Steaming... ? || !

BTW... 'parallell lines' in the title means 'OR' operation...

My culinary skills are on the uphill ride ... Wow..! Never knew cooking could be so interesting and confusing. List of the entries in Darshan's cuisine are increasing every week. At this point of time, I can cook (and eat ...!) confidently 10 dishes [ over a period of 1 week... not in single shot ;-) ]. 'till last week, there was some or the other re-work to bring whatever was cooked, back to form... like... adding more water, cooking some more vegetables... But now... ha ha ... ho ha.. ha.. ha ... great! [ You can imagine me with a club on my shoulder, standing with one of my foot on a clobbered demon... :-\ ]

And for all the veterans reading this out... Hats off... for your perseverence... :-)

Some of enlightments over these weeks -

• Prestige (cooker) is most important tool for my experiments...
• Cooking items in microwave is lot easier and less work. This is derived from the fact that you dont see vessels' scorched when in microwave!
• Non-stick vessels are the best inventions ever made on earth.
• Amount of oil used for cooking is inversely proportional to the darkness of the scorch in the vessel. (Experts... do comment.)
• Amount of oil used for cooking is directly proportional to the amount of soap/effort used to clean the vessel. (Ditto... comment required)

I guess I can assure my mom... .... ...... Mom, if you are listening (reading ???!!!), I can ease you by a day or 2 in a week from kitchen... lemme know! And Dad.. no need to worry for what you might have to eat then...(he he ... )

**********

I and my RooPa go to shopping for grocery once a week. Hmmm... honestly, it is both boring and fun... Well... if you can call "Microsoft Works" as an oxymoron, what do you call "Shopping Grocery" as...??? Huffff... ...

Anyways... every grocery mall here resembles our METRO... sizes vary... smaller than Metro and bigger than Metro... But the logic behind their working is the same. Trolley, Basket, multiple rows, and multiple counters at the end to bill.

We check for vegetables - Aloo, Pyas are the staple ones. Over them is capsicum, cauli-flower, tomato, carrot, cabbage, spinach (Hmmm... sopsige ?? I forgot what it is called in kannada... let you know later) pack of cut mixed vegetables and pack of cut Bhendi. To get chillies, we need to go to a particular store called the Indian store (Again, I dont recall the actual full name). 4 ltrs of milk, 2 packs of curd and before forgetting, a pack of apples. (On an average of 2 apples per day, I have eaten a lot of apples here.... )

Rice of 10 pounds, Dal of 1 kg... once in a month.

This is basic food ... What about the junks and snacks ... OK.... 1 bottle of Coke - 2 ltr [ huh.... it is not beer ?? , not yet ;-) ], a large can of Orange Tropicana with lot of pulp, 2 bags of chips, 2 packets of coffee biscuits ... and somethings here and there.

With this we return home, with 2-4 really large bags...! Wah Wah! what a life...!

My heart is filled with honest appreciation for my beloved ones, .... for doing this from past 30+ years ....

So much for now... Thanks for the equations of the universe for whatever has happenned ...

Adios for now... some more soon...

As usual... lemme know your thoughts...

yours

Darshan.

...

And the way it is going on ...

Hmm...

Sometimes I never know if it is good to have a "straight forward monotonous and easy life" or a "very unpredictably interesting tough life". Currently I am having a "not-so-tough interesting monotonous life"!!

My day WAS starting off at 5 AM in the morning. Get up, have hot cup of coffee in front of the TV. Weather channel for about 5 minutes getting to know the forecast for the day. Interestingly, forecasts here work and I decide on what I wear to office based on that...

Now pretty much it is still the same, but I am getting up at 5:45 AM. Hot cup of coffee... TV... and Music channel. Keep Rice in Micro-wave and go to bath at 6:15. Come back... Do some abs... and rice is ready. Use the sambhar/curry/curd/pickle to prepare something for breakfast and for lunch. Corn-flakes/Bread are just good enough for 1 hr... Rice is the best, if I have to have lunch at 12:30 PM.
Hmmm... OK.... So, completely ready by 7:15 AM. I cannot drive here for first 3 months (junk rules... Some jerk makes a mistake and new rules come out on earth... Anyways...)
A colleague of mine lives in the same apartment (Family man). Gives me a call anytime between 7:15 and 7:25 ... and pretty punctual... so I need to make sure that I dont ask for more time, anytime.
We leave to office (approx) 20 minutes ride on the freeway,.. Aaraam 100 kmph ride on a non-snowy day. Reach office by 7:45 AM - 8:00 AM and day repeats itself at it was in Bangalore... till around 6:30 PM to 8 PM.

In the evening, look for somebody to go back ... Generally I find somebody or the other about to leave... Get a drop and reach the apartment anytime between (earliest)6:45 PM to (latest) 9 PM.

Current protocol is, if I am first to reach the apartment, I do the cooking and if my ROOPA (Short for Room Partner) reaches earlier, it is his turn. He does very good sambhar and Puliyogare. When I get boared, I just ask him to prepare one, and he does it for me... Good boy....

Go to Gym (whatever is the time) for 30-60 minutes (depending on the time I reach the apartment). Work out. come back and have dinner. Watch some serials, discovery programs, movies before sleeping. Depending on the interest, go to bed by 10 PM to 11:30 PM....

Again.. alarm rings at 5 AM in the morning, and repeats in the interval of 5 mins... until I get up at 5:45 AM .... and shut it off....

Some more about the weekend .... next...

Bon Voyage...

Finally, I have settled down and getting used to the (busy/hectic !!! ???) life here... And have been composing this mail from almost 4 days in bits and pieces

Today there was almost a foot of snow all over the place...

This is an update on the previous weekend activities in Toronto...

Saturday started off with a workout in Gym - for about 45 minutes. It is within the apartment and decent one. Hope to continue it as I am prone to back pain. I had to open my bank a/c and went to a Bank (where one person no prizes for guessing, South Asian !) received us. Surprisingly this bank gives us only 10 free transactions per month. Beyond this count costs us CAD 1 per transaction. (Citibank and ICICI are the best !).

After this been to eye checkup. Everybody in the Lab here need to wear protective eye glasses. Those are without prescription (no power). Hence intelligent guys like me need to get prescribed glasses with protective covering at either sides.

In the evening, we did lot of shopping. There is a place called Square One which is like Jayanagar shopping complex. You also have Wal-Mart here. Bindaas shopping. Too many things and Too less money. Got a Jacket for the winter here. It is two layered and inner layer can be removed, basically took it with the intention of reusing it in home town. If I had not taken two layered one, I just had to wear it only by sitting inside the freezer!

Sunday started off early. Need to go to skiing. Unfortunately, temperature is -16 deg C. But who can stop the bunch of enthusiastic guys. 5 of us left the apartment at around 8:30 AM to Moonstone. This place is more towards north and colder. Our car (it was a SUV, Grand Jeep Cherokey - A 4X4) had a thermometer inside. As and when we approached Moonstone, temperature started to fall to -25 deg C. I was warned and had thermal wear. We reached the place at around 11 PM and at least I could see 200 cars in that place. We took a discover program, that involves a small training class for skiing. Went to have breakfast - as usual for a pulichar like me - French fries was safe bet.

Collected our gear - Skiing boots, skis, and Poles. Training started at 1 PM. It was horribly cold. Training Started of smooth and after teaching us to stop and turn, we were taken to practice spot. I fell, fell and fell again. In the process, I sprained my knee. Forgetting it, went up in a rope way to the top of the hill and started skiing and falling. I did have company for the falls (we were 5) Full fun and full timepass. Attached are the snaps. How come only so many snaps. With the temperature running at -25 deg C, batteries would not work, temperature will stop any chemical reaction in the cells.

I went up the hill using the rope way for about 6 times. 5th and 6th were successful. I could ski without falling and came down safe. As we came in with all our gear, I realized that I have lost sensation of my face, hands and foot. Went to the wash room, used the heater there to get some sense back. My little finger is still numb!

Planning to go to CN tower (tallest in the world) this weekend (provided I am not in office).
Shall update you all with the snaps.


Chalo all,
Send me your thoughts,
Darshan.