Learning to Eat With a Chop Stick

Self explanatory title.

Yes, i learnt to eat using a chop stick. Although the thought of eating food in a chop stick intimidates people but it actually isn't that difficult as what you think it is. That's what i found out .

What makes it interesting effort is what you eat with it, do you eat rice, noodles with it or go with food which are bigger in size?

For a novice , if you try eating rice or noodles with chop stick , well forget it, you are going to have an absolute nightmare.

So coming to story at hand or event that happened today.

I went to a Japanese food chain along with a colleague of mine for dinner. This was the second time iam going to a Japanese restaurant. The first time i went i just ate with spoons but this time i wanted to try eating with chopsticks.

We had ordered dumplings to start with, the dish came in , looked awesome but tricky part was , i was given a chop stick to eat. My colleague thought me how to use it , on the first try it didn't work the way it had to and on the next try, yeps all up and running. I finished all the dumplings six of them in my portion without spilling anything. That was quite an achievement for a first timer. I was proud of myself.

Then the main course of rice with potatoes came in , it was appealing but instead of being a hero and try to eat it with chopsticks, i was conservative and asked for a spoon and a fork. Job done.

Although i learnt to eat using a chop stick but i would like to try and eat either noodles or rice using it. Well , next time i will try that.

It was an interesting experience.

Internet My Saviour

What , Internet saved you ..... from????

Ok ok, it saved me from starving. This is what happened.

Joe came back from office all tired , looking to cook a nice meal and eat. The choice was zeroed down to rice and sabzi.

Ok i get cracking with cutting the vegetables a mix of tomato,capsicum and onions . All done and dusted in fifteen minutes , poured the oil in the pan which was on a light sim heat. Once heated , added few mustard seeds , typical southie cooking.

Once done , added onions and stirred it until crimson brown , then went in capsicum and then tomato and all masala. So subzi ready in less than 25 minutes. Hot hot and neat, ready to eat.

Only to realize that i forgot to cook the rice , in a hurry i made sure i washed the rice and got it ready to go into my new Panasonic Microwave , brand new .

Right , rice is in its microwave cookable vessel , in it goes into the microwave , alas how do i operate the new microwave?

I have never used this model before , all funcky new stuff . I search for the manual and to my horror , i dont find it .

I search every where , it just skips my eyes. One hour of frantic search , toying around the buttons just provide a futile attempt, only irritation and anger was left.

I almost gave up , i was angry and upset. Just as i turned around to give-up my Mac magic shone bright oh a split second idea, get to the internet and search for online manual.

Open the laptop, connect the internet and open google, type the search ' Panasonic Microwave Manuals'. Off its goes , returns with what i need. I still need to find the right manual for my model, which was another five minute search and once i had all the details , it was just matter of minutes to find the manual.

All done , cooking underway . After about two and half hours hot food was ready , had to re-heat my Sabzi .

Superb Dinner for a starving stomach , just that it was too late in the night but nevertheless worth all the effort and went to sleep saying that was good and all extra calories that i built up , i can loose in a visit to gym :)

Internet my saviour , technology at its very best.

A VS A

What a wierd title , that's what you are thinking.

The first A in the title stands for Aptitude and the second A stands for attitude.

I just wanted to pen down something on these two A's and try and deduce which one is required more to succeed in life , this topic came to mind as i watched a young eighteen year old present his business case in the TV show ' Dragons Den'.

All of us every man or woman would love to have awesome aptitude or are attracted to people with awesome aptitude. Its quite true that aptitude matters quite a lot and in most important places.

Wait a minute does that mean aptitude makes you the person you are and take you places ? Think again.

This eighteen year boy who i mentioned earlier had a good idea about a small piece of gadget which simplifies Pizza making process but was unable to articulate the business proposition . He lost the pitch and got some good advice from the panel.

What hit me like a rock was the way in which he took the whole event , he walked away cooly as if nothing had happened. I was impressed by his positive attitude.

History has quite a lot of examples of where attitude scored over aptitude. Am absolutely convinced that having very average aptitude and a great positive attitude is a killer combination than a great aptitude and a shoddy attitude. I guess you all will agree.

Positive attitude matters the most , one cannot achieve things only with a great aptitude.

Priority Vs Urge to Buy

You all know am a big fan of Apple products.

Apart from being a big apple fan , in general i found out something quite interesting in the way our human brian behaves.

There is always this urge to buy or do things and not always the urge succeeds, as you will see from my example.

The current urge for me is to buy an Iphone 4. In normal circumstances being what iam , i would have bought it by now and not waited , more out of impulse. However, when the human brian looks at urge vs priority, it looks like the priority part of the brian looms large than the urge part.

Example being, my priority to set-up my house vs buying an iphone. Setting up my house is far more important and the iphone can wait for obvious reasons. I think this act of the brian where priority wins over urge is what we call common sense.

Looks like it. So far i have kept my urge to the very minimum and i've outwitted my urge because of my pressing priority of setting up my house.

So far so good, don't really know how long this is going to last. Lets see.

Loneliness

Dictionary defines Loneliness as -without companions or solitary, it also maps it to a state of being sad.

Precise definition. Loneliness is a killer , i have now been almost alone for almost seven weeks but my loneliness is defined as being in an alien land without knowing not many people. If i just extrapolate my experience , i can truly understand what perfect loneliness could mean . It just frightens me. The sheer thought of perfect loneliness draws sweat in my brow.

All that being said about loneliness, there is one aspect which is important to give thought about. Although being alone is not the best of any human experience and human brain can go crazy with weird thoughts.

Hang on , weird thoughts but that comes from how we channel our energy , what i have come to believe is that there are some positive elements even in being alone .

If one channels the energy in the right direction while being alone , it can do wonders. I have come to a conclusion after being alone in seven weeks is that if one really strives hard to make a difference in oneself , being alone is not a bad place to start.

Because while being alone , one precious commodity "Time" is on ones side and if that can be used appropriately then to a major extent loneliness can be avoided and new skills can be acquired and existing skills can be sharpened.

What have i acquired in last seven weeks, not many but just two things , i have started seeing movies, that's new to me and i have tried to improve my cooking skills , i should say its improved . Lastly , i have given fitness my absolute priority.

Relocation- A Dedication

This Blog is dedicated to Suresh Iyer.

Moving any item from one to place to another even if its just a hundred meters is an effort.

Imagine relocating completely from one place to another, it is even bigger and a mammoth task.

I have discussed about relocation with Suresh lots of times as he has done relocation between, Mumbai,Bengaluru,Chennai and whenever he discussed about relocation and its difficulties, i used to think well what's all the fuss about? Should it not be very easy, just go to the new place, look at a house and settle in, job done.

How grossly wrong i was, i recently learned the acute issues facing relocation and that too to a completely new place.

Its difficult to find a right place which has right ambiance, good neighbours, proximity for travel,proximity for leisure activities, good set of colleagues .... the list is just endless.

You can imagine how much of an effort it is to get all of this right and you could imagine how much of pain one has to endure even if one of the item in the above list doesn't fit the bill.

This isn't it, there is more to do, when one relocates,all changes to bank accounts , changes to payments , let the local people know about your move , change of postal address.. phew its just such an enormous task.

Its dreadful to do it all alone . I have had a bit of luck as i have friends who are helping me out in my relocation.

Suresh,

Its been a great learning experience and i actually underestimated the efforts in relocation.

Its so Easy to Comment!!

How many times do we comment on others work , almost everyday. Don't we?

Atleast once a day we comment "oh mom same food everyday", "Can't you do this simple thing", "That's so simple","He should have done that ","It was a give away , he shouldn't have played like that".

Its easy to pass comments sitting in a couch or comment while we pass. Have we ever thought can i do the same thing better?

I learnt , its so easy to comment but when you are on spot light , things get awfully difficult to even deliver the smallest thing which we commented was easy thing to do.

Last three weeks i have been cooking for myself, believe me every single day when i cook , i think what the heck of a job this is and how difficult this can be .

I always used to ask my mum, oh ma, why same food everyday? Now with the experience of cooking for my own, well i think what a stupid question that was, when i didn't even realize how difficult job that was.

So easy to pass a comment until we are in the same place and doing the same job. So next time when you pass a comment beware that the work in question might warrant a even better comment.