Oranges

Last week, for two consecutive days, whenever I walked in home after work, I smelt a strong orange smell at home. Wow - the mandarin oranges that I bought at Costco really do have a very strong smell, I thought. I asked S about it and he shrugged, "Maybe!".

On day three, I once again entered into a house smelling of oranges. I told S, "I bet the oranges are going bad - the whole house is smelling of them!"

I rummaged through the sack of oranges. Though I really couldn't smell the oranges any stronger at this close range and I couldn't find any spoilt oranges, I finally managed to find one misshapen, squished orange. I triumphantly pulled it out and said to S, "Aha, this is the culprit!". S asked, "Are you sure? This orange does not have any smell at all!" I stubbornly said, "This has to be it, there is no other source for the orange smell."

This was when I noticed that S was having an undefinable look on his face and was shaking silently. I demanded, "What?".

S burst out laughing, "Hahahahah - I found this orange-scented room-spray in one of the cupboards the other day and I have been spraying it every evening since then. I have to appreciate you though! You are one mighty talented detective - you so smartly deduced that the strong orange smell was coming from one squished orange with no smell in it whatsover - hahahahahah!"

Grrr!

How that orange-scented room spray came to be at home is a mystery still unresolved.

Dance

Call me racist but I always used to think that highly flexible body movements were out of reach of Indian women. As graceful as many female Indian dancers are, I never thought flexibility was one of the strong points as far as the women were concerned.

I have eaten my words (and my prejudices) since I saw this video. Start watching from minute 3.00 if you want to cut the chatter.

http://www.tamilrain.com/jodi-no-1-season-4-17-04-2010/black-and-white-round-day-2-part-1-video_dc429fbb4.html

Isn't that such a magical performance? The girl, Sai Pramoditha, has done her puppet act so well. So bendy, springy and flexible - wow!

As an aside, the show itself, called Jodi No. 1 Season 4, features several ultra-talented, creative and gifted dancers and choreographers competing (pretty civilly, I must say) with each other to get the top spot for the best dancer couple.

What a pleasure it is to watch a reality show that showcases such deserving talent!

I like the sound of that!

My friend V once told me that he read somewhere that salsa (both dance and the food) could be so popular because people love to say "salsa". I am not sure I love saying salsa quite so much though I love the food as well as the dance. But there are other words I like the sound of. I also like the way they roll off my tongue.

Here are some words I like listening to or pronouncing:

Sugar, shoes, chalk, meal (it is always a disappointment when I realize for the n-th time that the boring chapathis and dal I had for lunch is a "meal" too), juice.

Off the top of my head, that's all I can think of.

But if you kind reader folks will post some words you like in the comments section, I would love to read about them.

Grumble-grumble

Anyone know how to uninstall that newly added annoying, annoying, annoying, annoying --> infinity left bar on the google search results? Google had such a clean look - why did they have to go and tweak it? At the very least, shouldn't they have made these bells and whistles optional? Sigh.

***

What do you do when someone asks totally inapproprite questions? I just overheard two colleagues talking. One of them, say A, was enquiring about the other's (say B's) baby. B made the usual blah-blah comments. Then A goes, "Are you done?". B looked confused and A helpfully clarified "I mean, are you done having babies or are you having one more?" The expression on B's face was priceless and she spluttered some response. Seriously, since when did someone's reproductive habits become topics of casual conversation? I have noticed that people of Asian descent are more likely to be the perpetrators - probably owing to the Asian culture of "everyone's business is my business as well".

***

I uninstalled the Facebook app for iPhone. I realized that my tolerance for reading daily status updates like "Yaay - my kids finished eating their bowls of cereal completely" and "Watzisname is twiddling her thumbs" is pretty low. Must say, my quality of life seems to have improved.

***

Phew - I sure sound grumpy! On the bright side, the weather today is gorgeous. A perfect California day - cloudless, sunny and pleasantly warm. Niccccceee!

The cook in me

When I was younger, thanks to being a shy little kid, I used to take refuge in the kitchen under the pretext of helping Mom whenever guests came over to our house. My sister, the social butterfly, preferred to take on the task of entertaining the guests. As a result, I picked up quite a few kitchen tips like how to cut vegetables, how dishes looked in the intermediate stage of preparation etc. To this day, I am the official taster in my house and in relatives' houses. I can always tell when "something" is missing in a dish and adjustments can be suitably made.

Despite these forays into the kitchen, I did not know any actual cooking. I learnt to make exactly two things - tea and rasam (I once made killer rasam which made my granny appreciatively sigh "Get some gold bangles for the hands which made this divine rasam" (nah I did not actually get the bangles :-()) - these dishes being two of my most favorite things to drink/eat.

Life went on this way till I was thrust into the role of head-chef at home for a few days when in college. Though I acquitted myself reasonably okay then, other than sporadically trying out some exotic recipe from some magazine (this was before the days of food-blogs) I never voluntarily cooked.

All this changed once I moved to the US for grad school. Obviously, there was no mom around to place plates filled with piping hot food in front of me. If I wanted to eat, *I* had to cook (or persuade a room-mate to cook for me).

For the first time in my life, I began to appreciate just how much effort cooking involved. I mentally cursed myself for all the times back home when I had whined, "Not idli for dinner again", "this dosa is not hot enough, can I get one off the stove", "Aaargh, do I have to have left-over sambhar" and so on. I especially hated the clean up and doing dishes that the end of every cooking session entailed. I decided that cooking was an annoying chore which I had to do.

When I moved out on my own once I started working, I cooked huge pots of food over the weekend which then served as lunch and dinner for the rest of the week. This got boring soon enough but I thought it was definitely preferable to slogging night after night in the kitchen.

But - during the weekend, I slowly started cooking different kinds of food - recipes from cookbooks, recipes from mom, cravings that had to satisfied RIGHT NOW and so on. Soon enough I realized that what was annoying to me was not the cooking. It was the cleaning part of it. Mincing, chopping, measuring spices, stirring and other essentials of cooking was something that I did not mind. Heck, I actually *liked* it.

The next time I went to India, I offered to cook a meal for my family. Though she had her doubts, mom agreed. My parents and sister were pleasantly surprised with the end result. Duh - did they really think their foodie daughter would have survived by herself for so long in the US if she was making inedible food?

In any case, these experiments with food gave me enough confidence to actually cook for relatives when they came to visit me in the US instead of whisking them straight to Saravana Bhavan or Udupi Palace which is my standard operating procedure for visitors. These relatives were amazed that I could cook. Seriously, I think once someone has seen you as a drooling baby, they assume that you will never grow up and do "adult" things like cooking, driving etc!

Last year, after S and me got hitched, I got a full time guinea-pig, er, appreciative recipient to test my cooking on.

If I am a foodie, S is a super foodie. Which works out great because S is a good cook (it is my theory that people who love food with a passion are typically good cooks as well). For the first few months of married life, we took turns outshining each other in the kitchen. This caused an unforeseen problem: within a couple of months, we had gained back all weight lost for the wedding plus some. Not good at all. So, the enthusiasm had to be curbed.

Nevertheless, with S being such an eager taster, I have become only too willing to experiment*. Not everyday - fixing daily meals still mostly bores me - but over the weekends I usually try my hand at a new recipe or two. And, I actually look forward to it**. Yup, I am discovering the cook in me.

*Of course, not every culinary end result is a spectacular success but the suspense about the final product is part of the fun.

** It helps that S is willing to do the dishes afterwards :-). I still hate that part.

Spotted

New kind of herb tea at work:


Am wondering if they are trying to send some kind of message here.

Clash of the Titans

Movie-makers seem to have been bitten by the 3D bug since Avatar happened. A slew of 3D movies are coming out these days. I have always found 3D movies to be a lot of fun since the first time I watched one (remember My dear kuttichatan? My mom still recalls both sis and me reaching out eagerly to grab ice-cream in one of the scenes).

Last weekend, S said that Clash of the Titans was out. Since the movie is mythology based with scope for plenty of monsters and CGI, we shelled out an extra 10 bucks for the 3D version of the movie as we thought it would be paisa-vasool*.

We had reached the theater at 11.00am for a 11.00am show. No problem - usually the trailers run for a good 20 minutes or so before the movie starts. We put on the dorky 3D glasses and settled down. When the movie started, the titles leapt out of the screen. Cool - this was going to be good!

The movie continued on its mythological way. After a while I realized that I could not see any 3D-ish effects even in the places where 3D effects should have been obvious - like a coin being flung towards the screen, a sword being pointed towards the audience etc. Was this really 3D or what? To validate my suspicion, I took off my 3D glasses and peered at the screen. Whereas for Avatar, the entire screen was kinda blurry when I took those glasses off, for Clash of the Titans, the movie continued being crystal-clear.

Aaaaargh! Evidently the movie makers had 3D-fied about 10 minutes of Clash of the Titans for the trailers and left the rest of the movie as is. Effectively, we had paid 10 extra bucks for a few minutes of watching fancy-looking titles.

Only after we returned home did I read on the Net that the movie had had 3D effects added after it had finished being shot. Essentially the producers had decided to cash in on the 3D-mania without actually spending much on it besides adding the words 3D to the title, and providing dorky glasses to the theatre patrons.

The movie itself was not too bad - an okay masala entertainer as movies in this genre usually are. Regardless, we felt cheated.

Flash news for the producers: Dorky glasses doth not a 3D-movie make.

*value for money

I can't think of an apt title

These days, what with women's lib and everything, the old adage, "Behind every successful man is a woman" is slowly taking on a new avatar: "Behind every successful woman is a man". Still, I found this bio-profile of the Consul General of India in San Francisco, Susmita Thomas, totally hilarious.

Slightly self-trumpety as it sounds, I have no issues whatsoever with the first three paragraphs. But what on earth are the last three paragraphs doing in the Consul-General's profile? The description about her husband Ravi's achievements is even longer than her own! This chap is in no way related to the Indian Embassy other than being the Consul General's husband. How is what he did, is doing and going to do even relevant in this context? Perhaps this is how Susmita is supposed to show her loyalty to her husband - don't know! Aaaargh!

This brings me to another question: am I the only one who finds the practice of women doctors in India identifying themselves Dr. (Mrs.) Female DoctorName on name-boards odd? How many male doctors are there who have the compulsive need to identify themselves as married by saying something like this: Dr. Male DoctorName (married) on their name-boards?

New look

Finally, I tried out the new Blogger template designer. It is so much easier to change the various elements of the blogger page. Thus, in about 15 minutes of picking and choosing, my blog has got a new look. Sweet! Though I usually avoid it in interest of speedy loading, this time round I could not resist picking a background picture.

Do hop on over and let me know what you think. For the lazy ones, here is a screenshot of "The New Look":

Vidathu Karuppu

Last week S discovered all the episodes of the Vidathu Karuppu television series on some website online. If you recall, Vidathu Karuppu (VK) is part two of the thrilling Marma Desam stories penned by Indra Soundarajan. VK was telecast on Sun TV more than a dozen years ago. It was one of the very few TV series that I watched regularly. I still remember waiting eagerly every Thursday night 9.00pm for the next episode of VK.

So when S asked if I was interested in re-watching it, it took very little thinking on my part to say yes. Other than remembering the climax, I recalled nothing whatsover of the series. So we started watching it. And I realized all over again as to why I was so attracted towards the series.

Each episode is divided into scenes from the past and the present - both these parts are rivetingly done and more often than not, end in an event which leaves you with burning curiosity as to what happened next.

Needless to say, S and me were completely hooked. The main advantage we had was that we just had to click on the next button to see the next episode instead of having to wait a whole week to know what happened (man, it must have been excruciating back then to wait for a entire week - and even more exasperating to see a a few minutes of recap every week when that time could have been used to move the story further). The downside was that we were completely addicted.

On Sunday we finally finished watching the series (ya in one week we watched all 84 episodes of it and yup while working full time and everything). The series was as satisfying as ever. We are still discussing the nuances and we kinda miss the characters now - addiction withdrawal symptoms I guess. I wonder how come such thrilling serials no longer get made in Tamil these days. Instead we have these sob-fests called mega serials which go on for years together. Ugh.

Another thing I liked while watching VK was seeing how naturally the various characters were dressed. But I wondered at the protaganist Reena's clothes. She mostly wore extremely loose tops and jeans/skirts or tent-like salwar kameezes. She was supposed to be a modern young woman from Chennai - so why was she wearing such ill-fitting clothes? Then I realized with a pang - that's exactly how most "normal" Chennai girls used to dress back then. Including me. *blush*. Oh well, you live and you learn, no?

If you know Tamil, Vidathu Karuppu is a must watch series. It has aged well with time and is as gripping now as it was more than a dozen years ago.

p.s. do you know if DVDs of good Tamil serials are available for sale?