Asakiyume mita

As part of my happy role as Frutero ice cream enthusiast, I am pleased to bring you an interview with Vedant Saboo and Mike Weber, who created the Philadelphia-based company.


Vedant and Mike enjoying some ice cream

The two became friends in business school, and in 2019, Vedant brought Mike to India and got him to try tropical fruit ice cream--which he loved. As Vedant recalls in an interview for Authority magazine,

Mike and I thought there must be more people like us who would love tropical fruit ice cream. Ice cream is more than $10 billion market in the US, but overly cluttered with variations of chocolate.

And that was the impetus for Frutero. Mike had prior experience in food and beverage companies--including a leading ice cream company--and Vedant had worked as an investment associate and a business analyst, so they made a good team. To my delight, they agreed to do an interview with me. Mike answered some questions, and Vedant answered others.

( in the beginning )

( People's reactions to Frutero )

( Working with farmers in Colombia )

( Actual ice cream-making process )

( Flavors to look forward to )

Thank you so much for doing this interview! Your ice cream has been one of my joys this year, and I really appreciate both of you taking the time to share about your wonderful venture. I wish you all success for the future. Any final words to leave us with?

Mike:
On each pint we write that our mission is to make the world’s best tropical fruit ice cream. We live this motto, and we’re always looking to improve! Once folks try our ice cream, we definitely want to hear from you! What did you like, and what can we do better?


Mike with a pop-up Frutero ice cream display

Thank you again! And to everyone who sees this interview, do try their ice cream and let them know. 💛

These questions are a mix of Tetun and English. Where they're in Tetun (probably riddled with errors), I've supplied English, but I haven't attempted to translate my English-language questions into Tetun. Similarly, where Nando answered in Tetun, I've translated the answers into English, but where he answered in English, I haven't ventured a translation. Ha'u husu deskulpa tanba la bele tradús hotu ba Tetun 😓

Nando da Costa Pires


Nando da Costa Pires is the author of "Mr. Mau Leki Meets an Eel," which you can read here.

(Nando da Costa Pires mak hakerek na'in "Sr. Mau Leki Hetán Majiku Husu Tuna," ne'ebe mak bele lee iha ne'e (okos).)

I asked him some questions ...

Can you tell us about reading when you were growing up in Ainaro?

Tuir ha’u nia hanoin kona ba reading iha Ainaro ladun le’e livru barak tanba livre ba le’e la to.

(According to my view, many in Ainaro didn’t read books because books were not available for all, but some people did find a way to read books.)

When I was a child, I didn’t read any books because I didn’t have any. Sometimes I asked other people to show me some to help me do my homework, and sometimes I borrowed my friends’ books to read.

When you were a child, what things did you do each day?

When I came back from school each day, I spent my time helping my family a lot on the farm.

Follow-up Question:
Bainhira Alin Nando sei ki’ik oinsa mak ajuda ita-nia familia iha to’os?

(When you were little, how did you help your family on the farm?)

Wainhira hau sei kiik, hau ajuda hau nia familia mak hanesan hamoos duut ou kuru bee lori ba hau nia inan aman hemu no hili ai hodi tein ba meiudia sira han.

(When I was little, I helped my family by doing things like weeding, or fetching water for my parents to drink and gathering wood to cook everyone’s midday meal.)

In school, what subjects did you like? Were there any subjects that you did not like?

In my school, I liked math and science. The subject I didn’t like was talking about politics.

You told me that your grandmother told you the story of Mr. Mau Leki and the eel. Did she tell you many other stories?

Nia konta istória só iha tempu espesiál ka beibeik ka?

(Did she tell stories only on special occasions or all the time?)

When I was a child, my grandmother told me many stories. She would tell me stories two times a month, or sometimes three times a month.

Who else in your family told stories?

My parent and my uncle (my father’s brother).

You told me “istória nee realidade akontese duni” (“this story really happened”).
Ha’u fiar ita, tanba mundu ne’e misteriozu no buat hotu (ema, animal, ai-hun, rai, lalehan, klamar) mak ligadu malu

(I believe you because this world is mysterious, and everything (people, animals, trees, earth, heaven, spirits) is connected to each other.)

So, I want to ask: What important things do stories like this one teach us?

(Istória hanesan ne’e hanorin ba ita buat importante saida?)

Istória nia importante mak hanorin mai ita atu kuidadu ita nia natureza sira, no karik ita hetan milagre husi natureza nia forsa, ita bele uza forsa ne’e bele tulun fali ita nia maluk sira ne'ebé presiza ita nia ajuda.

(This story’s importance is that it teaches us to take care of our natural world, and that if we obtain miracles from the forces of nature, we can use that power to help our families and friends when they need our help.)

Liu husi istória ne’e ema bele hadomi liu tan sira nia ambiente.

(Through this story, people can come to love their environment more.)

Hanorin ami atu oinsá atu ajuda ema seluk, karik sira presiza ita nia tulun.

(It teaches us how to help other people, if they need our help.)

Follow-up question:
Alin Nando dehan, “karik ita hetan milagre husi natureza nia forsa, ita bele uza forsa ne’e bele tulun fali ita nia maluk sira ne'ebé presiza ita nia ajuda.” Alin Nando rasik iha esperiensia ne’e?

(You said, “if we obtain miracles from nature’s power, we can use that power to help our families and friends when they need our help.” Have you yourself had that experience?)

Iha, tanba hau nia avo hetan duni milagre balun husi natureza tanba nia kura duni ema balun ne’ebé hetan moras no nia tana hodi siik ema nia moras no nia fo aimoruk tradisional ba ema moras nee.

I have, because my grandfather has indeed experienced various miracles from nature, because he has truly cured a number of people who were sick, and he performs divinations in order to understand people’s illnesses, and he gives traditional medicine to these sick people.

Is this the first time you have ever written a story?

Yes. It is the first time for me to write a story.

Do you read many stories? If yes, what types of story do you like?

Yes, I do read stories, but not many. I read some stories in Tetun from Revista Lafaek.

In your opinion, what is the difference between reading a story and listening to someone tell a story?

In my opinion, reading stories improves our comprehension about the things the story is talking about. We learn something from the story, and we come to know about interesting places. And also, we can read the story to our family.

In my opinion, when we listen to someone tell a story, we must listen carefully to the person so that we can understand the meaning of the story.


You studied math at university and now help students learn math. What methods do you use?

Yes. My experience is this: first I must prepare worksheets for the students, and then give them some examples and explain it to them. I must give exercises for student do in the class, and then I must check if they understand how to do it. And I must give them homework to reinforce what I taught, and later I must check their homework.

Follow-up question:
Kona-ba estudante ita-nian: sira-nia idade saida?

(About your students: what are their ages?)

Kona-ba estudante sira nia idade husi idade 8 to 17.

(About the students: they range in age from 8 to 17.)

Obrigada barak ba intervista ne’e no ba istória furak ne’ebe mak ita hakerek.
Ha’u hein katak ita hakerek istória barak tan!

(Thank you very much for this interview and for the wonderful story that you wrote.
I hope that you write lots more stories!)

Today's question for Doug involves a resource in our area, the Titanic Historical Society. It was created in 1963 by Edward Kamuda, who back in the 1950s reached out to the survivors of the Titanic, asking them if they would be willing to share their memories. He created the first LP album recording of them sharing those memories. Various people also donated their souvenirs--including a square of carpet from the ship!

Have you been to the Titanic Historical Society's museum in Indian Orchard [a neighborhood in Springfield, MA]? If so, what's it like? What's the best part?

Doug's reply:

Yes, several times. I actually met the founder of the Titanic Historical Society, Ed Kamuda, a few years before his passing. The first time I met him, he gave me a little pop quiz on ocean liners, and I got them all right, and he said to my mother, "You got an expert right here." You never forget things like that.

I think the best part is that it was established in my hometown, and that’s something positive I can say about the city where I grew up. Also, two of Titanic’s passengers who died lived in Springfield. Milton Long, son of Judge Charles Long, a former mayor of the city, and Jane Carr, who was a third-class passenger whom I believe lived in nearby Windsor Locks prior to Springfield. Springfield has so much hidden history that one would be surprised to learn about.

Photos of Milton Long and Jane Carr



Link to Doug's book

Today my question for Titanic enthusiast Douglas Ross is this:

You've been interested in the Titanic for a long time. How (if at all) has your focus changed?

Doug's answer:

I have always been interested in the general story of Titanic and the lessons incorporated into maritime law, which I call the Civil Rights Act of the sea for its groundbreaking and world-shattering changes that endure until this very day, but now my focus has slightly shifted to incorporate the broader world, such as how racism affected Blacks traveling back and forth between the United States and Europe. I'm also more interested in certain passengers and crew, such as the White Star Line chairman J. Bruce Ismay, who is a very complex man that I have grown to sympathize with on a personal level, but I wasn’t always this way towards Ismay.

J. Bruce Ismay as a young man
(photo courtesy of Wikipedia)



J. Bruce Ismay as played by Frank Lawton in the film A Night To Remember (1958), in a lifeboat, as the Titanic sinks behind him



J Bruce Ismay as played by Jonathan Hyde in James Cameron's Titanic (1997), same scene



ETA --Doug commented on Twitter about film representations of Ismay, saying that there are "several films on Ismay, all bad with the exception of SOS Titanic and A Night to Remember."

His list of other offerings:
--Titanic (1996 CBS miniseries)
--Ghosts of the Abyss (2003) [A documentary film]
--Titanic (2012) [a four-part TV drama]
--Titanic: Blood and Steel (2012) [a 12-part TV drama]
--Titanic documentary (2011)



(Link to Doug's book)

And here we are at the last mer post! I hope you’ve enjoyed spending time with the mer community and learning about making tails as much as I have. This post has Stillwater_fx’s answers to my questions about favorite things, hardest things, and the thing I most wanted to know about—can you actually swim in a mermaid tail. (Special thanks to genarti for teaching me how to make a cute Instagram tag of Stillwater_fx’s name.)

asakiyume: What’s the hardest part of tail creation?

stillwater_fx: For me, the hardest part has to be sculpting, especially sculpting big flukes and scale sheets. But it’s not the sculpting itself that makes it hard. No, sculpting is fun. It’s the hours of being hunched over or kneeling down on the floor. The pain is bad—sometimes it forces me to take a day off, sometimes two, just to rest and recuperate. And honestly, the second-hardest part for me is having to part with my babies, the tails I make, after spending so long, usually months or weeks making them. It’s so personal to me that I become attached to them.



asakiyume: What part is the most fun?

stillwater_fx: My favorite part of the tail-making process has to be designing. I have sketchbooks filled with old fin designs and styles and descriptions. It honestly looks like a mad scientist’s journal. Sometimes I like to imagine a background story for the mermaid or merman. For example, if the character is a warrior, it’s safe to say that it won’t have long and flowy fins. More like a lion fish, the fins will be looking sharp and dangerous—ready for battle. If the character is perhaps a princess, then long and flowy fins like that of a betta fish would look more aesthetic.

lion fish


betta fish


asakiyume: And is it possible to swim in a mermaid tail?

stillwater_fx: Yes, people can swim in mermaid tails. The main reason for that is the monofin. Swimming in a monofin takes a bit of practice, but once you get that dolphin movement down, you’ll be as graceful as any professional mermaid. Silicone tails can weigh up to 30 lbs. depending on a client’s size and stature. It’s also depending on how many fins they’ve ordered and the size of the caudal fins, because the caudal fin is the biggest and heaviest part of a mermaid tail.

a young mermaid—who can swim in her tail


Proof!--click for a 10-second video

I have swum upstream in rivers and against the raging seas. Swimming in a tail isn’t safe for everyone. Make sure that you are physically able to perform such a demanding task. There are always risks when in the water. Always make sure you’re not swimming alone, and if possible, that there are lifeguards on duty. And always tell someone where you’re going to be before any nature exploration, be it above or below the seas. Stay safe, guys, and I hope you enjoy this interview!

One of the people I got to know when I was tutoring in Holyoke last fall was stillwater_fx, who has an amazing side job: he makes tails for merfolk. They’re incredible works of art, and you can actually swim in them, if you’re skilled.





( Interview under the cut )

Here you can listen to stillwater_fx’s remarks about the community as therapy.

STAY TUNED FOR PART 2: CREATING A MERMAID TAIL

Sherwood Smith asked me some really interesting questions that The Inconvenient God raised for her, and she posted the questions and answers over on the Book View Cafe blog (here).

I think my favorite question was the one about whether writing words down chains them. The technology of writing is really wonderful and makes miracles possible, in terms of sharing and transmission, but the spoken word has real power too. I love thinking about their different strengths.

And speaking of spoken word (heh), okrablossom linked me to another beautiful spoken word poem, "Rise," by Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, this time in collaboration with Aka Niviâna, an Inuk poet. Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner is from the Marshall Islands, which are gravely threatened by rising sea levels, and many of her poems deal with climate change. Aka Niviâna is from Kalaallit Nunaat--Greenland--whose melting glaciers create the rising sea levels. Her poems often deal with the legacy of colonization.

Their words, combined with the breathtaking images, is really powerful (video (6 minutes) and text of the poem available here).

--Sister of ice and snow, I'm coming to you
--Sister of ocean and sand, I welcome you

Last year, two friends had poetry and short-story collections come out in Aqueduct Press's Conversation Pieces series. One is Lisa Bradley (The Haunted Girl), whose works have appeared in Strange Horizons, Stone Telling, and Mythic Delirium, among other venues, and who's been anthologized in Rose Lemberg's The Moment of Change and Sylvia Moreno-Garcia and Orrin Grey's Fungi, among other collections. I got to know her work through her poem-a-day on LJ. Those entries are mainly locked, but here and here are a couple of evocative short-form poems that she shared publicly. I loved The Haunted Girl (review here), and the other day I asked if I could interview her about it. She agreed!

The title of this collection, and of one of the poems in it, is “The Haunted Girl.” Can you talk a little about the different forms that haunting takes in this collection?

There are few, if any, see-through, rattling chains, type ghosts here. Most of the hauntings come from our ability to imagine other outcomes, to impose counterfactuals on memories.

The Haunted Girl in the title poem is an amalgamation of girls killed in horror movies. The narrator is haunted by the knowledge that this didn’t *have* to be the Girl’s fate. She imagines ways to help the Girl, but none of the counterfactuals work because our world IS the horror movie: it created and perpetuates misogynistic tropes. In “Teratoma Lullaby,” “Blood Is Thicker than Water,” and several other pieces, the true haunting is a yearning to fix broken families, to rewrite personal histories.

There are some curses in the book, too. Casting a vengeful curse is pushing your counterfactual into the future. If, on the other hand, you’re the one cursed, then much of your tragedy comes of imagining the beautiful life you’d have otherwise.

( on family )

( horror--plus humor? )

I hope the world will one day get to see your novels, as I have a powerful love for the one I’ve read. As a writer of poetry, short stories, and novels, do you find one or another of those formats more amenable to some topics or themes than others? Are you driven to write in a particular format, or is it a conscious choice--or does it vary?

I can’t imagine writing a whole novel about family, not the way I do in poems and short stories. That kind of emotional intensity and self-reflection would probably kill me. (Current “me,” that is. Never say never, right?) Family usually sneaks its way into the novels, but it’s not the focus.

In my mental shorthand, poetry is for ideas, stories for character, and novels for action. I realize this differs from current genre expectations, which may explain why my poetry has been more outwardly successful than my fiction.

Thank you so much for this interview! Your description of a curse--“pushing your counterfactual into the future”--as well as your insights about family, especially about the sense of walking into a story already in progress--have really given me food for thought, as has your neat system for what things become poems, short stories, and novels.

You can read more from Lisa on Twitter or here on LJ.

The nice thing about the indie fantasy story bundle is that it's got so many different kinds of stories. sartorias's Lhind the Thief, for instance, is a straight-up great adventure story of the sort that lets you forget, oh, say, approaching blizzards and the like. We talked a bit about it:

( special powers )

( villains )

( peril )

( sequels )

One thing I love about Twitter is that it lets you peek into many different places, many different disciplines, many different interests. Some of my interests include genre fiction, diversity in literature, and Southeast Asia, so maybe it’s not surprising that I’ve ended up following Ahmad Alkadri (@alkadri), a student in forestry in Indonesia who’s also a translator and a writer. His debut novel Spora, a tale of Lovecraftian horror, came out last year.

He kindly let me ask him some questions about the genre scene in Indonesia and about his own work. Today’s questions are about Indonesia. Tune in tomorrow to learn more about Ahmad himself and his writer’s journey.

Can you speak a little about the science fiction, fantasy, and horror writing community in Indonesia? What Indonesian writers would you like to see gain popularity outside of Indonesia?

The communities are small in number, but they are very passionate! There are some very active groups, such as Kastil Fantasi (@KastilFantasi), Penggemar Novel Fantasi Indonesia (PNFI) (@portalfantasi), and Le Chateau de Phantasm (@L_C_D_P). Also there are fan groups, such as Harry Potter Indonesia, The Darkest Minds Indonesia, The Mortal Instruments Indonesia, and so many more.

I’d pretty much want to see some Indonesian writers and books going abroad. Vandaria Saga is an original high epic fantasy series from my country, spanning books and video games, with a coherent world and intertwined little stories that I’d like to be skyrocketed in other countries.


We also write good action stories (which lately have been developed into all other sorts of action movies, one of which is The Raid), and horror novels (Eve Shi is my favorite Indonesian horror writer by now—check out her works!). I’d really like to see all of them, together, graced the international market together.

Eve Shi

Indonesian, lifelong and full-time fangirl, writer. She subsists on tea, fruit juice, and the occasional latte. Currently her favorite writers are the late Liang Yusheng (wuxia writer), Arakawa Hiromu (mangaka), and Zen Cho (Malaysian speculative fiction writer). Her third YA supernatural/horror novel, Unforgiven, is published by Gagas Media in June 2014. Next: Sparkle (YA, drama), from Noura Books in November 2014. (Source)

How would you describe Indonesian science fiction, fantasy, and horror? (Are there qualities to it that feel uniquely Indonesian to you?)

Indonesian fantasy stories are usually full of action, with merciless villains and a heavy political plot ready to destroy the hero. You think Game of Thrones is hardcore? Well there is this TV series, a long time ago, about an evil witch (Mak Lampir) who manipulated kingdoms full of martial art masters (each one of them is probably capable of handling her in one-on-one battle) to keep battling each other to death. And the hero is a homeless, wandering warrior. With a whiplash as main weapon (rad, huh?).
Mak Lampir

(photo source)

The horror stories are frightening, and here is where I’d proudly say that they are, most of them, uniquely Indonesian. We have many paranormal creatures and ghosts from our own folklores, and most of them are terrifying. We have our own zombies (google: zombie toraja indonesia), vampires (google: hantu leak), and even were-creatures (google: babi ngepet). Check them out. You’d be surprised.

Have some google images. . .

(The image of a zombie from Toraja is under a cut because your hostess finds it genuinely terrifying)
( Read more... )

(Okay, you know what? Hantu leak is also too horrifying to go without a cut. She’s a human head, but her body is nothing but viscera)
( Read more... )

Babi ngepet is a were-boar

(image source)

Any questions for Ahmad about Indonesia's genre scene? Leave them here!