Nice to be back home

Back in my hometown of Calicut for a 3 day weekend again, feels nice to be back. My little one has been circling in a 1 meter radius around me ever since I landed. :).She is growing up fast and I seem to be missing out on all the fun. At least I can meet her once or twice in a month.

I have to figure out a way of spending more time with her from now on. Tomorrow we are taking her for Kinder Garten admission .

Back to reading ways

Finally I have gotten over the reader's block :-) . The book that I have started on is "The Appeal" by John Grisham. I believe I must have read all of Grisham's books.

I think his ability has declined a lot over the years. Some of his earlier ones were quite impressive . I loved A time to kill , The Chamber and The Rainmaker. A painted house was not bad either. I was disappointed by his recent ones like Playing for pizza , The Bleachers or The King of Torts. Maybe I am just reading too much of Grisham.

I find the same trend of diminishing ability with most of the specialists like Robert Ludlum or Robin Cook. After a while , you get tired of the same plots. How many different ways can you spin medical thrillers and spy stories ?Compared to them, I think Michael Crichton is still very readable after all these years.

The second book in queue is Like a flowing river by Paul Coelho. After my disappointment with The Alchemist, I am deliberately keeping low expectations this time. Who knows, maybe this book will surprise me ....

I feel much more at peace now , reading does help my state of mind a lot !!

Musings of a volunteer

If you have read some of my earlier blogs, you would know that I volunteer time on weekends for a cause that I believe in. Several people have asked me in the past on why I continue to volunteer .

In reality, I do not have any convincing answer to offer. In fact my answers to this question vary from time to time. I know India is a country of more than a billion, whatever tiny bit that I do is unlikely to cause any big change. I know that my work will go unappreciated and unnoticed by 99.999999% of Indian population. No one is going to turn and pat me on the back or encourage me to keep doing this.

But I do it anyway. I do not have a reason , nor I do I have inspiring words to share with you. One lousy reason that I always tell people is that "I do it because I do not have anything else to do on weekends "

I know of several people who can reel out list after list of perfectly logical , reasonable and believable excuses on why they could not spare couple of hours on a weekend. I know of people who can eloquently speak tons of words on passion and commitment , yet time and again refuse to walk this talk.

One lousy reason on why I do it Vs 10 convincing reasons on why you cannot do it .

Take your pick, what would you choose ?

Bake a cake : V3 and success !!

Success !! Finally something that I made turned out to be edible. And to give credit where it's due, I dedicate this success to my consultant in AZ, USA :-)

Cut the proportions in the recipe by half and the cake turned out perfect. Beautifully browned on outside, soft on inside and tastes good too. What more do you want from a cake ? Unfortunately I don't have my digital camera with me, so I cannot upload a photo . It's a thing of beauty, trust me !!

And the modified recipe , reproduced with NO permission taken from the original author whatsoever ;-)

1/2 cup butter at room temperature
1 cup sugar
1.5 cup maida
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
4-5 drops of vanilla essence
Some cashew nuts

• Mix the maida with baking powder and pass through a sieve 2-3 times.
• Separate the egg-white and yolk. Beat the egg whites thoroughly first.
• Mix the sugar and butter and churn till they mix well
• Add the beaten egg yolks to it and stir further.
• Add the egg whites and mix thoroughly
• Add the vanilla essence drops and cashew nuts and mix it
• Add the maida in small quantities and keep mixing till a lump free thick batter is obtained.
• Pour into the cake tin and bake for around 30 -35 mins with oven temperature at 180 deg C ( convection only )

And presto, the masterpiece is ready for consumption !!

I am so happy, after so much of wasted material, finally something that tastes really good !!

Bake a cake : version 2

After my miserable previous attempt , I made another go at baking a cake yesterday. This time armed with a professional recipe from a "self proclaimed" professional cook.

One of the key improvements noticed with the new recipe was that this cake had a nice smell while baking, my earlier attempt almost stank up my kitchen while in oven.

Well apart from that the miseries continued. The cake rose up and was almost sticking out of my cake tin by a good inch and a half. Even after 50 minutes of baking, the insides were undercooked. I could not put in the oven any longer as the top surface was almost black in color by then. Took me couple of hours to set everything up. And of course, the pathetic end result had my in-famous temper on the boil again.

My professional cook has suggested to me that probably I had too small a cake tin. My question is , why is the cake tin size not mentioned as part of the recipe ? :)

Whatever was not burnt or undercooked did taste good though. I am an optimist when it comes to cooking , as you can make out from my never ending series of past attempts.

They say "You can't have your cake and eat it too" . If the cake is made by me, probably there is no way you want to eat it anyway :-((

Forget ranks & marks, life is more important

My wife told me yesterday that one of her juniors decided to end her life because she could not get a good rank in the All India PG entrance exam for medicine. Whatever I had written earlier in http://deeplyrandom.blogspot.com/2007/12/is-good-academic-record-over-rated.html seems worth repeating.

Apparently this girl was a rank holder in SSLC. I am assuming she was under fair bit of peer pressure. But come on, a failure in an exam, that is reason enough to end a human life ? I simply cannot understand this. Such a waste of talent . All for what, a good rank , good marks ? What will that get you in life ?

And why bother so much ? Marks and ranks are in no way a measure of your intelligence or abilities anyway . Any idiot can score great marks. From my personal experience, I can tell you that it requires no special skill.

I feel so frustrated when I hear news like these. When will our academic system ever get out of this mode of marks and ranks ? I really fear for the future of the next generation. I hope I am a good enough parent never to let these pressures get to my daughter.
Time will tell, I guess.

Which type of wedding do you like ?

I was having a conversation with some of my North Indian friends some months back on the differences in marriage ceremonies between North and South India. I was of the opinion that North Indian weddings look more like a circus and lack dignity. Needless to say my comments were not very well received .

But I do think that the marriage ceremony that I went through was pretty nice. The whole church service was very short, to the point and meaningful. Is there something more beautiful than the exchange of vows ? I don't know ..

" I, Pradeep, Take you, Padmini, to be my wife, To have and to hold from this day forward;
For better, for worse;
For richer, for poorer;
In sickness and in health;
To love, cherish, and protect, till death us do part, According to God’s holy law;
And to this I give you my pledge."

I did look into my wife's eyes when I said this. She did not look back though :-))

And one more thing. There is a point in the ceremony when the pastor asks the congregation if anyone has any objection to this marriage taking place. Boy, does your heart start pounding in the 10 second silence that follows !!!

Another disaster

For some time the urge to innovate has been again been active inside me. This time I though a simple cake would be a good thing to try out in the kitchen.

Recipes ? They are for wimps. Real men trust their intuition !! :). So started my intuition based cooking experiment.

Ingredients : 2 cup maida, 3/4 cup powdered sugar, 4 egg whites, vanilla essence and cashew nuts. They were all appropriately mixed and poured to the cake tin. Baked in microwave convection mode at 250 deg C for close to 30-40 minutes. Actually I had employed an Arizona based cooking consultant to find out the cooking time, so the consultant also shares the moral blame for what happened :-))

To cut the story short, what came out of the oven was one of the best looking cakes I had ever seen. Beautifully browned top, the cake had risen nicely. Almost perfect.

Alas, looks don't make a cake, do they ? The cake was too dense, not at all soft. In fact distinctly rubbery in feel . Also has a real weird taste, or should I say no taste at all ? I wonder what went wrong .

Another failure, the resolve to succeed becomes stronger ...

On friends

I was chatting with one of my close friends recently. Then this thought struck me on how bizarrely sometimes friendships develops.

In this particular case, we studied in the same engineering college, though in different departments. In the 4 years that we spent at college, I remember a grand total of one word that I spoke to her. Yes, one word , and that word was "Thanks "!! Yet today, around 10 years from my college days she is one of my best friends.

Another friendship took a more obvious route. We sat on the same bench on day one of engineering college. Well as luck would have it, we continued to be seated together for the rest of 4 years. :-)

As things turned out, the two individuals I mentioned above ( no names as I have not taken their permission ) , are the friends whom I can say have the maximum positive impact in my life. I feel I have genuinely improved as a person after being in contact with them. From a complete sociopath to a somewhat tolerable presence :)

If I had sat on a different bench, would my life have been different ? Now that is an interesting thought ... :-))

Tyler Hamilton

One of my earlier posts was on Jan Ullrich and how he fascinated me. There is one more cyclist mentioned in the same book Lance Armstrong : Tour de Force, Tyler Hamilton.

If Ullrich piqued my curiosity by his apparent utter laziness, Hamilton intrigues me by his sheer unluckiness and threshold for pain.

If you a broken shoulder blade, what would you do ? Probably won't even get out of bed, right ?

Not Tyler Hamilton. He continues on racing to complete one of the most grueling cycling races in history, 2003 Tour De France. Legend is that by the end of the race, he had ground his teeth right down to the nerve ends. And in case some of you are thinking ' ah, he must have been filled to brim with painkillers', the ant-doping regulations prevented him from taking any painkillers during the course of the 3 week race. That is some serious threshold for pain !! 

What motivates these guys to endure so much of pain ? Is it genetic ? Would you or me be able to do this ?

Leading by example

I was watching this movie "A few good men" recently on TV. Somewhere in that movie, the following bit of conversation happens . ( Jessup is Jack Nicholson and Koffee is Tom Cruise. )

Jessup: I felt his life might be in danger once word of the letter got out.
Kaffee: Grave danger?
Jessup: Is there another kind?

Similarly I quote this :
"Leadership by example ?"
"Is there another kind ?"

Very simple question . One that all of us know the answer to , but rarely ever follow. Walking the talk is so important, in fact I would put it down as the single most important quality that would prompt me to respect a person.

I am frustrated by some examples of leadership in volunteering efforts that I have come across in the past, hence this post.

Back from home

You know what the most hearbreaking thing in life is ? When your three year old daughter clings on to you and says "Don't go daddy, I also want to come with you", "Why are you going back to Bangalore ?" , "Why don't you work here, I like it so much when you are around" . I don't have an answer for any of her questions. Makes me wonder as always if whatever I am doing is worth all this pain ....

I invariably cry on my way back. That's when I realize it is sometimes better to release all these emotions than keep them bottled up like I often do. Hmm.. Maybe there is a lesson there..

I landed back in office today morning. It is like there is an Akshaya patra of visitors in our office this week. I am either presenting to some one or listening to some presentation. When will I work ??????