Weekend in the kitchen

The weekend was pretty fine. It was one of the rare weekends when I didn’t visit Pathe. We spent the Saturday in cooking a lot of stuffs and eating them all. We had invited V and his family to our place. R had promised to drop at our place to help us out in cooking. He had said that he could not cook even to save his own life. So, he had offered us the service of chopping vegetables.

By the time R arrived, we had finished cooking. But, he insisted that he had to do something. He proclaimed that he is an ace dish-washer and went on to wash the utensils used for cooking. He did it so well that we even thought of getting every utensil in our house washed by him. We changed our minds when he broke a glass. He offered to super-glue the glass pieces back to place. Super-glue the glass? What if the glass breaks again while we drink something out of it?? What if we end up swallowing the glass pieces??? We dropped the super-glue idea at that rather scary thought.

We got wonderful feedback about the food. V’s wife even asked for the recipe of our chicken-curry. She predicted that if we reveal our cooking prowess when we get married, our wives may make us cook meals for the rest of our lives. Though flattered, we were equally frightened.

We grilled fishes on Sunday. It was a stinky process. I was tempted to sing “Smelly fish, smelly fish”, in Phoebe’s style. I abandoned that thought for the sake of my flatmates’ well being. The fishes came out superb. Grilled fishs, potato chips and apple juice – they made a heavenly dinner.

True colors

There are things that bring involuntary smile in your face. Dove’s ad for its real beauty campaign is one such. A real cute thing.

They have used Cyndi Lauper’s song True Colors [Music Video and Lyrics]. Very apt.

Cyndi is also known for her another highly popular song - Girls just wanna have fun [Music Video and Lyrics].

Company a.k.a Corporate

September the 17th, 2001. What could be special about that day except that it was half a dozen days after a few crazy people tried to park planes over buildings? Well, it was very special to me. It was the day I finally stepped into my professional life after 7 years of college life. Yeah, 7 long years. My parents would have let me study for the rest of my life. Fortunately, that didn't happen. It was the day when I moved from dependent-on-parents to independent status.

It was the day when I joined my first (and the only, till date) company as a campus recruit. I was offered a job by the company in the mid 2000. Things were pretty fine then. But, 2001 witnessed an IT slowdown. A few of my classmates, who were recruited by various companies, got their offers deferred. Some even got them cancelled. And then 9/11 happened. The situation was pretty uncertain. But my company decided to stick on to the original offer.

I still remember the day well. My roommate gave me a lift for half the distance. I took an auto-rickshaw for the remaining distance and reached the office late. I was the last to report. I spent that day filling in numerous forms, signing furiously on dozens of agreements, listening to terms like Provident Fund, Medical Claim, Reimbursement, etc.

55 of us joined the company on that day. We decided to call ourselves “Freshfinders”. Today the Freshfinders are scattered across the globe. A lot of them have quit the company. September 17th this year was the fifth anniversary for the Freshfinders. For me and the few others who decided to stick to the company, it was the fifth anniversary of our association with the company.

The Freshfinders in Madras organized a get-together. The Freshfinder who organized it sent an invitation to all the other Freshfinders and copied the mail to some of the managers and directors of the company. One of the directors, along with congratulating us on the anniversary, replied that he would not be able to attend the gathering as he had another appointment. Coincidentally, there is a Freshfinder of the same name as this Director. One of the Freshfinders who is still with the company and currently located in UK went on to reply all with something like – “Don’t howl, buddy. And, don’t show-off as if you are too busy. By the way, regrets... I mean, congratulations to all those who are still stuck to the company”.

Hahah... Luckily that UK based Freshfinder was at his modest self and his choice of words was very mild to his standards. If he had been his normal self and had replied in his usual vocabulary, I am sure the Director would have had a heart-attack. The Freshfinder soon called-back the mail and requested the recipients to ignore his mail. :P

Coincidentally, the public transportation of The Hague decided to run for free on Sunday, September 17. A move to promote tourism, I guess. Buses, Trams, cycle-rickshaws, bicycles, boats were all free on that day. My flatmate (who himself is a Freshfinder) and I decided to celebrate the anniversary by watching Miami Vice. It was just another action movie. The best part of the movie was Colin Farrell’s mustache. It was really awesome. Am seriously contemplating about sporting it. ;)

Messy mornings

Why is waking up in the morning so awful? I go through this painful experience five days a week. On week ends I wake up after noon. The sound that I hate the most is that of the alarm. Well, my own voice couldn’t receive this honour because my feeling towards it is beyond hatred and mankind is yet to give a name to that feeling.

The first thing I do when I wake up is - shut the alarm and sleep again. This is the period of the day when I get the strong doubt that I actually have two brains. One advises me to be good and get out of the bed. The other brain tells that the first brain is a moron and that a few more minutes of sleep would not bring the universe to come to a stand-still. Then the two brains start shouting at each other. I would blink in confusion for a few moments and then run away from the bed, unable to stand the noisy brains.

Almost every morning I realize that I lead a life filled with blunders. Take for instance this morning. Hair gel suffecient for a week long usage was in the container. But, my fingers wouldn’t reach the bottom of the container to get some. I may end up waiting for a lifetime if I turn the container upside down for the gel to come out. Why did I get that 500 ml jar of hair gel? I am sane enough to be realize that my fingers are no more going to get thinner and longer. Then, why didn’t I buy a smaller container with a wider mouth? By the way, why do they sell hair gel in milli-litres and not in milli-grams or grams? They sell tooth-paste in grams. And, both are gooey...

And then I tripped on the bump in front of my appartment. I trip on it almost every day. I don’t know when I am going to fall flat on my face. It is concrete floor and if I fall on it, the chances of me getting up fully intact are very thin. I think I do live dangerously. That makes mine a dangerous life full of blunders. Sigh.

Kill-Pimple

I got a pimple on my lower lip. Well, not exactly on the lip, but so close that it looks like the pimple is on the lip. I had had a serious pimple problem during my teens. I had so many pimples on my face that I even came close to claiming the title ‘spotty’. For a few years, when I looked at the mirror, I was able to look at only pimples and not my face. I was almost about to forget how my face looks like and then slowly the pimple density reduced. From then onwards, I have occasional pimples on my face and not my face hidden behind pimples.

This particular pimple announced its arrival yesterday at the edge of my lower lip. As the pimple came after a very long gap, I sort of grew fond of it and even started adoring it. It was like meeting a close friend after a long time. An interesting fact is that an odd pimple even looks good on your face. But that is strictly till the white head shows up on the pimple. The moment the white head emerges, the pimple stops being cute and starts being disgusting.

The first thing I noticed when I looked at the mirror this morning was the white head on the pimple. So I went on to do the first thing I do when I see a white headed pimple – kill it by squeezing its white head out. Now this is one of the most painful things that you would do to yourself. Painful yet essential. It is an eye-watering job. Every time I come out of the bathroom after squeezing the white head off the pimple, people think that I had been weeping in the bathroom. Sigh.

I used to be a pro in killing the pimples during my ‘pimple’ful days. I used to kill pimples with single clinical squeezes. Today I found that I have lost touch. I ended up squeezing a wide area around the pimple before I finally managed to kill it. Result – a puffed lower lip.

If I had photographed my lower lip then and shown it to you, you would have identified it as Angelina Jolie’s or Boomika Chawla’s. Puffed lips could be emtremely embarrassing. People could easily mistake it for pouting. I covered my puffed lip while I travelled to the office. I didn’t want some random girl to think that I was making obscene gesture at her and slap me across my face.

If I say that random girls have never slapped me or even threatened to do so, my friends would take it as a confirmation of their doubt that I am a totally hopeless creature. But I am proud of this record of mine and I intend to keep it intact.

KANK again

I asked the girl at the ticket counter of Pathe, “Two tickets to the Bollywood movie, please”.

There was no communication problem with the people at the ticket counter when I got the ticket for ‘Krrish’. May be it was because the movie name was pretty simple. It was not the case with KANK. The girl at the ticket counter looked at me as though I had said something in Martian lingo, when I uttered ‘Kabhi Alvidha Na Kehna’. To make clear that I was not making fun of her, I hurried to point at the poster of KANK. By the time my flatmates went to get the tickets, the girl had picked up the name of the movie a bit. She said, “Oh… Kabi…” and nodded in recognition. The people at Pathe identify Hindi movies much better by the name ‘Bollywood films’.

So, last Saturday, when we went to Pathe to watch ‘Lage Raho Munnabhai’, I asked the girl at the ticket counter of Pather, “Two tickets to the Bollywood movie, please”. She gave us the tickets with a bright smile. The smiles in our faces drained the moment we saw the tickets. They were for KANK. Lage Raho Munnabhai was not yet released in Pathe Scheveningen.

My flatmate found spending three and a half hours on a movie for the second time as too much and went back. I had actually planned to watch KANK again. I was pretty happy with the way things had turned out. I was surprised to see over half the hall filled even after around a month. My surprise was doubled when I saw that quite a few dutch people were prepared to watch the three-and-a-half-hours-long-movie-with-no-interval.

Needless to say, I loved watching KANK, for the second time.