Culinary Expertise

I started cooking during my first job at Pune. The space of learning has been fast. Frankly I am amazed by my space of learning new things and excelling, even something as remote as cooking. The learning has come in various stages, which I will try to describe over here: The first day => Expertise in pulses => Daal-Chawal-Bhurji => Egg Curry => Chicken => Prawn
The start was not at all good, in fact horrific. It was a saturday night in Pune, and finally I decided to cook myself. A huge menu: Boiled Rice, Daal & Omlette. Rice & Omlette was easy, but I had a horrid time in boiling the daal. I had no idea in the proportion of water that was to be mixed. Finally after four hours I got the daal half boiled. Did not have the patience for four hours more. So I consumed whatever was done. Thank God, the next day was a Sunday as I was confined to the four walls of my room and another smaller room for the reasons I think you can guess.
As I have always said Morning does not show the day: Slowly I developed by own way of cooking daal, that became a huge hit among my friends. Then came the IIMC days when I thought I had lost my skills due to lack of practice. I was proved so when in London I made a sad start in cooking. But again slowly I improved and during that time I added the Bhurji to the list of my expert menu.
Now here in Kuala Lumpur, the menu list has become long. First I experimented with Chicken!! And the very first time it was a huge hit. Egg curry was never a problem. I tried Gobi masala as well. And finally yesterday I ended up cooking prawns. It was a huge success. Right mix of masalas, proper sequence can get any food you are cooking taste good.
Somehow I feel whatever I cook tastes the same. This is because the sequence of masalas is always the same. I think I should experiment a little next time. So next time anyone of you my friends planning to visit me, let me know in advance so that I can prepare the choicest of meals for you. Non vegetarians are preferred though!!

A day with parasites

Yesterday in the afternoon of diwali we decided to go for our second trekking expedition into the Templar park water fall. After the fun we had in our first at the Kuntching forest and water fall (very near to the second) we had expected another great day of expedition. There were practically three differences in this trip.
1) There were not many people around: We did not care, the risk takers we are.
2) This place was less rocky/hilly, more damp, swampy and at places there was practically no pathway: We felt more excited, making our way underneath fallen trees, through the slippery stream and bushes
3) I had forgotten to wear sports shoes and was on my Woodlands: I don't know why the company named its shoes woodlands. While how much good these shoes are, they are not meant for trekking. In fact the soles of the shoes are so slippery that it gets difficult walking on a wet floor. Leave aside the swampy or the slippery rocks on the stream.
As always my enthusiasm with these activities took me to the front of the group. However a failed tarzan like stance when I tried to do some rope climbing on a hanging bamboo tree got me surprised, as those were dead trees and it could not take my weight and the result I fell heavily down and those trees fell heavily on me. That hurt and that hurt my new Reebok Tee more :(. Then after innumerable number of falls on the ground due to my heavy slippery shoes got my enthusiasm somewhat down. At this point we reached some short of a dead end on the stream as there was no "road" beyond that and we had to get into the stream completely to cross the point and make our way ahead through the bushes and swamp. I was a little down at that point and thought of going back to the point where there were at least a few people around. But you know enthusiasm is contagious as one of my friend was already into water. It soon got to me and I found myself crossing the stream.
After that we were climbing steep, the region was swampy. I could sense irritation in my body, but we still proceeded some 800 meters or so. Soon we reached a point which was completely a dead end. From there on the bushes give way to huge trees, and swamp. There was no place to move on. We could sense it might rain soon. Hence we decided to go back. It was at this moment I saw the first parasite, a leech, climbing up my jeans. Frankly I did not know it was a leech. I grabbed it and threw it into the water. In the return journey we decided to follow the stream, in fact wade through it. Forgetting the stream might take a course inhuman enough. We got into the water, but I could sense the irritation in my legs had increased. I removed my shoes and found innumerable number of leeches struck into my legs, filled with blood. I got freaked. I got mad. I started pulling them out. It was real difficult. And the moment I would pull one out it would get struck in my fingers. It was like "Ewwwwww". But hey... I could see there were more leeches around, more than I could imagine. My fellow adventurous souls got freaked out as well. There were leeches on them. There were hundreds of leeches rushing on to us in a twirling motion, fast. And the species was clever as well. They did not attack us directly. They were getting into our shoes, knowing we cannot go barefoot. It was futile trying to get rid of the ones struck into our body standing at the point as before we could remove one there would be 10 more getting in. We decided to "run" and leave that place as fast as we could. But by this time, we had lost the trail we had followed while we came. The emotions beyond this point is hard to replicate through blog. Every moment we tried to stop, to find our way, I could see those creepy creatures on the swamp. But yes we finally could find our way out for otherwise I wold not have been writing this blog. The experience was horrifying and I can't imagine getting so freaked out by such small creatures. How much I despise these parasites and other parasites living in this world?
I would like to end the blog with three comments (on request) which after those freaky hours while removing the ones struck into the body I made:
1) Can there be an intelligent leech who would secretly be resting inside my shoe, go home and drink blood out of our body every day. We actually found one such leech inside my shoe after the whole episode. Can there be one more??
2) Next time I visit that place I would carry a bagful of salt, and going to carpet bomb these parasites out of this world.
3) One leech is still un-accounted for and I fear it is somewhere inside my home.

I am so so freaked out!!!!

Distance & Teleporting

Have you ever felt that many of the problems that we face everyday, is a product of the physical distance of where we want to go and where we are. The fact that few days back I was so nostalgic and the consequent emotional atyachar was just because of my physical distance from India. Just think of the innumerable number of problems that could be solved if physical distance could be brought closer to the virtual world. Just a small example: When I first arrived KL there wasn't any direct flight between kolkata and kuala lumpur. And that very fact bugged me a lot. If I am to go home, two days are lost just on traveling (in fact waiting in one of the stupid transits). And then suddenly Air Asia announces its new direct flight between KL & KOL, and wow (forget for the time being that it is a low cost carrier which is even better) my distance from home suddenly reduced so much. Information Technology: The mobiles, the Internet actually brings the physical distance closer to the virtual distance.(In Newtonian physics virtual distance is 0). In my school days when letters were my only way of communication with home, I used to wait weeks for a letter from home or some near one. Home seemed so far away even being only 300 kms away from home.
The world takes time before going virtual. In the days of letters or even prior to that when information was sent through a guy on a horseback. Information used to be physical. It took 2000 or so years until information completely became virtual ie physical distance between the receiver and sender became unimportant. We can actually say physical distance for information became virtual ie 0.
Similarly when the subject of carry is not information but the person himself, it occured to me can the same thing be achieved. There would be certain steps. First of all air travel speed would increase. Just a simple breakthrough that if each of the flights become supersonic at affordable cost. Distance reduces by half. Then if flights become hypersonic I can actually go home after office, again, given the fact it is affordable. Perhaps days are not far when such travels would be possible. Six generations down the line I am pretty sure a person like me would have breakfast at Kolkata go to office at London, and come back home for dinner in a hypersonic BMW. Even then things are nowhere near virtual.
So what might be a possible solution, human beings would need to be sent like information. Visualize this: year 4009. You want to travel to London. You take your mobile, type in a number. The mobile converts you into a digital signal encoded and send you to London, where you are decoded back to your self. Sounds simple. This is what I call teleporting. Satyajit Ray showed this in his movie. Life would be so simple, at least the emotional problems of a human would be so much solved. But will this be actually possible?
The day human beings achieve this, man would no longer be mortal. The simple fact that a human being can be converted digitally means, any disease can be treated just by the flip of a few binary digits. For a better explanation: Every human being would have a digital coding. Now when a disease occurs it means on the digital side some of the codes have encountered errors. So it is just a matter of time to digitize the man, identify those codes and flip them. I understand this cannot be the case, for every man has to die. However the closer we can get to this the better our life would be.

When Narcissism is good

I ran long after a long time. Last saturday we had the internal run for "Frost the trail", the CSR initiative of our company, a run through the nature for 8.1 km. It was a kind of a dry run for the final event that is going to happen next week, where runners from different parts of Kuala Lumpur would be joining us. However the important question is how can somehow be happy running such a long distance through extreme terrains, ending up with cramped legs, not being able to walk properly for two consecutive days??
This is the question I am trying to answer connecting with the happiness function that I built. The body aches, pains but still I am so happy. (Can I also connect it to the response function to pain that I built, all my critics what do you think??). While I try to find the answer let me give you a complete description of the proceedings. The 8.1 km trail was at the forest reserve of Kuala Lumpur. We had to run past lakes, run uphill: really up at times the angle of climb could be as high as 40 degrees, run through forest. It was fun. To add to that it was raining and the whole package was just awesome. I did not have much time appreciating the nature as I was running fast. I clocked 49 mins and was the first to finish the race. And after the race we had fun cycling, playing football and taking snaps. It was fun all the way. Now what is the factor that made me feel so good. The Narcissist in me makes me think the importance that I got being the first placed runner has made me happy. Then there were the external variables. It is true it is pure narcissism. I feel happy being the best in everything I do. Frankly I love changing the world around me, making it the best. I hate being second, I hate being on the bench being the substitute. And that is why, I thrive so much to perfect myself in whatever I do, and when I get results of those perfections, I am happy.
Right now, I am having difficulty in walking. Thinking about that, I have to run another 8.1 km this coming sunday my legs start aching more. But I love it. During my school days this competitive spirit was always in me. I was nowhere near a good sportsmen compared to the other guys over there. I could never run 100 m in 12 secs, 5 km in 20 mins. But I always gave my heart out, improved over the years and finally I was second in my hostel. (The first was way too good). Then there was the obstacle course. We needed to jump over a 10 ft wall. I could never achieve the feat until the last day I tried it. It was the inter hall competitions and no one from my hostel could do that. Someone made of fun of that fact. I tried for one hour continuously before the event and finally I managed to do it and in the next one hour I perfected it. Though during the main event I failed, I felt happy that I could prove a point. Sometimes I feel whatever little I have achieved in my life or something which fuels me to achieve more has got a lot to do with the Narcissism, the ego, the jealousy in me. So do you think these attributes are good???