Recipe: Chawal ki Kheer

After like ages, I actually decided to make Kheer for my dad who loves sweets 🙂

And I wish I had someone here to testify the fact that it turned out to be delicious! 😀

So, I decided to share the recipe with you all as the dish is very very easy to make 🙂 Even you guys can give it a shot at home 🙂 Make it for ur girl friend or wife and surprise them 😀 And if u have neither, then make it to pamper yourself 🙂

Ingredients (Servings for 2): 

Milk – 1/2 Litre

Sugar – As per taste

Dry fruits – 50 gms

Rice – 50 gms 

Soak Rice for 15 mins. Add rice to milk in a frying pan (Kadhai) and start boiling with the flame at sim. Put one steel handle in the Kadhai to ensure that the milk doesnt boil out of the vessel. Put the sugar in the vessel. Keep stirring every few minutes. Keep boiling till the rice is cooked and the milk is a little thicker. You can decide the consistency of thickness depending on your taste. Please note that the flame is at sim throughout. Put the dry fruits in the vessel and Voila! The Kheer is ready to serve!! 😀

Try this out!

M sure it will work 🙂

Last Year’s L’Attitude

Check out some of the pics from last year…

 

 

So are you ready to rock Chennai this time???

Be ready with your WAR-CRY!!!!

Got a tattoo done! :)

Got a cute coool looking tattoo done near the ankles… 😀

Ok chill!! Its just temporary 😉

Me having funnnnnnnnnnnnnn in Goa!!! 😀

Cheerios! 😀

A peek into the past :)

They say past is a reflection of what future holds for us… 🙂 

And, at Great Lakes, we believe in setting high expectations and living upto them.

Last year, L’Attitude  13˚05,  organised by the Junior Pioneer batch took everyone by surprise. The participants were left dumbfounded by the kind of hospitality they received. And the organisation of the event certainly impressed quite a few 🙂 

This year, its back again! 🙂 The L’Attitude 13˚05 fever is at a new high. Its time for us Crusaders to prove our mettle and outdo our seniors. The theme this time – WAR!  

The preparations are on!

The success? – Only time will tell…. 

But, we sure are having a ball of a time.. Hope u will too 🙂 Watch out this space for pics of last year’s L’Attitude 🙂       

Air Deccan – SimpliHow??

 

My first association with Air Deccan was when I had just started earning… I was travelling from Bangalore to Ahmedabad. There was no direct flight so had to book tickets via Bombay… The Bang-Mum flight that day was late by over 5 hours, 😦 which resulted in my missing the Mum-Abad flight (which also btw was Air Deccan) 😦 The result – I had to rush to book an Indian Airlines flight early next morning… which meant, well, spending the entire night at the Bombay Airport… So, no points for guessing, my first experience was pretty much awful. Its been that day and it is now.. Air Deccan has never failed to perpetually torture this particular customer (Sniff!!!!). And It is most certainly, the story of the rest of the Junta as well… 

And yet, I used to incessantly crib about the bad flights, bad aircrafts… over and above that, bad experience with Air Deccan and yet continue to fly with it (The rates were so damn cheap!! You really cant blame me, Can you?). It has been over 2 years now and I just heard the Air Hostess announce that If your Air Deccan flight is delayed by more than 3 hours or cancelled, you get a air ticket free – Wow!! Now thats something… 🙂 

Air deccan not only offers the cheapest price, it also covers 56 destinations all over India (which btw is the highest covered by any air line in India so far). 

Amidst all this, one boggles at how Air Deccan manages to do this, specially at an era, when most air lines find it difficult to even cover their operational costs. Air Deccan is not just meeting it, it is also buying many more AirBus 320s (wow! :D) 

Now coming to the specifics, Air Deccan’s success to a large extent depends on its ability to understand and react to consumer behavior (Yield Management). Good yield management maximizes revenue production for the same number of units, by taking advantage of the forecast of high demand/low demand periods, effectively shifting demand from high demand periods to low ones and by charging premium for late bookings. Yield management models attempt to forecast total demand for all products/services they provide, by market segment and price point.  

Their focus is clearly on the bigger picture – that every flight has to make money rather than every seat. They focus on revenue rather than yield. So, it is not about every seat that is sold, it is more about how much moolah can be raked in on every flight. If that were not enough, they use forecasting and other algorithms, to identify the size of the aircraft and new destinations to fly to. In fact, they are soon headed to CRM, which would mean recognising customers through their websites and servicing them accordingly. Hmmm… Now thats interesting! 🙂 

Air Deccan has definitely been a boon to India with its concept of dynamic pricing, which means even the ones who couldnt afford to Fly earlier can do so now at unbelievably realistic rates – Now that means business!!  

Way to go Captain! 😀

Its time for L’Attitude 13’05 :)

Hey all 🙂

L’Attitude 13˚05 is here… 😀

The preparations are in full swing and with everyone all excited and enthused about it… it looks like there are going to be many more D’s and F’s in sight 😉 😛 and ofc not to mention anguished profs 😉

Now, the question is “Are we worried about it??” NAH!!! What we really care is to ensure that we gather enough moolah to get you prizes to drool over 😉

So, get going and keep watching this space for more… 😀

Cheerios for now 🙂

Parivartan

Remember that unforgettable dialogue from a pretty much forgettable movie “Mohabbatein” in which Amitabh Bachchan in his classic style says “Mujhe Parivartan se sakht nafrat hai Mr Aryan. I don’t like change!”

Well… as much as I am a die-hard Senior and Junior AB fan, I decided to change things a bit… Trying out this new theme for my blog.. hope u guys like it 🙂

Any comments most welcome 🙂

Cheerios

Umrao Jaan – **Sniff**

 

Year: 2006

I was due to watch Umrao Jaan (which btw i was very looking forward to…) on a sunday morning 10:20 AM show. Not only that, I thought it would be a good way to meet a couple of friends, who simply refused to watch the movie (Lucky them!!!), but heartily agreed to come and meet me at the theatre… As luck would have had it, I overslept and reached the hall a full 40 mins late… 😦 Others, who were supposed to watch the movie with me, were in the hall already watching the movie, but for one kind soul, who decided to wait for me… 🙂

After reaching there, we decided, it would be better to just sit in Transit and chat… After a good 2 hours, interval was announced, and we decided to watch the rest of the movie to see wat it had to offer… I can vouch for something here… Not going for the first half was probably the best decision I made that day 😐 and going for the second half, probably the worst… 😦 The story of Umrao Jaan was not what we wanted to see, but it was the treatment of another classic, that made us go in after the interval. One more thing became clear, my friends who were watching movie from the start, shared no different opinion than mine… so watching movie half way, actually helped! (It reduced the torture :D)

One more experience I had that day while watching the last never-ending-30 mins of the movie…. The audience was increasingly getting impatient by the endless string of songs and the story which absolutely refused to move an inch further… I had never even once experienced such open expression of disgust and despair… 😦 The audience started walking out of the theatre when we had a good another 30 mins to bear… We were the only mighty warriors who stayed till the end 😀

After coming out of the theatre that day, I had decided I would not write its review…. I had too much respect for JP Dutta and Abhi to be able to do that… But, then what am I doing here? Stumbled across an excellent review and couldnt help sharing the same…

Enjoy the review guys… http://www.jammag.com/movies/show_movie.php?movie_id=455 😀

Cheers 😀

Aquarians – The waterbearer

Here, I get a chance to write about one of my all time passions – Zodiac Signs 🙂 They have never failed to fascinate me and indeed, even though the logic behind them is pretty much hazy, the uncanny resemblance to the real life people can not be denied.

In this post, I will write a couple of ways to recognise an aquarian (Thats Me!!) 😀

How to recognise an Aquarian

 

“In spring, when -woods are getting green, I’ll try and tell you what I mean:

In summer, when the days are long, Perhaps you’ll understand the song.'”

“For this must ever be   -A secret

Kept from all the rest Between yourself and me.”

Generally kindly and tranquil by nature, Aquarians never­theless enjoy defying public opinion, and they secretly delight in shocking more conventional people with oc­casional erratic conduct. These normally soft-spoken and courteous souls can suddenly short circuit you with the most amazing statements and actions at the most unpredict­able times.

You can often recognize people born under this fixed, air sign by their frequent use of the word friend, Aquarian Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats invariably began with, “My friends . . .” and the typical Uranus question after a broken romance is, “Can’t we still be friends?” Aquarius is neither jaded nor naive, neither enthusiastic nor blase. Continuous experimentation simply leaves him curious to penetrate the next mystery, and the next mystery could be you. That person who seems to be either a million miles away mentally, or else dissecting you under an invisible microscope, is probably an Aquarian. It can be disconcert­ing to discover, after all his intense, nattering curiosity, that he’s just as deeply interested in the personal lives of the corner policeman, the bartender, the bellboy, the night club singer or the inmates of the funny house as he is in yours. Politics fascinate him, sports absorb him and chil­dren intrigue him. But then so do horses, automobiles, elderly people, medical discoveries, authors, astronauts, alcoholics, pianos, pinwheels and prayers-not to mention baseball and Louis Armstrong. Join the crowd and toss your ego in the wastebasket, or his coolly impersonal ap­proach will be sure to bruise it.

Freedom-loving Uranians can be acutely funny, original, conceited and independent, but they can also be diplomatic, gentle, sympathetic and timid. The Aquarian will almost desperately seek the security of crowds and saturate himself with friendship. Then hell fall into a gloomy, morose spell of loneliness, and want to be strictly left alone.

To this end, Aquarians are always analyzing situations, friends and strangers. It can be disturbing when they start asking pointblank questions, with a bare minimum of tact, as they probe into the heart of your private feelings. When they discover the puzzle wasn’t so complex after all, they become bored, sometimes even upset. 🙂

Uranians are a curious mixture of cold, practicality and eccentric instability, and they seem to have an instinctive empathy with the mentally disturbed. It’s a curious fact that almost any Aquarian can substantially reduce the anxiety of the insane simply by talking to them quietly. He has a marvelous knack for calming hysterical people and soothing frightened children. :O

You’ll rarely find the Aquarian fighting fiercely for a cause. They live their code, and feel that’s enough. Let Aries, Scorpio, Leo and Sagittarius grab the sword and battle gloriously to free the downtrodden. The Uranus-ruled souls are too busy figuring out the reason for the revolution, listening to people’s troubles and sharing sym­pathetic understanding. Aquarius believes in violent change, but he leaves the violence to others. He’s not a moral or a physical coward. He just isn’t geared for battle.  😀

Aquarians don’t have the best memories in the world, but then they really don’t need to memorize much, since they seem to pick up knowledge out of thin air, with some kind of invisible antennae. Why should they clutter their minds with information they may never need, when they can reach out by osmosis and grasp just about anything they want? They’re likely to come home from the store without the most important item on the grocery list, be­cause they can’t be bothered with remembering what is, to them, non-essential. The typical Aquarian is the em­bodiment of the legendary absent-minded professor. 😉

Source: http://mizian.com.ne.kr/englishwiz/library/names/zodiac/acquarius.htm

The need to justify!!

All our lives, we keep having this irrepressible urge to justify every action we take, every word we speak and sometimes even every morsel we put in our mouth… Why! I ask… Why do we always have to keep proving ourselves to the crowd… Why cant we be what we want to be and not what we want the world to see us as…!!! Is it because we want to be accepted?? Possibly yes…  

But Is that what we are living for? Sometimes i believe, you need to keep justifying because of lack of communication on either your part or the other one concerned… But, then again, Why does communication between two people suffer? Is only the language (or the lack of it) to be blamed for the same??? Not always… sometimes, we want to hear something and we thus condition our minds (or ears) into hearing something that we want to hear and in the process miss out on what was actually spoken… Even then, the root of loads of misery still remains… the need to justify!!  

And I guess, As long as there is human subjectivity and as long as we continue to be “social” animals… This need will remain!!

Back to the roots :)

After almost a month, it feels absolutely GREAT to be back to college. 😀

For a month now, was in Bangalore for Fall Internship. Initially when it was announced, we were thrilled – welcoming it as a good, well deserved change. But, when it was time to actually leave, the realisation struck! It meant not staying 19 hours at a stretch in college… it meant not fighting with security to keep Lake Superior open… it meant not seeing bright, warm, friendly faces around… it meant not having endless masti and fun, which had become part of our coll lives… it meant not being each other’s constant support during those endless hours of studying together and preparing for never-ending exams… It felt empty!!

The one month we were far off, certainly helped further deepen the roots we share with Great Lakes. It made us realise how much we missed it, every part of it… For a week or so, it was difficult to realise that for a month, it was going to be only work and no classes…. The one month that followed was certainly was hectic and we felt hard-pressed for time, but we also enjoyed… yet missed Great Lakes… 

The wait is over…!!

While entering the college campus today, I had this nostalgic feeling which had gripped me throughout my stay at Bangalore (for internship)…. I felt like I was back home…. Greeted everyone with a Biggggggg Hiii and a bigger smile on the face 😀 Almost everyone looked so happy to be back… 🙂 It was a great feeling!!! It would be an injustice to even think of describing it 🙂

Currently, I am sitting in huddle…. and as I write this, I have a huge smile on my face… Rupal just left to make kadhi chawal at home 😀

FEELS GREAT TO BE BACK!!

Kuch Ankahee…

Aisa kyun hota hai…   

…Ki poori duniya se to ladne ki himmat hoti hai, par kuch logon ki choti si choti baat bhi dil ko cheer jati hai   

…Ki sadiyon se jinhe hum jaanne aur samajhne ka dava karte hain, ek haseen subah unse anjaan aur koi nazar nahi aata   

…Ki jinpe hum apni jaan nisar karne ko tatpar rehte hain, unhein hum jahan mein sabse zyada khudgarz lagte hain   

…Ki kal ko jin ko nazarein andekha kar deti thi, aaj unhi se hatne ko saaf mana kar diya karti hain   

…Ki zindagi aksar aisi cheezein thama deti hai, jise hum chahte to nahi par chahna seekh jate hain   

…Ki jab dil kisi cheez ko be-intehaa pana chahta hai, tabhi wo cheez dil ko naseeb nahi hoti   

…Ki jab dil ko sab se zyada zarurat jiski mehsus hoti hai, tab duniya bhar ka sahara hota hai, ek usi ka nahi 

How Does Someone Become Comatose?

“Coma” is a phenomenon which has always intrigued me… Found an interesting article on how people become comatose. Thought of sharing it with you guys…

Illnesses that affect the brain and brain injuries can both cause comas. If a person suffers severe head trauma, the impact can cause the brain to move back and forth inside the skull. The movement of the brain inside the skull can tear blood vessels and nerve fibers, which causes swelling in the brain. This swelling presses down on blood vessels, blocking the flow of blood (and with it, oxygen) to the brain. The oxygen- and blood-starved parts of the brain begin to die. Some infections of the brain and spinal cord (such as encephalitis or meningitis) can also cause swelling in the brain. Conditions that cause an excess of blood inside the brain or skull, such a skull fracture or a burst aneurysm, can also lead to swelling and further brain injury.

A type of stroke, called an ischemic stroke, can also lead to a coma. This stroke occurs when an artery that supplies the brain with blood is blocked. The blockage starves the brain of blood and oxygen. If it is very large, the person can fall into a stupor or coma.

In people with diabetes, the body does not produce enough of the hormone insulin. Because insulin helps cells use glucose for energy, a lack of the hormone causes blood glucose levels to rise (hyperglycemia). Conversely, when insulin isn’t in the right proportion, blood sugar can drop too low (hypoglycemia). If the blood sugar is either extremely high or low, it can cause a person to fall into a diabetic coma.

Comas can also be caused by brain tumors, alcohol or drug overdoses, seizure disorders, lack of oxygen to the brain (such as from drowning) or extremely high blood pressure.

A person can become comatose immediately or gradually. If an infection or other illness causes the coma, for example, the person might run a high fever, feel dizzy or seem lethargic before falling into a coma. If the cause is a stroke or severe head trauma, they can become comatose almost immediately.

Source: http://health.howstuffworks.com/coma1.htm

Damn! What a day!!!

It started on a bad note… Last night slept late and uska nateeja??? Aaj subah naani ji yaad aa gayin jab uthna pada… Bilkul aankh hi nahi khul rahi thi aur upar se bukhar jaisa bhi lag raha tha… Khair apne aap ko bistar se ghaseet ke khada kiya…. Kisi tarah se aadhe ghante rickshaw ke liye wait karne ke baad office pahuchi…

Waha pahuch ke ek presentation dena tha. Conf room me pahuche, to Projector gayab… 😦 Kisi tarah se intezaam kiya. 18 Logon ne presentation attend kiya… wo badhiya raha… kaafi interactive aur dilchasp presentation tha… 3-4 logon se jam ke behes ki… ab is ka nateeja to samay hi batayega….

Ab uske baad se Project pe waapas kaam karna hai, lekin bukhar lag raha hai aur bahut neend aa rahi hai… guess i need a lot of rest…

Cant wait to get back home and sleep!!!! Sigh!

Recipe: Aloo ki Tikkia – Slurp!!!!!

This is one of my all-time favorite snack.

Rimjhim baarish ho rahi ho, aur mummy ke haath ki bani aloo tikki mil jaye to waaaah!!!! 😀 – That’s heaven on earth 😀

Ab aloo ki tikkia banane ke liye

Ingredients:
Boiled mashed potatoes		3 cups
Refined flour (maida)		1/4 cup
Flaked rice (poha)		1 cup
Chopped green chilli		2
Chopped onion		1
Chopped tomato		1
Roasted cumin powder		2 tsp.
Red chilli powder		2 tsp.
Yogurt (curd)		1 cup
Salt to taste
Vegetable oil as required
Green chutney		1/2 cup
Tamarind chutney		1/2 cup

Method:
1.	Wash poha thoroughly and squeeze out all the water.Soak poha in about 1/8 cup water for 5 minutes so that it becomes soft. Then mash it.
2.	Add mashed potatoes, refined flour and salt. Knead to a smooth mixture.
3.	Take a little potato mixture and flatten it on your palm, round in shape and about 1 cm. thick. Similarly, make tikkis from the remaining mixture and keep aside.
4.	Heat about 3 tbsp. oil in a frying pan (preferably flat) / non-stick pan.
5.	Fry the tikkis on medium heat until golden brown on both the side. While frying turn the tikkis upside down so that they don’t burn.
6.	Once you are done with all the tikkis, be ready to serve.
7.	Take 2 tikkis in a plate. Flatten the tikkis, then add some chopped onion, chopped tomatoes, green chilli. Add about 1 tbsp. yogurt, little green chutney, tamarind chutney. Sprinkle pinch of red chilli powder, roasted cumin powder and salt. Follow the same procedure for the remaining tikkis.
	Serve hot aloo tikkia. (Optional- garnish with chopped green coriander leaves)Aloo ki Tikkia khaiye aur khush ho jaiye 😀