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Friday, November 26, 2010

Bhendi Fry

Today, for the first time in my life, I cooked a curry (of course, under the watchful eye of my mother). If you don't mind handling gooeey stuff and washing a very stubbornly greasy kadai, I think Bhendi Fry is one of the easiest curries to cook. Below is the recipe :)

Ingredients:
Lady's finger - 0.5kg, serves 4
Garam masala - 1 Tb sp.
Ginger garlic paste - 1 Tb sp.
Turmeric - 1 tea spoon
Salt - 1 Tb spoon
Oil - Approx. 50 ml

Optional ingredients: My mum suggested Til and grated coconut. Add anything else that you feel like adding :)

Time:
Takes about 30 mins (assuming you have already chopped the bhendi)

Procedure:
Chop the bhendi into small pieces. Pour the oil in a kadai. Add a little salt (apparently, it prevents the bhendi from sticking to the kadai).

After the oil becomes a little hot, add the bhendi. Wait 5 minutes - mix well. Repeat this at 5 minute intervals until about 80% of the gooeey stuff vanishes. Then add salt, turmeric, ginger garlic paste, garam masala (and everything else that you want to add). Mix well. Turn off the stove after another 5 minutes. Bhendi fry is ready :)

It came out pretty well, dad said super (yay!)

That's all for now.
Suggestions, anyone?

-Prashanth

Update
Do not close the kadai with a lid throughout. Keep it open :)

Monday, August 16, 2010

Lost in translation



I saw this notice on Old Airport Road today. The kannada text reads "ಅತಿವೇಗವೇ ಅಪಘಾತಕ್ಕೆ ಕಾರಣ" meaning "High speed is the reason for accidents".

Sunday, August 8, 2010

The honeymoon period

It's been 3 weeks since I joined Oracle and I have gone through 3 weeks of extreme joblessness. My manager calls it the honeymoon period.

Well, the honeymoon period officially came to an end last night with my first night-out at office. (It was actually fun working on a saturday night). This morning, I got a mail from my manager with my first assignment and deadline. All this while, I used to think that Prof. PB is the only person crazy enough to work on weekends and nights.

In conclusion, managers don't sleep. I finally have some work. Things look good :)

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Last day at IITB



I leave IITB in about 3 hours. And I have a lot of people to thank :)
  • The mess workers for keeping us well fed throughout. Though a few may complain about food, I feel that I've had the best food of my life here.
  • The house keeping staff, especially at H12, have been excellent. I can't imagine how things would be without them. 
  • The office staff who have been so kind and helpful. They have been so patient and such a great help during our final stages. I find it in stark contrast to the office staff at RVCE - ask 3 questions and you are shouted at.
  • DC++ hub owners - thank you for the unlimited supply of entertainment.
  • The man at the H12 printer shop for providing low cost, good quality prints; and also for the nice chats every time I visited him
  • The excellent faculty who made us stretch our limits in every course.
  • My guide, for giving me good grades and finally letting me go :)
  • The government of India for setting up such wonderful institutions. I wish them success with all the new IITs.
  • All my friends who made my life here so colourful.
I will surely miss my friends, the ambiance, the food, the fun, the freedom, the courses and everything. But I'm certainly not coming back for a PhD.

So long.
Prashanth

Friday, June 11, 2010

Happy :)

A few nice things happened in the last 24 hours, and I'm reaaaallly happy about them.

Last night, my parents called to tell me that they received my Oracle offer letter (finally!). Today, I came to know that they've pushed my joining date by a week (exactly what I wanted :) ).

My thesis defense is over (Y!). Both the internal and external examiners hinted that they have given me good marks (\m/) . And the external examiner bought me a pack of biscuits (Hide and Seek, my favourite!) and gave his blessings(!!!) when I went to see him off.

Only 15 days of IITB left!!!

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Downtime@IITB

Officially, my first rant on blog

The last 3-4 days felt like we had gone back a decade in time.

To start things off, it was 12.20 at night when boom - the power went out. And it is so humid all the time here, it is impossible to sleep without the fan. All we could do was queue up laptops and watch movies till the power came back at 5 in the morning, using notepads to fan ourselves dry. (God help the people who were refactoring their code at 12.20)

Then, 2 days ago, a construction worker at one of the million construction sites in the campus had this bright idea of chopping the campus' optic fibre backbone. Result - no network for 2 whole days! With project presentations coming up soon, I must say, great timing.

Yesterday was supposed to be a no water day. But thankfully, we did not feel the pinch.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

One crazy night

This was the night when my juniors showed their love, my namesake got GPLs, I got wet twice in an hour, stole the draught of stinking hell, chased, got chased and got baptized.

So here is the story.

Prologue: Prashant Borole is one of my classmates here at IITB. Prashant and I have more things in common than just the name. His birthday is on 5th of April and mine on 6th. He stays in room 214 and I in 215. We were both TAs for the Software Lab course which is mandatory for all MTech first years. And all the first years remember him for the sed assignment he gave one day, which made them spend 1 whole day on just 1 problem, and there were 8.

Scene 1: The curious case of the redirected GPLs
It was 11.55pm on the 5th of April. I heard noises. When I came out of my room and looked, there were about 20 first years and quite a few of my classmates. My classmates usually spare me from the GPLs because I have a reputation of being a "Non-Kamina", but the first years couldn't be trusted! But to my surprise, all of them moved to room 214, pulled out Prashant and delivered well aimed GPLs. I was thinking they got the wrong guy until they wished me a happy birthday!
Phew! That was close!

Scene 2: The bath
After the regular cake-cutting, I went to the bathroom to clean up my face  and hair. As soon as I came out, Ajitav emptied a bucket of cold water on my head. Grrrrr.....That wasn't there in the birthday protocol!

Scene 3: The great escape
As per the birthday protocol followed by us, the birthday boy gives a treat in the night canteen, and after that, The Draught of Stinking Hell(DOSH) is poured on his head. DOSH is brewed by putting bits and pieces of food in a cold drink bottle and shaking it well. Saurabh took up the initiative this time and ordered Slice (it's more for the bottle than for the juice). As the food arrived, people started contributing to it. As far as I know, the following ingredients went into the bottle - mango juice, slice, chips, dosa, chutney, ketchup, noodles, lemon juice, rose milk, chickoo juice, omlette and rice. It looked ugly and disgusting.

All the time, I was trying to think of ways to escape. All I wanted to do was get rid of the bottle. So, after my friends were done with the food and were leisurely trying to envision my fate, I grabbed the bottle, ran to the sink and poured out the sticky, smelly DOSH in the sink :) :) And by the time Saurabh caught up with me, I had managed to empty 90% of the bottle :)

Scene 4: The baptizing
After the escape, I was talking to a few of my friends outside the canteen. This was my biggest mistake of the night. Saurabh had somehow managed to brew up the DOSH again! I ran as soon as I saw him. But Adil was quicker and caught me and Saurabh happily emptied the DOSH on my head :| Now that the damage was done, the best I could do was run after Saurabh and dirty his shirt.

As I write, my hair still smells of cake. And I'm glad it smells of cake rather than DOSH. And thank god Saurabh wasn't able to brew it up to its usual concentration!

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Addicted to this song



Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop *POP*(2x)

Call my baby Lollipop
Tell you why
'Cause he's sweeter than an apple pie
And when he does'nt shake he rock and dance
Man I haven't got a chance
I call him

Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop *POP*

Sweeter than candy on a stick
Huckle berry, cherry, or rye
If you have a choice you fill your pick
But Lollipop is mine...

Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop *POP*

Crazy way he thrills me
Tell you why
Just like a lightning from the sky
He loves to kiss me
'Till I can't see straight
GEE, my Lollipop is great!
I call him...

Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop *POP*

Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop Lollipop
Oh Lolli Lolli Lolli
Lollipop oh Lollipop

Source http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/c/chordettes/lollipop.html

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Counting lines of code



$ find . -name *.java |xargs wc -l


But this counts blank lines and comments as well! Better ideas, anyone?

Monday, February 8, 2010

Shit happens

Disclaimer: I have posted this mainly for its humour value. It is not intended to offend Spammer in any way.

One of my classmates was sending a lot of forwards to our Google group. Some people didn't like the spam. Here are parts of the conversation with some witty replies by Chander Iyer (reproduced here with permission)

Chander:
No wonder that the streets of Mumbai felt a little cleaner today...cuz all the trash that was supposed to thrown outside has been transformed into Junk mail by Spammer...

Kudos Spammer...i can at least see uniformity in s*** in Mumbai now...Garbage in Bins outside, and garbage in Bits inside !!!


Spammer:
 If its really junk then why r u so deeply digging into it..? I hope u guys r not scavengers....

Chander: (This one takes the cake :) )
Dude...when you defecate junk out in the open (in the MTech group), either we can ask people to stop defecating, or shut our eyes and walk away...so i choose the former, if indeed you persist with these unhyegenic habits, we might be required to notify the sanitation department...

The choice is yours...I just hope it does not raise too much stench around !!!

Spammer:
It looks like u r lord of the sanitation deptt. btw ur nose seems to be too sensitive to smell the shit,  I firmly believe u r a great competitor to sniffer dogs :)  Btw does the M.Tech group lie at ur backyard tat u r concerned so much.
Other pals r enjoying a little...  seems u have a problem with tat too... ??

Chander:
Hmmm...comments seem to get pretty vitriolic...let's see...

I never did mention abt me being any sanitation head...it is just that the shit was a little too close to my doorstep, hence the stinker...

A sniffer dog is a better epithet than porks s***ting pellets out on the highway (read that information highway)...watch out, you might be run over by too much traffic here...