4 years.... #MB2013

So, I did manage to find a gift for B which he seems to be hooked onto!

I feel very smug and happy when I do that. Its not too often that I can predict what is it that he would truly appreciate, but at times, I put some serious thoughts, or you might just call me lucky, and I do come up with something.

And this time he said, "You really know the kind of stuff I like!"

Now wouldn't that make you really thrilled? Yes, it did it for me.

 I got him Dad's the Word, a not so recent book by Soumya Bhattacharya. I came across this book while reading an ol' review on DNA. And then I started to look around to find where is it that I would find this book, because it was not something I had seen around for sure. I found that Westland books does sell through Ebay and I could order from the publishers. This was the closest I could imagine to getting a confirmed delivery. I did not want to order with the usual online stores as they would send it to me in a week's time, and I sure did not have a week. In fact I had just 4 days to get the book to me.

B loved the book after reading the Preface and has been with the book since yesterday night. This is the person who has not completed And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini in almost 3 months. He is not a very ardent reader, but some books do the trick. He has picked this up like it has done the trick, but it is yet to be seen what would be the final verdict.

When I picked up the book, my thought was that this is the true meaning of our wedding. The fact that we are parents and there is this small person who is just looking at us to play, sing and dance with. And that is when I thought that I should not go for any wedding anniversary celebration without her. It would just be incomplete. She is such an important part of the marriage, and I feel things would have been nothing like what it is if not for her. These thoughts left me with a feeling that this is the book which works the best for him, and this is not about the diaper changes, or sleepless nights. It is about a father and daughter, bonding over mutual interests. I felt it was a perfect gift.

I shall do a review of this book, once I do read it... this will come up in sometime.

How much is your soul worth?

I just did one such test, and I think this one is totally hilarious! 

The questions are real interesting too. Try it

How much is your soul worth? 

My soul is worth $ 182,560 Soul Dollars

Whats the gender of your blog?

Analyse the gender of your blog ! 

Here is my result

We guess http://vectorgaming.blogspot.com is written by a woman (56%), however it's quite gender neutral.

Culinary Calamities

Recently I was sifting through my many drafts and I saw that there was something which I started off sometime back, but never got down to completing. So on this occasion of my 150th post, on this blog which I started way back in 2007 (after being initiated into it by a professor of mine from college) I shall be continuing this post, though completing should be the better word I think. Also, I think with the past two years in Bangalore, there have been many more points made which makes it easier to trace the foray that I have made into the kitchen. Now when I look back, I think I did certainly inched my way into it, with many puddles to jump over and at times getting my feet ankle deep in muck too!

I think it’s most appropriate to inform that all that most of these items have been made over a period of years and many people have been subjected to it. One very calming effect is that in spite of that, I think the items not mentioned here (and which came out much better) must have compensated for some of the effects, as one person in spite of all the yuck tastings, has decided to stand by as my tasting partner for life.

Now, here I take a deep breath and bare before you all, the N number of mistakes that I have committed through these years.

Paneer Capsicum

The first time I made this, I had no clue that I was supposed to be frying the masala and following which the paneer is added. So, you must be wondering, what exactly did I do??? Well, I just sauted the onions till pink and then the tomatoes, after which I dumped the capsicum, poured some water and added all the masalas which I thought appropriate! After a few minutes, I added the Paneer and promptly switched off the flame after a few minutes!

Now, here I had a very raw masala tasting, almost uncooked paneer capsicum!

Bottle gourd or Laukhi

Everyone told me that this is one of the easiest veggies to make, due to its almost negligible cooking time, and I was Oh so thrilled with this piece of information. I fried the requisite masala this time around, in a pressure cooker and then added the laukhi when the masala was done. Now I added quite a bit of water (no one told me not to add water when cooking laukhi) and then closed the lid to cook it. I opened it after 5- 7 minutes and I see a complete kichdi form of the laukhi, which barely was looking edible.

Simple Masoor Dal

I wish to believe that everyone should have burnt dal atleast once in their lifetime. It’s a very satisfying experience of screwing up something which is deemed one of the simplest activities in Indian cooking. With my dal, I not only burnt it, I also spoiled the pressure cooker, by blowing off the safety valve! The water was too less for the quantity of dal I was intending to cook (as per my mom).

Bringal aka Baigan

My recent disaster involved trying to make something similar to bhindi masala using brinjal. I do not know why I thought by just frying the brinjal, it shall take a similar appearance, which it gracefully did not and finally ended up even with less salt and chilli so that one could not even pass it off like medicinal capsules! This is one the few things which had to completely flipped into the garbage in! :(

Now with all these interesting details which I have gained knowledge in, I hope that the following years shall be a tad better than the past two in terms of cooking :)

Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera & IE

Just a real funny link which an office friend send me !

Check it out here!

Isn't much use to anyone !!

Sulz tagged and here is the result.

Its an interesting way to arrive at your first fake album cover from your fake band!

Album Name: Isn't much use to anyone
Band Name: Cham Wings

Cham Wings Airlines is a low cost airlines from Syria. I am not sure how going on full speed on a skateboard equated to flying!

But anyhow, I liked the simplicity of the tag and the randomness!

If you would like to pick up the tag... go ahead!

Here are the instructions

1 - Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random” or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band. If it’s already the name of a band, you can hit random again.

2 - Go to “random quotations” or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3

The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days

Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.

5 - Post it to blog with this text and tag the blog buddies if you want.

Scorching Inferno

I think the world needs many superheroes for various things which are mounting up on the to - do list.

So I am booking myself this costume!


You wanna design your costume? Head over here!

LEGO

Check out here a truly charming work of Lego which I have seen.

They are not huge construction projects, or grand expanses covered in lego. These are just perfect things which we see everyday, all captured in the Lego World.

I am just amazed that this is one toy which has not died out after all these years. There have been many, Mechanix and Electronix, and what not, but Lego is just plain LEGO!

1.5 Years

When I said that I will save a special post for Whisky, I thought I would maybe have a video of her and her antics. Her antics are usually pertaining to trying to catch a small fly to wasps and bees which come into the room for the sheer warmth as compared to the chill of Bangalore nights. But pictures are something I have posted before also, so a more apt post would be if I write about all that she is, and all the problems that she creates about the house (usually when no one is at home). Else she is a very docile cat. She loves to welcome you when you get back from work. She will come to greet you at the door, she will rub herself (as all cats love to do), and even just plop herself right on your feet rooting you to the spot. She loves to be picked up, and she will lick your face, hand and will rub her head under your chin.

Her favourite spot during the day is lazing at the balcony in the sun, or else she will be on the rug with some piece of wrapper playing catch all by herself. Let evening come, and she will crawl under the blanket with anyone who has done the job of opening up any blanket. She will either sleep on top or under, as the person who is tucked in bed is willing to accept it. She is very flexible in these matters, a true well bred cat!

I have always brought her up on a mix of dry and wet food. I five her fresh meat and fish only in very small portions and she gorges on them. But even on these cases, she will not over eat. She will leave meat aside if she is done, and then when she comes back for them, in most cases they would be covered with ants and there she would lose her precious food to someone so small and tiny in front of the mighty cat!

She has her share of outdoor fun too, and at these times are those when I fret and worry about her. One day, she decided that she will just go for a stroll, and jumped out of the window on the balcony and from there she further found a ledge and then the stairs all the way down to the ground floor. Once she reached there, she realized that there is no way she remembers which floor she lives on (It’s the 6th). There are far too many stray dogs also down there, and with her bell ringing as she moves even an inch, I was quite sure that she is in much more danger than she can fathom. But she is not that bad a cat; she climbed up to the ground floor balcony, and tucked her self between some plants and old furniture for the night. She pulled through for the first time, all by herself outside in the cold. She has always been indoors with a warm blanket since the age of 2 months. And now at 1 year she wants an adventure, the teenage rebel spirit in her has awaken I believe.

I searched, I called, I whistled but she was I believe too scared to meow or else she really was not ready to come back home, or even better she was not hungry yet. The next whole day, I have no clue what she did, and where she roamed about. She was hungry and did not eat anything that was one thing I was sure by evening. I came back from work, looked all through the stairs, lift lobbies and even through the car park but she was no where to be seen. One I was up at my balcony, standing and making an aerial look out for her, there she is sitting on the hood of a car and looking up at me! I ran down and I think she was quite taken aback from the noise person running towards her. She jumped and ran, but under the car, not towards me or into my arms! Tsk tsk.... When she was sure it was just me, she came out meowing and pushing her way towards my legs. I picked Miss. Dirty Self up and took her upstairs and first thing fed her. She had in one sitting; I believe food that she would have else had in a span of a day! After that she was so tired I believe, she went right back to her spot and decided to sleep peacefully in the warmth.

This incident has been a good 3 months back and till date she has never tried to do that again, or rush to the door when the door is to be opened. So I think maybe my baby girl has grown up a little now.

She still loves to use all pieces of cardboard available in the house as her scratch pads, but I guess that is better and easier to clean up too rather than have all the footwear and other vaguely possible scratchable items being succumbed to her mercy.

I don't know ... but, maybe I do!

For every conversation that you do not wish to continue or in fact do not want to prolong under any circumstances, then the best answer is always...

There come so many situations when you don’t want to say anything, but then the people facing you do not seem to understand that. Just got me thinking what’s the best option?

I am trying to look for the not so direct push off phrases…

1. I don’t know, would not work, as the person might tend to believe 'it' to be an invitation to pour knowledge unto thy poor unknowing soul!
2. I am busy right now, might just result in pushing trouble for a later time.
3. I am too tired, lets talk tomorrow, might draw undue trouble on your health and all such related aspects.
   

I cant really think of anything else which might successfully push someone off!

I guess many a times one has to know what will put an end to the conversation and what works for one might not work for another.

For example, when someone says I don't know, I take it to be a uninterested statement and hence would not bother to waste my breath explaining, where as I myself have come across so many others who tend to think this is an open invitation to speak about everything that they know!

Even just standing there not uttering a word and just smiling doesn't at times seem to get the message across!

Murder at 3:09 AM

I have sometimes wondered what would totally scare me the most, and what would that be which as people say can give you a heart attack. The answer which I have come up with following yesterday night’s events is “Cockroaches”!! They do certainly scare me the most.

Yesterday night I woke up with a start when I realized that some flying insect had just landing on my arm. And the moment I woke up, somehow I had a feeling within that this was not an insect and it was a cockroach which had landed on my arm. I almost shrieked and flung my hands sideways to get rid of it, and the moment I saw it land on the floor ( after i switched on the mobile phone for a streak of light), I knew that it was a cockroach, all right! I ran for the insect killer and by that time, the cockroach had further started to fly around the room. (The most I hate being the flying cockroaches!) I think my room would be still smelling of the spray which I used to kill it eventually after running behind it (at a safe 1 m distance though) for a period of close to 10 minutes!

Even though I did succeed eventually, I still was unable to sleep to well knowing within that I just had a cockroach sitting on my arm!

April Fools

I guess there can be quite hazardous results if newspapers start partaking in April Fool’s day celebrations.

The pic shows the Kuwait Times with their Main headlines for April 1st. Kuwait being a Islamic state, and hence a dry state would have had some fun!!