Kahaani Mirch-Pakode ki

Its not just the place but also the people that we experience when we visit a place. Its so much fun to explore different cultures, different lifestyle, their clothes, the look, the food. It all makes a difference when you go places and see it for yourself.

Recently we visited Rajasthan and although it was not a culture research oriented visit, its hard to ignore the vast difference you see when you visit the local market, the people around, the way they talk. 

I am a foodie and it gave me that one more reason to visit Rajasthan, the place for foodies. If you are travelling to Rajasthan, its not necessary to get there to start experiencing their "foodie behavior". Get into the train and you 'll find yourself in between a big Rajasthani family. How much ever you try to ignore them, you will end up making friends with them. Thats what I did, not just once but twice. It happened while travelling from Mumbai to Rajasthan and back that we were in the middle of Rajasthani family. In such cases, you need not worry about food. You need to follow just one rule ... "Aanedo" (read in hindi) :-)

But it actually made my trip complete. :-) While we were returning from Jodhpur to Mumbai, we boarded the train and me and my wife, all happy discussing how good was our trip!! Train left and we soon again .... found ourselves in the middle of a family from Jodhpur. Businessman as he was, he introduced us to his entire family and asked about us. Well after all that introduction and our trip details, the bahu of the family started opening some packets. I could smell the garma garam pakoda in it!!! :-) and soon ... the uncle said ... 

"Khaya hai aapne mirch pakoda Rajasthan me?

and I was like ... ahhhh ... instead of asking ... 'Did you visit Umed Palace in Jodhpur', why's he asking me about a pakoda!!!

and I replied .... " he he he ... No. mauka nahi mila" .... and I knew what is coming next !!!

Next was ... Pakoda coming our way .... with uncle coming up with ..."Rajasthan me aake mirch pakoda nahi khaya .. to kya khaya" ... and the bahu of the family said to my wife ... "Lijiye ... khayiye na garam hai" ...

and I was like ... 'garm kyo na ho .. yaha to har family keliye ek chaat wala hota hai" ..

and we (me n my wife) just looked at each other ... but mera reply to decided tha ... "Nahi rehne do, we already had snacks" .... which actually meant .... "bahut achha lag raha hai ... aane do pakoda" :P

..... and then we had lots of Mirch Pakoda and Onion wali Kachori !! :D

But with all this interaction ... we really had a good time chatting with the family, nice people, which made me think .... "Our trip would have been really incomplete, had we not tasted those mirch pakodas and kachoris!!! not joking .. they really tasted different and very nice, which meant, we enjoyed it a lot!!! So thanks to our Rajasthani businessman family who really prevented me from missing one of the important aspect of Rajasthan ... FOOD!!!"

Thanks again ... :-) ... and yessss ... we really enjoyed the trip !!!

For all my non-foodie readers ... sorry for boring you through this blog, but it really made my trip complete ;-)


For more details of our trip - http://www.meetthenature.blogspot.com/

Fun @ Work!

Shall I sing something or just mime about how fun this week was in office! :) Thats what we did literally entire week. Some fun events organised this week in office and they didnt disappoint! I sometimes think, for anyone, how good or bad the event is, depends on how much he involves in the event.

Its always good to have this kinda fun types atmosphere in office, which doesnt happen much at my place. But this week was good and these events changed the entire mood .. :) Had events like Antakshari, Dumb Charades, Rangoli, Housie and some more chantar pantar games !! No, I didnt participate in Rangoli!! :) But did in Antakshari and Dumb Charades..

Its real fun to do well as a team, when none of the team members nor others think you can do any better than the last position in the competition. That was the case when we registered for Antakshari! Sole motive was to njoy the moment and be a part of it! Jokingly we challenged a colleague that if we win, we get a treat in BBQ. Yup, we almost won, got 2nd position! :P n now we r waiting for the treat. :)

Dumb C was gr8 fun too with our gr8 team members. We have experts here -

Member-1: He's Guru in Bolywood songs, films, dialogues, u name it n he knows it!

Member-2: He simply guesses! n its always right! :)

Never thought I would do a Shaharukh in front of 50-60 people :P but we pulled it off well .. ye game bhi apne se kya kya karwaate hai !! :)

All cannot be sweet sweet and there has to be something going wrong somewhere ... Yes! 1 mishtake n we were out of DumbC ... n we got another famous dialogue from our Guru (member-1) ... "Touch nahi karna chahiye tha by god" :-)

All in all, day full of fun ... which got better when few of our teammates won in their events too! Good food to end the day with n thats all ... (chicken to too good tha yaar!) :P

Had a nice time ... n thinking of doing some work tomorrow for a change! :)

GAMES : cant stop innovating ..

GAMES ?????

When i start thinking about it .. First thing which comes to my mind is CRICKET! May be thats bcos thats the first and I think the only game I have been playing for some many years.

Few days back .. my colleague asked me .. "Chal .. lets play AOE?" .. and it took me few secs to decode ... AOE is 'Age of Empires' .. and i said nahhhhhhh, not interested! Then came our NFS competition. Oh I was better here, I atleast knew what NFS stands for! :P but when it came to car racing I was interested and did my bit to compete well.

Its all about games now a days and gone are the days of basic Mario, Ninja or Tanker or PacMan. Its really interesting to see how this business has evolved over the years. We in our team, always talk about innovations and doing a simple thing differently. Its this difference which makes you better than others. I remember thinking about this sometime back. One of my friends told me, her husband works in company which develops games! He's into gaming all the time. That just didnt interest me at all. I was like .. what more can anyone do into gaming!

But that was somtime back and now I have realised there's so much to do here .. Today I was going through the details of XBOX Kinect. (I need to install SilverLight to see demo, which I will surely wont install :P) http://www.xbox.com/hi-IN/kinect/

Today, its all about keeping your consumers 'engaged and involved' all the time. These are few words my CEO mentions all the time :) . But I realize its importance and YES, its all about ideas and keeping your consumers engaged!

Nintendo coming up with 3D games on a dual screen handy box and PS3 and Xbox coming up with seventh generation games, we as customers have a lot to choose from .. These ideas have succeeded in making a a gamer get out of his couch playing games to actually performing actions to win a tennis game on his XBox:) And I think, this is a win-win for both children and their parents :P sochenge .. bachha atleast kuch activity kar raha hai!!

Well lets see where these new ideas takes us in coming years in field of gaming! and for me .. It will interest me only if i can play a cricket game with a bat in hand and hit Shoaibh Akhtar for a SIX .. thanks to one of these gaming inventions :)

Weekend trips .. after long time ..

Its been more than a year, I havent been able to get out of Bangalore on my usual trips, treks, bike trips to relax and njoy the nature ... Well the reason, many things, more so my classes on weekly basis which kept me in the city. Thanks to classes, I could visit Jamshedpur, which i wouldnt have otherwise. Last 6 months though, office work kept me occupied almost 24hrs a day. Forget my trips, I could not even go to my home, Mumbai in last 6 months.

But now am done with my classes and also through with the biggest release of my product. :) So .. really waiting for some plans ...

Well it has started well actually. Within a week, with my family, we went to Ooty in Tamilnadu, Hogannekal Falls, again in Tamilnadu (or is it in Karnataka?? better we dont go in this discussion :P ). Then we even a had a quick bike ride to Banyan Tree, around 35kms frm city. All in all it has started well for me :) .. and hope we could plan few more outings.

Kaam ya Araam ???

Have you anytime entered office and found soon that you have no work to work??? All is done and you have no idea whats coming next?

I am experiencing the same this week, for the first time in last 5 years. Don't remember a single day earlier, when I have spent any time doing nothing. This week has been literally the week to relax. Looking at it, all seems great!! Everyday office and no work makes Mukul a TT boy! :) Its just games and games all the time. All looks good!!! but lemme tell u ... its boring!!

Why is it, that when we used to work 6 days a week, work from home on Sunday and 24hrs available for our customers issues, we desperately wanted some time off .. and now when we have all the time, I want work! May be, last 6 months of non-stop work has put me in that mood and am not enjoying this free time.

Its not just me, even my bosses are free (i guess) n on a vacation!! :)

All learning should not be on job, learning can and should happen in an informal way.. so dont waste time, take interests in other aspects of your work, research, think, learn .... ye sab mai nahi bolta ... koi aur bolta hai! mai sirf sunta hun! :P Ideally every word is true but does that really happen?? Are we so sincere to learn something on our own ... lets hope I do a better job in this department from now on ... as I dont see much work coming my way in next few weeks! :D

So, trying hard to njoy my relaxed time at work .. and at the same time .. I will keep in mind that 'Learning does not necessarily happen while only on job. Its your interest and efforts that makes the difference'

Marathon Race ... Bangalore

Thanks to Bangalore climate, every few months Bangalore witnesses a marathon race to raise money for charity. A nice trend started by who knows but always succeeds is bringing enthusiasts together and at the same time raising enough money for charity.

Sunfeast is one of the biggest sponsor of such events and recently organized a 10kms marathon race. 10kms is for serious competition but what about people like us! :) who are excited, interested but have no stamina to run for 10k and be competitive. No worries Sunfeast comes up with its 'Majja Run' of 5.7kms and thats how people like me get attracted to it!

Yes, I participated in Marathon this time, it was for Majja Run, a fun race of 5.7kms. People who know me, know ... I cant run 6kms odd for sure ;) But it went on all .... There's one principle I always see working for me ... "If you are into it ... you find a successful way out of it" and same happened here! To start with I really doubted me running 5.7kms at a stretch but once started, we kept going and going ... and could finish it, not easily but definitely much better than what we had imagined! :)

It was really great to see more than 10000 people participating in this event. Actual count was 14000. Pretty awsome! Start of 9am and we reached there at 8:00am ... 8am on a saturday, i should have been in my bed. But thats usual, this experience was much better :) Even was well organized too. No chaos, no confusions, no delay meant we were at right place at right time with right people. Race began exactly at 9, was a surprise i would say!

At the end of the race, we got a drink, an apple, sweet bun to regain our energy levels! :) It was gr8 fun! I really wanted to participate in one such event for a long time and this time I could, finally! There's one more biking event next week but i might not go this time. Really waiting for next Marathon though ... will definitely participate and would also try to get few more people with me this time :)

The IPL 2010 fever ..

I have so many things to do but for past 1 month am doing nothing !!! :-) I dont work, I dont study, I am just glued to my TV set every day evening. Its IPL fever and its going on for over a month now.

May it be a 4pm match or a 8pm match, we dont care, we just know that we need to follow it. acricket.com is like boon to IT employees. :) Any match, any time, its available live there and we get a chance to watch every ball .. and thus neglect work! :P

IPL 2010 brand of over $4billion, are kya karna hai us se hume .. its for people who fix matches, and own teams. We are here to watch every match and enjoy it to the fullest. And yes I really did and will do it even today, it MI vs CSK Finals of IPL 2010. My excitement for IPL has one more reason, its that MI is doing well and more importantly the GOD playing fabulous cricket. Its always fun to talk cricket, and we did this all the time in IPL. Morning time as soon as everyone arrives in office, first discussion is IPL matches and yesterday's results. And if it had been RCB and MI playing against each other fir to office me .. its me vs everyone else!! But its fun, to support our own teams. Its MI winning sometimes or RCB doing it well. What mattered was how we enjoyed it and supported the teams.

Even went to RCB vs MI match on April 17th and my fight was on with my colleagues :) Clinical performance by MI and RCB was literally outplayed on that day. Even semis between RCB and MI. It was time to repay for RCB, but they couldnt and were out of the tournament.

After 1998 Sharjah Match, I would have enjoyed this semifinal the most. It was just amazing. Match dekhne ka asli majaa akele to aataa hi nahi hai .. So we all roomies were just making noise, supporting different teams ofcourse! I was talking to my friends on phone, on chat, my bro, dad. It was all excitement and everyone were glued to TV sets. MI won then!! :)

Today its IPL 2010 Finals and we have two teams, one who could not even reach Semi for last 2 years, MI. Another which will be playing Finals of IPL for the second time, CSK. And my support .. ha kay prashna zala .. MI .. MI ... :)

So lets see how the match goes .. and hope it will be a cracking Finals!!