Foodie

I am not a big eater but I like my food to taste good, albeit whatever little I eat. So when my female colleague, MP, invited us over for dinner, I was sceptic. The confidence she had in her own culinary skills wasnt encouraging.


The aspect of sumptious food that has always fascinated me is the process of making it. Its a skill to cook good food, get the portions just right and also make it look delicious. A skill that I can never possess. One thing that I have learnt about myself is that I am not a perfectionist and can never be. A good cook is a perfectionist, period. No looking glass needs to tell you that.


So yesterday was the D-day for her. And she took charge just as she had to. The five of us were encouraged to contribute in various activities that I mentioned earlier has fascinated me. I have always maintained a safe distance from the kitchen even at home, and so that some earlier disastrous episodes of my brief forays into the kitchen does not come back to haunt me, I decided to stay back and wait for the end product.


2 of my male colleagues were not to be undone. They turned out to be experts in cutting vegetables and making sure its cut the right way. Of course there was other delicacies in store of us along the way, be it PM's almost innocuous one liners that tickled our funny bones or SB's devouring of raw vegetables which even today continues to amaze me.

Ok, now for the end product. The pulav turned out to be brilliant, its the best food I have eaten in Walldorf to say the least and thats probably an understatement. The ingredients and spices seemed to just right. To go with was Raitha which made the combination all the more awesome. Ok, so MP wasnt an amateur afterall. No wait, we are not done yet. Dessert was mouthfulls of flavored buttermilk that had me asking for more.

It was just after midnight that we started the feast. As the age old adage goes, the rewards are sweet for the one who waits. So now its again a wait for more invites from MP and more exercise for the taste buds.

Wein

So we had to choose another country to take a tour of yesterday. As usual, our planning sucks big time and we could just about make a decision on Friday. By this time, the tickets to Venice had exhausted. The tickets to Vienna were still available and we decided to take it. I am not a good travel writer and this blog isnt a travel log, so I wont go into the details of what we saw and did. However, its safe to say that I enjoyed every second of what we did yesterday. The travel by bus on two successive nights was tiring, but apart from that we had a fun trip. The hop on hop off trips we took gave a great overview of the city I am a tad disappointed that we could not enter a musuem as there were several around but its great to save the best for the next travel.

Mediocrity

Yesterday there was a debate with my colleague over 3 idiots. While he found the film great, I just found it mediocre. For me a film should be great in what it tries to convey and 3 idiots should be looked at purely an entertainer. In that way it was a nice film. However, 3 idiots tried to make a point and fell flat on its head. It was a film with false pretentions. The other flaws were the character sketching of Aamir and some average writing. So what could have been a masterpiece was reduced to a mundane Bollywood masala film.

On the other hand I liked Dabangg totally because it was a good masala film and did not try to be anything but that. But then this is only my opinion :-).

On the rise

Just returned from a 3 hour tennis hit and it feels great. The campus here has 6 clay courts and its maintained wonderfully well. Have played on 3 of those by now and hope to cover all 6 before I return. Its great to play the ball on the rise and Iam trying to do that on the forehand. I also have a flat forehand which I am trying to hit with a little bit of spin. Lets see how that works out.

Frankfurt

So we spent the day moving from Walldorf to Frankfurt through Mannheim and back. Since none of us who travelled had the sagacity to plan the trip in advance, ended up spending just about 3 hours in Frankfurt. We reached the city at an uncouth hour in the evening, missed the hop-on-hop-off tour of the city, ended up walking up the city ring and eating at a Punjabi dhaba and then we were headed back.
However it was a day well spent, the long walks and the nagging pain in my tired limbs has a soporific effect, a night of sound sleep beckons.

Pitstop

Have taken a pit stop at Walldorf for a few months. Its summer time and therefore not a bad decision.