How a man can end up in khichdi starting with Rice and Daal! - Dedicated to the female folk!

Well, my previous post ends with 'rest of the day was normal' which wasnt.Here I describe the abnormal part which was my experience with cooking.(Believe me.. If you are a vegetarian on carleton campus , its almost mandatory!!)

Once I was well settled in my room,I realized I was almost dying with hunger. As I had almost all the necessary items to make a 'good' dinner for myself which included rice,dal,salt,pickles,all sorts of spices and what not, so I started cooking confidently believing that its a cake walk which the females always boast of!... I had heard from mummy that the easiest and the fastest dish when you are hungry is rice n dal with some pickles. So, it was decided that Chef Ashish Modi is going to make rice and dal for the dinner which will be served with pickle brought from India.

It had been almost six years since I had sincerely seen mummy cooking food for us.(When I visit home, I prefer talking with her in kitchen rather than paying attention to the details of cooking). I thought of making dal first followed by rice. Since I dislike the watery daal in kgp mess, so I had put in less water than I thought mess workers used. I thought that as it is daal only so a few more whistles of the pressure cooker wont do any harm! 7 whistles in one go!!... :) n then the smell of something being cooked in pressure cooker started coming. Somehow I was having the feeling that the smell was weird!.. anyways.. I opened the lid and ohh! my god where had all the water gone???? :( Thank God it wasnt burnt!!(well... almost! :P). Anyways, I thought of managing with the curdy daal for the night and cook better next time.

It was the turn to cook rice.By now, my confidence level had been short circuited to ground for an all time low!Anyways.. I marched ahead like a soldier with a defeated army. I put in rice with lots of water this time and made sure that it didn't burn as in case of daal 'by opening the lid of the pressure cooker every 3-4 minutes'... Indeed it didnt.. but it didnt get cooked as well because every time I opened the lid,the water vapour escaped and I opened it again before sufficient pressure built up.. This way, almost all the water (4-5 times the rice) was vaporated and the rice still was uncooked!.. Frustrated by this, I put in 2 bowls of water and cook it for 3 whistles at a stretch!!.. When I opened the cooker, I had not rice but something like khichdi without daal!!(Dunno if that has an indian name!!).. So, being an engineer, I thought of analogy between the current situation and that of cooking khichdi!.. As a result, I mixed up daal and rice and cooked it for two more whistles! :) and the worst was yet to come, water was short this time!! :( It was then that I realized that Women Rock!!!!..

As it was quite late for me to go out again, I decided to eat the 'khichdi' which at the end I couldnt. So, I had maggi and other snacks(brought from India) for the night and went to sleep praising the women of the country for their innate talent with cooking! :)

My First Day in Canda!

03 May,2010 : I landed on ottawa airport. I am supposed to meet a student named Paul Ren Xiang Tang (I never knew which was his first name :P) who will accompany me to the Carleton University. But where he is? No signs of a chinki.. ab main kya karun? Should I wait? .. suddenly he appears from no where and says 'Hi Ashish'... I checked on on my back if here is a name tag sticking to my T shirt!(afterall he had never seen me before!!)..Naah there was none..Anyways.. We move on towards a taxi! On the highway, PRXT asks me if I wasnt well. how could I be? The meter was going such a fast rate That too in dollars!..The supposedly good quantitative skills of the IITians worsened the situation because I could convert dollars to INR without using a Calculator... then I suddenly realize that we shouldnt be blaming the taxi drivers in Kolkata for the meter speeding faster than their taxis! Suddenly the taxi stops on a traffic light which seemed to have been red forever. The University entrance could be seen from there. Once the idea crossd my mind that should I ask PRXT to get down here itself? I had to act fast because the thinking was also costing me around 3 Dollars per minute. As I was yet to decide something ,the taxi started to move..(Mind you .. The decision taking power of 1007 and 1010 Sector V, Bokaro rocks.. btw thats the residence me and my friends used while doing our intermediate from Chinmaya Vidyalaya) .. Anyways, I thanked God because now I was not paying INR 135 per minute for standing on a signal! As we reached near some building and I was about prepare myself to count the change, Mr PRXT says to the taxi driver to keep 3.8 Dollars as tip!!!!!... INR 171 as Tip?? I rarely had the whole bill on myself as INR 171!! However, I couldnt say anything... the damage had been done!

Anyways, we moved forward to the reception desk (referred to as residence commons), there was a gal in red t-shirt whose face was not visible because she was trying to pick up something from beneath her chair! As she finally picked up whatever she was trying to and as her face started coming in view, my heart sank! Ohh My God!!!!!... How can someone be so beautiful????? I read her name.. It was 'Alicia'... Man such a sweet name for such a cute lady!.. I was dead.. Somehow the red t-shirt was the perfect for her... I kept watching her.. and watching her.. and still watching her... she asked me something which obv i couldnt listen to because I was busy watching her. Then Mr PRXT comes into picture and gets the technicalities done.. In the whole scene, I remained mum and kept watching her!.. She was a Goddess!.. Then Paul asked me to accompany him to the LEEDS house. I just cant explain how much I wanted to stay there. Anyways, I had to go.. As I started to go, She said - 'Bye, Have a nice stay and a good night!'.. I couldnt say anything.. From her voice which I noticed for the first time , I could say that she was definitely french.. I was in love with everything that is french.

Anyways, My fairy goes out of the view and I came back to the real world. Then we reached the room and I started taking a few snaps!!.. To upload on the facebook for others to see, Typical IITian!!.. the rest of the day was normal.. we went to purchase a few necessay items (obviously I had to stop calculating the prices in INR if I was to buy anything) and then I came back and had some food. As I was dead with tiredness, I went to my cozy bed for having a nice sleep. I dont remember whether my fairy queen came into the dreams as well but I had a nice night!.. This is in short how my first day in canada and my first blog are!..