Palani's day out

Two days ago, When trying to get ready for dinner, i was checking out the various options i had. It is not that we have many varieties available every time. In the recent weeks, we started cooking 4 or 5 dishes during Sunday afternoon so that we don't have to cook during the week. Hence during the start of the week and in particular on a Monday, I have the luxury of selecting which one to eat. I decided to have frozen chapathi but the subji was the confusing part. I had potato fry that i had for lunch, or the pudina chutney that i with bread in the morning or else a cauliflower fry. I don't want to repeat what i had during the day and also not in the mood to have the cauliflower fry. So while i was searching in the refridgerator for something that will go with the chapathi, my eyes fell on the pinapple jam and then my mind didn't hover for anything else. I know with what i can eat the chapathi and and i was kind of thrilled because it has been so many, many years that i had chapathi with jam.

People can wonder whats special about it? When i was a kid I used to love the combination of Jam with anything and everything that is edible. I will always try to have jam with whatever possible thing my mom used to make. Of course she will let me have jam only when there is no other alternative or if i behave very good. But most of the time i get away with jam at the least for partial meal during dinner time. Besides the usual bread & jam, I used to have jam with fresh hot idlis, its flat companion the dosas or the plain rotis & chapathis. Those times, you won't get as many varieties in jam as now a days in India. It used to be always the Mixed Jam and i can still remember the translucent reddish pink color. I think kissan was the brand that was available during those times. I have even had jam with curd rice few times if i had the urge to have jam during the afternoons... I know you won't beleive but its just me! Jam was like peanut butter and jelly to the kids who grow up in America.

We saw couple of kuppa movies over the weekend. One was 'Ayutham Seivom' and the other a Telugu movie dubbed in Tamil called 'Deva'. The latter came as a second movie to the 'Dum Dum Dum' dvd. Since 'D' desperately wanted to see a new Tamil movie and 'Ayutham Seivom' was the reasonable one that was available out of all the kuppai movies, i rented that one. 'Dum Dum Dum' is a classic and one of my personal favorite. Since it had been a very long time, i also rented it. Along with it came the second kuppa movie.

I am not very good movie reviews as i wrote long time ago in this post. But i can find a bad one from a given list of movies. The above two belong to the bad movie category. I am dead againgt watching a Telugu movie or a dubbed version in general but this one had Chiranjeevi and Boomika in the lead roles along with another bollywood actress. Thought about checking the reviews of this 'deva movie' but surprisingly didn't find anything about the movie at all. There were few websites that had review for this movie but they were mentioning surya/asin and pointing to the movie 'vel'. Since i have seen 'vel', i know these websites were erroneously doing some review or there was some confusion in the film name in the past. Anyway, without any review i started watching the movie having little hope that the movie will be reasonable at the least bacause of the starcast. 

From the day i got my driving license till this weekend, i was the one who drove my car for the most part on any given day. Only during long trips, few of my friends or my brother would drive my car for some time. In the recent days, 'D' was test driving as part of her driver's license learning cycle. She got her license two weeks ago in her first attempt. Even then i was the one who drove the most part over the past two weeks(after having two drivers in our house). This pride that i had for so many years changed today because of some stupid rule of our local DMV. 

If you love Tiramisu particularly from Olive gardens and if you are like me who goes to Olive Gardens just for eating Tiramisu, you are lucky if there is a Whole foods nearby your place. Just stop by Whole Foods to get a delicious Tiramisu at their bakery. They are made fresh in their bakery and taste exactly the same as Olive gardens. The extra kick is that you get almost three times the size of what you have in Olive gardens but for the same price. We didn't find any difference between whole foods and the olive gardens tiramisu. They look exactly the same in texture, softness and of course the delicious heavenly taste!

Tiramisu is one of very few desserts that 'D' like very much. That is the main reason for us to get tiramisu now a days very often from whole foods. Though i like to devour the whole thing in a matter of seconds, i only take a minuscule portion because of my health conscious attitude. To make adjustments for this minuscule tiramisu, i decided to forgo one of my other high calorie favorite "Starbucks caramal frappuccino with a vanilla shot" that i drink(venti size) every once in a while!

Some of my friends told me that Traders joe also sells very good tiramisu. I need to get my hands on it but 'D' is so fond of whole foods tiramisu that she is not letting me buy from Traders joe even once just for the sake of checking its taste... Here is a picture of the whole foods tiramisu before we pounced on it. Salt and pepper shaker is on the background just for giving a rough idea about the size of the tiramisu in the image.

Browsing the Internet was not much of a difference when you move out from Windows OS. Thanks to Firefox. The real trouble started when i wanted to play music and watch movies. I opened up the synaptic package manager and searching on the software repository resulted in many music players. It is not as simple as in windows where i download Winamp in a new system and then forget about music player till i buy the next computer. I have to check the reviews on the Internet to decide on which one to try out. Later i should get comfortable with it and finally decide to stick with one. But that's the fun part right!

I did some research and finally decided on ''mplayer". When i marked that software for download and applied the changes in the synaptic package manager, the real trouble started. I don't remember the error message now but when i searched on the Internet, there were many references about it. I started trying out the solutions one by one and finally one that involved changing some configuration spec for the Ubuntu start up module worked. I have to open up the shell prompt and type in the commands the old style.

I was able to play mp3 but mplayer didn't work for streaming video from the Internet. 'D' needs that capability to listen to her lectures from the school website. Then i had to install another player and few other audio/video codecs. Finally everything worked as expected but the GUI for these players were not as sophisticated as the Windows equivalent. But that's the price one has to pay for using free open source software utilities that doesn't has large user community.

Synaptic package manager, Thunar file Manager and many other regular things were new but most of them were within a quick learning curve. It is just a matter of few days before i get used to the new environment and settings of Ubuntu. I have to get myself out of the Windows way of using a regular computer system! But i'm already missing alt+tabs, print screens and few other Windows generic functions but hey, i think this is a good start for someone who is switching from the Windows platform the first time...

It is nothing new to me. I have seen two movies at a stretch during my college days many times and if i remember correctly a few times even when i was in school itself. Last Sunday we watched "Kannamuchi Ennada" followed by 'Rhythm". We started watching the first movie around 7.00 PM and finished both the movies around 1.00 in the night. This qualifies for a back to back movies and its something very normal to me(like watching one movie over the weekend) But for 'D', its the first ever back to back movie in her lifetime!

'D' is someone who can watch a movie in multiple sittings. I know few people like that. A college friend of mine will always browse Internet while watching a movie. I will not even blink for more than a second while watching a movie. Thats me! Once i had a roommate who will finish up a Tamil movie in 5 days. He will watch the movie for 30 minutes while having dinner daily. After he is done with the food, he will simply turn off the TV and do something else. For them, watching movies in DVDs is a kind of relaxing entertainment at their convenience. I have always wondered about the mindset of those people. It is like doing injustice to the entire set of people behind the movie :) How could they stop watching a movie in the midway?

I belong to the antithesis of that notion. To me when a movie starts, there should be nothing over the entire time that will be a disturbance even for a second. The rule applies for all types of movie (excellent ones, all good ones, most of the mediocre ones and few bad ones). But nowadays there are movies that are really bad and pathetic that i don't rent them at all. Because if i rent them and start watching them, then i got to finish them up. At the most i will fast forward but will never even think of wandering to other rooms when the TV is on!

I usually don't pick up phone calls even if i see the movie for the umpteenth time. The same rule applies if i have to pause the movie in case of a loo break or any other important thing. On the other hand, 'D' belongs to the other category. She will the watch the movie for few minutes, then go and do some work at the kitchen(Even if i insist on stopping the movie, she will say thats OK) and later join for the remaining of the movie. Thats total disrespect to a movie in my language :)

But over the last weekend, i have successfully pulled her out of the other category. She didn't like the first movie that much but enjoyed the latter. But the main thing is, she watched two movies back to back! One of many things a marriage could do to a person :)

I came across these two phrases last week. I heard them from different people at different situations but both were intriguing to me. They were unrelated but i felt compelled to write about them just like that. One was "placebo effect". I don't remember the actual context but my brother mentioned it while we were having a discussion over the memorial day weekend. In layman terms, if you have headache you may think that a cup of coffee will fix it. Even though medically the caffeine may help you out, the good feeling and the belief you have on the coffee as the remedy acts as a catalyst to make you feel better quickly. That's called as the "placebo effect". Though i have come across the general meaning of the phrase over the years such as feel good factor or terms such as " everything is in your mind" or attitude/belief to a certain extent while taking medication, i was surprised that there is a proper term "placebo effect" for this phenomena and it is a widely researched topic for many decades in the scientific community. On the Internet, one will find many interesting accounts of how this phenomena is studied/ researched the help of various clinical trials.

Placebo effect - "The placebo effect is the measurable, observable, or felt improvement in health or behavior not attributable to a medication or treatment that has been administered."

The other one was "canary in a coal mine". When my colleague was getting ready to get out of work, she said that she was like the "canary in the coal mine" to people who still stays at work after she leaves. She is the one who leaves works as the last person generally. I know that the phrase was something close to a warning. I was like whats that??? and she went on for few minutes about the short life of a canary in a coal mine. I told her that i will leave immediately along with her as i don't want to stay after the canary :)

Canary in a coal mine - "Life for an actual canary in a coal mine could be described in three words - short but meaningful. Early coal mines did not feature ventilation systems, so miners would routinely bring a caged canary into new coal seams. Canaries are especially sensitive to methane and carbon monoxide, which made them ideal for detecting any dangerous gas build-ups. As long as the canary in a coal mine kept singing, the miners knew their air supply was safe. A dead canary in a coal mine signaled an immediate evacuation."

I payed $54 when i filled my car last week. That was the first time i had to shell out more than $50 for filling my Accord. I guess it will be like this from now on and i have to be even prepared for the worse looking at the current oil scenario! It used to be $1.70 a gallon when i bought my car in 2004. I know all of us can relate to some time period and about the cost of gas at that time. To me, i started noticing it when i got my first car in 2004. Now its around $4 and since my average miles/month have increased rapidly compared to 2004, i am paying at the gas station each time what i used to pay for a month earlier! Sad to mention that i need to fill up my Accord once a week.

My only consolation is that i don't owe a Mustang or a SUV. I am hearing lot of stories from friends who have these gas guzzlers about the money they spend for gasoline every time. It could come to $100 easily or may be around @125 for filling up a SUV soon. Thats bad news for all the people who owe a gas guzzler or planning to buy one. For those who have one, nothing is going to change on the SUV's mileage to offset for the rise in gas price. With its already low mileage, everyone will think twice before buying a new/old SUV these days.

In the recent days, i avidly monitored the gas prices wherever i see them while i drive around. The hike in gas price was gradually moving up and i first saw the premium gas hitting the $4 some weeks ago. Then it was the middle one and this week it was the regular gas crossing the $4 milestone. Is this a milestone?? Not for me or for most of the public except for few executives who have stock options in the oil companies! I was planning to put a graph showing the gas price over time. But nothing interesting there. People will sigh looking at the graph and moreover it will be shocking to many of us if it had a forecast for the future gas price. Instead of that, i settled with the below funny image.

I know that people in Europe pay roughly $8 for a gallon of gas. But now, in USA people are feeling the pinch on the gas bills and it ain't going anywhere soon! It will take some time for the normal public to come to terms with the $4 a gallon price but that time, the gas prices would have jumped to hit the next milestone ($5 a gallon)...