!!!!!!

Chop 1/2 a cabbage into fine pieces.Put it in a bowl.Chop 2-4 green chillies and add it to the cabbage.Add 1 tsp turmeric powder, Salt and 1 tsp chilli powder and mix well with the hand . Allow it to set.
Boil 1 cup of Chana Dhaal. Use a pressure cooker if available. Mash it.
Chop 1 medium onion and 1 medium tomato.
Add some oil and splutter cumin seeds. Add onion fry for around 2-4 minutes. Add tomato fry it for a minute or two. Add the cabbage. Fry it for around 5 minutes. Then add the mashed dhaal.Let it cook for 3-4 minutes. Now take the mixture and put it in a pressure cooker for one whistle.
If pressure cooker is not available, add little water and allow it to cook. Make sure that the cabbage is cooked. dont add too much water also. Once it cabbage is done add 3/4 cup of shredded coconut and cook for a couple of minutes. Eat with rice/chappathi/naan.

The new face of comedy

Edgar winter,Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have done it again. If you thought shaun of the dead could not be bettered watch Hot Fuzz.An absolutely brilliant and stunningly intelligent comedy, superbly original script, brilliant acting, classy dialogues and some stunning action sequences. Hats of to you guys for delivering one of the movies of the year.

A neat, easy and healthy recipe: Avial

Boil 2 cups of vegetables: I used carrot,peas,beans. You can use potato/chena kai( I dont know the english name for this), raw plantain also.
Grind coconut,yoghurt,chilli into a thick paste( note the consistency, it has to be thick).Add some salt.
Reduce the heat when almost all the water has evaporated.Add the grinded paste.And mix well.Heat the mixture on sim for ar0und 3 minutes. Add salt.The final mix should not be watert it shud be a thick paste.So adjust water/yoghurt quantity according to that.

The heat some oil, splutter mustards,cumin seeds and curry leaves.Add it to the mix.Serve with rice.

My Futon Day

Saturday:April 7th 2007. A particularly cold weekend in Austin.Temperature was in the 30s.It was drizzling the whole day.I decided to stay in.Both my roommates were going out, one to San Antonio, the other to San Marcos. I had the house to myself.
All the matches I wanted to see on Saturday were coming on FSC.Yeeeaaah.Woke up at 8. Started watching the chelsea spurs game
on my laptop sleeping on my bed.Chelsea won 1-0.Exactly the result I wanted.Next Liverpool reading game.Liverpool won 2-1.Perfect.Exactly the result I wanted.Around the same time Arsenal Westham match was going on.West Ham won the game.Perfect result again.Then around 10:30 I moved into the living room and started watching the Manu Portsmouth match on TV.I was lying on the futon,covered with my comforter watching a high class attacking soccer match.Cud this day get any better.Yes it could, Portsmouth won the match which was as u guessed,exactly the result I wanted.

Match ended around 1.Slept in my futon for around an hour.I then walked to my laptop in my bedroom.responded to a couple of emails and then took some research papers/Vonnegut's breakfast of champions and climbed back into my futon.When I climbed back in m futon,I remembered where I had saved one dissertation which one my labmates might find useful for a presentation.But during that thought process, I had comfortably settled into the futon and i was unwilling to climb out and respond.I was anyway planning to have a haircut in an hour.I will go to my bedroom enroute and then respond to that email.
So comfortable settled in my futon, I did light research work and alternated it with breakfast of champions.Around 2:45 I got up again, responded to that email with the location of the dissertation, walked to Tgf to have a haircut.I went and wrote my name on the list.Crap, there were 5 people ahead of me who had booked a hair cut slot. Then one of the barbers walked up to me and said that I am next.I asked him, but i was the last name.Apparently 3 people who had booked did not show up and other 2 had requested special stylists.Perfect.Had a haircut.Went to Its a grind, celebrated with a white choco moca and then walked back. Now the time was 3:30.I had a bath and by 4 I was back in ,you guessed right, on the futon. I was lying on the futon.Ate lunch doing so.Then alternated between sleeping,reading BOC and some research stuff.

Around 6 I decided to watch a movie.I had finished BOC by then.Luckily i had the two dvds within hands reach and I could insert the DVD into the DVD player without getting out of my Futon.I watched Internal Affairs 2. Watched that while preparing my prob stats review session lecture.Then around 8 got out of the futon, responded to some mails went to quiznos,bought dinner and got back into my futon by 8:30.Enroute to my futon,I picked up "A long way gone" by Ishmael Beah which was in my bedroom.Ate dinner sitting on my futon,watched internal affairs 3 and did some light research work.By light research work i mean reading papers in bursts, with an average rate of 4 paragraphs an hour and some random thinking.After finishing Infernal Affairs 3, I came with some examples for my prob stats class. Around 11 I started reading A long way gone.Finished 2 chapters and then began contemplating about war while watching frasier.Basically in the first 2 chapters this is what happens. A 10 year old kid in sierra leone.Him and his friends do the things normal children their age do.PLay, Listen to music.they get infatuated with rap and decide to walk to a nearby town to participate in a talent search competition.The two ins 16 miles away.They decide to walk the previous day.Have a stop at their grandma's village.Then reach the town by night time.Stay at their friends place.Next day in the morning,their friend comes running back from school his face ashen.His message, school is closed,rebels have attached his grandma's and parents village and wiped them out.he then describes how he walks back to grandma's village sees corpses everywhere, people wailing walks back to town.This is where I stopped. I then started contemplating,I have read a lot of war stories, watched a lot of war movies, why has this affected me. reason number 1:this book is a true story of a 10 year old kid whose life gets turned upside down within a matter of days.reason number 2: the language used is brilliant, simple, straightforward english.It is the exact language which i have seen my labmates use to describe their weekends. No dramatization, nothing. Ishmael describes it in as normal a way as possible. and thats what affected me the most.

I then start thinking about a conversation I had with my dad when I was in my seventh grade.He started explaining to me what a bad thing war is. He explained to me imagine we are living in a city in a war zone.Imagine the tension whenever there is an air raid.He went on to explain how the economy wud be affected.All shops would close down.Businesses would close down.People would become unemployed.People would move out of the place and maybe live in refugee camps.things we took for granted coffee at a nearby coffeeeshop, would no longer be available.I was playing this conversation through my head. It was 12:30 and i remembered two quotes by hemingway on war:

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.

They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.

with that in mind I decided to get out of my futon, walked to my bedroom and went to sleep.

Weird ..huh

A conversation at the coffee shop at 7 in the morning

Me: I will have a bagel
Coffee Shop girl: What type do you want
Me( Still drowsy making a random noises and avoiding prepositions since i was half asleep and defo not in the mood for making hard decisions which is gonna affect my life):hmmmmmmmmmm.. random bagel
Coffee Shop girl:I dont think we have that.We have wheat, spinach,raisin .
Me:Wheat please.

Never knew random was not a commonly used term. Always wondered how much my language got affected after being not in touch with the "outside" world for a long time. I am now trying my level best to avoid using engineering terms in normal language. To be fair to me, Iw as mumbling at that time and I think she did not hear random. I think she just heard a random sound begining with r which did not sound like any type of bagel they carried. Reminded me of an incident which happened in my senior year.

Friend's girlfriend who had just cut her hair short and had a makeover
ME: Hey, You have changed your font
She: huh..what
Me: err..font...u know appearance
She:thats geeky and disgustingly baad
Both of Us:hehehehehehe

On a more geeky note, did u note that the owner of slashdot and the moderator of their forums proposed to his girlfriend on feb 14th by posting a message in the slashdot forums and setting up a poll " Will you marry me?"and she accepted with "Yes.Dork. You made me cry. :)"

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,50428,00.html

I'm strong to the finich, coz I eats my spinach!!!

I was watching a couple of popeye cartoons when I decided that I needed to make some spinach dish this time. The obvious choice was Palak Paneer( Spinach and Cottage Cheese Curry).I got an excellent and easy to make recipe from Sourabh Sinha's Website:
http://members.tripod.com/~SourabhSinha/food.html#PALAKPANEER
I followed the same process but I modified the amount of each ingredient because :(i) I was looking to cook 6-7 servings (ii) The main content of the gravy is the spinach which has a bland taste and if you dont add enought spices, the taste of spinach overpowers the taste of the spices.

Cut Paneer(cottage cheese - get it at your local India store) into cubes and fry them in oil. You can use Tofu as a replacement.But If you are using Tofu make sure you increase the spiciness in the gravy as it can get a bit too bland. For Paneer- use the entire block which is the standard size sold at India stores here. Tofu- I would recommend medium hard ones and use around 1.5-2 packets.

Boil spinach, Garlic, Ginger,Tomatos. I used 4-5 flakes of Garlic, 1 inch of ginger( chopped fine), 2 reasonably big tomatoes( chopped fine), 5-6 green chillies(chopped fine and slight along the middle sold at HEB - lies below the jalapeno aisle) and 2 small rectangular packets of frozen spinach sold at HEB.I waited till the frozen spinach thawed, looked at the water content and then added water accordingly( around 1/2- 1 cup).I boiled it for around 10 minutes.I then allowed the mixture to cool and blended it.

I then chopped two reasonably big onions into fine pieces and fried them in oil until they turned transclucent and slightly brown( for about 5- 7 minutes).Then reduced the heat to low and added the following spices:

2.5 teaspoon chilli powder
1 tsp cumin powder
3 tsp coriander powder
1/2 tsp turmeric
(recommend adding 1/2 tsp garam masala and 1/2 tsp of powdered pepper if your using tofu)
Fried the mixture on low heat for about a minute.Then increased the heat fried it for about 15-20 seconds.Be very careful here, the spices should not get burnt.If your feeling unfortable remove the vessel from the stove, add the spices mix well and put it back.
Now add the blended mixture, Fried Paneer and One cup of water , salt to taste( around 1 one tablespoon ) and bring the mixture to boil.
Goes well with rice, and very well with bread/tortilla/parathas.

goan vegetable curry

Boil potatos,peas and carrots. Fry onion,chillies,ginger,garlic,garam masala, coriander powder,pepper.Grind it into a paste.
Fry the paste in a pan and then add the cooked vegetables..add salt. add 2 cups of water and let the mixture boil..reduce the heat add 1.5 cups of coconut milk and let it simmer for 3 minutes..garnish with cilantro leaves...