Whipped cream miseries

Definition of Whipped cream : thick cream that has had air incorporated into it by rapid beating

Sounds reasonable, so what is the big deal ???

The big deal is that once you keep whipping the cream, it turns thicker and thicker. There is a certain thickness level, which once when crossed WILL CAUSE RAPID CONVERSION OF CREAM TO BUTTER !!! So instead of having nice whipped cream to decorate my pineapple cake, I had BUTTER .

&^%$#*@

Needless to say, the icing had a slightly odd taste, completely masking the excellent pineapple cake underneath.

Icing and decoration continue to be development needs for me.

Sighhhhh, when will I learn all this ????

Jose again …

Jose Mourinho is back after his Inter Milan won 3-1 against Barcelona in the first leg of their champions league semi-final. When asked by a journalist about some petty complaints that Barcelona had about the loss, he answered

“The way they are, tomorrow we will probably read I am to blame for the volcano. Maybe it is true. Maybe I have a friend in the volcano and I am responsible for that."

Barcelona , of course had to take a long bus journey to Inter to play their match because all flights were canceled due to volcanic ash

I like this guy !!

And its over

Gone are the days when I can come back home , switch on the TV and be entertained by a mindless exhibition of slogging called T20. The end of IPL-3 has left a vacuum in my life, one that I am trying to fill with the new season of Indian Idol :-)

Yesterday’s final was the true demonstration of why Tendulkar (who no doubt of the greatest batsman India has ever produced) is no more than a very average captain. A very average captain, whose stock has been considerably inflated by two of his long time admirers in commentary box – Ravi Shastri and Sunil Gavaskar.

Baffling choices in batting order. MI lost because of those choices and also in no small measure due to fairly pedestrian batting by Tendulkar and Abhishek Nayar. Harbhajan and Nayar are better players than Duminy and Pollard ?? Which book of cricket says that ?

Anyway it is wonderfully easy to be an arm-chair critic , is it not  ? :)

PV the philosopher

I might have mentioned earlier that expectation may indeed be the root cause of many miseries.

Judging others by how you might have responded to something is an equally precarious path. A path that I have tread so often in the past, somehow the lessons from that are never learnt.

Maybe life is like that, a few lessons are repeated, yet you do not learn. If all of us learnt from our mistakes and never repeated them, would the world be a better place ? Or would it be far worse off ?

Whatever that maybe, nothing better than an empty house, cloudy weather and indifferent mood to unleash the philosopher in you.

Stay tuned for more PV-isms :-)

A good blog

If you are keen follower of football , especially the English Premier League, be sure to read Chris Charle’s Blog on BBC. Especially look at the Quotes of the week section.

The irrepressible Roy Keane came up with this during the past week :
"Attempts on goal is like going to a nightclub. You could speak to 50 girls but if you're going home on your own, it's no good, is it? You could only speak to one and go home with her!"
Roy Keane's dating tips and Ipswich's scoring issues!

And one of the reason why so many of us love The Special One : Jose Mourinho is captured in the quote below. This was just before the Champions league match between Mourinho’s Inter Milan and Chelsea, the club he formerly managed.
 "Before the game I know everybody and I love them, and after the game I know everybody and I love them - for 90 minutes I know nobody." 
The one and only Jose Mourinho on his return to Chelsea
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/chrischarles/2010/03/quotes_of_the_week_17.html)

Also if you are looking at a humorous round up of the weeks football action, you could do a lot worse than Robbo Robson’s blog.

Non football lovers, please excuse :-)

When everything else fails …

…………… try reading. Always a good remedy to unwind and relax. Especially when a weekend looms where friends are unreachable or unresponsive. Everyone has their own lives to live, which is why books are such a reliable backup.

Well, let me try and recap my last 3 books. First was 2 states : The story of my marriage by Chetan Bhagat. Contains plenty of pot shots at Tamilians, with a few unkind portrayals of Punjabis too thrown in. But overall he is not far from truth. There is very little in common between North and South, however hard you may try to prove otherwise. The book is very light to read and reasonably entertaining.

Another one that I read was Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton ( may his soul R-I-P). Quite a deviation from the usual science thrillers that he writes. Story of a band of pirates around 17th century. For me it is more of a portrayal of super-heroes who are indestructible.  Pretty weak by Crichton’s standards. Not a bad read, but not a recommended one by me for sure

Most recent one was Arvind Adiga’s - Between Assassinations. Quite well written, very simple stories. There is an underlying anger or frustration that comes through in each one of them. I am yet to read the 2008 Man Booker prize winner – The White Tiger, I am  tempted to after this book.

There seems to be quite a lot of very good Indian authors around. I must read more of them.

IPL and entertainment

The IPL has been entertaining me on most days. More than the cricket, I have been impressed with the Adidas ads on cricket. Here are all the three, in descending order of my liking. The music score at the end adds that extra punch

The bowler
He can hit the ball for an eight. He can bat till the pitch grows grass. His coach loves him, my coach loves him. He is strong off the front foot, he is strong off the back foot. He is his team’s best batsman

But right now …. He is in my way

The fielder
I can’t sing. I can’t dance. I can’t climb up mountains. I can’t ride a horse. I can’t swim. I can’t cook.

But sometimes …… I can fly

The batsman
Good advice, bad advice, captain’s advice, coach’s advice, stranger’s advice, dressing room advice, barber shop advice.

But my bat … it is Deaf

Enough of this nonsense

I am tired of hearing “breaking news” about Sania Mirza and Shoaib Malik. I don’t care if they get married or not, it is time for the media circus to end.

Could not care less if Sania went and married an Orangutan instead. Considering the fact that her fiancé has in the past married a woman over phone after seeing her photo, some may argue that in terms of intellectual capacity Orangutan may score slightly better than her present choice.

But that is beside the point. Two adults should have the freedom to do what they want their lives without the disgusting behavior (bordering on Voyeurism) by our media.

Shiv Sena also has made some hay while the sun shined, with Bal Thackeray claiming Sania would no longer be an Indian if she married Shoaib. Possibly he has overlooked that fact that Shoaib had married Ayesha Siddiqui first, who is an Indian. I don’t recall him writing an article saying Ayesha is no longer Indian, maybe someone can refresh my memory.