Resurfaced!!!

Hi all,
I think it is about 6 months since my last post. If you are wondering why I was lying low all this time, well my only excuse is "Semester work". After a hectic semester, I had to travel immediately and for the past two weeks or so I have been enjoying myself by eating mom's food, fighting with my sister, pulling her leg( i mean literally also.. hee hee), visiting friends, relatives, etc etc.. If you re wondering still, I am in India and I am loving every moment. I hope I will be a little regular from now on. But for now...I m off to have a midnight snack.. :)

Comedy of Errors!!

I have been thinking about writing this post for quite sometime but something or the other came up and I kept postponing it. I am here in CA for the summer and I am interning in a lab here in CA. I always love the first few days in any new place. There is so much to learn, right from simple things like figuring your way out to the restroom to big things like learning whatever is needed for your job. There is so much of information and there is so little you can grasp. Still....

Anyways, coming back to the issue, I guess, it is pretty obvious now. I am talking about my first few days at the lab. This lab is actually located on the hills and the division in which I am working is actually pretty widespread. Although, only one number is associated with the building, I later learnt that the building itself was actually consisted of 4 different ones. There are subdivisions like A, B, C and D. And, the worst part is these are not in order. You enter building A and suddenly when you pass through a door, building C starts but that is not the case in another floor. In another floor, you may even end up in building C. Well, then you might be curious as to how I did find my way. Thanks to my supervisors and other project members, who always made sure that one of them always accompanied me to meetings and things like that. Still, there were a couple of times I did get lost. In the mornings, I usually go early to the lab and, not many are around and so I have to find my way to my room alone. The second day, I went around in circles for some 15 minutes or so and finally located a map of the building and finally made my way to the room. The second day afternoon,I had another problem. I did not know where the women's rest room was in the building. I tried to search for one on the floor, but there were none. And, to top it all, there were no interns sitting with me in the office space I was given. Finally, I found one in another building and had to take a walk to the other building each time I had to use the rest room. In the evening, I had trouble finding my way out. After managing to find my way out, I used the way a couple of times and memorized the way to office from the entrance. I kept memorizing that all night and the next day morning as I started for work. I was so sure that I wouldn't make a mistake this time. Alas!! I was wrong. Not entirely. Because I did know the way from the entrance. But, the thing that went wrong was I boarded the wrong bus!!!! There are two buses to the lab and only one of them goes to the building. I was not aware of that and when I saw a bus with the name of the lab approaching, I just boarded it. After sometime, the bus went in another direction and only then I realized that I had boarded some other bus. This bus goes in the opposite direction to the lab. All, I could do was reach some building in the lab and get off there. Then, Another bus that goes to the lab came and I got into that. But, he dropped me in a different entrance to the building!!! Hmph!!! All my previous day's memorizing was in vain!! I once again had a hard time figuring out the way to my office.

Moral of the story: Murphy's Law: If something has to go wrong, it will!!! :)

What do you think?? :)

Missing my laptop!!!

Exams are over and holidays have begun. But, as the holidays started, I had to part with my laptop and send it on a long journey through half the United States. The reason being, it was not well. The laptop suffered a mild fracture and its neck(meaning hinge) was broken. And, it is hardly eight months old. Well, I can now see you people giving me disgusted looks for being so irresponsible. But, I tell you, I took extreme care of it. But, I simply do not know, when it broke.I just noticed one day, that I was having trouble closing the laptop. On inspecting further, I saw that the hinge was broken .All this had happened without my knowledge. And, laptop had become such an integral part of my life that life without it is unimaginable. The very first thing I look at, when I get up, is its screen, and the last thing I look at before I go to bed is it. So, when I had to part with it, I was naturally sad. But my friend kept telling me, that it was going to have a gala time without me hitting it through out the day. But, I dont like to think that way.. :/... I rather like to think that it too misses me.. :).. Anyways, I am feeling the void without it. And yesterday was just the first day. I tried cooking, walking, writing, eating my roomie's head and what not and yet, I had several hours at my disposal without knowing what to do. Plus, my hopes of becoming a regular writer here at this blog was also dashed because, I have to run to my department for just checking my daily emails. Well, since I am going through all this trouble, I thought I will dedicate this post to a gadget that has become very much a part of me. My Dell Laptop!!

Hot hot Pakodas!! - the latest from my kitchen!!

Yet again, I was in an adventurous mood yesterday. So, at about 1.00 am in the night, I set about trying another new dish(new to me:)). PAKODAS!!! I won't go into the details of how exactly it is done!!It is a very very common dish in India. Still, when you do it yourslef, even the simplest dish becomes hard the first time. And, I did have my share of mishaps in this. First, I had put too little besan powder. When I adjusted that, next I poured a little extra water, So, I had to put some extra besan flour and by the time I got the proportion right, I had forgotten all about the salt that I had added initially. Net Result?? My pakodas were deficient of salt!! Still, it was not bad for a first try!! OOPS!! I forgot to mention. I made two varieties of pakodas!! Cauliflower and onion. The cauliflower pakodas were done without a hitch. For the onion pakodas, we had a mini crying scene as we both went about cutting onions. We were talking too much and cutting too slowly and so, our eyes started to water!!(mouths are supposed to water when you make tasty dishes!!But, what to do!!??).Then, we had to take a break, wipe our eyes and start again. Somehow, we managed it and the whole operation was over by 2.00 am. And, from 2.00 to 2.30 am, we start and relished our pakodas!! However, it turns out, the outcome of your first trial is always sweet(atleast to you!! :)). Anyways, here are some of the pics of the OPERATION PAKODAS!!! (I made my friend transfer the photos immediately after she took them!! That is a feat by itself!! You will understand if you know how lazy she is when it comes to transferring photos from her camera to her laptop!!) :)

Bread rolls!!! - My next experiment in the kitchen

It is 2.55 am here and I am now sitting here after filling up my stomach with my latest cooking experiment. What we experimented today was bread rolls! The motivation to do this was that the expiry date of a big unopened bread pack was approaching and we had to finish it up soon!! And, frankly, I was bored with the bread upma, sandwiches and bread and jam, etc. So, as my friend came and complained that the bread was going to be wasted unless we finished it somehow, I racked my brains to try something else with the bread!! And, suddenly, I was reminded of my mom's bread rolls!! Yummy!! So, with so much time on my hands, I thought, why not give it a try. And,my friend also volunteered to help me!! Instead of just allo fill, I thought I ll use all sorts of vegetables. My friend started cutting up the onions and I dealt with the other vegetables. And, soon, the "curry" was ready. So, then we moved on to the next stage of the project and here is where the mishaps started!! Well, I guess I did not mention, but I had never tried this dish before and I hid this fact from my friend as well. There my friend was asking me for instruction, when in fact I knew very little about it(what I had seen of my mother making it at home). I just pretended as though I was in control and told her to soak the bread, squeeze out the water, fill the curry and make a roll. How simple!! If you were also thinking so, try it and you will know how wrong the statement is!! And, we too found it the hard way!! My friend followed the instructions and put whatever she got out of that into the oil. And.... The whole piece came apart in the oil!! There was no roll!!. Fried bread and vegetables were ll that came out of the oil!! So, for the next roll, I tried removing the thick sides of the bread and it worked!! So, we found the trick to make the bread stay as a roll and managed to make 4 rolls. But, it was amidst a lot of oil fumes. (we could not open the window as it was the middle of the night and our house is on the first floor and the kitchen fan was not enough for the fumes). It took sometime for tthe oil fumes to clear and we had to wait for that with watery eyes!! Whew!! What an experiment!! Well, I forgot to add!! the bread rolls came out well!! It is not just my opinion but my friend's as well.( both of us participated in the making, so we probably are a bit biased, but I guess for all that trouble we went into, we can justify our bias!! :))

Spring break kitchen exploits!!!

At last the much awaited spring break has begun. And, to start my break, I watched two films back to back. That too, from 12.00 am to 6.00 am (that is when spring break began na.. :)). After that, I slept for about 8 hours or so and woke up lazily at about 2.00pm. I would have slept longer but I have this bad habit of waking up after 8 hours especially during holidays. So, I was just loitering about the house, thinking of what to do and I suddenly this idea struck me!!! Cooking!! It has been a while since I cooked some really tasty dish and we have have been living off pasta, pizza, instant paratha and what not!! So, I attacked the refrigerator and the cupboard and took an inventory of what was available. Well, we recently stocked the fridge. So, there was pretty much everything there. We had recently bought a big cauliflower but the point was none of us knew how exactly to cook it. So, what other time is best for some experimenting?? And, this is how my kitchen exploits began. And, after making this cauliflower curry, I was still not satisfied. And, so I thought of making some spinach rice. And, now that I have finished cooking both, and even recording it on my blog I am waiting for roomie to get up. The only brave soul to eat my cooking!! Well, I will tell you how my experiments have turned out after she tastes it.. :)

The "Convocation"-Waiting for mine!!! :)

(The credit for title goes to my roomie).
I am here in US in pursuit of my childhood goals and dreams and hence, I missed my own convocation. As I was looking at the photos sent by my friends, I realized they were all giddy with happiness. Receiving the piece of paper in front of so many people, family, friends, staff, etc that is the proof of the four years of hard work that you have put in, is an amazing feeling. It is like proclaiming to the world.. See, I have made it!!! Now, even I can have a suffix (in some cases prefix as well, like for MBBS grads) for my name. Those abbreviated letters mean a lot. Three or four years of work is contained in them. But, there are a lot of people like me who miss their convocation every year. In pursuit of our dreams, we have come a long way, leaving behind everything, back in our homeland, even the scrap of paper that is the only proof that we were once enrolled in a college and finished it successfully!!(Trust me, there were times, we thought it would be difficult, especially with papers like DSP, which is known as Degree Stopping Paper). It also serves as a reminder of all the college fun we had, the friends we made and the "class cuts" and the exams for which we never prepared and soon. There are other forms of memories, slam books, photographs, videos, but nothing compensates for the moment you walk up on stage wearing that yellow robe and receiving your degree on a stage in front of several hundred people. I surely missed mine. But, I have a second chance... But for that, I will have to wait for a little more than a year. And, this time it will be a lot more sweeter, as it I will be collecting some form of proof after 6 years of work!!But, to get to that, I still have a lot to do. Between now and then, I will have several prayers, hopes, dreams and aspirations.. But finally, mera number bhi aageya!! (Courtesy:Pepsi ad :-) ).
But for now, my parents have to collect my "degree" and send it to me. So, I am still waiting for mine!! :)

PS: Congrats my "B.E." friends!!!