Wifey’s birthday was on Saturday, had a mini family get together here with all her cousins and their families coming over. Kids from age of 2 to 10, boys and girls. 4 hours of absolute mayhem and noise, I loved it :-)
Pretty much crashed whole of Sunday, little one has picked some Asthma related problems once more with a nagging cough and slight fever. The weather is so dry here that the dust never settles, that must explain it for sure.
Incident-1: One of the all under one roof home furnishing stores.
The conversation goes something like this
I like this chair, I will take it , how much is it ?
940 sir
Here you are, I have a Rs.1000 note
Sir can you pay me 60 more ? I can then return 100 to you
Errr …. Why do you say you want 60 ? Are you planning to pay me back 120 ?
No, sir I will give you back 100. See the chair is 940, you paid me 1000, so if you give me 60 more, i can give you 100
If I give you 40, you need to pay me back 100. If I give you 60, you need to give me back 120 !!
Total confusion, 2-3 minutes of patient explaining on how addition works, finally she gets my point. Well it is late in the evening and she must be getting tired, I think
Incident-2: A famous retail store
How much is the total bill ?
309 Sir
Here is 1000
Do you have 9 Rs change ?
Nope, but here is a 10
Here is your balance, 601
601 ??? Haven’t you missed a hundred ????
No sir it is correct. The bill is for 309, I gave you 601
And if you add the two what will you get ?
System crash. Cashier just froze. She calls her manager to figure out this tough math problem. Manager thankfully is an older guy who can still add 2 numbers in his head, so I get my 100 without too much hassle.
Surely this must be a coincidence, I think. Our math skills have not gone so bad, have they ?
Incident-3: Yet another famous retail store
Your bill is 240 sir
Ok cool, take this 500 note
Your change sir, 160
What the …., aren’t you making a mistake, I should get back 260 !!
Again 2 minutes of confusion, but finally I get my additional 100. Man , surely something is stinking, and this time it has got nothing to do with the food in my refrigerator !!
------------------------------------------------------------------Common trend between all three stores
(a) The cashiers did not enter the amount I paid to their billing machine and did the math on their own.
(b) All cashiers are kids in the 18-21 age group
Question I have is this. Has the proliferation of Cell-phone calculators and computers affected our basic math skills so much ???
One thing is for sure, gone are days when I used to take my change and blindly shove into the purse without counting !! I am counting every note from now on !!
Shiva Sena is threatening to disrupt yet another movie, Muthalik threatens to disrupt Valentine’s day again and one more weekend looms for me with nothing to do ….
What else is new ?
Nothing much. I have been on almost full time PV cabs duty, must have covered 300+ kms over the past week to all parts of Bangalore. Malleshwaram, KR market, BIAL , Forum value mall : you name it.
Also finally managed to kick start my home wine experiment, will know the results in 21 days or so :-) Hopefully it will come out ok.
Been feeling a bit low also of late. Though some people may suggest that I might as well add that to the “what else is new ?” list.
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.
“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 ???
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.
Had a nice short and enjoyable trip home over the weekend. Only problem with a short trip is you never really recover from the tiredness of bus travel.
Kerala is a complete mess now. Swami Vivekananda once referred to Kerala as a mental asylum , I believe he was being very mild indeed. Hartals happen at the drop of a hat(remember, bandh is banned by High court, so why not just re-name it ?). I bet no woman can step outside safely after 6.30 p.m or so. Minor insignificant issues being totally blown out of proportion. A toothless media which hardly does anything other than just plainly report events that occurred. A population which is completely dejected and has very little hope of a better future. And I am not taking sides with any party here, all are uniformly bad. I had once harbored hopes of going back to Kerala sometime in future and settling there, now I think that might remain just a wish :-((
My little one was really happy to see me. We played lots, read stories and cuddled up together. Apparently she has been told in school to sing songs loudly. Boy, doesn't she follow those instructions well !! When she starts to sing, volume is so absurdly high that you have to cover your ears just to retain some sanity. I heard her sing in Sunday school class, she could be heard right outside the church. And I am talking of a really big church here !! :-)
She had a day off in school today. Education Bandh in Kerala. This state will never ever improve.
As another Sunday evening approached, an interesting question popped up in my mind :How fast can my Wagon-R go on the outer ring road ?
Answer : Not very :-(
After some attempts, the max I could hit was around 110 kms/ hr, got limited by traffic mostly. That is like a first gear corner in F1.
I am realizing driving fast is also a mood elevator for me :-). Do not get alarmed though, I am a fast driver , not a rash or stupid one . There is a difference, you know . A difference not appreciated by most of my friends, I must say :-(
Weekend passed by with the usual dose of activities. Cooking, reading, some TV, movies and volunteering. Latest movies were Silence of the lambs, Forrest Gump and Remember the titans. Liked all of them. Chilling is the only word to describe Antony Hopkins in Silence of the lambs. Forrest Gump is one of those genuine heartwarming stories, Tom Hanks is just amazing. Remember the titans is based on a true story of a football team that overcomes racial segregation issues. You can learn more about the true story here : http://www.71originaltitans.com/
Next in line is Bridge over River Kwai
The main thing to report is that I am finally back to volunteering ways again, started going to the new computer education center. Had taken a break of close to month just to re-charge.
Lots of challenges this time around as the student population is very young and does not speak English very well. So we will have to devise smarter ways of teaching. Unfortunately, in spite of being in Karnataka for 10 years now, I cannot speak the language. I can understand bits and pieces. Cannot really say that I am too proud of this fact :-(
Just downloaded OpenOffice and was playing around with it. Very impressive. A touch slow , but hey it is completely free !! Menus and navigation is pretty similar to that of Microsoft Office, so picking it up was really easy. I wonder why this has not been more popular here in India !!
Drove around Bangalore on Sunday evening due to lack of anything better to do. Traffic was not all that bad. Did a round of AECS layout, Outer Ring Road, Airport Road, Koramangala, HSR layout and then back home. Picked up dinner also along the way. The all time mallu favorite of Kerala Porotta with Chilly Chicken !! :-)
Really happy to see that Spain has won the Euro 2008 !! They have been such an under achieving team so far. Wanted Holland also to do well, they had some really awesome players. Somehow did not click when it mattered.
Still reading the Manual of the Warrior of Light. This one cannot be rushed, so taking my time with it.
I am stuck with Appams as breakfast , lunch and dinner for the past couple of weeks. Boy, I am sick of it already !! This is the trouble of using instant Appam mixes that come only in 1 kg packets. Serves 35-40 appams, they say . Who will eat all these is my question ? In my opinion they should come up with bachelor friendly mini packs that makes 4-5 appams only
Went to a colleague's kids birthday party today. Again the reality hit home then on how much I am missing my wife and daughter. However that is the hand life and circumstances have dealt us, and there is no point really griping too much about it. Too much self pity is a dangerous thing, so I do my best to not let these thoughts into my mind too often.
I was again wearing my driver's hat today, driving across heavy traffic areas to pick up and drop couple of my colleagues. I love driving, so does not really matter to me whether it is slow moving or fast traffic. It could turn out into an interesting alternate career path for me :-). I'm also a bit paranoid about any of my female friends having to take a public bus/auto or cab to get home in the evening/night time. There have been so many bad incidents reported in the press that I am just too scared to let them take those options.
Finished with More Twisted. Not nearly as good as Twisted, the wickedness factor is considerably less in More Twisted. The next book that I just started is Devil Wears Prada. Never read anything from the author, Lauren Weisberger before. So should be interesting.
Yesterday was a good day in that I was able to get around 8-9 hours of solid sleep. Lot of demons vanished from my mind after that !! It's interesting that sleep deprivation can have all sorts of bizarre effects on people. Was reading about some at this link , some of it does scare you a bit. Thankfully I never went to that extreme !
Rains have started yet again and the rapidly changing climate is a killer for Asthmatics like me. Managing to hold on without major problems so far. I am hoping my good luck continues !!
Did some experimentation with chicken today. Tried to make grilled chicken. Surprisingly, it turned out ok. The masala was perhaps a touch too strong, but then proportions are never my strong point in cooking :-)
Planning to read and drift off to sleep now. Yet to finish More Twisted, has been pretty good so far. A touch less gruesome than Twisted but equally intriguing.
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