July 26, 2008
We’ve all been fifteen, and if you want to re-visit some of those troubled times; find time this summer to watch - Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging.
July 25, 2008
Reason.TV - Mark Bauerlein - Young Americans Are the Dumbest Generation
Posted by varna under Debates, Education, Issues, Muse, PeopleNo Comments
Check out Reason.tv’s latest interview with Mark Bauerlein discussing his latest book the ‘The Dumbest Generation’.
From the YouTube Description
Mark Bauerlein argues that “the digital age stupefies young Americans and jeopardizes our future” by turning out hyper-networked kids who can track each other’s every move with ease but are largely ignorant of history, economics, culture, and other subjects he believes are prerequisites for meaningful civic participation.
July 24, 2008
If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the Indian Condom Song on YouTube.
Unlike the comments I find the song more than just funny.
To me - the video illustrates the awesome power of local creativity to spread a vital public health service message.
It is repetitive, which is a good way of reinforcing the message in addition to being amusing and memorable.
For several South Indians its a familiar tune that remains in your head and most importantly it goes a long way towards talking about ’safe sex’ openly.
July 22, 2008
What do you think this guy is playing? Some sort of jal tarang with wine glasses?
I saw him play at the water front in old Alexandria last weekend.
July 20, 2008
Yesterday was Capitol tour day with Senator Lugar’s office. Senator Lugar is Indiana’s senator and the tour was a lot of fun. Funnily enough, one of the larger photographs in Lugar’s office was a close up of the Lugar, Bush and prime minister Manmohan Singh!
The Capitol building is beautiful especially the Capital Rotunda which is Constatino Brumidi’s claim to fame. It was (I was informed, by a cheerful intern at Lugar’s office) originally designed to be a presidential crypt. After Washington died earlier than his wife burial pans were altered. This left the Senate with too much space so they decided to throw in a couple of statues.
Like several Mughal buildings the Rotunda has excellent natural acoustics including a famous ‘whispering spot’, which didn’t work despite our many attempts. The cement floor is famous for ‘cat paws’, evidence of a famous tabby cat that crossed the senate floor in total contempt of authority when the floor cement was still wet!
I also found the train which travels between the three senate buildings- Heart, Russell and Dirksen- rather amusing because it was toy-like. The chamber where one enters the train is also rather representative of federal affairs! There are large trash-can like containers placed strategically under falling bits of ceiling with a hand-tacked sign saying “these bins are NOT for trash!” 
The Apotheosis of Washington is probably the one thing that caught my eye more than anything else at the Rotunda. It is Brumidi’s fresco that decorates the underside of the dome. I still find the foundations of liberty, in the American tradition astounding - and this was doubly so when our guide deciphered the fresco for us.
The fresco apparently depicts the ‘becoming of a god’ which is roughly what the ‘apotheosis’ means. The fresco has George Washington surrounded by paintings of classical roman mythology including the goddess of victory and interestingly the goddess of liberty to his immediate left and right. Washington also has thirteen women (why women?!) in a circle who apparently represent the thirteen original colonies.
The Rotunda is full of beautifully carved statues and the walls have what is called the ‘Frieze of American History’. The Frieze is nineteen colourful panels which depict scenes from American history and include an entertaining anecdote of how Brumidi was suspended upside down for a whole fifteen minutes while he fell off the scaffolding one fine day. The panels cover a whole range of historical milestones, except the first which includes the goddess of liberty again- I found Columbus, William Penn and the Wright brothers on the fresco.
The Rotunda also has eight huge paintings and several other sculptures including some presidents. The paintings have what you would expect- the declaration of independence, the arrival of Columbus, Mississippi and the Pocahontas - all breathtakingly beautiful.
Possibly of the two quirkiest parts of the Rotunda is the permanently stationed George Washington Statue, which lacks a left ear! Brumidi apparently forgot the ear- and while our guide told us the ear was missing, I heard several other guides claiming that Washington’s hair covered the missing ear-lobe!
The second interesting and quirky statue depicts the women’s suffrage movement which led to the 19th amendment and consists of portraits of the leaders of the women accompanied by an un-carved marble section at the back of the sculpture.
I am told, the un-carved section is reserved for America’s first woman president- that would be Hillary if she wins or another eight years of empty marble which is more likely.
The start to the Capitol tour too was rather fascinating. It consists of being confronted by a rather bizarre 
statute by Alexander Calder. The structure is supposed to be representative of ‘Mountains and Clouds’, and was followed by Calder killing himself by jumping off a building.
The atrium of the Hart building also includes four miniatures representing the original designs of the capital building including the first design which was essentially a re-make of the Pantheon!
Now all I need to figure out is why the average person from Indiana is called a Hoosier. Senator Lugar’s office had a large board that swung from side-to-side saying welcome ‘Hoosiers’. All my friends of Indiana, however, don’t have the slightest idea why they are all called ‘Hoosiers’…. hmmmm.
Possibly, the funniest anecdote I can relate is about the large and beautiful chandelier which stands at entrance of the Rotunda. Our guide asked us to guess how much it cost the senate to buy the chandelier. After a bunch of wrong guesses, he told us it was bought off the local church for a mere 1500 dollars and was probably the only fiscally responsible the Senate had ever done!
July 16, 2008
If you like the convenience of an online backup system and have access to a fast internet connection I highly recommend SpiderOak.
Unlike Humyo.com, SpiderOak does not promise endless storage and dump you with a PC upload client that refuses to install despite payment, complaints and a lousy attempt at ‘branded’ media.The pricing plans are also much more reasonable at $10 for 20 GB every month, which is a cartload cheaper than $79 that Humyo offers, especially because the space you buy at SpiderOak is more fungible.
SpiderOak gives you a simple 2GB limit to back up important stuff, which you can then choose to share with a ShareID. The upload client works very well, and will the space constraint will make you back up documents and stuff you really need, not oodles of free music you could find again.
July 14, 2008
Its my birthday today. I’m now twenty three years old. A lot wiser, greyer, wider and more sober than last year. I’m also on a different continent, and so the birthday has been a quiet affair thus far. My birthday resolutions for this year - I want to find a job I can keep and invest in real estate.
July 12, 2008
I never went to the market to shop for vegetables and food before I got married. Not even with my mother, as a tiny tot! My Dad and Mom always went together. When we were older, my sister and my brother did the shopping, if my Dad did not. Me, I wasn’t going to leave my Barbara Cartland and Georgette Heyer to go and buy aubergines and bitter gourds! As I grew older Perry Mason and James Bond held all my attention. Of course, even when I began going to college, there were days and days, when I would be reading while eating and my Mom or Dad would tell me to put my book away or leave the table!
The first time I went shopping to cook a meal was perhaps when I got married and set up house. Ah! You think, I am one of those lucky ones with a husband who knows how to cook! Not so. And he wasn’t the lucky one with a wife who cooked wonderfully. He claimed, he had eaten out for 20 years! Since he was 15, first at college hostels, then in ‘messes’ when he began to first work, then when he earned enough, he ate at restaurants, beginning his first meal with rum or whiskey, at about 11 a.m., eating his first meal at about 1 p.m., his second at about 12 a.m., past midnight. In between he smoked, had these intimate conversations with the cat on his table, cursed his typewriter, and flirted with words!
I have told you what kind of a girl I was.
Since one day, we decided to and got married, we found we didn’t have enough money to eat out every day. It was quite a bore to have to get dressed and go out to eat every meal! That, I am sure, is a perennial truth for most of you who I hope are reading me. Married or single. Not enough money to eat out every day.
Then, of course, are all those logical reasons, good health, time saving, don’t want to eat out alone…etc…etc…etc… So do I cook ? First I had to grapple with that. What do I know about cooking? Eventually, I came to the conclusion I may not know much about cooking but it wasn’t something that could not be learned. Once I had sorted this out in my mind, I took the next step…It would be I who had to cook. Not anyone else. Did I need to learn it professionally? Did I have to buy cookbooks? did I have to call up my Mom and ask? Or should I ask Dad? I decided it wouldn’t be a bad idea to call Mom for recipes but that could be done later. I sat me down and did some thinking.
We lived in a large room with a large bathroom and a veranda filled with roses trailing down over the single window. We had a typewriter and a table, two boxes of clothes, several dozen books and a bed. There was no kitchen. A Kitchen is not absolutely necessary, you know, to cook. The table, I decided, could serve as the kitchen.
After I finished cooking each day. I put the electric heater I used, down on the floor, spread newspaper on the table, rehabilitated the Remington and each one drifted into our respective creative realms! Before I cooked a meal for the first time, I sat down and thought out things for several hours. PLANNING we call it these days. Getting the heebeejeebies, my Grandma would have said!
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Concoctix
July 12, 2008
Let me tell you a story. A story is essentially what one gets after cooking up words, and what better way to start talking about cooking than with a tall tale?
My father always tells me my mother never taught me to cook. Well, I still can’t cook as well as he can! He is 85 years old and still believes in cooking for the connoisseur, taking a lot of trouble and being very particular. I come from a family where most of the men know how to cook.
I remember festivals and gatherings at my grandparents’ house, when I was about five years old. I had a dozen uncles and aunts. Really, not literary! There was a rectangular space, a courtyard inside the L-shaped house. Opposite the larger arm of the house was a separate kitchen. We had to cross the courtyard to go and eat our meals, and if it was raining, dashing across was an adventure in itself!
The kitchen was the cook’s domain, the cook changed several times in a year and generally there were about 30 people eating in that kitchen, all relatives. Festival times were different. My uncles got down to do the cooking, and the cook turned into an assistant. There were several fires burning in the courtyard, several mud ovens, traditional, all of which took considerable skill to light. They got going after much huffing and puffing, but by the time I was ten, I had learnt how to light that kind of a traditional mud stove, also how to light a hookah which my grandfather puffed.
Most difficult was, of course, learning how to light a match stick, the way we Asians do. Lighting a lighter is child’s play compared to lighting a match and if you can do that — cooking is darn easy.
Why my Dad still says I wasn’t taught how to cook by my mother like all little girls are, is because my mother and my aunts never saw cooking as anything more than something that has to be done. One has to eat, so one has to cook.
I began life watching my uncles tie a ‘gaamcha’, a red piece of wiping cloth, around their waist and, often another around their heads, and stirring large aluminum pots over hot mud stoves. The smells of meat and spice that wafted out of those pots is a lifelong memory. And the fish, a meter long, its dead eye looking at all the going ons, waiting its turn to be addressed, sometimes, smaller ones, live and jumping. At the same time, arriving after long and very crowded train journey to a village where my aunt taught in a school. We reached home in a rickshaw, pulled by a rickshaw puller, after yet another of trundling through narrow mud tracks, ravenously hungry.
My aunt would have worked all day, and then cooked us a meal, that was better than anything I have ever tasted. boiled rice, lots of butter, boiled potatoes and eggs, all mashed and eaten with our hands. When I was a little older, we often ate what my father cooked at the end of a hard long day at office. My mother was bed-ridden for many long years, and could not get up from her bed. Those days it was my Dad, the finicky cook who produced quick meals that surpassed all that he made at leisure.
So, I claim to understand how dreadful it is if one has to cook at the end of a long hard day at work and is ravenously hungry. It seems easier to open ready-made packets, or go and get pickups, or go out to eat.
BUT IT ISN’T
This is perhaps why, I have chosen to write about how to rustle up a meal at the most disadvantageous moment. When you are tired, hungry, lonely, wishing your mom or girl friend or wife was around, a hot meal was ready on the table.
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Concoctix
July 11, 2008
Introducing my friend ‘Concoctix’ who has great culinary talents. Visit her new home on the web right here on Una Voce - just click the page tab titled ‘Feed Me’ on the upper-right corner. Or just click here.
Feed Me is a new read- and-cook service brought to you by by Concoctix and Una Voce. The idea is simple, Concoctix blogs about cooking and you get to learn cooking with her. She’ll post here with a recipe every alternate day. Her posts are fun too, tales of small adventures in the kitchen- which you get to read for free.
The recipes cost a wee little dollar each, and there is some fabulous stuff we promise you. Every ingredient shall be available in America and India too, no recipe will require supreme cooking efforts and if you follow the directions right- the taste will be awesome too.
Posts and Recipes will be tagged ‘Cooking With Concoctix’ just as this on is. You can view older recipes (to order access) or see older posts, by searching within the ‘Cooking With Concoctix’ category on the sidebar.
Click here, to find out more about Concoctix and the Feed Me service.
Help me spread the word about Concoctix and Feed Me!
