A family man

Have been busy this week trying to get used to what family life feels like. Landed in Bangalore on Monday morning. A quick review of my kitchen by Mom, Sister and Wife resulted in lot of head shaking and an extremely long shopping list. Off I went to the department store, in search of items ranging from mopping cloth to Chicken. I returned with enough items to fill up my car's boot and lighter in the wallet to the tune of around Rs.2,000.

For a change, I need not conduct my cooking experiments this week. I have food to eat, company at home when I return from work and someone to talk to at night. Feels a bit weird , am I dreaming ? ;-)

I have promised to unveil my masterpiece , "The cake" in front of my family on May 1st. They will be surprised for sure, whether the surprise would be of the pleasant variety or not is to yet to be seen.

Vodafone ad

Every day I want to fly, stay by my side,
Every day I want to dream, stay by my side,
Every morning I wish I could just play,
Wish the mornings would just stay ..

The new Vodafone ad is absolutely wonderful. Watch the YouTube video here.

I wonder if the song is an original composition or just written for the ad.

Simple lyrics, mystical music that makes you want to hear this song over and over again and a top class video.

How to cut an onion without crying ?

I was getting bugged by this crying business while cutting onions. Any Indian dish that you try to cook requires onions and invariably I end up shedding bucketful of tears. So is there any way out ?

Quick survey of literature available reveals that an absurd amount of "solutions" exists for this problem. To quote a few :

(a) Cut out a cone at the bottom of the onion from the root, this is the part the makes you cry. (Maybe, but I don't want to waste half my onion just avoid a few tears, would I ? Especially with the prices the way they are in India now !! )
(b) Wear contact lenses (That seems a bit extreme )
(c) Chew a piece of bread while you chop onions ( Why not a glass of wine also while you are at it , eh ? )
(d) Wear protective glasses or incredibly a diving mask ( "Where are off to in that diving mask ?" , "Just chopping a few onions.." . Innovative for sure, somehow I don't think this option would find too many takers )

As is the case with most problems, the literature search gave me no conclusive answer. Ask and expert was the only option left. So I went ahead and posed this question to my North Indian cooking consultant. Predictably, she told me something not seen in literature yet : Soak the onion in water for 10 mins before chopping. I tried this technique today, and I must say it was surprisingly effective. Not a tear shed !!

Maybe I should listen to experts a bit more :-)

The final goodbye

My four year association with Each One Teach One ( EOTO ) is coming to an end this weekend. The NGO is facing severe funding issues and would not longer be able to pay the rent that is required to keep the center open. It is a sad moment for me personally. I had really enjoyed working with the students.

It is tough to find a silver lining when faced with such bad news. Looking back over the past four years, I realize that I was indeed really blessed
Blessed because I had this opportunity to make a difference to the lives of so many students
Blessed because I met one of the most special persons I have come across in my entire life, Mrs. Kusum Manchanda from EOTO. The one person from which I understood the meaning of commitment and passion
Blessed because I had a chance to work with so many different volunteers, each of them who have taught me something new
Blessed because I no longer look at life and complain so much. I know now there are others who would give an arm and a leg to enjoy the priveleged life that I live.
And blessed because every once in a while a past student walks up to me , looks me in the eye and tells me "Sir, you have made a difference to my life". You can take away my salary, take away all my medals and rank certificates, I would exchange them anyday for a comment like that from my students.

The only thing that I console myself is that I am convinced I gave it my all during these years. I never held back, never said no to a chance to volunteer and never let my students down. To quote the bible - I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith

However when one door closes, several others open. We have been fortunate enough to get another like minded group to start a similar computer education initiative at a different location.

A sense of personal loss remains though, I still wonder if things would be the same again.

Adios, EOTO. Thanks for the memories.

Road racing , an interesting quote

I had expressed my new found fascination for the sport of cycling in couple of earlier blogs. I was re-reading a book when I came across this quote.

"Road racing imitates life, the way it would be without the corruptive influence of civilization. When you see an enemy lying on the ground, what's your first reaction ? To help him to his feet ?

In road racing, you kick him to death."

Powerful for the sheer brutality of the quote. Tells you all you need to know about the sport of professional road racing /cycling.

I am limping back to normal after a poor weekend. Again had to come back early from office today as I just could not focus on work. Return to normalcy is taking a lot longer this time :-((

Orkut has again thrown a feel good fortune statement at me : "You have a friendly heart and are well admired". I am sure I have a friendly heart. I think the well admired part would be highly debatable.

A dark weekend

A weekend when I was pretty much down in the dumps for most of the time. Actually Saturday started out not so bad, got through some laundry and spent couple of hours at EOTO. I started feeling a bit uneasy on the way back from EOTO, couple of minor issues kept on nagging away at the back of my mind.

By the time I reached back home, my mood was totally off. Made couple of phone calls to my home hoping that would improve my state. If anything it went further downhill after those calls. I realized how badly I was missing the company of my family. My friend has also gone home to his hometown for Vishu, so I was all alone in the house.

I desperately needed to talk to a close friend, unfortunately my attempt at that evoked absolutely no response from my friend. Which was quite surprising and disappointing at same time for me, I am hoping there is some good reason for that. That no response resulted in me sinking further lower. When it rains, it pours , I guess :-(((

Started Sunday on the same note that I ended Saturday on. However things did improve later on in the day. I went out for a drive, got some household shopping done and had a long chat with my sister. All of this improved my state of mind.

I am feeling a bit better now. I am sure things will improve as the week progresses.

If I have to make one wish for all my friends, I would wish that they never have to go through the pain that I feel now ....

A different role

I have been donning an Administrative Assistant's hat for the past day or two, trying to get an agenda organized for one of our global team members who is visiting us. Setting up calendar notes, co-ordinating with people, room bookings : just the kind of work that I passionately hate :-(

I started with My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk. Wonderfully intricate writing style, the exact opposite of Paul Coelho. Due to this , reading pace has been abysmally slow.

There was a point in my day today when I suddenly felt overwhelmed. One point I was laughing and joking around as usual, then from nowhere all emotions came tumbling out. I suddenly felt incredibly sad at not being able to spend more time with my wife and little one. In fact, got so perturbed that I had to get up and go for a walk so that no one else noticed my distress. Walk did help, it brought my emotions back to normal. It also helped me notice how lovely our office campus is, maybe I should take more walks like these.

May be it is a sign , as Paul Coelho would put it. Only a sign for what, I do not know :-)

Appam and stew : From the fast improving cook

Ever in search of a new challenge, I decided that Appam-Stew has to be my next attempt. After some research on the topic, I decided that the best course of action is to go for a ready made appam mix that is available in the market. All you have to do is take the mix ( around 500 gms ) , add 4 table spoon sugar, half tea spoon salt , 5 cups of water , half cup of milk and beat the mix together in a mixer for a minute or two. Then you keep the batter out for around 1-2 hours, the batter does rise quite a bit, as I realized at the expense of lot of spillage !!
Caution : This can make you around 35 appams , so scale according to number of people . Unfortunately, I did no such scaling and so I would be eating appams only for the rest of the week :-((

For the technically minded, one Table spoon = 14.786765 milli-liters and one Teaspoon = 4.9289216 milli-liters :-)

I had a non stick appam pan , so making appam itself was very simple. You pour couple of spoons of batter into the pan , swerve around the pan to get a thin spread on outside. Then close the lid and let it cook for like 30-45 secs. The way I detected it was done was when the appam began to separate from the pan on its own .

I already knew how to make the stew. Basically boiled potatoes mixed with onions fried in oil cooked in coconut milk . I also add green chillies to give it a bit of zing and some cardamom to give it a nice aroma .

Next challenge please , I am beginning to get good at this :-)

The more I cook , the less I read and vice versa. In three days, all I have finished is one book, should pick up my speed later during the week.

Mars, Venus and other weekend activities

I am reading this rather nice book by John Gray on Why Mars and Venus collide.
The book talks about how to reduce stress in relationships by explaining how Men and Women are different by creation itself.

Makes for nice reading, would need some amount of practice to implement whatever is written of course. Unfortunately, I have never finished reading the first book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, so I cannot really tell you any comparison between the books. One irritating thing about Why Mars and Venus collide is that lot of it is repetitive. Still many of the facts mentioned were new to me , so I am happy with this book.

I have bought an Orhan Pamuk recently, My name is Red. I have never read him before, so should be interesting.

Finally got around to meeting an old friend and family today. Have been planning a visit for 4-5 years now. She was just recently married then, now she is the mother of two kids :-). The second one is a carbon copy of his mom. So nice to see that !!

Weekends are never really complete without friends ...

Sore arm and painting

We did a school library painting on Thursday afternoon as part of our on going volunteer program to make a difference to communities around us. Of course, you can turn around and ask me what have we accomplished that a bunch of hired painters could not have. Frankly, I have no convincing answer for that :-).

What I can tell you is that we had great fun doing it. For the first 2 hours, it was just the five of us doing the painting. We were pulling each others legs, cracking jokes at the lack of painiting skills and each one was claiming he / she was the better painter. You can see me in action in the following couple of snaps.

As you can see in the snaps, I am holding the painting bucket in my left hand. Definitely not a good idea, if you paint for 3 hours non-stop. I did experience a very stiff left arm for a couple of days.

The painting event itself was successful.

Orkut baba

According to Orkut baba, today's fortune is "If your desires are not extravagant they will be granted". If it is not extravagant, then why desire at all ?? :-)

I am 'revising' some of my old books now as I wait for my latest acquisitions to arrive . Why Mars and Venus collide by John Gray and Lateral Thinking by Edward De Bono. I have never read Edward De Bono , so looking forward to that book. The old books under revision are Man , Woman and Child by Erich Segal and Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth

For the Jeffrey Archer fans, there is good news. The latest book A Prisoner of Birth is quite good. I found it to be a very enjoyable read. This is unlike his previous book , False Impression which was rather mediocre and predictable by his standards.

My cooking experiments have fallen by the wayside now, need to revive it. Will be back with more cooking adventures shortly.

Today being April 1st, I did make some weak attempts at fooling couple of my friends. Did fail miserably in those attempts :-( I am not a convincing liar, I guess.