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 :-((