Monthly Archive for June, 2009

Experience Of A Rookie Chef

Published on June 28, 2009 in Anu. View Comments

I have never claimed to like or be good at cooking. I have always shyed away from the kitchen. It is the one room which scares me the most. And so it should. I have always liked things which can be described definitely. When you devise an algorithm, you insist that a particular event occurs after a certain event in this particular order.

But when it comes to cooking, you get instructions like – cook the rice for 5-7 minutes. Hang on! Which is right? Do I wait for 5 or 7 minutes, or do I average it out and turn off the burner after 6 minutes? And even the 6 minutes is subjective. You do not have to look at the watch to keep track of the time. Apparently, you sort of develop and intuition for cooking. Oh! these things always confuse me. And I always end up stuck in no-mans-land trying to figure out the best rescue strategy.

The other day I wanted to prepare dal. Now the receipe said that I had to leave the pressure cooker on full flame till it whistled and then sim down for roughly some 5 minutes. Fine! I waited for the first whistle, and then simmed down the flame. But the whistling did not stop and the receipe does not say anything about more whistling! Confused and not knowing what to do, I turned off the flame and opened the pressure only to find uncooked dal. Huh, so much for panicking. So I put the pressure back again on full flame waiting for the first whistle. I assumed that the whole procedure needed to started from start, which as I learnt later was wrong. At the end when I opened the cooker, I found my dal to be as dry as rice.

Ab main chala dal chokne. I do not know what it is called in english, so I’ll write the thing in hindi. Mom ne kaha tha ki pehle kalchul ko gas par rakhte hain, taaki paani sooch jaaye. Once again, no definite time defined. I waited a few seconds. Fir ghee daalo aur thoda der gas par garam hone do, was the next instruction to be followed. I did only to find oil sprinkle here and there. Reason: I hadn’t waited long enough for all the water to boil away.

Ab ghee karam hona tha thodi der tak. Once again no time period defined. I waited a minute and carried out the next instruction which was – ghee mein jeera daalo. And the minute I do so, the whole thing catches fire. Now I had seen my mom do this but it never caught fire ! Help Help!! I turned off the burner and then started to blow off the fire. After some efforts it subsided. I called up my mom to find that I shouldn’t have waited so long.

Ok! So I do the whole procedure again and was successful. It was now time to immerse the kalchul into dal. And the minute I do that, the whole thing sprinkled out with a hissing noise. Curse it! The kitchen was in a mess. But I neither had the patience nor the tools to clean it. So I just ignored the situation.

Yesterday, I asked the receipe of making kheer. Accordingly I bought sugar and milk from a shop nearby. Happy that I was about to eat kheer in half an hour, I set about cooking it. I took the packet of milk and started to cut it open, while also singing a I-Must-Not-Spill-The-Milk song. You must have heard the story of a man who was cutting the branch of tree he was sitting on? Well the same thing happened with me. The moment my scissor cut open the packet, I realised that I was holing the upper part which I was cutting off, and the bottom part which had the milk was unsupported hanging in the air.

Splash! I spent the next 20 minutes mopping the kitchen.

Why? Why does everything happen only to me? What the hell ever happened to beginners luck? I must read The Alchemist again.

By the way, if you are a person who likes the kitchen clean and tidy, beware before entering my kitchen.

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The Difficult Choices

Published on June 20, 2009 in Anu. View Comments

Things were so simple in the past when my father used to make all my decisions. Well, most of the time I disagreed with him, but still, atleast I wasn’t burdened with distinguishing one choice over the other. Back then, I was just a robot doing what my father wanted of me.

I remember, we were studying NP problems. Our professor introduced a function – choose(), which would choose a solution, and all we next had to do was to verify if the chosen solution is correct or not in polynomial time. Life would have so much easier if we had such a choose() method. Alas !

The joy of growing up and becoming independent comes with the pain of having to choose yourself. The responsibility of weighing one choice over the other now rests on you yourself. And my years of experience, however less might it be, has taught me that more motivated and clear your goal is, easier the task of choosing becomes.

Normally I am quite motivated. I know my goals. I have a very-long-term expectations and the path is vaguely defined. I am proud to say that usually my brain makes all the decisions, curbing whatever desires I might have had. I try to suppress my feelings and always think twice before making a decision. I try my best not to get carried away by the petty emotional attachments that I might have.

Yet, I am but a human. And just like any one else, I too am biased. At times it becomes too difficult to think clearly. The choice of path does not seem as intuitive. My actions tend to maximise local happiness, rather than the global happiness. Suddenly the control of my mind seems to waver a little, giving in to the temptations.

At these times I can actually hear my brain speaking out to myself. The brain tries to remind me how useless the temptation is, and how important the other goals are. But at these times it becomes a challenge to make the right call. What do I want ?

I have tried convincing myself that I have worked hard to be who I am today, and therefore, do deserve to enjoy the moment. And yet, this very thought reminds me that the work is not yet done. Its a long life out there, and a lot yet to be achieved. I remind myself that I am not the person I aspire to be, atleast not yet. The temptations, the fleeting happiness, the greedy solutions always tend to throw me off the track.

But come what may, I always manage to find my way back. And I think this is more significant. Though distracted, I fight hard to get back into the battle.

A similar dilemma greets me now. I have a good job with a decent salary in the city of Bangalore. An awesome team, some great new friends and a few of my best friends from college – I have everything I wanted from my first job. There is indeed a tendency for me to get carried away, to become complacent, to lose my focus.

Which is why I have written this post. This shall serve as a reminder to me that the life has just begun, that there are a lot of things to achieve. Now shall be the true test of my character, of my mental strength. I need to curb my complacency tendencies and set myself challenging targets. Yes, I shall talk to Navin and make sure that the half-yearly goals we set for me are tough to achieve.

Despite what I have written, I am confident that my mind shall win over heart, that I shall continue to be as focussed as I was just before the JEE. And whenever I shall feel my faith waiver, I shall read this post to remind myself who I truly am and what my goals are.

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Off The Field Drama

Published on June 14, 2009 in Sports. View Comments

Contrary to the expectation, sports these days seems to be more interesting off the field. The on field action has become quite predictable and boring. Off-the-field however, stories evolve as ego clash.

F1 has literally shifted from on-track racing to board room meetings and negotiations. Ferrari is already out of the championship. So they seem to have devoted all their time to countering Max Mosely. Being the head of FOTA, they are pretty much in the drivers seat making all the crucial decisions. Thus we see Ferraris’ decision being backed by FOTA. And when Williams decided to leave the ranks and sign up for next years championship, they were suspended from FOTA.

Ferrari and FIA are aiming blows after blows at each other, refusing to buckle down below the other’s ego. And Bernie finds himself amidst this confusion, knowing pretty well that despite what Mosely says Ferrari’s role in F1 cannot be undermined. If Ferrari decides to pull out, Bernie could lose a lot, unless he manages to recover the loss by filing law suitz against Ferrari.

McLaren have decided to keep mum. Their position is understandable. Just recently they were pardoned for their lie to the stewards and are compelled to remain quite. However, even their participation next year is subject to conditions.

Its so sad for Brawn and Red Bull that all the drama had to unfold this year. Being the two leading teams, any other year they would have been the main target for the journalists and would have made it to the top of the magazine covers every issue. This year though, their achievement has been overshadowed by all the altercations and threats to sue.

But F1 is not the only sport attracting interest. Elsewhere in the world of soccer, Real Madrid has gone back to its big budget spending ways, tempting Kaka and Ronaldo to joing and resurrect a dying team. Playing second fiddle to Barcelona the whole of last year, Real have splashed lots of money to ensure that big names play for it once again. Kaka and Ronaldo should definitely strengthen the mid field. They are also looking to land in David Villa, but the deal has not been confirmed yet.

Chelsea should be the most worried at this time. With Deco declaring his interst to move away from Stamford Bridge and Caravalho also wanting to rejoin with Murinho, theirs is a depleted side. Their bid for Villa was rejected and Chelsea obviously will not be able to meet Manchester United in the pursuit of Frank Ribery. Pato wants to talk to his former manager before confirming his contract at AC Milan, but Milan spokesperson has ensured that Pato stays at Milan. Ageing squad of Chelsea needs more than one fresh pair of legs to challenge ManU or Liverpool.

Sir Alex also has a daunting task on his hands. He now needs to find a winger as good as Ronaldo, which is almost next to impossible. The void left by Ronaldo shall not be easy to fill. Despite what the ManU fans feel, Ronaldo was instrumental in setting up many victories single handedly.

Cricket has become more boring than ever. I shall not even waste another line to talk about it.

The next few weeks shall be quite interesting. F1 sees teams and administration go into a war. And the transfer market couldn’t have been more interesting than it already has become. La Liga shall not be a one sided affair the coming season. I hope more big names transfer this year. And for god’s sake, somebody come to Chelsea.

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Two Awesome Weeks At Bangalore

Published on June 14, 2009 in Anu. View Comments

Things just keep getting better by day. Living alone by oneself is not easy, but the thought of your friends joining you in another 10 days keeps you going. Apart from that, life’s good at B’lore.

My first job at Fair Isaac has almost everything I ever desired. I have my own desk, with reasonable amount of privacy. I have an awesome 4gb laptop. I am part of a great group of people, who like to party and travel places together. And the team is led by a manager who himself doesn’t care much about formalities and is completely friendly with us.

Our group of campus recruits has lots of good people. I have made some nice friends. And though shortly we shall be moving away to our respective teams, I hope to keep in touch with them and spend more time together. Luckily, a few of them are on the ground floor, the same as me.

As I mentioned earlier, my friends from Kharagpur shall be joining me pretty soon. Once they are here, it will be party time and lots of fun. Also Chuski will be coming for enrollment into the management course at IIMB. Yay .. a treat’s due :D .

The best thing however is that I have not yet managed to get the gas conneciton transferred. :D … So I am having to dine out everytime. Lucky me. Cooking alone would just be devastating. I have done enough cooking in Switzerland last summer to last a lifetime.

The only downside to the whole life at work is that using windows is mandatory. :( . I am already missing ubuntu. I am missing amarok. A new version of it has been released and I cannot test it.

Also, it was boring transitioning to Java. I am still in love with the complexity of C. Moving on is turning out to be difficult.

Sadly, now I have to go and get started on my Java project. Enough procastinating already.

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