respectable than corporate or academic jobs. Indeed, skilled tradespeople are among the highest income earners in the country.

To take one very stark example, plumbers are most often called in to deal with blocked toilet drains, and their job necessarily brings them into frequent contact with human faeces. In India, such a job would be considered to be the lowest of the low, and the existence of the caste system bears witness to this pervasive social attitude. In Australia, thankfully, there is no stigma at all attached to this trade. It's a truly egalitarian society.

If anything, the snobbery in Australia runs the other way. In India, students who secure admission to an educational institution "on merit", i.e., by scoring high marks in an entrance test, tend to look down on their classmates who have secured admission by paying "capitation fees" or through a "management quota". Scholastic ability ("merit") has legitimacy that fee-paying ability does not.

In Australia, I have heard from Indian friends (whose children gained admission to private schools on a scholarship) that they were disdained by their classmates who were paying full fees. In a complete inversion of social strata, the students who were able to pay full fees were the children of highly-paid tradespeople, whereas the children of my highly educated friends working in academia and mid-level corporate positions were constrained by economics to seek financial assistance through scholarships, which then made them the object of their classmates' contempt.

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These are some of the interesting differences I've seen between the societies of my native country and my adoptive one.

If you liked this, check out a related post, Thoughts On Culture, Friendship And Hospitality.