While waiting for my car to be fixed at the dealership, I was browsing through the day’s local newspaper.

This ad on the business section of the paper caught my eye,

“Great Minds Gathering on Oct 7 - Don’t miss it. Today’s date Oct 23 2008.”

Quite entertaining

With all the doom and gloom, market crashes and poor earnings reports, this is the only thing on the business page that brought a smile.

I never fully understood the difference between a geek and a nerd like most people.

Last week I was at a Fellowship graduation dinner for cardiologist (tagging along with my housemate Dev)and it appeared that the debate of who is saving the world was settled once and for all in favor of the physicians and the cardiologists of the world.

But life is such a big drama and once again there is a new twist to the tale.

The geeks are showing and leading the way claims David Brooks in this NY Times opinion page article

My “Fellow” geeks and I feel vindicated. Go ahead and tell the world that you are geek.

Its Cool!

The India that I grew up in was a country of extreme contradictions, socially speaking. A sizable minority does not eat meat and consider themselves “vegetarians”.

The logical conclusion would be that people in India are kind towards animals since they do not eat meat.

Sadly, this is not the case, remember I told you this was a country of contradictions.

Why is this so?

When I was a kid I was programmed to follow this rule,

IF you see a dog
THEN look for a stone to throw at it


This programming probably had something to do with it.

But seriously, this can only be an effect and not the real cause… I have my own non-scientific reasons as to what may be the real cause including a feverish selfishness and a dedicated disregard for others, people or otherwise.

Do you know why people don’t care about dogs or mistreat them in India ? Or If you know why, Please leave a comment.

Thankfully, I have learnt better now and don’t throw stone at people or dogs
People are simply not aware of animal rights in India and fail to acknowledge that animals do have rights. The common excuse I hear is that an average woman/man’s life was worse than that of a dog or a pig.

People have to be kind and treat animals fairly.

What prompted me to write this story was this news article of a couple of German Tourists rescuing a Dog in Madurai, a major city in TamilNadu, South India.

I thank their kindness and hope that people learn to be kind to animals from these beautiful strangers.

Here is a list of pie categories from the 2007 National Pie Championships Commercial Entry Form,

Apple
Apple Crumb
Banana Cream
Berry
Blueberry
Candy/Cookie Cream
Cherry
Chocolate Cream
Citrus
Coconut Cream
Custard
Key Lime
Nut
Open
Open Cream
Open Fruit/Berry
Peach
Peanut Butter
Pumpkin
Silk Cream

The very elemental nature of this list attracted me. Enjoy the pie!

I wanted to add some color to my room. Well, I am not much of a colors person and I am not an interior designer either! So I downloaded Seashore on my MacBook and created this picture.

I want to blow this up into a larger picture, frame it a hang it on my living room wall .

Do you think its worth it? Let me know what you think by adding your comments below.

Here is a quick run down of seven things (gems) that I liked about Sivaji - The Boss

- Classic Rajini ( saarukku tea bajji kondu vaada dai, Kaun Hai? Boss-da Kenai! )

- Shankar nuff said just pick his movie and you are sure to be entertained and inspired. [ some of the masterpieces he has created on the silver screen include Gentleman, Kaadhalan, Indian, Mudhalvan, Anniyan and of course Sivaji -The Boss]

- Art Direction for the song sequences, There are songs that you fast forward or shy and look the other way but if you take your eyes off the songs in this movie or even bat an eyelid you will miss a great experience. So enjoy the songs and feast on the elaborate sets, Hello Broadway are you taking notice!

- Music AR Rahman, I didn’t get the music at first. The lyrics were not helping either but the numbers slowly grew on me and I love all of the songs except the sad version of “Sahana/Sahara”.

- Costume, Doing costume for Rajini is a challenge and the costume designers have lived up to that challenge. The song “Style” features some amazing clothes on Rajini and Shreya the heroine. Of course the first song ballelakka features the signature Shankar style painted caricatures, dolls vaguely resembling traditional dance costumes and a dance crew whose faces you never see, running around the green country side.

What do you think?

- Camera (stunt scenes) Shankar introduced the The cool Bullet Time filming technique popularized by the Matrix in an earlier film. I loved the use of this technique in the stunt scenes. Of course, none other than Rajni would have looked as cool in those stunt scenes. Am I using cool a lot?

- Post Production

We all wanted to see a younger Rajini thanks to Prasad Labs, this was made possible through their patient digital enhancements.

If you are not a Rajini fan or if you are not even from the sub-continent you will still enjoy this world classic. You should run to the local Indian video store and ask for Sivaji -The Boss (tell them The Boss sent you there)

Overall the Boss Rules! I give seven stars (*******) for the superstar !

Songs from Sivaji The Boss

for my personal listening only

Recipe for Vegetable Guruma

Preparation time 30 minutes
Serving Size 4 people.

Ingredients for grinding [Araikka, in tamil]:

Green Chillis 2 pieces
Coconut [Grated] 1/4 Cup
Ginger 1/2 inch piece
Garlic 2 pieces
Poppy seed 1 table spoon
Cashews 4-5 pieces

Udaichcha Kadalai [pottu kadalai, Split Peas Dal, roasted gram, Dalia, sengapappu] 3 table spoons
Coriander Seeds [Dania] 1 table spoon

Vegetables

Carrots 1 (diced)
Beans 10 pods (cut to 1/4 inch pieces)
Fresh Green Peas 1/4 cup
Cauliflower (florets) 1/4 cup (cut to small pieces)

Frying [Thalikka] Ingredients

Onion 1 (medium size), cut to small pieces
Tomato 1 (large), cut to small pieces
Cinnamon bar 2 (approx 1 inch pieces)
Clove 2 pieces
Curry leaves 10-12 leaves

Other ingredients

turmeric powder 1/2 tea spoon
garam masala 1/2 tea spoon
salt to taste
coriander leaves
Cooking oil 3 table spoons

Preparation

Add all the ingredients for grinding in a food processor (mixer/grinder) and grind to a paste (add a little water if that helps).

Heat 3 table spoons of cooking oil in a deep pan (Kadai, wok) .
Keep the flame in medium.
Fry the Cinnamon bars and cloves till they splutter.
Add the chopped onions and give it a few minutes to cook, till the onions are transparent.
Add the curry leaves.
Add the chopped tomatoes.
After the tomatoes are cooked (after five minutes or so) add all the vegetables till they are cooked.

Add the ground masala paste, turmeric powder, garam masala to the pan and add 4 cups of water.

Add salt to taste.

Close the pan and boil the guruma for ten minutes. (Keep stirring the guruma every two minutes or so.)

Remove pan from the stove and pour guruma into a serving dish. Add finely chopped fresh coriander leaves to the guruma
before serving.

Here is the final result,

This goes well with Idli, Ghee rice and of course puris and parottas.

You can also call this as Parotta Guruma.

I finally have my own wordpress server. Its running on an old Dell Dimension Laptop. Total installation cost $0! Well not really … if you consider the cost of the CD that I used to burn ubuntu.

Its a great feeling and discovering that WP as built using php is a pleasant surprise.