Who else is watching you !!!

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The way technology is rapidly advancing and so easily available to the common man is scary.

I remember watching a Will Smith / Gene Hackman movie (“Enemy of the State”) where US Govt “security/spy” sattelites are used to track down Will Smith in Real Time. Of course, the scenario looks far fetched, one never really believes the movies, and everything depicted there is either categorized by our brains as either fantasy or computer effects.

We tend to have an ostrich attitude when something like this, does really happen and comes out in the open. I am sure the Indian Government was caught napping too when Google Earth mapped out the entire continent, President House, the Parliament, Airports, sensitive military installations et al. You name it and it was already there.

A person had to just diligently sit and surf, to zero in on a destination.

Of course everybody knows about google earth and how cool it is. Nobody really cares if the “President house” is marked up on the map. Would you? I think you would'nt, but I bet you would care if your home was marked up on the map along with your phone number, and heaven forbid, you happened to be a girl. And this exactly is what is happening on Wikimapia , yes Wikimapia and not Wikipedia. Initially, I was amused to find innumerable “tags” and “descriptions” which were harmless as follows

Haranjit Arora's house in delhi (Hi)

Naseem Bhai's Chawri Bazaar HangOut

Achha Naala

shilpi lives here..ooooh

But then slowly the reaction turned to an alarming one, once I realized people were using this nifty tool to mark addresses of girls coupled with phone numbers in some cases. One can only imagine the nightmare and harassment these girls must be facing if such information is freely available under the public domain.

I am sure the author had good intentions when he developed this tool but as in most cases the fault is not in the technology but how it is being used or misused. On one end of spectrum fire can be used to warm a person, cook food, give light OR napalmed to clear flora, fauna and of course humans.

In the end, I would suggest that you have a look at wikimapia, play around with it and have fun, mark the places which are of real importance, explore the world and places where you have been to, marvel at the technology like I do, but then come back and check your own home or residence and delete any personal information if some stalker or vindictive soul has put up. And you have to repeat the process again and again and again……because now, not only is big brother watching you, but then, so is the whole world.

Learning Deutsch

Its really quite difficult to write/update a blog if one has sworn that he will not talk about his personal life, friends or other related topics.

Every time I am away from the computer, my head is swarming with a million topics to write about, but as soon as I open up my editor, I am left gaping at the screen. At least now I can appreciate the hard work and creativity which goes into writing. It really is quite a job to write well and at the same time have the reader coming back for more. The reader in this case being a total stranger and not one’s friend or colleague who will check your blog by default.

Maybe I should have paid more attention and concentrated more in my school days during writing classes, but then I recall reading somewhere that its never too late. I know it is hackneyed and a cliché but I firmly believe, it IS possible to learn a new skill, or rather any skill, at any age and be moderately successful too, provided one stays at it. Ok, agreed its not that simple but it can be done.

So taking inspiration from trail blazers before me, I have finally decided to embark on a new voyage. I have decided to learn German. Why German? I just love the sound of it or maybe, it could be the fact that once upon a time, aeon's ago I had a German pen pal and she happened to be a girl. :-) Some of sentences which I asked her, and which she dutifully taught me, were translations for sentences like “Where is the bathroom?”, “Run, Police Run”, and the ubiquitous “I love you” - no wonder she stopped communicating with me after a while. Which girl in her right senses would? What guys or rather I did'nt understand is that girls want romance and not some neanderthal asking translations of gross sentences like “wheres the loo…” ( I still haven’t learnt my lesson though and still say dorkiest of things. )

So for the next few days in my spare time I am going to google German and from Monday onwards its going to be German Hour thrice a week. My humble aim being to have a decent enough conversation for 10 minutes, without getting slapped or punched in the face. So till next time Auf Wiedersehen.

Khichdi - िखचड़ी - Rice & Lentil Combo

A few days back I was down and out with food poisoning and extreme acidity, an upshot of too much partying or plain stupidity by eating at grubby joints or maybe both.

The doctors advise was to stop all ‘spicy/oily foods’ and he suggested bland food for a week, along with a motley of pills. To cut a long story short, what follows is the recipe for preparing “khichdi” .

Khichdi is a popular Indian dish, relished all over India. It is also known as khichdee, khichadi, khichuri, or khichari. The various spellings are in existence due to limitations in English language phonetics.The proper pronunciation in Devnagri is िखचड़ी. Khichdi in Indian slang literally means hodge podge or mishmash of things. For those of you, who would rather skip and delve straight into the recipe, grab your mouse and scroll down to Recipe section.

Khichdi essentially is a combination of rice and lentils. Period .There are many variations of Khichdi where some people throw in an assortment of vegetables (cauliflower, carrots, mushrooms, potatoes, beans etc), but that according to me is ‘vegetable pullao’ and not Khichdi. The humble Khichdi has also given rise to kedgeree, a dish popular in England during Victorian times made up of rice, smoked/cooked flaked fish and boiled eggs. My version or recipe of Khichdi is a simple meal which can be cooked in a jiffy (5 minutes) and is very gentle on upset stomachs. Incidentally in northern India when a person is sick he is usually brought off the Rotis / Chappati / Fullkas रोटी / चपाती / फुलका (leavened wheat bread), which happens to be the staple diet of north Indians, and fed rice ( khichdi). I am told the reverse happens in southern India where a sick person (staple diet – rice ) is given Rotis during recuperation. :-)

Before we plunge into the ingredients or recipe, let me tell you that I am a tyro and i could never follow or understand the plethora of cooking steps/recipes, even after hours and hours of googling. The recipes, ingredients and methods are so exotic and numbing at the same time that I am often left wondering as to where can I find all these rare herbs OR the lentil. For someone like me who classifies lentils (Daal / दाल) as yellow daal, green daal, black daal, this can be quite embarrassing. (A local trip to grocery store revealed that they had THREE yellow lentils and I had to plod back and google out again which particular lentil was it and scrawl it on my hand for my shopping)

So keeping in tandem with the name of blog ‘Step by Step’ that’s exactly how I shall be presenting the recipe so that even a novice, who has never stepped into a kitchen before, can cook without having a coronary.

Recipe:

Preparation Time : 8 minutes
Cooking Time : 5 Minutes
Servings: 1

Ingredients

1 Teaspoon Salt
½ Cup Rice
½ Cup Yellow Lentils ( Dhuli Moong - धुली मूंग )

Visuals ( Click on any picture for enlarged view)

Yellow Lentils -Dhuli Moong - धुली मूंग




½ Cup of Rice & Yellow Lentils (Dhuli Moong - धुली मूंग)






Rice and lentils mixed






The Exact Measurement

Method

1) Mix the rice and yellow lentils together and wash them 2-3 times draining out the water.

2) Put the mixture of rice and lentils in a pressure cooker and add water till the mixture is 1/2 inch submerged. Add salt according to taste.

3) Cook till the pressure cooker lets out steam (whistles) thrice. (My pressure cooker takes 3 whistles. You will have to experiment with yours.)

4) Do not open the pressure cooker as yet. Wait for 5-7 minutes as rice and lentils are still being cooked in the steam.

5) Take out the steaming hot khichdi ( िखचड़ी ) and serve with curd.

6) BURP :-) ( This step is optional )

VOILA - Steaming Khichdi( िखचड़ी ) with Curd

Khichdi is usually served with curd, ghee घी - clarified butter, achaar अचार - pickle and papad पापड़ - poppadum. I have left them out on my doctors advise, I don’t see any reason why should you? There’s another type of khichdi which is made with a green daal :-) . Wait till I try it out on myself and let me get the terminology correct instead of gaping and asking my grocer for “green daal”. Till then adios, take care and be good.

Why Blog?

Why do people blog? I have been watching the blogging phenomenon for quite some time and could never understand it.

The wikipedia defines a Blog as follows:

“A blog is a user-generated website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order.

Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual although some focus on photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), or audio (podcasting), and are part of a wider network of social media.”

The only sense that I could make out of it was that it’s more of a personal diary. Well if it’s a “personal” diary then why is it online? Why would you want millions and billions of people from all over the world to go over your “personal” diary, and are these personal diaries even worth reading. I have tried several but never came across any which could be read at length. The blog tends to focus more on the writers day to day cribbing and his few good joie de vivre. Well, all that is fine but then who would want to read about what god forsaken tragedy has befallen on another soul some millions of miles away. The happier moments are another thing; they at least make the reader smile.

The primary reason, and this is my personal view (as is everything else in my blog), why people write is because they are lonely. Each and everyone of the human species is lonely at one point of time or the other, and since man is a social animal, he begs to be heard or spoken to, and what else could be a better medium in the age of Information Technology than blogging. The poor chap is at least de-stressing himself by writing it all out, instead of keeping it pent up inside, and hoping, that some soul in the other corner of the world will empathize with him and understand what he is going through.

Second reason which I could thing of why people blog is they are not living out there lives to their true potential. The people who are truly living out their life are just going ahead and doing that. There are a million of things one had dreamt about when he was young that he would like to do. Painting, sketching, Hang gliding, golf, learning to play a musical instrument, sailing, fishing, trekking, rock climbing, reading all those classics, learning a foreign language, going to pyramids, inventing your own cipher, running that 8 mile, sculpturing, juggling ad infinitum. So why aren’t we going ahead and doing just that instead of sitting in front of our monitors with glazed eyes for two hours and blogging.

Third reason which comes to mind is the need for recognition and to be a part of a social circle and acceptance by the peer group. Well if one colleague in an office/college/school/community has started a blog, the others are compelled to start their blog too, and after having done it they are compelled by an insane force to inform all their community members to “please read my blog”. It is altogether a different matter if all the members can write equally well or whether they can offer a nugget of information which will help the community and this doesn’t even fall under the domain of blogging. We have forums for that which are much more interactive and informative. Peer blogging, if I may call it so, is more of “I too can write and my blogs better than you.”

There are more points which I would like to elaborate on – but since my blog editor tells me I can edit my already posted blog topics, I shall add them up subsequently.

You dear reader may be wondering which category do I fall under. :-) Or why am I starting this blog?

Well my blog is, as wikipedia informs, is a “Personal Diary”. You may read it, if you stumble across it, I don’t have any qualms about it, but I will protect my identity. In fact I will not be informing any of my peers/friends/colleagues etc about it. If I do so, I compromise myself. No real names will be mentioned. I shall rave and rant too but I hope to do it not in a personal manner but in a generalized way so that you too can participate, feel a part of it, and shed some light on my ramblings. Since I do not want to be a part of the point two which I had mentioned earlier, this blog will not be very frequently updated. The main reason why this blog came into existence can never be told since it’s too personal. If that person someday comes across this blog he will understand the significance of both the blog and the name chosen for it. Just for the record this blog was intended to be started and the first entry was to be on 28^th Jan 2007.

Thank you for stopping by and making it up till this far. You are welcome to drop by again.