Time...the irony

When we see comments like "you have way too much time on your hands" after watching the mysore pak or vadam videos, cannot help but smile.

The whole idea behind doing the videos was to show folks that

a. you do not need a lot of time to make it
b. it is not that difficult to make these things

That is why the time was mentioned in the videos. The mysore pak was done in 1 hour and 4 mins (and if the ghee was premade it could be done in 50 mins.) The time it takes for you to drive around to an Indian Restaurant and find mysore pak(you can find Soan Papdi and Haldiram stuff here in stores but not MysorePak), stay in line, pay, come back home is almost an hour plus.

It will also cost you 1$ per piece + gas for that while it costs you 10 cents to make it at home!

The vadam making started at 12:42 and we were done by 1:08, in under 30 minutes! We got 72 pieces for ~$1.5 total! Your other options are to wait for closest friend or relative to get you some from India or buy 20 pieces for $3.99 from the local Indian store.

It would have taken the same time to make 4 times that quantity of the gel and another 10 minutes to spread it out!

Was telling Sangeetha earlier today "Has cooking ones own specialty items become that unfashionable that only people with time to waste or too much time on their hands can do it?"

Is this a phenomena with the younger generation? Eating fast food or buying your food is somehow supposed to be a "time saver" and therefore a cheaper option?

Just think about it!

We cook every night and we take our lunch with us to work. (San always packs my lunch.. also everyday I do call her at lunchtime to have a chat, if not about the food, at least we have a chat). We cook for the kids anyways, so it is a no brainer to spend the 10 minutes to pack lunch. One can always argue that if you get paid enough, the cost of that 10 minutes is more at an hourly rate and therefore buying food is cheaper.

So many recipes are going to be lost. It has been ages since I even smelled some of those divine smells that would come from the kumuti aduppus (charcoal stoves) when my grandma and her aunt would team up to make sweets for the family on a whim!

Just wish I could replay those smells like we replay youtube videos! It doesn't have to be lost. We don't have to rely on MSG and complicated carbonates and coloring agents to add pep to the food we eat.

On a similar note, when we pulled potatoes grown in our backyard and made a simple curry, the smell and taste were orders of magnitude better. It was like being transported to my 10 year old phase, and I was sitting on the floor and my mom was sliding more curry on to my plate from the "ilupa chatti"!

The potatoes looked ugly and gnarled, but the taste was out of this world. The picture perfect potatoes from the local grocery store are practically bland compared to this. We as a consumer would rather have our food look good than taste good.

A lot of the younger generation prefers to buy food than make food and the convenient excuse becomes "you have way too much time on your hands if you are cooking!"

By the way, bloging and videoblogs are easy, especially if you can type 70+ words a minute and you have been doing this a lot.

We all have 168 hours a week. If you spend 42 hours sleeping, 14 hours driving to and from work and running errands over weekend, that leaves you with 112 hours.

If you work 11 hours a day, 5 days a week and another 10 hours over the weekend that takes out 65 hours and you have 47 hours. You spend ~2.5 hours a weekday with your kids and 12 hours with them over the weekend and that is another 17 hours and you still have 30 hours left for eating breakfast, dinner, watching movies, doing dishes, grocery shopping, making that once a week cooking video,etc. no?

Jr., after watching the "Making of Vadaam" video, decided to make a cooking video earlier today (aka irritating your mother video). I did not know about this till San told me. It was hilarious to hear her commentary and the videography.

She adapts, refines, starts this one at the beginning of the Dosai making cycle..Watching this brings happy tears! My little girl is already an expert videographer and cooking aficionado!

You see how a 7 year old can do this by observation (between watching food network and her dad). Next thing you know she will be collecting advertisement money.

Kids today!

ps. You have to have the audio on high to really hear her comments.

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The older blogger

TIRED!!!!

LOBSTER.

WTFIROTFLMAO?

OMGWHTWCT?

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This is really extreme, duh!!!!

Lot of bull shit to exasperate reader.

What the %$^* is rolling on the floor laughing my @$$ off?

Oh my god What is this world coming to?

Now, for the post!

When I see such abbreviated comments in my inbox like ROTFLMAO, I used to be puzzled. My abbreviations on internetiquette slang was limited to the understanding of OMG, WTF and LOL !

Now there is all these ROFL, ROTFL, ROTFLMAO, ROTFLCONFUSIUS, ROTFLMANMOHANSINGH, etc. etc.

HTGCOSUDTUWTCIAA!

Have to go check out what the comment is all about!

Why? Why?

I am old. It is difficult enough to understand it when spelled out!

PLEASE...

(Please Limit Extensively Abbreviated Spoken English...)

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Tie up loose ends..

There is a phrase in Tamizh "mottai thalaikkum muzhangaalukkum mudichchu podaadhey" which literally translated means "don't tie a knot between your tonsured head and your ankles"

This could have been our wise sages saying "don't have your head up your @$$" in a nice politically correct way or there is some other cryptic reference. They must have been wise sages, because a tonsured head should be way better than a head full of hair, for said purpose. This phrase is used by granny's to convey the message "Don't try to link unrelated things!" and used by me to say "Don't insult Karl Pearson and his correlation coefficient!".

Now what loose ends is this post going to tie up? Nostalgia, IT, people and perceptions.

Why? Well, a comment on the previous post, a followup comment and an analysis of the comment by s.b., that is why!

Nostalgia for me has always been associated with something more than just reminescing or flashbacks. Often times it puts things in a different perspective. Reminds me of (oh oh! there we go again!) a short story we had as part of our Non-Detailed Text book (NDT as we used to call it). It was "The Pepper Tree" by Dal Stevens(either I do not know the correct spelling for the author or it is not a popular story because Google does not give me a link!).

In this story, the author goes back to his childhood home, only to find that the huge pepper tree that he remembered as a child is nothing impresive when he is a grown man! Can personally relate to this. The high compound wall from which I fell and got eight stitches as a child was all of 3 1/2 feet tall. I kind of felt stupid when showing it to the family on our last India trip!

Now for another nostalgic event involving IT People. My friend Suresh was visiting Boston for a conference. He was in a suburban train station where there was only one other person, another desi. Here is the conversation (as narrated to me by Suresh after his trip, as much as I can remember)

2nd Desi Dude : Sir, neenga endha Platform? (Sir, which Platform are you?)
Confused Suresh : Sir, there is only two Platforms here. One to go that way, one to go this way. I am going to Boston.
2nd Desi Dude : I mean which Platform do you work on?
Confused Suresh : What makes you think I work for the Platform? Do I look like a transit railway employee? I am a chemical Engineer!
2nd Desi Dude: Sorry Sir. I thought you were also IT!

This was 1997 or 1996 (don't remember) and it was an okay icebreaker between two Desi's to ask "Which platform?" and expect an answer like "windows" or "linux" or god knows what those Platforms are! Chemical and Materials Engineers would of course have a lightbulb moment. Still remember rolling on the ground laughing when he came back and narrated this. There were so many Desi IT dudes who descended in those years that they would generalize any Desi in the US to be an IT dude!!

Today, the IT sector in general seems to be getting a brunt of abuse by Desi's. All problems are to be traced back to the IT people! This reminds me of Raj's post on finding the right scapegoat and making it stick. That reminds me of .......

When I was a small boy we would hear on the radio, auto rickshaw mounted election campaign loudspeakers, stuff like "we will eliminate the forward caste. Down with the Brahmins." etc. etc. If you are from a lower middle class Brahmin family, you do start wondering what all the fuss is about. It was fashionable in the (A, AIA, B, BIA, C, CIA, etc. etc.. )D(M)K parties to do at least some Brahmin bashing as a forward to any election speech.

Today it is customary for people to indulge in IT bashing along similar lines.

In any case, "I am not IT people" was to tell folks that I am a materials engineer and not a software person and therefore not qualified to represent the views of "IT people".

As for IT being blamed for everything, well, Raj's post puts that in perspective. You might have to squint a little and read it to catch the perspective, but it is there!

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Vacation time..

I deleted a lot of comments from the controversial post. None of them were mine!

Today, I have been hurt more by words than in my entire life. So, I deleted the follow up post as well. After 30 mintues of thinking how to respond, I just decided it wasnt worth it.

Some guy didnt even read the difference between Sundar Narayanan and Narayanan Venkittu (the person who actually started the comment war with some anonymous blogger in my site on the original post) and said some really nasty things.

Another guy emailed me to say I should send my two daughters to the US miliary to show my patriotism to the US ! etc. etc.

This is my last post from India. In a few days I will be back to working my butt off in the US because I wont have any vacation days for a long time to come !

I write a blog about raising my daughters !! I will stick to it. With our busy work schedules and raising two little kids, blogging itself is an extravagance in time. I wrote one line about Nithari and the entire Indian blogging community is up in arms (this inspite of an apology!)..

Anyways, it is not worth spoiling my vacation over NRI, OCI, NRA, citizenship discussions.. A touchy feely subject where people are ready to go to any lengths to prove their stance..

For those of you who gave me your two (or four) cents on the topic, thank you. I did get a lot of nice advice from people, friendly words, stuff like "why are you defending someone else's comments", "vidu machchi", etc. etc. Thanks for that as well.

My daughters are not going to the military, Indian or American .. I am not saying this because I disrespect the armed forces. I am against guns, killing, war and violence.

I definitely dont want another comment war till I reach the US. For those curious folks who wanted to know my status, I am a US Citizen. I also am an Overseas Citizen of India. (went and became US citizen only after Manmohan Singh approved dual Citizenship!). Some guys are telling me that it is nothing less than an unlimited visa! I hope you are wrong. So if you want to write to me, please email me at sundar72@gmail.com and I will respond to you after I reach there.

Until next time, bye bye Indian bloggers..I hope to meet some of you at least on my next trip and hopefully it will be under better circumstances..

Finally I got 100 kbps (at 3 AM!!).. now I know the secret to fast blogging from home here ..

Ta Ta..