3 Idiots

Before talking about the movie, let me tell you about the difficulties I had in scheduling the outing.
All the movie buffs in my friend circle had already seen the movie.
The ones who hadn't couldn't find a common time frame to see it. But I was determined that this didn't become another "Slum Dog Millionaire" - thanks to all the non-stop discussions about slumdog, I knew all the scenes of that movie before seeing it!

Oh! the good old college days when it was easy to find friends to see a movie. All I had to do was to decide to watch a movie a few days before an exam! Everyone was waiting for an excuse to put down the books.
For some reason, a popular movie was a good enough excuse :-)

But I digress. Back to the movie. I liked it, would have liked it better if it was shorter. I had tears in my eyes for most of the movie, sometimes due to laughing too hard and sometimes because of some poignant moments. The movie did bring out some valid points concerning the education system in India. To a large extent, those
problems are present in the school system in the U.S. too.

Let me make my point regarding the US school system as I'm going thru that with my kids now. How does any system cater to the majority of its client base with a single process - by targetting the average. By definition, most of the students are average and conforming to a single point of view. The K-12 school system caters to them just fine. It is the kids who fall at the edges of the bell curve that have an issue, Or the kids who learn in a non-traditional way. Of all the non-confirming kids, the schools work better with the kids who are below average. This helps the school increase their scores and they are rewarded for improving. How about the kids who learn quicker? They are left to get bored. As far as I can see, no effort is made to tailor projects to their pace or issue more homework. I've tried speaking to the teachers and things improve for a short time before sliding back to the routine in a short while.

What is the solution? I haven't found one. Unfortunately, the movie didn't come up with one too. A short mention of an alternative kind of school is no answer. Perhaps there is no solution. Perhaps home-schooling is the answer. Perhaps supplementing with after-school activities is a way to go.
Or perhaps getting bored is one of the ways for a creative mind to come up with different ideas.

Only time can time. I can only pray that the result is to my liking.

green apple gojju

Blog regularly.
Well, that’s my resolution for the year. I’ll mostly write about my other resolution, trying new recipes. New is defined as something that I've not tried before. However don’t look here for recipes – it may not be in your best interests. There, now that that is out of the way, let me give you an account of my first experiment.

We have a green apple tree in our backyard. How it grows in our house is still a mystery to me. We don’t tend to it or pay any attention to it, still it grows and thrives. I wish my kids learnt something from that tree. Well, that’ll be my next year’s resolution – instill apple tree values in kids!

Back to the recipe, I decide to cook the apples for my first new dish. My husband picked 5 apples from the tree and put them on the counter. Apples from the backyard, in a new dish. I did feel a bit like Martha Stewart then.
Forget the fact that I’d no idea what I’ll do with the green apples!

Sweet, sour and a bit tart - I'm talking about the apples here. What could I do with them? Gojju came to mind, so I tried my version of it with apples. Surprising it turned out well. So I'm off to a good start. The recipe follows just for the record.
I eye-balled the quantity of the spices, so what I have here is an approximation.


Ingredients

5 green apples
handful Grated coconut
4 red chillis
3tsp dania
2tsp urud dal
1tsp methi seeds
3tsp Sesame seeds
a large piece Jaggery
1tsp tamarind paste
Salt to taste
a pinch Turmeric powder

For the seasoning:

Oil
Mustard
1 Red chilli
few curry leaves

Directions
1.Roast red chillis, dania, urud dal, methi, & sesame seeds. Allow to cool and grind to a powder.
2.Wet grind grated coconut and turmeric powder along with the above ground powder with sufficient water.
3.Cut the apples.
4. In a large saucepan, heat oil. Add mustard seeds, curry leaves and red chilli.
5. Add the apples to the oil and cook till half done.
6. Add the masala paste to the apples and continue cooking. after a while add the tamarind, jaggery & salt.
7. The gojju is done when the apples are fully cooked.

Why Blog:
It's a good idea to figure out the "why" before venturing on anything new. Keeping with this philosophy, I decided to work out my reasons to start blogging.
I started counting the advantages of blogging,

I needed a hobby that didn't require me to be a millionaire,
I can read & write,
I can put sentences together that are grammatically correct (most of the time),
I can do it from home,

the positives are many. So the idea took root.

That was the easy part. Knowing how to put together sentences doesn't help you much when deciding what to write about. Ability to read & write isn't enough to find a worthy subject. As I found out the hard way, creative writing explores your attitude and the ability to view small things is a different light. I've begun to question my every opinion, try to capture all thots travelling through the gray cells of my brain.

My kids will appreciate this. No more nagging from me while I try to call to order my "not-so-random" thots :-)

Happy New Year 2010

For all my preparedness, all my resolutions for the new year, all my lists, 2010 did creep up on me unexpectedly! Let me make myself clear. I know today is January 2nd 2010, I know the new year has begun but I don't feel it - the new beginning. This fact is bothering me a bit, just a tiny bit.
Maybe this recollection of the past year will help. Our family had a wonderful 365 days, the only problem being that it went by too fast. If this was a computer program, I'd loop it to the first sentence now ;-) What was big this year was that our daughter started middle school. That took a lot of mental adjustments, our baby going to the same school as the adult looking 8th graders! Well, it turns out she is doing just fine and lecturing me on worrying too much. So it turned out that the only adjustment required was to co-ordinate the schedules of 2 schools. Start-up ideas, anyone?

On the travel front, we toured England & Scotland in the summer - 15 days of great fun. We decided to drive in the U.K. My fun was doubled as I could sit in the passenger seat and remind Venka to drive on the wrong side of the road very frequently :-) Mihir stills remembers the round-a-bouts fondly. Apart from the driving, we enjoyed the castles, especially the ones in Scotland. Bath was quickly added to my list of favorite cities. London was different than my expectations but in a good way.
We visited the Joshua tree National Park in December. The namesake trees look like something out of Dr. Seuss's books! Very good place for the fertile imagination of my kids'. That and the boulders that are scattered around the NP have inspired my kids to draw (I need to make a trip to Michaels now). The spontaneous rock-climbing that we did in the JTNP was the highlight of our visit.

We did meet a lot of family & friends this year. Starting from visiting my cousin in London, attending Venka's aunt's birthday and just last week meeting my friend from college after 2 decades! A good year based only on this.

I do have a lot of resolutions for the year 2010, maybe that's the reason my mind is ignoring the fact that it is 2010 already. The one main goal is to focus on improving my perseverance. Doing small focused jobs but doing it frequently is the my theme for the year. Not being the first one to start, or finish something. Or even the speed - it is the "keep doing your stuff" philosophy that I want to adhere to this year. You all can help by supporting me, visit and comment on the blog frequently!

Hope this year is wonderful to you and your loved ones. Wish you all the joy, happiness and success.