Thursday, July 26, 2007

Humor in Cooking!!

I made some lentils(moong dal ka sabji) today! When I sat down for dinner I got to know that they were not cooked properly! I ate the stuff but wanted to cook the sabji (I generally take the same sabji to lunch next morn) that was left! SO I added some water and left it to boil on the stove! And as you might have guessed I forgot entirely about it! When I went back it was burnt mostly in the lowest layer! I started saving what was left! As I did that I had three distinctly burnt components::
First Order Burn Sabji:: Eatable not very different from well(or rather extremely well) cooked curry! Saved up to be taken for lunch!!
Second Order Burn Sabji:: Eatable only if you like roast curry or if you are a grad student suffering random pangs of hunger! Saved up reluctantly expecting a hunger pang soon!!
Third Order Sabji:: As black as Konkana Sen Sharma's hair. Sent to the bin!!

LOL!!!

Friday, July 06, 2007

Montreal Diaries 1!

It would be a crime not to write something on a beautiful city and a beautiful fest that you get a chance to visit! Here is my not so short diary entry for Montreal!
We started last friday! Started is the wrong word! I basically got up and waited for MA to call! I had no clue how we were going to get to Montreal! All that I knew was that Friday was National Action Day in Canada, aboriginal people mark that day to bring their plight to the doors of the common Canadian! They were blocking highways( India vaasam adikkudhe!!!) and I was like that is cool, finally I can see some confrontation in this damned country after 10 months you miss India even for its confrontations!! Sadly we could not take a carpool lift as planned and we were on a safe Canada Coach bus but I got my share of excitement when I had to buy lunch for me, Eugenie(MAs gf) and the Falafel guy in TO was so slow that I had jaywalk/run back to the bus! Anyways in 6 hours I was in Montreal!
The first night in Montreal I did two new things! Had a crazy dosa type western food called Crepe! Basic a wheat dosa + some masala (mild western masala that is) = Crepe, followed it up with expresso in creamy milk, yum! And the second new thing was paying a tip! (Aah why do french waitresses look so hot!!) Dinner with Zhenia (my baby sitter for the first night at Montreal) was followed by Jazz fest. The first concert of the day was some arbit guy singing conventional Jazz/blues! Stuff I dint like but yet I clicked a photo for the heck of it!
The next concert I attended was that of an Afro American lady singing typical jazz and she also said her father worked with the great Louis Armstrong! Her voice range was amazing but at times I thought the effort she put in mite kill her or something! Here is the concert pic::
With that done the first day had almost come to an end! We met Eugenie's sister Liah and her friends Swapna,Youshan and Julian all from Hannover. We walked to a pub to have one beer for the night and had a nice relaxing time after the long day! Here I got a a couple of logic questions from the group, one that I answered that day and the other that stayed with me for a couple of days!! The one that tortured me was this:
You have a prison with N prisoners. Allowed to meet once. The condition on their release is that they will have no contact after the first meeting and each night one among them (nobody knows who) will be taken to a room with a bulb and switch(nobody can see the room). The Jailer can call anybody,even repeat people night after night! For them to be releases one of them must announce to the jailer after realising that all the prisoners have been to the room atleast once and if he is right they are released else they go to the gallows! The question what is a fool proof strategy to achieve this! A pretty simple problem but I did not solve it immediately, shoot!
End of Day1, Day 2 to follow!