A potential aunt in US for my children when I have some....

This person is in denial. She loves the states and its only a matter of time. I pray to the god of all things petty that she realizes it soon.

:D

When is a Starbucks coffee worth its price?

Only when you get something extra.

And the something extra for me is:
* Getting to read atleast 10 pages from a book you like at Starbucks in a Barnes & Nobles.
* Having a good conversation with somebody. From WanderStruck's post, those people at Coffee Day do not know what they are selling.

Starbucks/Baristas/Any other coffee shop dont just sell coffee. We dont go to those shops to just drink good quality expensive coffee. People go there for a little something extra. The appeal and ambience. Some of us go there to make a lifestyle statement. Starbucks knows this well and they endorse it. The smart people at Coffee Day knows this as well but have failed to pass it on to their staff! ??

Those who do not know this should get their staff trained at Indian Coffee House who had/have a reputation for letting the Indian Intelligentsia stay and discuss for hours over a few cups of coffee shared among them. People went there to hang out so that they could fit the intellectual chappal.

Spicy Ground Buffalo Masala

I like cooking but not so much to spend hours in the kitchen. I love what my fellow Indians refer to as 'bland' american food, so food was always a non issue. But once in a while I cook food that tastes Indian, especially when you need to feel the spice in your tongue to shake off that alcohol induced numbness. Thats when I make the stuff.
The recipe follows:

I highly reccommend a shot of Tequila or Vodka when you start with the process.I also endorse organic produce if you can get/afford it(I am talking about the ingredients mentioned below).

Get 1 big ass white onion or 2 small ones and chop/mince/grind or whatever you wanna do to increase the oil to onion contact ratio.

Get a tomato.Make sure that its smaller than the onion, thats the key. If you dont like tomatos you can use a small spoonful of ketchup. Dice it.

Green Chillies, the more the better.

Green Peas. A small can.

Garam Masala or Meat Masala or Chicken Masala or any of those packets with the word 'Masala' in it.

A buffalo. Not the Indian one that spends its life frolicking in mud,water and sun but the great almost extinct and back American bison , commonly referred in the US as buffalo. Kill it, skin it and grind the meat. In case you cant find one you can use a cow or a turkey. No, you can not use goats as they are sacred. Also remember the popular urban saying 'Go fuck a goat..' from the movie 40 year old virgin . Its immoral to kill something that you fuck. Use a pound or two for this recipe.

Now below are the four optional ingredients that add to the flavor but if you dont have them, just increase the chilly content to compensate.

Ginger and garlic.(I count them as one)

Curry leaves.

Mustard/fenugreek/cumin seeds. (This one too)

fresh cilantro.

Ok. I use the pressure cooker but if you dont have one, use a deep pan with a lid. Pour some oil into the skillet/cooker/pan. Use the indian heat measuring technique to find out if the oil is hot. No seriously, put some mustard/fenugreek seeds/cumin seeds in the oil. When you hear a few bursts, put a spoonful of whatever masala powder you have.I like to burn the masala to compensate for something, I dont quite remember what. slide the onion in. Saute.

You should pour another shot for you and your friend at this crucial juncture. Something that will clear up your nose. Its very important for you to get the flavor right. Now, slide in the chillies and curry leaves, after a few minutes, some ginger and garllic in what ever form you have it followed by the the tomato.

saute.Add some more masala powder.

Add some water/beer to loosen the mix. and when its hot and ready to accept the buffalo add the buffalo.

Close the cooker for 8 mins. If you are using the pan, you are old school.

Open the cooker and add peas. Cook for another few minutes.

Alright, when you know its done (buffalo meat cooks fast), garnish with cilantro and eat. A beer would be nice with some bread /rice.

Do not forget to add salt. I have made this mistake many times.

If you spend more than 15-20 mins making this, you are doing it wrong.

If any buffalos find the recipe offensive I'll consider removing it.

Quaked

I have started believing that we use too much concrete in our buildings after seeing the earthquake related devastation in Pakistan and India. We need to use more wood and other light weight environment friendly material.
I wonder if the ice melting away at the poles and the earthquake and the hurricance is spun off the same thread!? No, i dont believe the world is coming to an end but I am disturbed by the lack of a unified thought process and follow through. I am also surprised that all this does not jolt me into a proactive state. I dont think figuring out that most of our 'problems' are petty is enough.

I am listening to the 'Skating on thin ice' by pink floyd..

If you should go skating
On the thin ice of modern life
Dragging behind you the silent reproach
Of a million tear-stained eyes
Don't be surprised when a crack in the ice
Appears under your feet.
You slip out of your depth and out of your mind
With your fear flowing out behind you
As you claw the thin ice

Who and what are these guys singing about?

Kerala:Elephant

Elephant
Originally uploaded by harisankar.

Flickr again

Kerala: Parboiled Rice

Rice Bowl
Originally uploaded by shivan.

Paddy fields ,flicked from flickr

Kerala : Chai

country side
Originally uploaded by reluktantwarrior.

Tea estate, lifted off flickr.

Uniqueness of Kerala

Malayalees celebrate Onam today. Onam is described as a harvest festival and people of all faith partake in it. Onam is actually much more than a harvest festival, it is a festival to reminisce the good times under a just ruler(MahaBali) and an utopia that was ours, it is a celebration of 'the return of the king' and is probably the only festival in India that glorifies a 'demon' king. That is the kind of stuff that sets malayaless apart from the rest of India. Every other Indian festival known to me is a celebration of a God's birthday or of a demon being slain by one of our god(esse)s!

This folk song says it all:

When Maveli ruled the land
Everyone was equal
Happily they lived
Danger befell none
There was no falsehood, or fraud
And no untruth

Riding the White Horse

I went WhiteWaterRafting yesterday! White Horse is a class III rapid at the end of my river trail where Shenandoah and Potomac meet. Anybody who seeks fun and adventure should definitely try white water rafting and if possible class III and above(with an experienced guide). Our 'trip' down the river was organized by the RiverAndTrailOutfitters and I should say that it was extremely well organized. Our guide was a guy named Gabrielle who sells surfboards on e-bay and aspires to join the marines even though he doesn't really believe in war! I have noticed that most of the good guides are good story-tellers and this guy was excellent at it. He'd unravel the american history on the river and occasionally feed us with bits of local rumors.To top that, he was good at handling the raft too!

My next destination for white water rafting is the Gauley river in West Virginia where I can do a class V rapid ;)

The New York Times Reader V.1

They posted the widget. 700+ downloads! That shows how strong The New York Times Brand is and how valuable their news is. You can see it here

http://www.widgetgallery.com/view.php?widget=37126

Penguins and Parenthood

I watched the movie:March of the Penguins recently. A well made documentary that I highly recommend. At the end of the movie, you have a new respect for the emperor penguin species and the national geographic team. The movie also makes you think and ask questions like why we (all the living beings in this planet) go to any extreme extent to ensure survival of our species. My friend Bipin also ponders over such existential /philosophical questions here!

Bipin is a recent dad and I believe that watching this particular movie may stop him from asking those questions. :)
As for me, I can only say that penguin sex must be quite awesome to go over all that trouble and sacrifice.
:D
viva la penguins and whatever that means.

An august month

The month of August in 2005 has been very eventful.

1. I aquired a new toy called Inspiron 6000d, a dell laptop with a wide ultrasharp screen, 1.86Ghz Centrino M, 512MB DDR, 12bMB dedicated graphics card,wireless b/g, bluetooth, a 60 GB 7200RPM hard disk and a 8X DVD +-RW. Now all I need to do is to decide which OS (s) to run on it.



2. I met with a few of my engineering school friends (Lt.AmrithRaj ,great grand son of Chathu kutty memon who killed tigers in Wynad by hurling stones at them and Raj Telukuntla who was the captain of MIT,Manipal swimming team(I didnt know that we had a team until he told me)) and went on a 3 day canoeing/kayaking trip on the Delavare river. We rented our boats from here and started on a saturday morning. The 34 mile river trail starts from Milford beach access and ends at the Delaware Water Gap(Kittatiny visitor center).The plan was to cover the distance in 2.5 days and then if we have some steam left in us at the end of the trip, cross the road from the Kittatiny visitor center to the Dunfield Creek Parking lot and follow the the Appalachian Trail up the mountain to Sunfish pond! We had 2 glorious days of sun and shade (and of course the nights were cool too except for the bear that circled our campsite) and on the third day, 20 minutes before reaching our destination, it started raining heavily. We were drenched,hungry and tired by the time we loaded all our stuff into the car and so decided to skip the hike. The people we met on the river were quite friendly and on Monday we literally had the whole river to ourselves.The water was so clear that we could see the fish, river bed and occassionally a beer can resting down there. There were a few rapids (all level 1) that provided some thrill, especially when we'd lose control of the canoe while blaming each other for not paddling right. By the end of the first day we got the hang of it.










I have wondered why but being closer to nature always makes me feel good. And after these kind of trips, I feel alive and rejuvenated. You end up having a better appreciation for life, yours and of other living beings. When you eat a burger, you realize that the piece of meat ,when alive in a primitive setting, could have made you break a sweat hunting it down. The fast food restaurants of our age do a good job of desensitizing us!



3. I have been playing with Konfabulator and created a New York Times news reader. I will post the link to it as soon as its uploaded.

4. On the marriage front, I decided that the girl I was talking to was not the right person or vice-versa and the girl I was interested in decided that I was not the right person. Sweet irony of life :)


Note: I made up the bear circling the camp story for the effect.But, we indeed were in bear country and we had to haul up the food on a tree every night. I am sure there was a bear near our camp but it most probably was in my mind.

SublimePattern welcomes Skepsi

My dear friend BipinNambiar (there is no other Bipin Nambiar topping google's search as of now)has started blogging. He has quite an interesting and whacky take on everything under and above the sun. You can read his posts here.

Capitalist's dilemma!

I have 100 dollars to spend. I can spend it buying stuff that fancies me and thus contribute to the American and in turn the world economy OR I can donate that money to an organization that channel it to the poor. Which is better? Which is noble-r? Which is more beneficial to the society?

Premise:
I do not know if the company that I buy the product passes on a fair share to its employees and is socially conscientious. I also do not know if the organization, that I contribute to, makes use of its funds in a way that benefits the society in the long run!
Or, looking from the other side, let us assume that they both do a good job with the money they get.

Now, Imagine that you have a million dollars at your disposal! What will you choose to do?

Smartness?

While chatting with a friend today, this thought crossed my mind:
Given that this world that we live in is so ephemeral, isnt a happy mediocre guy smarter than an intelligent person leading a tortured life?

Live Richly! (spend the money on me)

Scenes of two kids playing super-heroes. Text on screen : "Nobody grew up wanting to be a money man .. There is more to life than money. Live Richly!".

This is what the Citi Bank/Group's new TV commercial says. How much more ironic can life get? Whoever came up with that advertisement must think that consumers are idiots. At least the guy at Citi who approved the ad is one.

Dave Winer

Happy Birthday Dave , The father of RSS and thanks for RSS,OPML,XML-RPC,.....

Busted!

When I recently got arrested in Florida for speeding in my Porsche!!

Courtesy: NickD of Florida State Police Dept. :))

Bottle & Goat Skull by Picasso

Saturday, me and Abe(visiting from D.C) decided to spent the day in Manhattan.We had lunch at Minado.They serve the best japanese sea food buffet in Manhattan. Never ending supply of fresh sushi and udon!

Rest of the afternoon, we spent looking at some awesome art and design work at MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art and saw Picasso's work for the first time among other great artists'.



I also realized that any thing looks good on a huge white wall. For the record,
that is not an attempt to disrespect anybody.

Then we walked to the Times Square and had coffee and cheescake at Roxy's delicattessen.The service was lousy.

Later in the evening we went to a club called GLO in New Brunswick with

a few of our friends. Abe and I are the last of the remaining
bachelors from our batch in college and we
discussed about the urgency in finding the right girl. I
can't rule out the possibility of finding a girl first and making her
right :)

Why does death attract a crowd?

Pope is dead. Every TV channel is broadcasting his funeral. I have no interest in seeing his funeral whatsoever and I runaway when I bump into one while channel surfing.
What does fascinate me is the crowd in Vatican for his funeral trying to pay last respects.What does it mean 'pay last respects'? The man is dead, he doesn't care and there are no relatives around to console! So then why do these people go? My only guess is that people like to huddle. They like to gather and lose their individuality and in turn unwind and then go home physically tired with a sense of accomplishment. Death is an excuse, so are festivals /carnivals/fairs. Any comments?

Return of PB, PB.NET

Today, I went for the PowerBuilder user group meeting in Rockaway,NJ.
John's presentation about their DataWindow control for the .Net
platform was beautiful. Also, their plans to 'invade' the .Net
platform with their version was outlined. DataWindow.Net with all its
feature richness impressed me for one who doesn't use PB for anything
but accessing the Oracle Database at work.I use infragistics at work
and hate it.If there is one 'third party control' that is the nemesis
of Infragistics, it is DataWindow.Net. The question I had but did not
ask was how long before Borg like Microsoft assimilates it. The
evangelist's enthusiasm and fierceness for his technology reaffirmed
my belief in religion of simplicity and user friendliness. I dont know
the industry well enough to predict if PB will live,die or
re-incarnate but today I have become a little wiser and know that
Microsoft has competition in many of the technologies its working on.

Trivia:
1. I was the youngest in the crowd and I am 31 and not a PB developer.
2. Pizza was not so good.
3. If PB wants to survive they need to attract younger crowd, guys who
think anything other than hacking is a distraction.
4. I won the DataWindow.Net 1.0 (Windows) giveaway!! Thank You PowerSoft/Sybase

Visted states

On a dull friday morning, inspired by one of the blogs I read , Here
is a list of states that I've visited in the U.S (Courtesy:
www.world66.com ):

Buying a portable MP3/WMA Player

I bought a flash memory - mp3/wma/ogg - music player few weeks ago. I looked at different models and finally decided on Yepp by Samsung. I am quite happy with the product. In the process of making the purchase, I also considered iPod Shuffle. iPod shuffle stands for everything not Apple. Its old wine in an old bottle with a new shiny label trying to sell itself on the brand image of its predecessor. There is no display, no radio,and the other cool features that Samsung's Yepp or iRiver or Creative or SanDisk Has. Shuffle qualifies only as a fool's ostentatious aquisition or a ad gullible person's trap!

6 shades of brown and what about corporate ethics?

Today, I went to the premier Indian matrimonial site shaadi.com to create a profile as I have decided to enter the 'market'. In the process of filling up the form, I see a very interesting required field* - choose your complexion ! The choices follow : very fair, fair, wheatish, wheatish medium, wheatish brown, dark. 6 variations of the brown band. How much more differentiating and segragating can we get? I have heard my friends in the U.S talk about racism. What exactly is that shaadi.com is trying to get out of us? I am sure that they claim that they are only the means to promote a social evil prevalent in India and hence not responsible. We have heard similar arguments from cigarrette companies but they dont take away our will to buy or not to smoke. Shaadi.com does so by not providing us an option to say - I dont want to disclose my color, neither do I care about my mate's color. What more am I trying to say? I am trying to reflect on our race's inability to break away from a pattern even after we know how we think and that we think wrong.

'' unit tests

How long will it take for all the unit tests to be part of the framework? Why not introduce a standard set of tests as a part of the development environment!

dynamic getters and setters?

I wonder if it is possible to expose properties of a class written in any .net compliant language based on certain conditions. For example, expose the count property of a class only if an instance exists or expose the getter only if the value has been set. I have to research.

Hiking on trail 2005

I feel that year 2005 will be eventful from how it kicked off. I did not get drunk. I met with 2 of my best friends and spent a couple of days with them hiking through the Conashaugh loop near Milford,PA and a part of the Appalachian trail (The Sunfish pond Trail) at the Delaware Water Gap. Of course, we discussed world politics, business, software,French foreign policy, useless people who waste time discussing French/US foreign policy. We also cracked old jokes from movies/stand up comedies we'd watched while growing up and laughed. Best of all, this trip taught me the value of being focused and the importance of excelling in my chosen field. I will log more about my trip in a few days and also put up some fotos and maybe even a video! I am back!