My Culinary Favorites...

As the year comes to an end, I thought it is a good idea to list down my culinary favorites.

Fish:                  Salmon (pan seared fillet on a bed of garlic spinach)
Meat:                  Grilled Steak (medium well)
Poultry:               Rotisserie Chicken
Poultry, Boneless:     Grilled Chicken
Eggs:                  Sunny-side Up
Kebabs:                Chicken Malai Tikka
Non-Veg Curry:         Mutton Roganjosh
Veg Curry:             Methi Matar Malai (Fenugreek, Peas and Cream)
Dal:                   Yellow Dal Tadka (Pigeon Peas)
Beans:                 Red Kidney Beans
Breads:                Garlic Naan
Parantha, Non-stuffed: Methi (Fenugreek Leaves)
Parantha, Stuffed:     Paneer Parantha
Rice:                  Jeera Rice (Cumin)
Noodles:               Maggi (Plain)
Pasta:                 Penne (with Pesto Sauce)
Curd:                  Bathua Raita (Lamb's Quarters)
Sweet:                 Moong Dal Halwa
Ice-cream:             Butterscotch
Wine:                  Merlot
Cocktail:              Bloody Mary
Liquor:                Chivas on-the-rocks
Coffee:                Espresso (arabica, medium roast)

Please do comment and add your favorites to the list and do mention where should I try these...

Lovely Monsoon Rain... Finally in Noida

Finally, we had rain the way we wanted... full wrath of monsoon...

I enjoyed getting all soaked up and so did my family... getting wet in rain combined with dance music and Chivas Regal on the rocks is a damn good combination... so liberating... it made me forget the enormous loss I had in day today in margin trading on NSE...

Getting sober again now after all the fun... and it is still raining though the fury has subsided considerably.

Long time, Lot to say

Plenty of things have happened since my last post so this one may be a big... first I watched couple of movies...

"Dhoom 2" was below expectations except for Hrithik.
"Guru" confirms that Aish is a terrible actress.
"Don 2" was not as bad as I thought though the first one was still better. This one without any songs would have made better experience.

Apple iPhone is looking awesome. I can't wait to get one. But it won't be available till 2008. I know tons of people who are unhappy with PDAs. They are more happy with a fully functional phone and a fully functional laptop rather than carrying a combo that does none in a neat way. They always complain that sound quality on Treo is terrible. I felt the same when I used one briefly. I wondered if using google talk is better option than Treo.

Couple of days back I attended a seminar on "Blue Ocean Strategy". That was good and got me thinking. Also taught me about "yellow tail" wines :)

Finally, I had some time to enjoy Matrix trilogy again on my new LCD TV. This was amazing. I'm more than happy with my choice of Sony Bravia 32". I need to get a UPS now to enjoy the experience non-stop. Only thing I'm worried about is overloading my power outlet. Need to do some maths here.

Finally, I'm on to Orkut

Finally, I have convinced myself to devote some time to create an orkut profile. It so happened that an old friend of mine located me via orkut (via my sister). So I thought I may be a good idea to create a profile of my own. Now the next big task is to add my existing friends to the orkut list, sooner or later.

My Strengths

I had recently read the book "Now, Discover Your Strengths" by Marcus Buckingham. I was feeling inspired and went ahead to take the test. Here are my top 5 strengths as discovered by the StrengthsFinder test:

1. Focus
2. Deliberative
3. Learner
4. Intellection
5. Relator


I must admit that I was disappointed by the fact that it wasn't able to guide me towards an ideal profession. They have their reasons, but that left me in dark. What do you think would be the right profession for me?

How Left or Right are you?

This site has a great test to find out how left or right are you. The questions are very intriguing and ask you to pause and reflect on your beliefs.

I am -0.75 on Economic Left/Right scale. I didn't considered myself to be on left. Strange!

I am -2.15 on Social Libertarian/Authoritarian scale.

I'm actually pretty close to Gandhi on this. He being slightly more left than me.

Workrave

RSI is getting lots of attention from computer addicts all over the world. I'm just another addict and thus, I recently downloaded Workrave to give it a try. Though the interface is good, I find it pretty annoying. Or may be that reflects how little breaks I take while working. However annoying it may be, I want to keep it on default settings for a few days and if that's still intrusive, I would like to try never-had-a-rsi-problem settings of 10 seconds micropause every 10 minutes and 5 min rest break every hour.

I would have liked a lighter version. A small applet consuming 20 MB of RAM is not a good one.

Fellow Blogs

I recently discovered that others in my graduation batch, Nitin Goyal and Satnam Singh, also maintain blogs, so it would be a good idea to link them here. Satnam has some great pictures and adventure stories a la Marco Polo kind but in different area of expertise.

Its great feeling that atleast somebody I know is enjoying the life to the fullest. Mangesh is the other one I know. Rest seem too busy to write even one mail per month. Last meet I organized nobody but Rupi turned up. Let me see if I can organize another one.

BTW, if you are wondering which batch I am talking about here, its University of Roorkee 1996 B.E. batch.

2006

Well, finally 2006 is here. Delayed by a second. I didn't notice that delay. All I felt was jammed networks. So people sent me SMS well before 2006, just to make sure they don't miss out. Somehow, it is no longer strange to wish people in advance, such is the hectic pace of life now-a-days. Imagine, wishing happy fatherhood to somebody whose wife is expecting 8 months later... "better later than never" is now changed to "better earlier than ever"... Wonder what next? If we could predict future, perhaps the day when son is born, we would congratulate the new father with his son's first rank in college and then strut around to show what we are the first one.

Another new year. Another resolution. I have seen some people who make a long list of resolutions for the coming year. I don't make one. I am yet to follow the last one I made couple of years back. Times have changed but the need of that resolution is fresh as ever. So continuing with that. If I can achieve that, I'll make another.

Been very busy lately. Got some relief today. Wrote a small poem on the new year resolutions for my close friends, similar to that jokes/poems of Ahsaan Qureshi of The Great Indian Laughter Champions fame. I like his style more than any one else in that show. आखिर, व्यंग भी काव्य का एक अंग होता है ।

Big Bang

Finally, I have made myself start writing a blog. I had been thinking about it since 1998, but wasn't able to commit to it. Oh gosh, thats 7 years.

Now I have to think(?) and type... or may be just type. I remember I used to be a good writer but my writing skills are fading with more and more concentration on technical documents. I hope to revive them.

Actually, construction is going on in my office near my cubicle so it is really difficult to concentrate on work now a days. These wanderings have finally led me to create the blog.

I guess, before I start on it any further (and post my profile), I need to introduce myself. I know the risk I run looking at examples of people getting fired for expressing them liberally, so I will keep my office life separate. Ok, I'll try my best at that. Though, I don't mind getting fired since market is hot and I can make more money that I'm doing now but I like the work I have (since last 3 months).

So I'm a 28 yr old guy who likes to play Civilization III and used to play billiards and snooker. I like history, particle physics and astronomoy. I also like working on computers, travelling and trying new things. I have been to USA (Boston, New York, Indianapolis, San Francisco), The Netherlands, Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Vatican City, Singapore, Thailand, Japan and New Zealand, apart from my home country India where I have been to Agra, Ahmedabad, Allahabad, Badrinath, Bangalore, Chennai, Darjeeling, Dehradun, Delhi, Devprayag, Gaya, Gangotri, Guwahati, Hardwar, Indore, Jaipur, Kanyakumari, Kausani, Kedarnath, Kolkatta, Ladakh, Lucknow, Madurai, Manali, Mumbai, Mussoorie, Mysore, Nainital, Nalanda, Ooty, Rameshwaram, Rampur, Raipur, Roorkee, Shillong, Silchar, Udaipur, Ujjain, Yamunotri and various other places. My next plans for India is Andamans. If I can get to convert the videos to computer formats, I'll post some here.

One day, I will be a CTO in a big organization.