And then there are days …

Days in which I continue to question my existence. Yesterday and today have been such days.

Better ones to follow soon, I am sure. Right now tough to see from where ……

Metaphorical nonsense

Writing badly can be elevated to an art as is demonstrated at How to write badly well

Read this example :

“Seeing the lie of the land and bracing for impact, I stepped up to the plate and prepared to eat my words. In the hollow blankness of the auditorium, my creaking cough thundered like a volcano going off, a single pistol-shot in the echoing cavern of expectation before me.

’So,’ I said, my throat as dry as my wit, which was as sharp as my tone, ‘we seem to have reached a fork in the garden path you’ve been leading me up like a lamb to the slaughter. A turning point of no return, you might say.’

I knew that this would hardly be a ground-breaking barnstormer of a speech, but so far, it was going down like the stock value of a lead balloon manufacturer. The silence that followed was as long as a freight train, as deep as a philosophy textbook and as uncomfortable as this analogy”

Good one

Seen on the rear glass of a Reva car “Emission Impossible”

Who says creativity is dying ? :-)

Different version of beards

Keep watching this space for different versions of my beard

Update on December 4th, Friday

“Zappa” Pradeep

Here is Pradeep “Van Dyke”
 

Followed by a Pradeep “Fu Manchu” [with a vertical moustache variation]

What is next now ? Stay tuned :-)

Patience testers

Let me describe the following situation to you. I am with my family and after a long day of work and shopping we are finally at the BigBazaar checkout counter. I wiggle into a queue with only one couple in front of me. He has a cart full of items, should take no more than 3-4 minutes to check out. The cashier tallies the amount, it comes to Rs.4000 odd . So far so good.

Out come couple of BigBazaar gift vouchers. After counting it is figured out that still around 3000 Rs is to be paid.

Then comes the dreaded Ticket Restaurant Meal vouchers. Slow and methodical counting in progress and I am tapping my feet impatiently. [ I can never for the world figure out why folks cannot start counting once the cashier is tallying up the items ]. Well guess what, even after like 5 minutes of counting, still around 1500 is owed in balance.

Here comes a credit card now. Phew, finally the end seems near !! But no, looks like there is no easy getaway today

Cashier : “Sir, since you have shopped for 4000, you can get a crockery set for 150. Would you be interested ?”

Of course he would be interested, his whole purpose on earth seems to be to torture people behind in the queue. Off goes his wife to check out the crockery.

Another 5 mins pass. And the cashier won’t bill , because the guy won’t swipe till his wife comes back and tell him if to buy the crockery or not. I am already fantasizing on what I would do with a set of crockery on this guy’s head !!

Finally the wife come back and happily informs him that there is no need to buy the crockery set. Happily he checks out and leaves. Not a word of apology or acknowledgement to the people behind.

I am not a violent man, but boy if I do turn to violence I know exactly the kind of people to go after !!

And I do have a pathological hatred for anyone who pays by Ticket Restaurant vouchers.

Beards

Getting bored of seeing the same old face in the mirror, I am considering sporting one of those cool beards.

[Source : http://nixbased.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/beardtypes1.jpg]

As per the above picture, I am realizing that my normal experiments with facial hair has either been a “Short Boxed beard” or a “Van Dyke”.

Now I am considering a “Fu Manchu” or “The Zappa” .

What do you think ? :-)

You’ll never walk alone

As I have mentioned before, sports can be a great mood elevator. Just listen to the Liverpool anthem and you will know why ..

When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark
At the end of the storm
Is a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of a lark
Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
Though your dreams be tossed and blown
Walk on walk on with hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone
You'll never walk alone
Walk on walk on with hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone

 

Robert Enke

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8361113.stm.

Though I am a keen football follower, I had not heard of Robert Enke till he tragically took his own life. Apparently was almost a certainty as the first choice goal keeper for German national football side for 2010 world cup.

And just 32 years old too, an year younger than me. A professional footballer, one trained to perform in front of thousands. A man who you would think to be well equipped to handle the highest order of pressure.

This should be a true eye opener on how dangerous an opponent depression can be. When all your sense of logical thinking disappears and only negative thoughts hover in your mind. When you just cannot see even a shred of hope, while in reality things are not quite as bad.

Really, how low must he have been feeling to perform this act ? I only hope that is a low I would never feel ………..

RIP Robert Enke.

Children’s day

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
And He bends you with His might, that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, he loves also the bow that is stable

Khalil Gibran from The Prophet

The Lost Symbol

Just finished reading yet another of Dan Brown’s books, this time it is the latest one : The lost Symbol

I don’t know why I keep bothering to read his books, each one is progressively worse compared to the previous one. Last one I read was Angels and Demons and that was pretty average.

It is not the Symbol that is lost, it is Dan Brown’s brain that has got lost.

And I am lost for words to describe this book :-) Abysmal , is that the correct word to describe this ? Seems too mild.

Hard cover edition too, would definitely be good to squash a few cockroaches !!

Stay away at all costs !! If you simply have to read this , then don’t waste money. I will gladly gift you my copy.

Me , myself and Pradeep

The past few days have not been good. First my family went back to Calicut on Wednesday night . This time they had come here to secure my daughter’s school admission for June next year. We finally got her admitted to VIBGYOR high after considerable debate. Seems like a good school. Only time will tell if we are good enough parents to make sure our little one gets proper values and education.

After my family went back, I slipped into one of my customary moody state of minds.  I am usually very silent and irritable when in this mood. My food habits become very irregular and I am usually a bit curt or even rude. I can feel the transformation signs, but sadly there are very few things I can do to control them. The only thing that has worked for me is to brood a couple of days then get back to normal. It works in a certain time cycle, I cannot accelerate or decelerate the process !!

Very frustrating, especially because I realize I am upsetting a lot of my friends when I go into this shell.  But hopefully this is a part of life that will be gone forever once my family joins me in a few months. What if I lose a few battles, I will win the war for sure !!

Then I decided to foolishly volunteer for doing some wall scrubbing and painting, for a moment forgetting my old friend – Asthma. That friend does not take forgetfulness very lightly , and I was punished heavily for my indiscretion. The dust and turpentine smell was a bit too much for me to handle and I was out for close to 3 days before I could raise my head somewhat. 

So rearing my head back up again slowly now. On the prowl for a few books to read.

Pink !!

“Pink it’s my new obsession
Pink it’s not even a question
Pink on the lips of your lover, ‘cause
Pink is the love you discover”

I am not too much of an Aerosmith fan, but unfortunately I am getting destroyed by a pink-wash !!

All happened when I put in my Maroon colored Kurta for washing along with a load of other clothes. I rarely use my Kurta, so this is probable the first time in like 2 years that I am putting it for a wash. As luck would have it , several of the items that I put in were light colored clothes. And several of them were my favorites ….

Heavy discoloration of the Maroon Kurta occurred, all of my light clothes have been dyed in a shade of bright revolting pink :-(( See below for some samples

I have pink Handkerchiefs, pink socks, pink underwear, pink T-shirts, pink lungi (!!) and a pink shirt now. I guess I can spin it off as my bit towards cancer awareness. If White House can do it, so can I !!

But realistically, what do I do with these now ???

Master chef loses his golden touch

Well, the heading puts it rather mildly. I am having a pretty poor run of results in cooking. All started of with my birthday

Episode –1 : Killer Coconut
Dosa-Chutney is one of my favorites, so what better dish to have on birthday night ? Except for the small fact that I actually left the coconut that I grated the previous day outside the fridge by mistake. I had no spare coconut, so birthday night was spent as usual with a tall glass of cold water :-(

Episode-2: Old man and the porotta
Birthday was a washout but I was determined to eat something nice at least the next day. Went to MK retail, brought some chicken and gravy paste and made a Kolhapuri chicken curry. Kerala porotta(paratha) goes very well with spicy chicken curries. I eagerly opened my fridge to heat up some ready to eat porottas. To my dismay I realized that I had forgotten to stock those. Brain degeneration due to old age, I guess. So this time I had chicken gravy, but no porottas :-( Summary : No food

Episode-3: Revenge of the prawns
Resolve grew stronger when weekend arrived. Saturday saw yet another trip to MK retail, this time I returned with some frozen prawns, determined to make a dry type prawn masala. Marination of prawns went well, the masala came out looking nice and aromatic. All that was left was to mix the prawns in the masala and let it simmer for 20-25 minutes.
Happily I kept it in a closed vessel and went off to do some Facebook-ing on my computer. Returned back 20 mins later to find acrid smell and smoke spreading through the kitchen.  I had forgotten to put the gas on low flame :-((( All that was left was a deep black charred mass .. Siggghhhhhhhh .
Summary : No food

Episode 4: Return of the hogger
Thankfully that was Diwali day and I was saved by invitations from Daya and Chatter Box !!. Massive hogging sessions in the evenings offset the losses of previous days :-). Had a really nice time, bursting crackers, lighting Diyas, attending prayer , eating good food and having nice company on weekends for a change. Felt so happy when I got back home that I celebrated it by sleeping most of Sunday :) Life was indeed looking great !!

Episode 5: The final nail in the coffin
The next weekend arrived and I had to do something to keep from starving. Decided to fall back upon a tried and tested item – Appam. Now you may say that I should have seen it coming, but frankly I did not. Appam’s came out disastrous. They were refusing to spread on my non stick pan, and even when I could get the batter to spread, it was forming lumps all over !! :-(( This time I was so hungry that I had to eat up all the pathetic creations.

For the next 3 days my family is going to be here, so maybe a short break would help restore my confidence.

One tight slap

The moment you think life is not going good or start grumbling about minor things, life has a way of delivering one tight slap that snaps you back to your senses.

Sometimes this is what I need …. http://www.mtv.com/videos/misc/106071/a-well-deserved-slap.jhtml#

Happy b’day to me, Happy b’day to me ….

Still on the right side of 30 , I will put it that way :)

Like 90% of my days in a year, a day spent alone at home at night.  I had planned to make Dosa with coconut chutney ( one of my favs ), but the coconut got spoiled. So ended up with no dinner.

Friends at work gave me a nice surprise by organizing a cake. That was definitely the bright spot of my day !!

Would have been a whole lot better if people whom I expected to wish me first did not end up being the birth‘night’ wisher rather than birth’day’. But I can’t complain too much, porters and drivers cannot expect too much more …..

Being alone on a birthday is no fun at all :(( Hopefully this is the last time I have to this, next year my family should be here

Extended service mode of PV cabs

Current and past users of PV cabs would be delighted to know that pickup from Railway station and drop to hotel is an additional service being offered at no cost.

Under special circumstances, PV cabs driver can also double up as porter. Service currently on offer only for below cubicle height population :-))

Stay tuned for further enhancements in services

CEO
PV Cabs

What would you remember ?

Yet another ad on Tata Safari Dicor that I love. Haunting music, simple yet thought provoking themes

When you look back on life, what would you remember ……….

Indeed, what would I remember ? Some questions are best left unanswered.

Trriiing Trriiiing

Welcome to Airtel Hello Tunes. Please SMS Stop to 543211 to stop this service, you will be charged Rs.3 for this message
Rs.3 is better than having to pay 30 per month for this. Let me send this message right away
Invalid IP Address
What do you mean invalid IP address ?? This is a cell phone, from where will it get an IP address ? Hey wait a sec, it say here on the website that I can dial *678# and access a service menu and do this. Silly me, why did I waste 3 Rs now. Dial *678#
Dial 6 to stop hello tunes.
Dial 6
Please enter the mobile number from which you want to copy the hello tunes
No you dumb system, that is not what I want to do, I want to cancel it. Maybe I made an error in entry. He he he , that has to be it, how can the menu be wrong ? Let me pull up the menu again
Dial 6 to stop hello tunes.
Dial 6 with careful deliberation
Please enter the mobile number from which you want to copy the hello tunes
What the …………………………….

How do I get rid of this moronic Caller tune now ? Aha, there is hope still, you need to call 543211808, again toll free to unsubscribe. Let me try this now, this better work

And thankfully it did, though I recall that the menu choices were not that straightforward. Persistence wins !!!

Now why had I subscribed to Hello Tunes in the first place ??? For once, my memory fails me …… :-))

I am born again ……

No, I am not referring the Boney M song with same name

In a few hours I will complete my transition from a forced bachelor existence to being a family man . My family has already started their journey to join me in Bangalore for a week !!

One week in which I will be free of all the tensions in the world

One week in which I will no longer come back to an empty house

One week in which there will be laughter & conversation in my house

One week in which my house will become a home again

And what after a week ? I begin to go back into my shell, till the next time arrives :-)

“Happiness lies for those who cry, those who hurt, those who have searched, and those who have tried - For only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched their lives”

Lessons learnt the tough way, lessons that never shall be forgotten

Good to be back

Got back today to Bangalore after a two week trip to US with a one day whirlwind trip to Switzerland on the way back. I’m tired of eating fried food and drinking colas, so I celebrated my return with some Spicy chicken tikka and nan :-)

Due to high student traffic to US, I got routed through Paris Airport this time. Paris airport did not disappoint me, very pleasing to the eye, and I don’t just mean architecturally ;-D Lots of places where you can actually stretch out on recliners/couches.

Flew from there to JFK, which was everything Paris was not. Crowded, dirty, annoying announcers screaming on the mike all the time and fairly poor set of directions. This coupled with an apparent lack of Information / help desks ensures that navigating from one terminal to other is not very easy. That is if you can figure out which terminal you landed at in the first place !!

US trip itself was uneventful except for constant struggle with Asthma throughout my trip. I could also chat freely with my friends on the phone without burning a hole in my pocket :)

The other highlight of the trip was a visit to the movie theater after a gap of nearly three years. We watched Final Destination 3D, lots of pretty graphic scenes : that too in crystal clear 3D !! I am done with theaters for another 6 years after this one, a real stinker :(

Switzerland trip was spent mostly in trains in hotels. Couple of glimpses of Switzerland from my train window are below

Interestingly the Swiss hotels are rather ‘economical’ in terms of bathroom space. You can just about fit into the shower stalls and toilets :) I stayed in Hotel Pestalozzi @ Locarno, which did not even have air conditioning the rooms !!

Had my usual share of struggles in all the flights, cramped leg room, fidgety co passengers, awful food and complete lack of sleep :(

But here I am , getting back to blogging after nearly a month !

ISFJ !

Last time I tried, I was an ISTJ. This time a Facebook test returns that I am an ISFJ

There does not seem to be much doubt that I am Introverted, Sensing and Judging. The question is really whether I am a Thinking type or a Feeling type.

Maybe I am a Feeling Thinker :-) The other way round makes it sound as if I am a molester …

Silence of the cell ….. And a baking experiment

• Prolonged periods of cell-phone silence leads to depression

• Prolonged depression in turn leads to cell phone being switched off

Where does it start ? Where does it end ? Whatever the answer maybe, a sure-shot test to figure out my condition is to check if my cell phone is switched off :)

Felt like baking today [ Had no dinner, of course. I have fat reserves to hibernate for rest of the year :) ]

When I started off with the ingredients, realization dawned that I was a bit short.

I had only a quarter cup butter as compared to half cup needed. A quick glance at the essence expiry date told me that the bottle and my daughter were almost comparable in age :-(( I am still struggling to shake off the mental picture of an essence bottle in uniform sitting next to my daughter in school ….

I was also out of stock of my standard savior, cashew nuts. A lesser cook might have balked at this hurdle, but the Master Chef ?? Never !!

And hence was born the “masala” cake. A Hodge-podge of butter, sugar, eggs, condensed milk, regular milk, pineapple pieces, cardamom [essence substitute], maida and baking powder.

The end product looks like more of a sponge cake. Which suits me fine, because I had been on the lookout for a sponge cake recipe !!

How does it taste ? Well, that is really for the guinea pigs in office to tell tomorrow. I sampled a piece and according to me it is my best effort ever !! :-)

But then I have not had dinner, I may be biased because I have used the greatest sauce ever known to mankind ---- hunger.

I have to add that my new hand held Philips cake mixer is of great help !! Saves me lot of manual labor in mixing.

So that I can continue to build up my reserves for the long hard famine ahead ;)

He who burps the last, burps the loudest …

Happy independence day

62 years and going strong !! So what where are we headed, what does future hold in store for us ?

Could not help but laugh when I saw the following quote on a blog

“Barbaad gulistaan karne ko ek hi ulluu kaafi thaa
Har shaak pe ulluu baithaa hai, anjaam-e-gulistaan kyaa hogaa?”

Definitely Dicor

If the earlier post was not proof enough, see this ad too.

I love these ads. Tremendous tagline and a very haunting, philosophical sort of theme ..

Midnight ramblings

Eat when your stomach tells you, work when your heart tells you, sleep when your eyes tell you – I am sure I have read something to this effect sometime back.

What if stomach, heart and eyes tell you nothing ?????????????? Systemic hartal has hit me now !! :-) Just in a dazed state, completely switched off ..

I have initiated daily video conference calls with my family since my last trip home. Nothing beats being there in person , of course, but this comes pretty close. What I really need is a Telepresence link with home :-)

Finally wifey has got posted in Calicut Medical College itself, has been a major relief !! The first order posted her in Trichur, thankfully the officials were sympathetic to our plight and put her back in Calicut. I had external influence of course -- prayer support from two of my friends :-)) I am sure that is what made the difference finally..

Hmmm. I would have thought that with less than a year to go before we unite again, I would have felt happier. But the mind does not seem to accept it as “just one more year to go”. It is stuck  in “STILL one more year to go” mode. I suppose if I have survived three, I can survive one more.

Alive and kicking still, Don’t ask what is it that I am kicking :-)

And nope, no plans to kick the bucket anytime soon. Sorry to disappoint you all, my random thoughts still have a long way to go ;)

Miles to go before I sleep ……… [ Not really, the bed is right behind me. But what the heck, it felt like a nice line to end the blog]

Parallel parking

From now on, I think I will just park like this …

Life’s mystery solved ….

It is simple really, all I need to do is buy Tata Safari Dicor !! See the ad below :-)

Tata Safari Dicor advertisement from YouTube

One of my favorite ads !! Right along-side the “Everyday I want to smile” ad from Hutch.

And to add a random touch to my blog, here is a nice quip, from who else but Paulo Coelho : “We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path”

So what , you may ask ?  Everyone knows that there exists multiple paths that might relieve me of my worries. That is true, it is just that my chosen path happens to be a rocky one. So bear with me when I grumble and complain on my blog. ;)

Now you know why I need the 4x4 drive of Safari Dicor. To blast along the rocky path of life, of course:-)

Bring on the Dicor, let me reclaim my life ………..

Kheer / Payasam attempt

Last Sunday was the so called ‘Friendship day’. The sheer variety of these “days” never ceases to amaze me. Father’s day, mother’s day, valentine’s day, friendship day ….

And tomorrow happens to be the day every single Indian male dreads : Raksha bandhan !! Thankfully this one has been never a big celebration in South India ;-)

A weekend experiment in payasam (kheer) landed in predictable disaster and violent temper surges. :-((

It started off quite well, the semiya payasam was smelling good and consistency seemed decent. I had a cup after making it and it tasted quite good.

But once I left if outside for couple of hours, the semiya somehow seemed to absorb lot of the liquid. The end result was a near solid lumpy mass.I tried to rescue the situation by adding more milk and boiling it further. That worked like a charm for a while. Only problem was that it returned to its original solid state once I refrigerated it. &*#&@

It just refused to return to a liquid form even after I heated it. The re-heating attempt happened late at night when I was already pretty hungry. So naturally I was on a short fuse and violently dumped the solid payasam down my garbage bin.

Yet another experiment bites the dust. I guess next time I should remember not to let the milk thicken so much …..

Return of the king

2009 seems to be the year of comebacks. First Lance Armstrong riding the Tour de France and now Michael Schumacher stepping back inside an F1 cock pit to replace an injured Felippe Massa.

If you are an F1 fan you have to love this. Schumacher Vs a resurgent Lewis Hamilton should be fun to watch. Would he still have the same ruthless streak that made him such a successful driver ? I guess we will have to wait and see

Only sad part is that it had to happen at the expense of a horrendous injury to Massa. I always have a soft spot for Massa. How can you not , after seeing the finale to the 2008 season ? The sight of him choking back his tears while waving to his fans is one that will stay with me forever …… 

I hope he recovers completely. But for purely selfish reasons, I also hope that Schumacher gets to drive at least 4-5 races for Ferrari !!

Flower show

As I mentioned earlier, today was the day of flower show competition in our office.

Here is our three member team’s creation, what do you think ?

Update on 3rd August : We won the second prize !!

Water under the bridge

There are a lot of things that I prefer not to write about, just treating those as more water under the bridge. I have to do so , if I hope to retain my sanity. Times of extreme trial, when your faith and belief gets questioned severely.

I shall survive again, no doubt :-)

Not a good time to be hitting me with motivational quotes, I can tell you that much !! I get brutally violent these days when I see quotes like “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it”. Ain’t no such thing in life

I have started becoming more active on Facebook and Twitter these days as compared to Orkut. Twitter, mainly because I can read the updates from folks like Lance Armstrong, Levi Leipheimer, Ruebens Barrichello etc by just signing up as their follower !! I like the simple no-nonsense interface too, reminds you so much of Google.

Somehow, I have been signed up for a flower show competition being held in office tomorrow by Chatter Box. Senior being one of the other helpless team members. Two key learnings so far

• Flower show does not mean wearing a hibiscus over your ear and standing at the display. Somehow that sounded a lot more fun ….
• Cauli-flower does not count as a flower. This is an outrage, I must say !! Why not ?? It looks like a flower, at least

It would be evident to the casual observer that I am clue-less about the concept. Let us see how it goes tomorrow :-)

Hallucinations

Looks like my sleep problem is getting worse. I am doing things that I can’t even recollect now

How else can you explain the following screenshot from my  Indiaplaza account ?

Wonder how long I must have been online to shop for 16 Million odd items.

Somebody help !!!! I am morphing into a WAG …

I need a therapist !!!!

And then you win some ….

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers – M. Scott Peck

I can hear my friends groaning. Here he goes again on one of his tangents on life, dealing with dark moods and so on.

Not true this time, my friends.

I stepped out my reading rut with a recent trip to Sapna book house. This time I took time to read a few pages and made sure I am not getting conned again. Here is a quick summary of the reading action over the past week or so.

The Simple truth by David Baldacci : Not his best but still a decent read

Amen:Autobiography of a Nun by Sister Jesme : I bet the original in malayalam would be far more readable. The language is ordinary and some emotion is lacking from the story. Not bad, but if you are aware of the inner workings of Church, the story will not surprise you. Distrubing ? Yes. Shocking ? No.

Angels and Demons by Dan Brown : Just passable according to me. Far too many holes in the story line including the hindi movie like escape from a falling helicopter without parachute :)

Q&A by Vikas Swarup : Of course, the book of Slumdog Millionaire fame. I have not seen the movie, but found the book to be surprisingly good

When a tree shook delhi by Manoj Mitta and HS Phoolka : An actual account of the anti-Sikh riots that followed 1984 assassination of Indira Gandhi. Events that led Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to make the following comment 11 years later “I apologize not only to the Sikh community but to the whole Indian nation because what took place in 1984 is the negation of the concept of nationhood enshrined in our Constitution”. Well said, Sir !! After reading the book, my head too hangs in shame that such incidents happened in my country.

Wish you well by David Baldacci : It is a departure from his usual nail biting thrillers. This book is far more laid back, but Baldacci does paint a very nice picture. The story is a simple one, but touches you. For a change his characters seem deep and well formed. I enjoyed this one

I am out of books for now, maybe I should plan a raid to Crosswords shortly.

Speed of reading has been very rapid, I am averaging about a book per two days !!

Sleepless nights have made an untimely and unwelcome return. Mind is all jumbled up, almost beginning to see arrays of floating bodies before my eyes :-(( Frustrating ……

Kerala Porotta with Chicken curry !!

North Indians maybe quick to correct it as Kerala Paratha, but I insist. It is called Porotta in Kerala, I don’t care what the authentic name is !! :-)

Master Chef returned to kitchen today after a longish break. The immense relief from chest congestion after starting oral steroids greatly contributed to this early return. It is a 5 day course of steroids and has really helped.

Predictably, the return featured lots of ready to eat items. Porotta was purchased from MK retail, it comes in a 50% cooked state. You have to just heat it with a touch of Ghee. It comes out really soft and with multiple layers, just like the ones that I get back home in Calicut. 

I have heard that attempting to make porotta from first principles often results in a rubbery slipper like mass, so did not even think of making it from scratch !! :-)

Chicken tikka masala was the chosen curry, again made using the ready made Chicken tikka gravy paste [I think it was from a brand called Parampara]. You have to mix the paste well with water and curd. Sautee chicken pieces in ghee till they turn golden brown, add to the previous mixture and cook for 8-10 minutes till the gravy thickens

Tasted really good. I guess it had to , considering how minimal my inputs were to the entire process :-) I have enough curry and porotta to last for couple more days, whether my new found good health will last for that duration is a different question altogether.

All this has made no impact on the eccentricity of my sleep timings, 2 AM now and I am still up :-(

Freedom blog

Why the title ??

I have endured an especially frustrating day and I am still fuming. Remember the Dilbert experience that I was talking about in an earlier blog ??

Well the experience just got more bitter. The same article that I wrote up under great personal strife on Friday was mindlessly chopped and changed by one of our enlightened communications leaders. Let me call the person “Poet”, the reason would be apparent to a careful observer employed in the same company as me :-)

What value was added to the article ? None
What creativity was introduced to the article ? None
What was the purpose of the editing ? Not known, other than some ego kick that the person must have received
Were there any grammatical , factual or spelling errors in the original ? No chance
Was the person doing editing better informed than me in the topic ? Ha ha haaaaaa

Would Leonardo Davinci feel happy if an editor came and painted over Mona Lisa's smile because it looked a touch sad ? The beauty of the previous statement being that Davinci is being equated to yours truly ;-). You wanna edit that out “Poet”? But hey you can’t , this is my blog !!

So here is my mark of protest against all the parasitic, uncreative, ego-satisfying editors of the world. Edit this and show me !!

My turn will come “Poet”, my turn will come.

The mystery of undercooked pakodas

Well, it is 1 a.m in the morning and I’m blogging.

Why, you might ask ?

One of the side effects of battling a chest congestion & asthma is that your sleep becomes very intermittent. I have been so sleepless over the course of last week that I really crashed today. Woke up at 12.30 pm on Sunday, having slept for well over 12 hours !! Naturally I am a bit sleepless now after this marathon sleep fiesta

Now what has this got to do with Pakodas ?

Nothing much, apart from the following facts

(a) My ill health has reduced me from being a master chef to being a King of Leftovers. A sudden and dramatic degradation. Somehow reminds me of the following Malayalam poem :
Randu naalu dinam kondoruthane Thandiletti nadathunnathum bhavaan,
Maalika mukaleriya mannante Tholil maaraappu kettunnathum bhavaan. Non mallus can contact me for the translation :-)
(b) Due to reason a, I do not have any new cooking experiments to write about, hence this story from the vaults
(c) The name of my blog is Random thoughts, so it is natural that much of my writing will be so ;-)

Now pakoda is something that has constantly troubled me. The ingredients are simple enough. Gram flour, salt, and chopped up onions and green chillies.

The problem I have is that my pakodas always end up being a touch undercooked, though they are nice and brown on the outside. I have done some experimentation with oil temperatures, frying them in low flame, high flame, medium flame, everything !! Still they continue to turn out the same :(

Now could it be a problem with my gram flour batter consistency ? Possible, but I doubt it. It must be something to do with the way I fry them and how long they need to be in the oil.

Continues to be a mystery for me. 

Btw Bangalore has the classic pakoda weather now. Cloudy and windy with an occasional spattering of rain.

If only I could get them right ……

Gone too soon

For a generation like mine, which grew up as kids listening to classics such as Thriller, Beat it, Billie Jean, Man in the Mirror and Bad , the tragic death of King MJ does mean the end of an era.

The guy was undoubtedly a nut case, but also a champion performer and musical genius.

I guess I need to look no farther than MJ’s own song to describe his life.

Like A Comet ,Blazing 'Cross The Evening Sky
Gone Too Soon
Like A Rainbow, Fading In The Twinkling Of An Eye
Gone Too Soon
Shiny And Sparkly, And Splendidly Bright
Here One Day, Gone One Night

Like The Loss Of Sunlight, On A Cloudy Afternoon
Gone Too Soon
Like A Castle, Built Upon A Sandy Beach
Gone Too Soon
Like A Perfect Flower, That Is Just Beyond Your Reach
Gone Too Soon

Born To Amuse, To Inspire, To Delight
Here One Day, Gone One Night
Like A Sunset, Dying With The Rising Of The Moon
Gone Too Soon, Gone Too Soon

Dilbert like day

Whole day, I was making presentation for a meeting that eventually got canceled. Which is sort of ok as the slides that I were making did not make too much sense. And I am not really charging to the project anyway.

Wait a minute, I have read this somewhere. Surely not in a Dilbert strip ?? ;-)

And to round off the day, I was given the scapegoat (bakra, fall guy, loser, whatever you want to call it) hat to wear to take blame for delay in writing up of an article. The sad part being that this was not even anywhere near my responsibility to start with !! Of course, goes without saying that no one will know that I am the author of the article anyway.

Hey , my specialization as no-upside, plenty-of-downside job man is really taking off !! :)

All this with the steady polyphonic Asthma ‘ringtone’ in the background. Believe me, going through all of the above when you are struggling with your breathing rhythm does make you very very grumpy

So needless to say, I am not in the best of moods today >:o

GGGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR …..

Definitions and character building

I remember this passage from my high school biology text “Asthma is a disease characterized by a sudden inhalation followed by difficulty in exhalation”.

What this does not tell you is that during a particularly bad and prolonged attack, life can seem very dark and gloomy indeed. If you don’t know where your next breath is coming from, you pretty much are forced to have a short term outlook :-)Thank god for inhalers, which have more or less ensured that those prolonged spells are nothing but bad memories !!

I also saw the following statement from Center for Disease Control(CDC) website “In most cases, we don't know what causes asthma, and we don't know how to cure it”. Pretty hopeless, don’t you think ? ;-)

All this classic Bangalore cold weather and my own chest congestion has put me in soup again.

Though like Calvin’s father, I would say Asthma builds character !! It teaches you the value of patience and it makes you understand the virtues of having an unflappable temperament.

Do you know another thing it teaches ?? The most important thing in your life is the next breath that you take in !!

Breathe in, Breathe out . My life continues ….

A different role

Past week saw me donning a different hat again, this time that of a porter. Well, not really :-)) I was just coordinating the shipment of household goods from Bangalore to Kerala for a friend.

Invariably the shifters are never on time, the supervisors are always stuck in traffic and there is some last minute hassle or the other. A similar sequence of events saw me stuck at the shifter warehouse for far longer than I anticipated. The end result being a Schumacheresque dash through Bangalore traffic to reach office just in time for a 6 pm teleconference !!

The job is pretty similar to that of driving coaching, not much upside, plenty of downside :-(( I am becoming a sort of specialist in these kinds of tasks .

Was not keeping especially well during the past week either. Heavy chest congestion has reduced me to a leisurely walking speed. Anything more than that results in coughing and asthma !!

Bad luck with books continue after a mind-numbingly boring book called False Economy:A Surprising Economic History of the World by Alan Beattie. The author is hung up on his own greatness and the sentences are maddeningly long and meaningless. The outer cover makes tall claims, inside is all hollow. Shockingly poorly written, I do not know how this escaped the sword of the book editor. Maybe there is no such thing as an editor these days. This is another book that I won’t bother to finish, simply because it is not worth it.

Just came back from a drive across Bangalore, was feeling very downcast sitting at home. Reached back in time to catch the last few moments of Federer-Roddick final. I was backing Roddick to win :-(( Great match, nonetheless.

Two more books

My disappointing luck with books continues, this time in the form of Six Graves to Munich by Mario Puzo (writing as Mario Cleri). Good thing that he wrote under a different name, no way this goes along with rest of the books Puzo has written !! Very ordinary revenge story, no twists at all and does not really touch you. Needless to  say, I did not like this one

Then moved on to a borrowed book, Six Suspects by Vikas Swarup. [I wonder what is the significance of the number Six in both the book titles !! :-) ]. This one can be labelled as decent. It had a reasonable start and a good ending , however is cursed with a completely crappy middle portion. Author gets bogged down in detailed descriptions and begins to bore and irritate you. You can safely skip around 150 pages and still not miss anything !!

Ordered more books, hopefully something good will emerge soon :-((

Virus strikes again

This time it is not the computer variety, its the real deal. I have been out of service since Tuesday night. Fever hovers around 102 and just refuses to go away. Just beginning to slowly get better now.

It so happened that this was one of the rare occasions when my family was in Bangalore. So I had hot food to eat and plenty of time to spend with them. Bad health can have its own weird set of rewards :) Family went back today, so I back to pauper status.

I am extremely frustrated with the sub-standard quality of books that I have been reading of late.  I can’t wait to forget that I ever read miserable excuse of books like BPO-Sutras:The Stories From Inside India's Bpo's And Call Centres by Sudhindra Mokhasi and The Last Testament by Sam Bourne. I can excuse the former, because couple of the stories there were interesting. Mostly they were just boring, repetitive and predictable.

There can be no excuse for The Last Testament though. This was my first ever Sam Bourne book, and he has resoundingly proven that he is quite incapable of putting together a suspense thriller. 

It sounded like an interesting plot when I read the back cover. The book completely lacks in pace or suspense. And an extremely weak ending to boot. His attempt at using technology (like use of second life, the way e-mail IDs and passwords are hacked) are laughable, the thriller almost becomes a comedy novel in those sections. I wonder what would happen if a more capable author like Robert Ludlum had gotten hold of the same topic !!

Seems like I have to read 10 awful books to finally stumble upon a good one !!

The smell of success

Well finally wifey seems to have done it. She has done reasonably well in her practical exams, so in around a month she should be able to proudly display her well earned MD title !!

I’m very happy for her.  Past 3 years have been soul destroying for me [and no doubt for her as well] at times. But it sure feels nice to know that when it all settles down, it would have been well worth the effort

One of the few days in which I feel so deliriously happy that I feel like singing !! Which one should I sing ??? Aaj mein upar from Khamoshi ? Halka halka sa yeh nasha from Chocolate ? Dil Kya Kare from Salam-E-Ishq ?

You be the judge :-)

Happy Anniversary to me

6 years and still going strong :-)) Not a lot of those 6 years have bee spent together, but finally light is beginning to appear at the end of the long dark tunnel. Hopefully by next year this time, we will be a happily re-united family again !!

Even now, every time I see a dad and mom walking with their small daughter, I do feel a strong sense of pain. I guess this is a situation that I can never be totally in control of.

Decided not to go home and celebrate the anniversary as I thought it is better not to distract wifey during her final preparations for the practical exams

That leaves me with the ever challenging job of keeping myself occupied. Put on my master chef hat and baked a few chocolate chip cookies, samples below. Tasted very nice too

In fact looked so nice in the photo that several folks accused me of buying the cookies and taking photographs :-) 

I have finally decided to take the pains of writing up a recipe :-), you can find it below. Pretty similar to that of a cake

1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup honey *
2- 2.5 cups of maida
2 eggs
1 tea spoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
Lots of nuts and chocolate chips :-)) [ I just bought cooking chocolate bars and chopped them up ]

Mix the maida and baking powder and keep aside for 15 mins. Thoroughly mix butter and sugar. [I had used melted butter by microwaving it on low power for a minute or two]. Beat the eggs well with vanilla essence in a mixer and pour to the earlier butter-sugar batter and mix well. You can add honey also now. Fold in the maida and mix till the batter is thick. If it turns out to be a bit watery, add a touch more maida OR refrigerate it for 1/2 hour to get the water out. [ I employed both techniques , btw ;-) ]

Add a spoon or two of the final batter onto a baking pan [I formed a small ball with the dough and just pressed it on to the pan to get the shape]. It spreads as it bakes, so don’t put your clumps close together. Bake in a pre-heated oven ( 180 deg C) for 10-12 minutes, till outside begins to turn dark brown in color. As you take out the cookies, they may feel slightly spongy on top. Allow them to cool down and they become nice and crispy on the outside.

* Original recipe require 3/4 cup each of white and brown sugar, I had no brown sugar, nor do I know from where to get it in Bangalore. Hence used honey which was suggested as an alternative

Another cooking experiment

Let me start with :-(((, this is to represent how badly I am missing my family now. Maybe a familiar rant for some of you, even mildly amusing too perhaps. Ended up spending most of weekend with phone switched off, didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to see anyone.

Moving on to more pleasant things.

The master chef returns yet again with one of his magical mouth-watering creations. This time Paneer Tikka masala !! No idea of a recipe, so basically used the same one as for Chicken Tikka. I marinated Paneer in curd and masalas for couple of hours ( Tandori chicken masala, ginger garlic paste, chilli powder, salt) and grilled it in my microwave oven. Took quite a while to cook, close to 30 mins in my reckoning.

Turned out quite decent and eminently edible. See the photographs below.

I was just too hungry. So forgive the lack of decorations and garnishing :) The onions you see were actually part of the grilling process. I am not a big capsicum fan, else could have added that also to the grill

Hence [for this weekend at least] a resolution to the Pradeep-ian dilemna : To cook or not to cook, that is the question

Exams and school start

Came back from a brief vacation to Calicut. I had to go home to provide moral support to wifey for her MD theory exams. Also had to be there for my princess’s first week of school in UKG. Exams went well, so did the first week of school

Only thing that did not go well of course is the part in which I had to come back to Bangalore:-(

Well, I have been thinking. Normally I am supposed to be someone of fairly even temperament and strong mentally. See the following description from a Facebook test Which Periodic Table element are you ?

“Iron ( Fe)

You are strong in character, emotions, ethics and physically. People who know you believe you are reliable and steady. You say what you mean and you will follow through with it because you weighed the positives and negatives of the commitment before you even said yes. Life may though difficulties your way but you are able to cope with them because of your strength..”

So maybe the reason that I have been experiencing so many troughs is NOT because I am not strong enough, it is maybe because no person is strong enough to withstand these experiences !!

There, I made a sweeping and generalized comment covering billions of people about whom I know nothing at all ..

But somehow the statement makes me feel happy. It is the world’s fault, not mine. I am fine. Ha ha ha ha !!!!!!!!

Permanent membership in a mental asylum does not seem to far off now :-)

The random thoughts continue to flow unabated …..

Hamlet and an empty stomach

To be or not to be, that is the question

Well maybe for Hamlet that is the question, for me it is more like To cook or not to cook ……

As any normal human being, I am quite hungry and tired by the time I get back from work. But often I do not feel like eating anything and go to bed on a near empty stomach. Now why is that I don’t feel like eating ?

Quote : “Feelings are not supposed to be logical. Dangerous is the man who has rationalized his emotions”. I am not a Dangerous man, hence I cannot logically explain my feelings, hence I don’t eat.

Can you ever have any doubt that I live by Cogito Ergo Sum ? ;)

My random thoughts are getting really random , aren’t they ?

Well , for the record, I am not drunk nor do I take drugs, lest your thoughts proceed in that manner !!

On a more normal note, I watched Barcelona annihilate Manchester United in yesterday’s champion’s league final. Not very unlike a Maruti 800 going head to head with a Ferrari !! There are indeed few better sights in football than that of Barcelona midfield going at full steam at the opponents.

On the personal front, I just feel moody and restless. All friends have ‘deserted ‘ [ pun intended in some cases ..] , so I end up mumbling to myself most of the time.

If not for Cogito Ergo Sum, how would I even know I exist ?

Or a better question right now might be , is there a point in existence ?? :-((

Does an empty stomach make you a philosopher may be another relevant question. Wonder if Socrates could cook …….

All righty, this is getting too random even for me. So signing off for now.

Reflections on volunteering

I was looking up some quotes on volunteering, trying to come up with a catchy line for a volunteer recruitment drive being planned in office. Predictably there are tons of lovely quotes and stories out on the net. One of the better ones from Winston Churchill reads “You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give”

Speaking from my own experience, it is very tough to find one quote or story that spans the whole range emotions that you go through as volunteer. It is indeed quite a journey that is definitely worth undertaking !!

I’ll make no bones about that fact that I was dragged into volunteering kicking and screaming. I did not want to do it, it was more or less rammed down my throat by someone higher up. I had a hundred reasons on why not to do it, and I was quite vocal about them too.

Finally one of my volunteer friends looked me in the eye and calmly asked “At the end of the day, if you go and teach a bunch of kids, would you have done something right or wrong ?” I honestly had no rebuttal to that [ and that holds true even after 5 years :) ]

So what does it mean to be on the other side of the fence ?

To pull out another quote : “I always wondered why somebody didn't do something about that. Then I realized I was somebody”

Sure, there were times at which I have shed a tear or two, there were occasions when i contemplated giving it all up and there were times when I went through soul destroying experiences. But at the end of it all, I am glad that I made a choice to be that “somebody” around 5 years back.

I still have not scratched the surface of what I want to do.

Robert Frost says  “And miles to go before I sleep” and I agree fully.

However it is 11.45 in the night and I definitely need to sleep :)

Doctors and the weekend

Finally got over my huge inertia and kick started my volunteering again !! Feels nice to be back, I do enjoy teaching and have been missing it quite a bit.

Wifey’s MD exams are fast approaching, starting on 27th May to be exact. My respect for doctors has gone up quite a few notches after marrying one. Did I hear some married man snicker in the background ? “Did you have another choice other than to respect your wife”, did I hear them say ?  Come out in the open buddy and say it in front of your wife . And if you survive tell me about it :-))

I mean the sheer amount of effort that Doctors have to put in is quite mind boggling. Compared to my wife, I practically slept through my engineering and Masters :-))  

And to think that I was considered one of the better academics tells you all that there is about the effort levels needed to get by in engineering ;)

Except for a select few Doctors, I doubt if it the paybacks are in proportion to the efforts put. Unless you are one of those rare genuine human beings who think that helping to heal another human being is the reward in itself !!

You win some, you lose some

66.67% success rate for the weekend cooking.

Thumbs down for my experiment with Chicken curry ( odd taste, chicken a touch undercooked) .

Tasted major success with my attempts at Aloo – Mutter curry and Chole-Bhatura !! Recipes , of course courtesy of my ever present consultant a.k.a driving pupil a.k.a chatter box !!

I can write a thousand words, this time I’ll let the pictures do the talking. Looks professional, does it not ? :-)

I am really happy with my weekend’s cooking effort !!

As a token of my gratitude ( for the recipes and expert guidance) ,  I baked some experimental ‘chocolate chip -raisin muffins’ for my consultant. They too have received rave reviews :-)

The legend of the Master Chef continues to grow …..

The humble passenger blog

How would you commute to work if your car were out for repairs for close to a week ?
(a) Walk to office
(b) Take an auto
(c) Take a cab
(d) Take a bus
(e) Take a lift from your friend

Asthma rules out ‘a’ & ‘b’, depleted condition of wallet rules out ‘c’ and the desire not to lose wallet via pickpocket rules out ‘d’. So pretty much option ‘e’ is the only one left .

Well, what’s so bad about ‘e’ ??

Nothing, apart from that fact that a few nightmares from the past need to be relived. Beggars cannot be choosers, they say. And so the beggar began his adventures again :-)

Pickup happens on outer ring road at around 8 am. First thing that I notice is 400% increase in driving aggression level of my former mentee. Lanes are being switched needlessly and at high speeds. Couple of deep breaths and I calm down. Pulse rate around 95 / min

A sharp switch from left to right lane at 80 kms /hr , narrowly missing the back of a van ahead. A cold sweat begins to run down the back of my neck. Heart rate approaching 150 per min

A poor two wheeler guy is slowing down in front of us to get over a speed breaker. We are approaching him at 60km/hr. My driver has not seen the hump.

“What ?????? wait !!!! slowdown !!! there is a hump !!!! you’ll hit him ……. oh my god , i’m still too young to die !! “ pulse is at 280 per min

Sharp 90 degree twist to right, missing the two wheeler guy by the merest whisker, flying over the hump violently, and somehow managing to escape the traffic on our right. We were pretty close to hitting escape velocity and going into a geo-stationary orbit around the earth too.

A quote reads : “A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice”. Hmmm, the next time around, I shall stick to the advice.

PS : As usual, a few creative liberties have been taken in the description of some of the incidents ;-)

Facebook tests

I just started getting more active on Facebook. My cousin invited me to have a look at an app which says what you birth date reveals about you :) Here is the output

“Your Birth Number : 3

3’s are idealists. They are very creative, social, charming, romantic, and easygoing. They start many things, but don’t always see them through. They like others to be happy and go to great lengths to achieve it. They are very popular and idealistic. They should learn to see the world from a more realistic point of view.

“
Hmmmmm … I don’t know what to say …

Took another attitude test on Facebook, it says I am like this :-

”calm and quiet
you are the sort of person who likes to take life slowly... just one day at a time.. you usually know the difference between right and wrong. you believe in yourself. you put yourself in other peoples shoes and see how it feels to be them and then handle a situation accordingly.your attitude towards life is very positive.... you are liked by all and are a great friend.the flip side is that sometimes you care too much about other people and don't do what you really wanna do.”

Well, maybe some of it is true …

Hyderabad blues

Just got back to Bangalore after a 2 days business trip in Hyderabad. And I am happy to be back, only when you go away from Bangalore do you realize how awesome the weather here is !! Hyderabad was hot and miserable. And with the same traffic snarls as Bangalore.

What’s with Taj Banjara ? The lake in front of the hotel stinks, I mean proper 5-star rated stink. I wonder how they are running their outdoor restaurants !! No wonder they were offering a 30% discount on food :)

Due to our packed schedule, we did not really get time to taste the Hyderbadi Biriyani. Senior and Daya parceled the biriyani from Paradise and brought it to Bangalore. Apparently it was not good. Hmmm, the taste of hyderbadi biriyani may be just another myth …

And now at Bangalore you have to pay a Rs.260 user development fee !! Outrageous !!!

I am again wandering around sleeplessly, fed up :((

Daddy, I wanna be ………

I am sitting in my living room, reading the morning newspaper when my little princess strolls right up to me and declares 

Princess : “Daddy, I want to act in a TV serial”
Daddy : …………………………………………………………………
Princess : You know, I want to do something else also
Daddy Thinks : ( Finally she is going to say what she really wants)
Princess : “I want to become a reality TV judge”
Daddy : !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I guess you can figure out what my daughter watches on TV by now !!

Wonder what she wants to do next ??

I remember that I had clear ambitions of becoming a bus driver. Sort of satisfied,  don’t you think , from the following evidence ? link-1, link-2 and link-3 :)

Jai Ho !!

I had the good fortune of being able to attend AR Rehman’s Jai Ho concert held in Calicut on 3rd May. This was of course my first ever experience of a live concert and I absolutely loved it !!

I’m no music buff, I tagged along just for the benefit of wifey, who happens to a big time music fan. The concert was also held to raise money for the rehabilitation of AIDS infected children. They showed a touching video of a small kid narrating her story of how she is banned from playing with neighbours, on how she was thrown out of the school in which she was studying, and how people would throw stones at her even !!

All this in the supposedly highly literate state of Kerala. I guess this is further proof that literacy and knowledge does not go hand in hand.

The concert itself was superb. It was held in the corporation stadium ( where I have witnessed many a football match in the past) and was filled to the brim with people. A variety of singers including Hariharin, KS Chithra, Sadhna Sargam and the maestor AR Rehman himself came on stage. The sound systems were superb, so were the lights and background displays !!

I should definitely go to more of these live concerts !!

A word of appreciation for the much maligned Kerala police, they were simply outstanding on the day. Making sure that a crowd of close to 40,000 does not get out of hand is no joke. They were helpful , courteous and enforced discipline smoothly when needed.

Maybe all of us are guilty of passing judgments based on the stereo-type images formed in our own minds.

Update , Sunday May 10th

A few videos of this event from YouTube

Inroduction

       

Tu Muskura

Masakali

     

Jai Ho !

Wallet

“Of all the things that I’ve lost, I miss my wallet the most” – Pradeep

Well, technically I did not lose it, I just forgot it at home. The bottom-line being that I was left without any cash. So I had to borrow money for breakfast ( Rs.17) , then again for lunch (Rs.100, of which I ate for Rs.60. And , yes, our caterer rips us off !! ).

All this is fine, except for the fact that I had a call till late that night (My theory is that the later the hour of the call, lower the likelihood of something useful happening !!) , which left me very hungry .

Now normally this is not a problem as I can stop by at any of the restaurants nearby and hog. Unfortunately, just as I was about to pull into a restaurant , I was reminded of the bare-bones financial situation sans the wallet. 40 Rs would not even buy me a glass of lime-soda there :-(

Sadly the master chef reversed out of the parking and headed home hungrily, the MasterCard ad inspired verses, swirled in his head

“One liter of juice - 85 Rs
One tandoori chicken – 150Rs
Meal for one at Chilli and Pepper – 600Rs
Carrying your wallet when you are hungry – Priceless”

On stories and names

Inspired by the fake IPL blogger, let me also come out with names of characters that may appear in my blog in the near future.

Disclaimer : Any resemblance to any one living or dead is purely co-incidental. These are purely fictitious characters

Disaster, Daya, Lion, Senior, Windy, HBP(High Blood Pressure) , Senior, No-logic, Cucumber, Fat-drip and Chatter-box

Let us say No-Logic, Cucumber and Chatter box are of the fairer sex and Fat-drip is in the U.S :-).

So last weekend, Disaster, Daya, Lion and myself decided to have a bachelor cookout.

Bachelor ???, you might ask 

Well Daya and myself are not exactly bachelors, but for all practical purposes we can be assumed to be that for the next couple of weeks. Chatter-box was invited, but was busy with something or the other and No-Logic went on the usual weekend escapade to home. Windy was not yet a bachelor and so was not invited.

Intense discussions on menu followed for several days. Finally clear demarcation of roles and responsibilities was done. I would make Appam and Chicken Tikka, Daya would make fish fry, Lion would make egg curry and Disaster would make Dal. Saturday evening would be the time, and venue would be my house.

Saturday started off for me with purchase of chicken ( bone-less of course, bones are for dogs !! ) and appam mix. Kept the chicken marinated in a mix of lemon juice, curd and various top secret masalas for close to 6-7 hours :). Daya & disaster arrived with marinated fish and Lion too made his presence felt soon there after.

We were all set to start. The evening started with a magnificient display of chicken tikka by yours truly ( Hey, my blog, I will write whatever I want) .

Lion started with Egg curry and immediately started demanding ingredients which I did not have. Fresh green chillies, tomatoes etc .. A deep dive into fridge revealed some mildly rotten tomatoes and wilted green chillies. Lion was shaking his head as if he were the main chef of The Taj. After some severe sledging, he proceeded to reluctantly use the available ingredients and start cooking. Intense pressure was heaped up on him , with sarcastic comments flying thick and fast. Showing true Lion like qualities, he delivered under pressure with a very nice egg curry.

Daya proceeded to fry the fish in Goan style, and ended up eating half of the first fish to make sure the frying and masalas were in order ;). He also tried to use some un-named powder in my kitchen thinking it was rice powder, luckily we caught him in nick of time. BTW,  I still don’t know what that white powder is ……….

Disaster meanwhile just wanted to boil dal with salt ( and sugar !!! ) and add nothing else. After some not-so-gentle coaxing, he came around to making a version of dal that us normal human beings could consume. I must add here that Disaster has zero threshold for spices, show him a green chilly and he will start sweating like a pig !

There was nothing to say about the appam, except that the master chef’s stamp of class was clear in the soft fluffy creations ;)

Overall cookout v1 was declared as a grand success by all parties involved. Cookout v2 was also planned tentatively for the next Saturday, details of that to follow soon !!

Power woes

2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1 …..

No, this is not a new mathematical series that I invented, nor is this my bank account number

2 hours of power –1 hour of no power. The timings so precise, that you can almost set your clock based on it. The electricity company is again trying to push people to insanity.

This pattern continues on into the night also. 2 am in the night I wake up with mosquitoes almost airlifting me off the bed !! Tried Odomos repellant cream, it was simply not rated for this many mosquitoes . Finally I had to burn a mosquito coil just to get some shut-eye.

Of course the fumes from my coil triggered my asthma now :(, but still after a while I was able to fall asleep. Have slept less than 4-5 hours per day for the past several days due to this power situation and other things.

On a side note, there is quite a bit of talk in the US now about Smart Grids and Demand Response programs. Folks, learn about these from KPTCL, who surely have one the best load shedding programs in the world !!

There is no way you will end up complaining about your electricity bill, because the power is almost never there when you need it :-) And due to the scant availability of power, you are pushed to use it smartly ;).

KPCTL should be a pioneer in Smart Grids !!

Sport as mood elevator

Nothing lifts your mood like when one of your favorite teams pulls of an amazing victory.

I was watching Manchester United Vs Aston Villa on ESPN . For the most part of 80 mins, it looked like ManU will slip to their 3rd consecutive defeat.

They were trailing 2-1, their makeshift defensive line getting torn up time and again by a pacy and crafty Villa forward line, injuries and suspensions had caused at least 5 first team players to miss out. With Liverpool going above them in the table yesterday, the ManU title challenge seemed to be headed towards disaster.

That is till two pieces of brilliance turns the match on their head. Cristiano Ronaldo had been a passenger for most of the match after his early strike. He latches onto the ball outside the penalty area and lashes in a low drive to the corner of the net. 2-2

Then in injury time, 17 year old Federico Macheda makes a stunning turn and curls in an unstoppable short. GOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL and 3-2

This is surely how Premierships are won.

Liverpool is playing some stunning football, sets up a fascinating final few matches. This season has been one of the best that I have watched