Mexican Taste

The winter weather in the US can sometimes be very deceptive, atleast for people who have travelled from the tropical region. It would be very sunny out there and you go out off guard expecting a Chennai afternoon, you would have to run back home. It was one such Friday afternoon when we decided to taste Mexican food daring the wind chillness and the weather man's warning of minus something. We headed to the Blue Agave, a popular restaurant that specializes in the Mexican cuisine.

It was past one o clock when we checked in and the crowd was meager for the magnitude of the place. The restaurant was dim lit, but had a great ambiance. There were 2 huge inches plasma panels that played dance & music - should be hard core Mexican, i believe. That day, i was lucky enough to have people who had vowed to eat vegetarian alone on that particular day. I had been to Mexican restaurants before and had tasted the popular Mexican burritos and tacos during my earlier visits. I wanted to taste something different this time. I glanced through the menu and settled down for the Vegetarian Fajitas. Its a light combination of Mushrooms, bell peppers, onions & tomatoes served with Mexican rice, fried beans, pico de gallo & 4 flour tortillas. You just had to open the tortilla place some of each of the accompanying items of the vegetables,beans and rice, fold it and eat. The taste was just awesome. We wolfed down 2 tortillas in quick succession followed by a big glass of lemonade refilled time and again. It was a great lunch after having a not so good outing with the previous one. We wanted to go there again but did not as we had to cover other tastes as per our manifesto. We want to take a break and taste Indian next week. Let us see how that works to fulfill our mission to satisfy our taste buds. Ciao then.

Food Festival Continues

My tryst with international cuisine coninues. It was Chinese food last Friday for Lunch. We went to the Sun Flower Chinese restaurant which is about a 15 minutes drive from our office in Polaris parkway. The restaurant is in a corner and could easily be missed. The lunch package has tea, soup and rice, all complimentary along with the main course. The Tea tasted better than what it would be normally. Traditional Chinese Tea!!!. As usual, my choices were restricted to the food items marked green on the menu card. The soup had vegetables served in a colorless liquid, but tasted good. I ordered brown steamed rice with a buddhist delight for my main course, while my friends applied permutations and combinations with number of dishes and how they could share it. I think we ordered more food than what we could eat. The quantity is much more than what was served in the italian restauarant where we soothed our taste buds 2 weeks ago. The buddhist delight had raddish, onion, carrots, brocolli cooked in a mild sauce. It really didnot go well with rice which tasted a bit sweet. I could wolf down only half of the delightful Buddhist delight and so were others. Some of my friends packed the left over for their dinner. The lunch got over with a chinese fortune cookie. Its a desert that has a small piece of paper hidden in between two crispy pieces of biscuits that and has some words of wisdom. It was a a different experience with the taste of food and the ambience of the restaurant. We plan to visit the house of Japan next week. I have been to Japanese restaurants before, but will share my experience with the Japanese taste once i have it.

Soul Stirring Music

Ilayaraja is an all time great. Till now, i have not been able to move away from his tunes of the 80s' to any other form of music. I was getting bored on this Sunday afternoon and was browsing you tube for his evergreen movie Back Ground Music(BGMs). I happened to listen to the BGM of the movie Idayam. I have seen the movie many times. And one more time, it just transported me to a different world. A soul stirring & a divine experience. The movie was released sometime in 1992 when i was in my graduation and i still remember my friend talking about the movie for nearly 2 weeks after he had seen it in the Devi complex. I happened to see it in the Kumaran Theatre in Madipakkam along with 2 of my cousins. This was a movie which embraced me like a breeze. I would say that 90% of this effect was made possible only because of the Maestro's BGM. Added to it is the Spelendid Picturization and a perfect screen play!!!. It remains one of my best movies till now. I dont think i have seen or heard about any tamil movie till now that narrates romance in such an impressive way, between a man and a woman using the language of music. I have seen the movie many times now in the cable channels. Just hear to the BGM on a quiet afternoon. The BGM brings in a state of peace in me. I can feel my nerves calming down. I truly believe that music can cure diseases and am certain that Raja is one of the pioneers in this field of medicine.

Rendezvous with International Cuisines

I am once again in the US, this time in Columbus, Ohio. The work is very interesting and the people are friendly and make me feel at home. I have been lucky enough, all my previous trips to escape the harsh winter. But this time, my stay is a bit long here and is in the peak of the winter season. It has snowed only a couple of times this season and the weather god has been considerate. The temperature in the afternoons lingers around the 5 degree centigrade mark and falls below zero during night. To me, December was very cold, but seems very mild for some of the news papers here. They are now writing about the city entering into the coldest season of the year. Dont really understand what it means. But anyway, the stay has been good till now. Every time when i visit the US, I make it a point to visit all the Indian restaurants in that city. But this time aroud, I have decided to taste a different international cuisine every week. We(myself and my team) started of with the Indian menu a week ago and tasted Italian(Olive Gardens) last week.

The ambience was very pleasant. The food was good though, the names were a bit difficult to pronounce. The dishes were blande and went well with my taste. I started with the Italian bread & salads followed by the Egg plant Parmigiana & the stuffed mushrooms. Choices for Vegetarians is always limited. We have plans to visit the Chipotle Mexican grill this week to taste the burritos and tacos. This will be followed by Thai and the Mongolian Barbeque. I am liking it.

Festival of Lights

Deepavali is just around the corner. Ads of the latest designs of sarees sported by models have started coming on TV. I paid a visit to T Nagar last Sunday and the whole locality was gasping for breath. It would become even more claustrophobic over the next few days before the city completely embraces the festival of lights. Deepavali is a festival that is expected with the same sheen by all the Hindu communities in India. Its a day of joy for the rich and the poor alike. When i talk about Deepavali, My pre adolescent years come to my mind during which i used to expect the day months in advance. We used to make many lists of what crackers to buy and how to fire them with friends. On the day of lights, we got up at 4 AM to take the oil bath (Ganga Snan) and get ready for the events to come. We even used to have a contest among friends as to who would be the first to come out early in the morning to light the first cracker. Neighbours would come to our house with sweets and we shared that was made at ours. It was a ritual for many years in our family to meet our relatives to share our joy and to get blessings of elders. Evenings would be especially spectacular with colourful pyrotechnics painting the whole sky. Doordarshan, the one and only television channel those days, would treat its viewers with interviews of the hottest cine star and end the day with a latest movie. For me, the day would end with a gloom for having to wait for Deepavali for one more year.

In the last few decades, the mood of festivals seems to have changed for the newer generations. People have acquired a liking for other materialistic things in life and the glitter of Deepavali seems to be fading away year after year. But, there is always a ray of hope, that the world would be as naive as what it was, once upon a time, to take pleasure in the simple sweet things of life, like the festival of lights.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Recently, I had the privileged opportunity of attending the two day Signature program of the 7 Habits of highly effective people. I should say that it was quite an
eye-opener of sorts. It helped me to introspect myself as what i am in different roles that i play on a daily basis, personally and professionally. The faculty
did a fantastic job of extracting and explaining the crux of the framework that stephen covey has formulated. It would have been quite an effort for me to read
the voluminous book which is heavy too. The program consisted of a series of lecture sessions followed by screening of many videos in which Mr. Covey explains each of the 7 habits and the advantage of learning and practising them. In a nut shell, the following are the habits which Mr. Covey claims will change your life.

1. You need the right mindset to succeed in anything (Be Proactive)
2. Begin with the end in mind
3. Put first things first ( Classify things in to 4 quadrants - Urgent (X) & Important (Y))
4. Think Win-Win
5. Seek First to Understand(Others) and then to be Understood (by Others)
6. Synergize
7. Sharpen your Saw

The program is followed up with a series of emails from the institute to deep root the 2 day learning. This is a worthy investment for corporates to train their leaders in. This would definitely help individuals to understand better the dynamics of success & relationships and would help them to handle people & tasks better, bothpersonally & professionally.

Serial Killers

Its 7 PM in the evening. Mamis' have returned from the Temple. Its time to tune on. Whats the news on TV today. Its pretty much the same as what it was 2 weeks ago. Only change is that the girl who went to buy grocery two weeks ago has just returned home. What are we talking about. Hold on. This is about the "Serial time Killers", that atleast chennai women and men of late, as i know of, who have got hooked onto the television soap operas. Its a packed evening between 7 PM to 10:30 PM. Just have to find time for dinner. Arnab & Anna take a backseat. Whats more important than the second wife of a third husband going out on an adventurous rendezvous. Is it time for dinner now?. Hickory dickory dock!!! Watches - phew. I can tell you the time with the title music of the soap operas telecast on TV channels. The characters and names that come and go are akin to that of the infinite mathematical series of Ramanujan. There are people who can put Ramanujan on the backseat for their precision with their memory on the names of characters without using any formulae. The TRP rating is directly proportional to the amount of twists and turn the episodes generate week after week. The daughter in law says that she does not like her mother in law and picks up the knife from the kitchen only for the viewers to see a "To be continued" climax for the day. But you can rest assured to vacation in Simla for the next two weeks to come back and see the daughter in law cutting vegetables with the same knife that she picked up from the kitchen. Nevertheless, Its new age entertainment to pass your time in the most unproductive way possible. Presume now is the time for books on time management for authors to make millions. They should concentrate on time management for the precious 3 hours between 7-10 PM on week days to earn the bucks.