He Brews

I attended a 2-day workshop on ' Effective methods in teaching grammar'. The resource persons had around 5 meaningless sessions with us. One of it was a session on ' How South Indian coffee is brewed/prepared/made/fixed'. Are you lifting your eyebrows in interrogation?Well, here I go.
The word 'coffee' comes from the Arabic word ' '. It was first discovered in Abisinia in Ethiopia.
A lot of South Indians are Coffee connoisseurs and are very particular about their FilterED coffee also known as Drip coffee.
The coffee beans are bought and then roasted (not fried). It is then ground into small grains (finely powdered). This powder is put into the top container of a coffee filter. 
A typical coffee filter is a cylindrical shaped vessel consisting of 2 compartments. The bottom of the top half is slightly concave and has perforations. It also contains a stopper.
Boiling water is added to the coffee powder, now present in the top compartment of the filter. The decoction is collected in the bottom half. Milk is added to the decoction. Sugar is added. The coffee is then aerated. Finally, the coffee is dressed. This is done by adding a few drops of decoction to the foam.
ENJOY!!

Fine dining restaurant

The Vellore Kitchen is almost a 2yr old restaurant in the heart of the town. It is in fact located between Vellore and Katpadi and is right on the highway and can be hardly missed.

My folks here are quite choosy about the restaurants they visit but somehow they decided to try this place. I wasn't sure if they would like it but it turned out to be quite the opposite. They liked it but I did not. What I mainly did not like there was the ambience. The noise makes it feel like sitting in one of the non-ac halls of an old veg restaurant. There was nothing too great about the food either. The service was okay and the owner was always comes around to make sure customers are comfortable.

Since this place was closer home and easily accessible and since they anyway liked it, we frequented this restaurant. But my heart was always at Hundreds.

Then one day,a cousin told us about a second floor of VK. She said the experience was more like Hundreds and also offered to treat us there. And it was quite a fascinating experience.

Just as you enter VK, there is an elevator with a board above it saying "Fine Dining 2nd floor". We entered a dimly lit room in contrast to the bright 'hall' on the ground floor. The tables were separated providing more privacy for customers. Of course we were warmly welcomed as always. The menu is of course different with a choice of Chinese, Continental and Indian. And desserts under each category. I decided to go for Continental-mostly pastas-as I had company, while the others went in for the usual North Indian. The breads were very interestingly served in a "moram".(Unfortunately I did not take a picture of it though I'm sure there'll be a next time. It is type of sieve made using bamboo). I was somehow so fascinated by it and thought it was quite an idea.


They definitely have a creative vegetable carver who puts in a lot of effort for presentation. Service was slightly slow though not in an irritating way. And its way more pricey than the "Normal Dining restaurant". 
The most fascinating thing was a remote on each table to call for the waiter. There are options for service, water and the bill. And of course a Cancel button. The waiter wears a watch that indicates the button pressed.
On the whole the experience was worth it, thanks to Mridul. And no doubt, Vellore Kitchen is doing well and expanding.

Thomachayen zindabad!!

The highlight of the girls getaway was lunch on day 2. The plan was to pick up Anju from ECR and head to Moonrakers (MR). We set off to pick her up around  2pm on 29.12.13.Roads were blocked and so we were directed thro some of inner roads and finally we found our way to Anjuko. As the exchange of stories began and the Scorpio moved towards MR, we were suddenly asked to take a detour, thanks to road block. At almost 3 points we were forced to move into reverse gear and the conclusion was that there was no place for vehicles in Mahabs!!! By then it was half past 2 and our stomachs were talking louder than our mouths. We decided to head towards Chennai to find a place to eat. To reach the ECR, we had to cross a lot of hurdles including reversing on a narrow road with vehicles infront and behind us!(We were also almost sent away from TTDC restaurant) Finally we saw a board saying Today-prawns, fish, etc. The place looked really small and since our palates were programed for sea food and are stomachs were rolling like thunder, we decided to stop there. It was a single person holding the fort and he told us it would be 45 mins before he can get us some fried fish because he had to feed a cricket team of boys who had just come in and placed their order. We  prepared our minds to wait that long and to have just fish for lunch. The kutties were exhausted, especially after the swim but very sweetly stayed calm. 

While we waited....

By around 3:30 pm, we were served yum fried fish and prawns,a vegetable rice that was topped with ajinomoto crystals (but was really yummy),a loaf of modern bread straight out of the fridge and the yummiest onion tomato masala curry. This was probably the tastiest food we have ever had not just because we were so hungry but also because it was served with so much love. Eateries usually serve people to fill their pockets but this place filled our stomachs and eyes. And as we ate and licked away,Mr.Thomas told us his story. His wife had  passed away 30 yrs ago, his elder daughter is doing her MBBS and the younger one is studying commerce. He has travelled far and wide and cooked all types of cuisines. We thanked him and blessed him, clicked a few pics and drove back happily.
And if you are wondering how much we paid,well our bill was only Rs.700/- !!

After the Yummy experience

7 Wonders of Vellore

Here are some common facts about Vellore. Some still exist, others are history.

River without water ( The Palar that flows through Vellore has no water in it)
Fort without king ( There is a fort but no king) 
Temple without deity (This is history. The deity from the temple in the fort  was forcefully removed from there), 
Women without beauty ( I have no clue why this is said about them)
Men without brains ( This too makes no sense to me. Guess its not true)
Police without power (There is a famous police college here but no police there it seems), 
Hills without trees (This place is surrounded with hills but no trees on them)

From corporate to school

Ever since this transition happened 6 months ago, I had made several attempts to write about it.

From air conditioned workstations to wide open classrooms,
From staring at the computer all day to teaching and shouting at children,
From waiting for elevators to climbing the stairs,
From door step pick up by AC cabs to walking to the bus stop for the school bus,
From full fledged cafeterias to small canteens selling only samosas,
From taking a coffee break to getting coffee served to you at 10 45,
From big pay checks to small pay checks,
From quiet carpeted floors to noisy tiled ones,
From computer mouse to red pens,
From report submissions to lesson plan submissions,
From team huddles to teacher's meeting,
From timelines to meet SLAs to timelines for paper corrections,
From acting sophisticated and well mannered to being wild and full of life,
From handling data to handling children,
From clean dry restrooms to single attached ones,
From eating quiet lunches to noisy sharing ones,
From dreading Monday mornings to looking forward to them.

My list can go on. Teaching has been fun so far by God's grace. The people I work with are more than I could ever ask for. The love and laughter we share makes teaching life all the more fun. Children, no doubt add to it. They can get on your nerves, drive you crazy, make you bite your teeth and increase your blood pressure. But when the most irritating student wishes you and gives you a rose for Women's day, it really brings a smile on the face.
Children these days are so much different from what we were at that age. Handling them (40 at a time) and making sure they go in the right path is no easy task.
I thank God for where He has placed me today and ask Him for strength to do my job well.

Little Things

The joy of finding something that you have been hunting for a very long time is indescribable. Especially when it is something that was once a part of us.

My sis and I had a few favorite cassettes when we were small. Every morning we would take turns and listen to them. One such cassette was called Little Things. It was a collection of kid's songs sung by kids and among them we had our favorites. We listened to it so often that in no time we were singing along.(Though the words were not always correct).

As we grew up, our genre of music changed. But we would talk about those songs once in a while. As our nieces and nephews grew up, we thought they would enjoy the songs from Little Things. And so we began our hunt for the cassette. When there were no signs of it, we began looking for the album online. No luck there either. Then one day, we chanced upon it at nubeat.org.

Ha! The joy of finding Little Things

 

P.S.: I don't know if the children will enjoy it as much as we expect them to

Pilgrimage-Day8-Suez Canal-Cairo-Giza-Nile

Morning dawned. We packed and checked out. We had not unpacked actually!! We had breakfast looking at the Red Sea though we could not go to it. We drove down to Suez to cross the Suez canal and enter the African continent. Yea, all this while, we were still in the Asian continent. There was some kind of checking at the crossing and we were not allowed cameras. It was a 3-mins drive through a tunnel that goes below the canal. Just as we were entering and leaving the canal, we could see ships crossing on top of us.

Entrance to Suez Canal from Asia

We then drove through dry desert lands and soon our bus started to act a lil funny. It was only prayer power that helped us get to Cairo without losing much time. It was a 2.5 hr drive to Cairo city. We drove through the outskirts of Cairo and then entered the city. I felt that the place looked like India. The Nile flows through the city and is the main source of water for them. It was so exciting to see a portion of the longest river of the world. Dahlia continously enlightened us about the city. We saw Mubarak's office that was destroyed during the riots,got stuck in a good deal of traffic and finally reached Cairo museum. Absolutely nothing allowed inside the museum and so we left all our bags in the bus. This is behind Tahrir square where there were still some riots happening.

The Nile in Cairo

The parliament office that was burned during protests against Mubarak

We were all given a pouch with a transistor-like instrument and earphones.Dahlia would talk through a mike and each of us could hear it. Loud talks and explanations are not allowed in there. This is one of the largest and most ancient museums of the world with around 1,20,000 items on display and we saw only 0.5% of it.
King Tutankhamen's tomb was quite intact and a lot of items from there are displayed. Its interesting to see how much gold they used. There was even a mask of the king weighing about 13kg.
We spent nearly an hour there. After that we headed off to Giza, on the outskirts of Cairo, to see the Pyramids. Its not very far from the heart of Cairo and we could see the Pyramids even before we actually got there. 1st the bus took us inside and right upto a place where we could see the 3 big pyramids and the 3 smaller ones from a distance. The whole place is like a desert and empty. We were told not to entertain people/vendors there cause we could be tricked easily. We then drove down and got closer to a pyramid. The 3 smaller ones were for the women. Among the 3 bigger ones, the one in the middle is called the Great Pyramids and thats the one we got to touch and a few of them climbed it too. It felt really cool. All the pyramids are empty and nobody knows the actual way into it. Those who stole their way in made openings in the stones. We also saw the famous Sphinx. It was close to the Pyramids but we did not get off to see it. It was under renovatin and so not very exciting.

 Cairo is actually a poor city and looks all muddy and dry. A lot of area is still undeveloped. Dahlia told us that during Mubarak's reign, the middle class was almost wiped off. It was the very rich or the very poor.


The smaller pyramids



Our lunch was at a restaurant near the Pyramids. Infact, I ate my meal looking at the pyramids. It was quite late by the time we were done. We tried to take pics of some women making bread at the restaurant and they tried to force us to pay them.



Our next stop was a perfume factory, rather a shop selling perfumes, jewels and other precious stuff. Before that we shopped at a cotton store. Egyptian cotton is known to be the best in the world. Since it was heavily priced, we got off the speed at which we got in. At the perfume factory, we were given an orientation about the different products they had and got samples to smell. They had bottles of different sizes and perfumes for different 'occassions'.

Finally it was time for our Cruise and dinner on the Nile. We had to bid Dahlia good bye as we were not going to meet her the next day. We headed off to Cairo and were dropped off the bus at the Memphis cruise. The ship was waiting for us and once we were all aboard, it took off. We went to the upper deck and breathed in the fresh cold air. We then had an entertainment programme on the middle deck. The first was a belly dance by a professional. I'm sure her costume would have scandalized a few and would have excited some others. Her performance was commendable though. I like the band that played different types of instruments and some lovely oriental music. Next was a Turkish dance that took our breath away. The dancer was going in circles for solid 15 mins. Our belly dancer and some others came over next and even invited a few of us to join them for some simple steps. It was fun 'trying' to dance like them and moving around. We were all seated around small tables for about 6. As soon as the programme was over, soup was served at the tables and a wide-spread buffet was spread. Some interesting desserts too, unlike what we got the previous days. Cause of all the excitement, I was not too hungry. After dinner, I went to upper deck and had some "me" time. Contemplated on the trip and the fact that it was actually drawing to an end.



Cairo at night



On the deck of the Memphis

We then took snaps and bid good bye to the crew and boarded the buses that were waiting for us at the same place we got off. The journey to the hotel (Zoser hotels) was a farewell session. The emotional side of me sprang up.People took turns giving their farewell speeches,vote of thanks,etc. This session was followed by instructions for the next day (day of departure). We reached the hotel and went to our respective rooms. The usual happened. Helping people with their rooms and luggages and finally a long chatting session. Had to pack for the flight.

Click the below link for more pics

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