Sydney Stories - Week 60

Hi,

Thanks again for your b'day wishes.

As you can see, starting this week the Sydney stories will be delivered via a different channel. A friend of mine - Aravind Swamy had suggest this idea long ago. For some reason I just kept putting it away. Now as I turned 35, realized that it's time for a change. So here it is - not 1, but 2 blogs. I've dedicated one just for food and food related topics. I think its so important that it deserved that special attention. :-)

Damn - Cricket Season!! This week I literally had to request my lunch gang to change a topic of discussion. You might already know about my comprehensional capacity for Hindi and my LOVE for the game of cricket. When animated discussions happen in Hindi on cricket....well I don't need that stress during lunch!!! I hate to write about it, but don't seem to be left with much choice. This week, I breathed cricket, played cricket and worst of all I even WATCHED cricket. Truly an interesting week!!

My birthday was quite unique as it happens to be every year. This year, the uniqueness was when I had to eat lunch twice. A group of people from work went out to lunch to a Spanish Tapas. The food kept flowing in, all varieties of nibbles. Quite tasty each one of them (almost). I tried a mussel for the first time (from the shell). Probably not something I would try again. At the end (??) I had a very naive question - Great entrees (appetizers) so where are the mains? Just that we were about to pay the bill when I was asking this question. ;-) Being my b'day I didn't want to starve myself. Escaped out for a quick Pad Thai at my favourite Saap Thai. My DAY was made. Went to Sambal the Malay restaurant for dinner. Nandhitha had her "Chicken and Fries" from the Mcdonald's next door. Luckily they allowed to have it in the restaurant.

Today we had been to a unique train ride at a place called Galston. I could recollect the first time the train ride was introduced in the Anna park in Salem. It was fun to go around sitting ON the train (not in the train). They had some strict rules that a passenger should be wearing fully covered shoes. I heard some kids were turned away because they didn't have proper foot wear. The kids had a blast going round and round. It was a sudden trip and couldn't organize my camera on time. Hopefully some of my friends will share some pictures and will post them.

Hope you find this new format convenient. If you choose to get regular updates, please feel free to stalk me.

Have A Great Week!!

Sydney Stories - Week 59

Hello,

Hope you had a good week and end.

I get a weird feeling when I go to a rest room and the automatic sanitiser sends off a puff. Is it trying send me a signal? ;-)

Monday morning fever seems to be taken a bit literally by a few people. The labour rules in NSW is such that for a leave for 1 day one doesn't need produce a medical certificate to claim a sick leave. Becomes very convenient. Some take this a bit further to "show" that they are not abusing this facility. They take 2 days off and produce a medical certificate (which apparently doesnt seem to be too difficult to obtain). Oh well...am sure there is a strong reason for this.  :-)

The week zoomed past as usual and the weekend zoomed faster. 

Weekend went to an Indian restaurant in a suburb called Homebush called Taj Indian Masala. One of the "concepts" in Sydney with some restaurants is they have different versions of their own restaurant. This one I am talking about has a fast food outlet in a shopping mall. They have a pure vegetarian version in Harris Park and then a veg/non-veg restaurant usually fully licenced. The later is usually called "Fine Dining". Food was quite good with whatever we ordered and the best part was it was about 30% cheaper than other restaurants of similar kind. 

Today we had been to a relative's gruhapravesam. The priest was showing off proudly a newly "found" slokha  (that he read from his notes) for overall well-being of everybody. I used to think that usually all these old ones pretty much had every slokha under their tongue. I guess there is always something new to be learnt whatever profession it is. 

Alrighty...Have A Great Week!!

Chetty

Sydney Stories - Week 58

Hello,

A fairly quiet week, Business As Usual (BAU) as the IT professional Aussies say. Came up with some interesting graphs on Friday to assess how various teams were performing. As luck might have it one of the senior client managers was walking by and he peeked into my monitor and was surprised that someone actually looks at graphs (to analyse how things are) these days. Thankfully I was not on my gmail page then. ;-) 

Friday had a unique Thai lunch with one of my newly found friends. A Wiproite who happens to be Nandhitha's friend's dad. He is a hard core vegetarian and I was surprised when he used to claim that he loves Thai food. To prove his point he took me to a vegetarian Thai restaurant in the city. I am not sure if I would go there again, but certainly was an interesting concept. It was actually a vegan shop where all they had was tofu and veggies. I ordered one of my usual favourites - Pad See Iew. It had everything minus the chicken and more importantly the fish sauce. Chicken was substituted with some form of tofu - acceptable. However lack of fish sauce - it seemed to lack something basic. Is that what people call "soul"??? Looks like one can get realization through food too. ;-) That restaurant was trying its best to allure people to turn vegans. They had quotes from famous personalities starting from Da Vinci to Einstein and more. However, I remember reading somewhere that while Leonardo might not have eaten meat, he does kill animals for his varied experiments. 

This weekend happened to witness a "political drama" here. There was a general body meeting for electing this year's office bearers for the main committee of the Tamil school that Nandhitha goes. I had no intention of going there but did go on a request from my neighbour. Apparently my neighbour's friend was contesting for the post of "President" and hence trying to gather troops for his support. It was a hot saturday afternoon and about 80 people had turned up for this. The "meeting" started with a downpour of complaints on the outgoing president and the committee. Am sorry this is a volunteer role that someone is doing in his/her free time. Dont see how anybody can have any right to question anybody here except of course if there was any mishandling of funds. Which BTW, is a decent amount for a volunteer organization - about 20k. So far I hear there was never a competition for the post and usually selected unanimously. Anywhere there are more than 2 people, factions are formed. This time there were 4 schools joined together against our school. One team offers water to the participants and another provided sweet, karam for the voters. No points for guess who won. ;-) So much for an ego massage. 

Tried out a very decent and basic mee goreng. Uma and kids had a heavy snack outside and was not in the mood for dinner and me took this opportunity to experiment. The trick was with the sauce, kadai and small quantity of noodles. The small quantity allowed to get the noodles fried well with a bit of burn as well. The sauce mix - tomato sauce, kecap manis, sambal paste, soya sauce and oyster sauce. As for the kadai, I think I wouldn't have got this effect with a non-stick kadai had to use a iron kadai to get the burnt flavour.

Oki doki, that's all for now. Have A Great Week!!

Chetty

Sydney Stories - Week 57

Hello,

Hope you had a good week.

This weekend went to drop Nandhitha in her Tamil class and was hoping to catch up on some shopping. The school principal came up and requested me to "take a class" since one of the teachers was missing in action. Thankfully I was given the "pre-kg" group - Nandhitha's class. Nandhitha was the first to get excited and shouted - "Daddy you are not teacher. Why are you here?". What should I say - it was an interesting 2 hours. The syllabus I had to cover as அ and ஆ (the As of Tamil), words starting with them and an alphabet rhyme. It was a bit embarrassing to begin with having forgotten how to write அ.  Stretching this for 2 hours, yes it was an experience. Made the kids write the letters in many ways on the board. Luckily one of the kids mom was also sitting in the class who gave some tips, finally ended the class with நிலா நிலா ஓடி வா. :-)  In between I had to do ஆயா work as well taking kids to the loo.

`

While shopping in the local Woolies (Aussie for Woolworths) noticed an interesting operation. At regular intervals the cashiers bundle up the cash and coins in a "bullet" and send it up a tube / chute up. I guess there should be a gajaana (treasury) somewhere inside where they get deposited. Seems like secure way of transferring and collecting the cash.

This weekend made Pad Kee Mao - flat white noodles with basil leaves (and chicken of course). Figured out the trick not to kolanjufy the fresh rice noodles. The tip was out there on the net of course. A lesson not to be repeated - way too much noodles than what the kadai could take (inspite of that being a fairly wide one). Made 2 versions - one not too spicy for overall consumption and another with a Thai spicy rating of 3 *. The 2nd version which I made with lesser noodles and more spices came out pretty well. Marinating the chicken slices with soya sauce, fish sauce and ginger garlic paste (with a bit of corn flour for binding) gave a good effect as well.

At work a senior client executive had flown down from the US of A and was addressing the gathering here in Sydney. I think he did not realize that I was an external "vendor" sitting in the mix. He went on and on ranting on us vendors how we take them for a ride and how he intends to put a stop to it. Felt a bit awkward since I was the only "vendor" guy in that group. Oh well, at least now I know his plans.

That's all folks.

Have A Great Week!!

Chetty

Sydney Stories - Week 56

Hello,

Hope you had a good weekend. 

Enjoying the "pleasant" Sydney weather these days. A good change from the hot and humid. While it was hot and humid one day it drizzled a bit as I was walking home from the train station. It felt as if I was in a sauna filled with Eucalyptus steam. The road to home has a line of the Eucas (making up my own Aussie term here) which gave that superb effect. Don't remember when I had this before. Probably in Yercaud? 

Currently on a book on Leadership written by Robin Sharma. I think this will be my last Robin Sharma I will be reading. This is like a sequel to his first book "The Monk Who Sold his Ferrari". He is like the Deva (music director) of  such books. He takes content from all places, spins a story around with supposedly colourful words and makes it a "best seller". 

The tennis club I go to has a lot of interesting people. This weekend I met a person (probably in his 70s) who carries his tennis racquets in a well autographed wooden brief case. Was almost tempted to take a photograph, maybe after I know him for a little while.

One of the recent weekend routines these days is to go to a huge market called Parklea Market to buy vegetables. It's a mini-mall - mega market. There's a row of vegetable shops  amongst all other shops selling almost everything except automobiles. The veggie shops are located one after the other without any clear boundaries. One can easily take veggies from one shop to another without even realizing. The only way you can differentiate would be by the different coloured plastic carry bags. Invariably I find some desi lady "inconspicuously" sampling a grape or two. They do it so casually as if it was their right to do so. 

Oki doki. Have a Great Week!!

Oh yeah, Happy Valentines Day!! :-) Would've committed a sin if I didn't wish!! ;-)

Chetty

Sydney Stories - Week 55

Hello,

An almost event less week which was of course made up with the weekend. It seems like one can fight reason, but quite a challenge to fight stupidity (or something like that). If you know how to do that (win over stupidity) do let me know.

Weekends are becoming busier than ever. Nandhitha is busy with her swimming and Tamil classes. In the swimming pool, Indian men have a very unique way of presenting (or un-presenting) themselves. Almost every desi guy out there jumps into the pool with a t-shirt on, whereas you can see the fair skinners being quite comfortable baring down - regardless of their "form" to just their swim trunks. Is that a cultural thing? (Comments on men only) ;-)

The Tamil class is another interesting thing happening here. There is an Australian government funded Tamil School (chain of schools actually) being run for the past 33 years. It is primarily run by volunteers, but the government funds some part of the expenses. It was run in one of the public school campuses around here. There are 4 such schools in Sydney which runs their classes through out the year. I hear that the scores obtained in these classes can even be used for +2 (year 12 as they call it) scores. One of our friends is a principal in one such school. It was funny to see a "principal" running around in shorts and t-shirt with slippers. :-)

While the kids were busy learning Tamil the parents were catching up in the "cool" 42 degree weather. Felt like being in Phoenix that day. The temperatures dropped to 20s today. What a drop!!

Working with North Indians these days I get to know something interesting regarding Punjabi culture. Not everybody in a family belong to the same religion. Apprently the first son born is considered a Sikh - dedicated as a warrior to the army and the rest of them are Hindus!!!

Our recent spice addition to our kitchen is Kecap Manis - an Indonesian sweet soya sauce. The noodles came out pretty well after using that. Nandha was also impressed that he even slurped up the left overs the next day.

Oki doki.  Have A Great Week!!

Chetty

Sydney Stories - Week 54

Hello,

Hope you had a good week.

Work is just getting better and better at "entertainment value" every week. Spent a month trying to get something done only to know that the person who could help me with it sits right next to me. 

Last week marks my first anniversary at our apartment here in Westmead. Realize that I haven't been in the same house for so long since Phoenix. 

Auto body shops (as they call it in US) are called "Smash Repair" shops which takes care of all the tinkering and fixing done to cars after an accident. To the point.

Celebrated Australia Day on Jan 26th with a day off from work. This is ONE day where the the Aussies don't mess around with the day of the week to make it convenient along with a weekend. Some people I know of course made it a pretty looong weekend. It was supposed to be close to 40 deg C with humidity of around 90%. Not many people seemed to have ventured out. We had been to the local park here late in the evening to see fireworks. Nothing too great to talk about the pyrotechnics -  very ordinary. 

While returning from the carnival we saw a lot of cars parked on the curb since the parking spaces were all full. It looked funny so I took out my camera and clicked one such car. Just as I turn around, I see that car's owner walk past me and get into the car giving a very "warm" look. Escaaaape.... ;-) 

This weekend had a barbeque (barbie in Aussie) party arranged at Sydney Bicentennial park by a group of friends. A bunch of guys apparently went at around 8.30 in the morning to reserve a spot in the park for a barbeque lunch. Several varieties of vegetarian and meat options were available. A good alternative to host a party if one doesn't have the space at home or to invest in a barbeque setup. It is free if cost for space and fuel. Just need to find a good spot.

Post lunch they had arranged for a game of cricket. Of course I was a silent spectator. The 2nd round the guys decided to include the ladies as well. The rules were bent...or should I say twisted?? The ladies were given an handicap of few feet to bowl. They were not expected to field and every ball that hits the bat scored a run. Seemed like heights of female chauvinism. How could the women take such a liberty???

The weekend ended on a good Aussie Open match. Not sure if I should say Novak deserved to win or Andy deserved to lose. Guess both are appropriate here.

Oki doki. Have A Great Week!!

Chetty