Tuscan Apple & Lemon Cake … Ah !!!!! The Aroma of Freshly baked Cake :-)

Yesterday we had a project party and all of us got a small gift, mine was a cook book: Slow Food Bible.
A word about Slow Food: Slow Food means taking the time to enjoy good food – choosing seasonal ingredients and sharing the results with family and friends. While the book contains many simple to make recipes with ingredients found in the local market, the simplest - Tuscan Apple & Lemon cake. The cake is just out of the oven but I don’t feel like eating it on my own and then Slow Food, means sharing with friends, so will devour it tomorrow in office.
But that doesn’t stop me from enjoying the aroma. The 45 minutes when the cake was baking in the oven …. Forget the exotic cats or wild flowers, this is the best aroma of all … a cake baking slowly in an oven ;)
Pity I can’t share the cake, but I can share the recipe:

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200 g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2/3 cup caster sugar
3 eggs
3 Tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/3 cup milk
Grated zest of 1 lemon
Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
3 golden delicious apples

Preheat oven to 180 degree C. Grease a cake pan and line with baking paper
Sift flour and baking powder into a medium-sized bowl. Add sugar, eggs, butter, milk, lemon zest and nutmeg with an electric beater until thick and smooth. Pour batter into prepared pan.
Peel, core and slice apples, and arrange in a circular pattern on top of batter. Place cake in preheated oven and bake it for 1 hour. Check after about 50 minutes: if apples are beginning to burn, cover with baking paper or aluminium foil for the last 10 minutes. Cake is cooked when a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.
Remove cake from oven and let it cool slightly before removing from pan. Dust lightly with icing sugar and serve warm or at room temperature.

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One may ask what to do for the hour when cake is baking – just kick back, relax and enjoy the aromas ;) I just did that :)

A myth called Job Satisfaction:

Of late I am of the opinion that Job Satisfaction is a myth. Having run after trying to find a job which I would enjoy doing and give me a sense of purpose at the end of day for nearly 8 years now, I have become almost a cynic about it. First I wanted to be in IT, once in IT I wanted to be in Java Development. Then realized na its not challenging enough, need to be on the management side of things, so did my MBA and now 4 years after MBA I am still wondering what will be a job that will keep me excited about doing it. No, not all the days but at least the days when I enjoy should be more then the days when I am indifferent or plain sick of it.
Going through that thought process, my latest take is Job Satisfaction is a myth and there is no point in running after that. There are far too many variables which are beyond myimmediate control to render it as an effective source of satisfaction or purpose in life. Plus the biggest variable of money is always there. Will I be able to take a job which pays me half my current salary but is 10 times more challenging, probably no.
This brings me to my next summarization that I should look for my satisfaction outside of my job. Job becomes just a means to provide for the activities which I enjoy doing and want to do without any consideration of money. It may mean that the times I am doing the activity I like may be much less but that time will be free of any considerations. I enjoy my photography the way I do it right now, without any considerations about quality of picture, the kind of message I am trying to convey or any deadlines. If tomorrow I take it as a full time job will I enjoy it that much when I have to work against deadlines and someone will be constantly judging the quality of my output?
Sanskrit has a nice word for job: upjeevika, to split it in 2 words, it becomes “up” which means “sub”, jeevika means “source of life”. Put together it means that job is something which is a sub of my life a secondary part of my life. I do my job so that it allows me to do things which form the main part of my life. It provides me with means and tools to do what I really enjoy doing and want to do. At best its an enabler for the better things in life. Since its my own view, I have to agree on it: If I take the example of my current assignment. I absolutely hate the kind of work I am doing, but still stuck with it for a year. It gave me an opportunity to see this wonderful country: Australia and gave me enough money to buy my Nikon D80. Now that the purpose of visiting down under and buying my Digital SLR is over, I am heading back
And yeah there is one more benefit. Spending time onsite entitles me to some leave which is not part of my annual leave, so I can use it to go on a trip which I am planning for a long time. Doing Data Mapping for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week probably a small price to pay

Looking towards the future

Two of the most telling remarks on Nuclear Deal came from 2 young leaders in Parliament.

1) Instead of worrying about how the world will impact us, we should start thinking about how we will impact the world .... Rahul Gandhi

2) This is a deal between two countries. It is a deal between, we hope, two countries that in the future will be two equals .... Omar Abdullah

For me one of the highlights of the second day was Omar Abdullah's speech. It is one of the finest comment made by an Indian leader in parliament, bringing to head the issues that really matter and not just religious or political rhetoric which was dispensed out by Advanis of the world. For full text of Omar Abdullah's speech:

http://mutiny.in/2008/07/24/text-of-omar-abdullah-speech-in-parliament-unedited/

PS: Reading through India After Gandhi, the closest India came to having any solution on Kashmir was during the time of Pt Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah. A strange thought stuck my mind, with the grandson and great grandson now making their way towards the centre stage of politics in India and Valley, will we be able to get a solution?

Concluding remarks by PM while addressing the No Confidence Motion in Parliament

I have often said that I am a politician by accident. I have held many diverse responsibilities. I have been a teacher, I have been an official of the Government of India, I have been a member of this greatest of Parliaments, but I have never forgotten my life as a young boy in a distant village.
Every day that I have been Prime Minister of India I have tried to remember that the first ten years of my life were spent in a village with no drinking water supply, no electricity, no hospital, no roads and nothing that we today associate with modern living. I had to walk miles to school, I had to study in the dim light of a kerosene oil lamp. This nation gave me the opportunity to ensure that such would not be the life of our children in the foreseeable future.
Sir, my conscience is clear that on every day that I have occupied this high office, I have tried to fulfill the dream of that young boy from that distant village.
The greatness of democracy is that we are all birds of passage! We are here today, gone tomorrow! But in the brief time that the people of India entrust us with this responsibility, it is our duty to be honest and sincere in the discharge of these responsibilities. As it is said in our sacred texts, we are responsible for our actions and we must act without coveting the rewards of such action. Whatever I have done in this high office I have done so with a clear conscience and the best interests of my country and our people at heart. I have no other claims to make.

Lamhon ney khata ki thi

Years back when the current prime minister presented his budget signalling a change in India's economic policy and move towards free market he had used a urdu couplet to highlight the mistakes of the past:
कुछ ऐसे भी मन्जार है , तारिक की नजर मैं
लम्हों ने खता की थी, सदियों ने सजा पाई है
As the 540 odd highly capable members of the lower house decide on the fate of Manmohan Singh government are we standing at a similar epoch?

It happens only in America

Sample this:

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/12yearold-wins-car-for-perfect-school-attendance/67749-13.html

"A Chicago Public School (CPS) student won a 2008 Dodge Caliber for three straight months of perfect attendance and some luck. The car was an incentive that CPS officials were offering to children as a reward for attending school daily."

I fail to understand the rationale behind it. How can you give something as an incentive which one is not legaly permitted to use? Is it okay for 12 year old kids to drive in US? And then it is being given by school officials itself. Its one thing parents pampering the kid but the government agencies doing so. Aren't there any better incentives to be given to school kids, heck give them a Playstation 3 or a Wii if you can't think of better options, why give something which is not legal. Probably there in lies the tale of consumerist america, catch them young.

Unnatural Selection

Surfing the net came across this: Honoring those who improve the species...by accidentally removing themselves from it!

http://www.darwinawards.com/

Why so serious .. A Joker in the pack

My only regret about watching Dark Knight on Wednesday was to watch it in one of those old theatres in Melbourne which are now converted into Movie halls. The sound system was okay and the screen was simply not big enough. But enough about the movie hall, this is about the movie.

Dark Knight is one of those movies which justify the price of admission you pay (even though it is in dollars). I was slightly apprehensive before the movie due to all the hype and been in Australia the hype around late Heath Ledger was even more. But must say half an hour into the movie and you realize that its worth all the hype and the Oscar buzz surrounding it. Right from the moment Joker enters the screen he feels the screen with a mad energy. It’s a joker show all the way: - his lopsided gait, the serpentine manner in which he roles his tongue, “Why So Serious” everything sends a shiver down the spine. I sat with anticipation wondering what was Joker onto next.

Every hero needs a villain and a hero is as big as his Nemesis. As far as this movie is concerned Joker is bigger then Batman. In a lot of ways he is the dark side of Batman. The kind of fear joker creates is different from the ones we see in other super hero movies: - he brings out the dark side in you and makes you question your own motives and the ability to choose between good and bad. His weapons are more psychological then physical.

This performance by Heath Ledger is of the same level as Daniel Day-Lewis in last years Oscar winning ‘There will be Blood’. And by no means should the nomination be for ‘Best Supporting Actor’, it must be a ‘Best Actor’ nomination. Batman and everyone else are just incidental to this Joker story

So go and catch the Dark Knight at a cinema near you. As for me I will make up for the regret by catching up the movie in a better cinema hall yet again.

L = S + AoG

Some days back in one of the chat sessions with Ketan, got into a discussion about God and what it means to people. Most of the other details of the chat session are sketchy but we did come up with an equivalent of the equation for complex numbers to our understanding of things around us.
Going back to high-school maths complex numbers are written as:
a + bi, where a and b are real numbers called the real part and the imaginary part of the complex number, respectively
Borrowing from Da Vinci Code if we use the same equation:
L = S + AoG
L - Life – which happens to be a complex thing
S - Science / Our understanding of the World we live in
Life = Our Understanding of the World + Acts of God
Acts of God = God * Nature

What I was trying to think of was, how the idea of God must have occurred to Man. To the primitive man without the current understanding which we have, everything must have been a mystery. Why does it rain, why the lightening, the cycle of life, diseases many such things. Not so long ago diseases were seen as a curse by God rather then caused due Virus or Bacteria.
There were (rather are) a lot things which our senses or reason can’t explain to us. That’s why we must have created the idea of God to make sense of the things which can’t be explained by reason or our senses. Just like a mathematician uses an imaginary number "i" to make sense out of his equations, people use god to make sense of the world. Similarly philosophers, religious masters created "God", so that they can make sense of the universe which for now is beyond there comprehension.
What happens as our understanding of things around us increase does the value or complexity of AoG diminish. Interestingly the more questions science answers the more questions it is faced with. For instance once we determined that earth moves around the Sun, we were faced with a bigger problem what is Sun moving around? And that is without even asking why is it moving in first place ;-)

Disclaimer: - The thought process was to fit God in the equation of a complex number. It’s not to say whether God exists or not. On that question I will take refuge in the response to the same question by a philosopher: The question is too complex and life is too short

Random thought

Had some time on my hand, so decided to check what the Honorable Member of Loksabha from my constituency one Mr Ahuja, Govinda Arun was upto:
In the last 3 sessions of parliament, Govinda found time only to attend one session.
In his over 4 years in parliament he didn't participate in a single debate or raised a single question.

Would very much like to see Govinda's IT returns to check if he is filling his income for being a member of Parliament. Is there a provision in the consitution where a Member of Parliament can be charged for negligence of duty?

To the Party with a difference

Can BJP once prove to itself and everyone else that its really a party with a difference by supporting Manmohan Singh on the Nuclear Deal. It has a lot to gain and little to lose. Look at the present scenario:- Manmohan Singh has staked the future of his government for a deal which was initiated by BJP in first place. None of the original architects of the deal : AB Vajpyee, Jaswant Singh or Brijesh Patel have said anything negative about the deal which the present government brokered, which means that its consistent with what they have in mind. So in effect UPA govt is carrying forward the work done by NDA. Yet the moment the Left withdraw its support BJP was the first to ask for the government to prove its strength on the floor of the parliament. In a way they have joined hands with the Left to bring down the government.

If India wants to see itself as future economic power with the benefits of development reaching the lowest of the society, it needs to secure its energy future. And the way to do that is through Nuclear and Non Conventional sources of energy, especially with crude prices hovering over 140 USD there is no other way. Not signing of the deal means India won't get any assistance on Nuclear Energy for civilian usage not only from US but from all the other 45 NSG countries. Australia had agreed to provide India with Uranium but has changed its stand to say - Not unless India agrees to sign the deal. As much as India would like to tout its scientific powers in this area, let’s be honest - we haven't seen anything worth mentioning. So at some stage or other we need to join with US and other NSG countries in this. Why not do it now when the situation is not of present desperation but of securing the future?

If BJP supports Manmohan Singh on the deal, it sends a strong signal to the world community that both the major political forces in India are for the deal. So it’s not dependent on who is in government. Today the Indian middle class understands the need for the energy and subsequently of the deal. This is the same class which forms the major vote bank of BJP. Again the deal is to be done with US, which is more a friend of the right winged BJP then the Congress.

What does BJP gain if the government doesn’t survive the no-confidence motion - A chance to embarrass the government and bringing upon early elections? With its confidence riding high after the recent electoral benefits it may be thinking it’s a chance worth taking, but how much of a time does it get. With the motion scheduled in early august, even if the elections are to happen they won’t happen before the flag end of the year. On the other hand if the government doesn’t fall, it will be completing its term in May and we may still be seeing elections held in early part of next year. At best this gives BJP a 2 month period – with a price of putting shallow political gains ahead of larger national interest and embarrassing a good man (how many people will be ready to risk the PM’s post for something they believe in)

With supporting the deal, it sends a signal to the world community, can tout itself as a party with a difference – opposition is only of the ideology and use the 2 months to prepare itself for the larger battle of Lok Sabha elections.

A comment about the RSS leadership in Nagpur – In some ways it’s similar to the Communist leadership. Blinded by the prejudices of the past and not able to see what the present holds. Communist are blinded by everything American and RSS by everything Congress.