Sydney Stories - Week 14

Hello,

Guess you must be busy with IPL now. I don't know why...but I am on it too. It has been the most ridiculous thing I've done in the recently. Could think of a couple of reasons. I want to check out the entertainment value of the show. Who cares for the cricket anyway. Another reason is probably because tomorrow is a holiday for me and I can afford to stay up and watch the fun (?). Oh well...may the best team win. :-)  

Today is ANZAC day and hence tomorrow is a holiday for us here. It is equivalent to Veterans day celebrated in the US of A. ANZAC stands for Australia New Zealand Army Corps. This day is to remember the thousands of lives lost on April 25th at Gallipoli in Turkey. The funny thing about these remembrance days is it has been about sending the troops to some other country to fight someone else's war. Australia in particular has had no enemies of its own - only enemies of its allies. However, Australia will welcome with open hands people from those "enemy" countries as refugees. I should be missing something here because it doesn't make sense. Anyway, I will be enjoying my day off so it's all good. 

This weekend my cooking experiment was Char Kway Teow. Went on a shopping spree to get all the ingredients. I skipped 2 of them by choice - chinese sausage and cockles. The taste came out pretty OK to what I can remember. However it turned out a little soggy. I think I know what went wrong. Hopefully next time it should be better.

Nandha's visa process is progressing. I am thinking to make a short trip to India end of May. Hopefully I can time it along with a wedding in the family.

Oki doki will keep it short this time. Let me catch up on the IPL fever.

Have a great week.

Chetty

Sydney Stories - Week 13

Hello,

A fairly quiet but hectic week at work. It's the annual appraisal cycle going on right now. It's an interesting experience to be talking to all the team members and their negotiation tactics. Not that I am doing this for the first time but it's been a while.

What is it with us folks and lack of courtesy? The other day while I was in the train on the way to work had another "interesting" experience. The trains have a setup of 3 seaters and 2 seaters. The very first seat though...is a tad smaller than a regular 3 seater. Yes, 3 "small" people can fit in, but not always. So there I was taking a such a seat (another fairly "built" lady was already sitting there). There comes this hulk of a guy...one of our own and squeezes himself in that "3rd" seat. I started choking to an extent that I couldn't breathe properly. I excused myself and got out of the seat and traveled standing for the rest of the way.Why!!

I have harped about inefficiency of the Aussies many a times. Wonder what it is with them to underplay the human capital. People are used to hand out restaurant discount coupons, announce the sales going on in a shop etc. They all look so old marketing techniques. Can understand that this provides employment to many - but can't those people be better utilized?

One of the cool things I am seeing here is the 3 way pedestrian crossing signals. I had noticed this for the first time near Flinders St station in Melbourne. I see that more in Sydney. Normally the pedestrians get a green signal to walk in one direction only. So, I were to reach a point diagonally opposite to where I am I would have to wait to clear 2 signals. However here esp where they are big roads and longer signals they have diagonal crossing for pedestrians. Basically the automative traffic is stopped on all directions and you can pretty much walk whichever direction you want. Apparently not all of Aussie is bad. :-)

This tennis partner of mine, he works in the same building as I do. I've never seen him before or even if I did woulnd't have recognized him. The other day I met him at the train station. He taught me new route to get off from a different station than what I normally used to and walk to work across a park. Glad that I found it because I always thought the previous station was too far from work. So anyway, I bumped into him 3 times the same day. Talk about coincidences!!

The over enthusiast in me wanted to compete with my favourite chicken masala to prepare my own. Turned out to be a disaster. Luckily I stopped the process midway before adding it on the the dish. Resorted back to good old Kumar's masala. :-) Got to figure out that magic ingredient. ;-)

This weekend saw a couple of hindi movies - Ishqiyaa and Jaane tu ya jaane na. Ishqiyaa basically was inspired to watch after listening (and seeing) to the Dil to bachha hai song and the suspense behind the plot. Unfortunately the language was soo rural that I could only get a gist of the overall movie - in fact not even that. :-(  Jaane tu was one complete masala. Kept me occupied during my weekly ironing. :-)

Have a great week!!

Chetty

Sydney Stories - Week 11

Hello,

Winter is slowly settling in. The minimum temperatures are getting below 20 deg C. The weather is becoming "pleasant".  I don't know if its the chilled breeze the fragrance from the eucalyptus trees is a bit more noticeable these days. The walk to and from the train station is a bit more enjoyable now.

The looong weekend is just about to get over. The first two days were quite uneventful. Was warming the couch pretty much the whole time on Friday and Saturday. On Saturday went to a cousin's place for lunch. They had prepared bisi bele bath. Had it after a long time. It was yummy.

Finished reading up on Angels and Demons. Good timing in fact since I finished it on Good Friday. :-) Interesting book - definitely a page turner. Now am eager to watch the movie. Have started on a new book called Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra. Book loaned by my cousin.

On Sunday (Easter Sunday) a colleague of mine named Abhijeet and I decided to meet up in the city for a walk in the park. Reached the city at 2 pm and started our walk from one end of Hyde Park. The timing was good that we were able to see an  Easter procession. A rally with people from different nationalities (holding their respective flags) were walking around Hyde park. The interesting part was the rally was lead by an ass..oops should I say a mule? Apparently a Christian tradition. From Hyde park we proceeded on to the Royal Botanical gardens. It was an interesting garden. The key highlight was "heaps" of bats hanging upside down in the trees. (Heaps by the way is Aussie slang for "lots".) I have seen 1 or two bats here and there but never a cluster of them like this. It was an interesting sight.

One end of the botanical garden leads into the Opera house. Walked around the Opera towards the Harbour bridge. We initially thought of walking on the bridge but ditched it in the last minute. Looks like Easter sunday is a subha muhurtham day here. We saw 3 or 4 weddings that got over and the couples were being photographed with the Opera in the background. One of them was even an Indian couple. The photographers were asking them to do all the weird poses. Had a lot of photographs taken of me at various vantage points. Wonder when my mate would be uploading them on the web. It was a good long walk from 2 - 6 PM. After the walk headed back to my friend's room (the same hotel where I stayed initially). Had Thai for dinner and returned back home at around 10 PM.

Today (yes Monday was a holiday too) did a bit of cooking (more about that shortly). Finally got an opportunity to play tennis. Caught up with a Russian dude who lives close to me. He offered to give me a ride to the Parramatta tennis club. Had a good hour of tennis. This guy works in the same office building as mine. Now we are considering having a hit sometime during the week as well. Let's see how it goes.  In the evening went to my uncle's house for dinner. Had a nice south indian dinner - poori, masala, ven pongal, masala vadai with chutney and kootu. The kootu was something different - prepared without any onion or garlic. Have brought some back home for later use.

Over the weekend did a bit of experimentation in cooking of course. This weekend it was bhaingan bartha, pad kee mao (thai style flat rice noodles with chicken and basil leaves) and shitake mushrooms with bok choy in oyster sauce. Learnt a trick in making omlettes this weekend. The trick is to make the "batter" as thin as possible. Usually I beat up 2 eggs, mix up the onions, mushrooms and chillies and make it in one go. The omlette comes thick, sometimes burnt. Nowadays I make 2 separate omlettes with the same quantity of eggs and veggies. The result was restaurant quality. :-) Another trick (which I learnt from the web of course) is to add a bit of turmeric, cumin powder and garam masala (apart from salt and pepper). You gotta try this out. :-) Incidentally the garam masala which I've been enjoying for a while now is a Fijian brand. 

Thanks to the loong weekend caught up on a couple of movies - only Hindi this time. Saw Karthik Calling Karthik and Taare Zameen par. Beautiful movies both of them. KCK seemed a little dumb initially but the plot and the whole movie made complete sense at the end. TZP was brilliant, I wonder we - current day parents will get a message or two out of this.

On the home front, Nandha has got his passport. Now am waiting for the person handling the visas for my company to get back from her wedding vacation. Couple of more weeks to start the next process. It's getting there.

All in all a good week and weekend.

Have a great week ahead.

Chetty