RTE and my blue aluminum lunch box

Ankita's 'I want to be a teacher' poster

I have more questions than answers. But I will start with a small snippet from my yet to be written autobiography. 

May be more than half the 2nd standard has done the migration from aluminum to steel lunch boxes. I am talking about the year 1980 -1981, no one brought plastic lunch boxes to school at those times. I still carried my blue aluminum lunch box. That lunch box might have given me a feeling that I didn't belong to the majority who carried steel lunch boxes. I don't remember now, but it is quite possible that I sat and had lunch with others who had aluminum lunch boxes. I do remember my lunch box every time I see any car in a particular metallic blue colour and get a sinking feeling in my tummy even now.

Some might think otherwise, but kids are a gang who is acutely aware of class division. So when we place the kids from a low income background with the ones from high income background, do we expect automatic integration of both. I don't think anyone is naive enough to think that it will be easy to integrate them when the 25% low income students are welcomed into the high income schools. But how difficult would that be, do we have an idea?

I have met and interviewed an awesome lady who has started a school in which she takes half of the students from affluent background and the other half from the other spectrum. She has started the school 4 years back. But she agreed regretfully that she is still struggling with the problem of integration. The rich kids and poor kids hung around separately from each other and she just didn't have an idea how to solve it. Remember these are kids of parents who are fully aware of the noble intentions of the school and have decided to send their kids to this school possibly because of that or at least irrespective of that. 

Now when the rich schools are forced to take poor kids, with all the resistance from the rich parents, will there be any integration at all? Are the poor kids going to be treated differently than the rich kids? Are they going to be segregated? Shouldn't someone really figure out the psychological aspects of this move before we push forward with this in the next academic year? 

As I said in the beginning, I have only questions. May be someone out there has the answers! Do you?

To B or not to B

While discussing with a few of my friends my post on 'boob watching' by men, the question came about the cup sizes. These women in question have much more than 'barely there'. I was really surprised to hear that they all are Bs. So who ever has named B as 'barely there' do not know the technicalities of the sizes. It looks like a size B can also be quite sizable based on the size of the body they are fitted on. Narrating this to a friend inspired her to draw this cartoon.

Adamant in ignorance

"Oh sure! Water can explode!" I exclaimed after hearing that water which was taken out from a microwave oven after heating, exploded on some one's face. I might not have even gone and searched it on the web. Then one day it happened to me. I heated the water in a beer mug in the microwave. After I opened the door, while I was just about to take the mug out, my phone rang. I went and got the phone and was walking towards the oven while answering the call, the water burst out from the mug drenching in and around the microwave. I just stood there shocked and reported it to my friend who was at the other end of the call. This was a very humbling experience and made me look at 'knowledge' in a completely new light.

I remembered about this incident when I was talking about 'Tuberculoid leprosy' to someone very close to me. His immediate reaction was there can't be anything like that, as tuberculosis is a lung disease. May be the fact that I was talking to him on April 1st also had an effect as in the previous one hour I had heard 'April fool' at least 13 times. He might have thought that I was also trying to pull a fast one on him. Then I realised may be he has never had a 'water explosion' moment in his life to think that anything is possible.

That was a mild reaction when compared to how two of my colleagues from Singapore reacted to the pins on the power plug of my laptop, when I reached their office for a meeting. They almost rolled on the floor laughing and telling 'round, round, round plugs'. In Singapore the plug pins were rectangular. I was amused by their reaction as I had seen various shapes, sizes and pin alignments on power plugs by then.

I have won money, play station games and whiskey bottles (for friends of course) by telling 'bet' at the right time with some of these people. Then last week while discussing cars with a friend, we were talking about Volkswagen Beetle and he commented that it is bigger than the Volkswagen Vento which we have just passed by. I argued for a few minutes and left it thinking he will figure it out or may be I am wrong. He indeed figured it out and told me a day or 2 later that I was correct. Then I realised that after my 'water explosion' incident I am not even sure about things I am sure about, my being adamant in my knowledge is diminished so much that I have stopped telling 'bet' any more. May be it is a good thing, may be it is not.

Refer Hoax Slayer for more details on microwave water explosion.

Read about different types of power plugs in Wikipedia.

Get your eyes off my ....

There are a few studies and reports which say, staring at breasts increase the longevity of men. Anyway there is no secret about men and their obsession with breasts. But this doesn't give any man a right to openly stare. I don't know how many women face this problem, but I am 100% sure that I am not the only one. So when my friend was telling me about a common friend asking her boss whether there is any problem out there when he started talking to her boobs, I said I need to get it out here too.

You will always see some eyes gliding there, but the glance is averted instantaneously. If the averting is done with a slightly guilty look then 'Thank you very much'. But here I am not talking about the did-he-look-there glance.

Once I went to a colleague to discuss something. Since it was a Saturday, I was not in my usual  formals, but a t-shirt slightly tighter than the stuff I usually wear. For 3 minutes he talked to my boobs. After that I went and checked myself in the washroom and also checked with a female colleague. She confirmed, nothing wrong. I am a B, means barely there. So I thought, may be this is the first time he
is realising that I have something there. Though I thought 3 minutes is a pretty long time to check and confirm.

Recently again when I had to discuss something with a colleague, I went ".. and the boards will have to be..... (oh, where is he looking).. ready by then ... (oh shit, are his eyes stuck)... or else we will ... (I want to scream).. not have enough time to .... (What is he thinking? "Oh my god, my eyes  are glued. But you please continue talking to me, I can multitask") ... test everything before the ... (run, run, just run)..." And I walked away from there.

Next time if it ever happens again, I will ask the same question 'is there anything wrong there?'. May be, may be, I will feel bold enough to do that.

Let it rain

Rain, oh please let it rain
The earth might be cracking
The trees might be dry
But my heart is so thirsty
I can almost cry
Rain, oh please let it rain
I wait for the scent of earth
I wait for the sound on my roof
I wait for the lightning
Then the thunder
And once all the downpour is over
The drops that are hanging
On edge of the leaves
Rain, oh please let it rain

Things I learnt today - 3

Have you ever waited for rain just because you wanted the scent that follows? I have done that. I am currently doing it as the rain clouds are playing hide and seek for the last 2-3 days. But did you know that the scent of the earth after the first shower is called petrichor? This smell derives from an oil exuded by certain plants during dry periods, whereupon it is absorbed by clay-based soils and rocks. During rain, the oil is released into the air along with another compound, geosmin, producing the distinctive scent. This oil retards seed germination and early plant growth. Information courtesy, as always, Wikipedia.

Have you ever seen a person with irises of two different colours, one green, one blue? Or an animal? Heterochromia iridum is the name of the phenomenon. Read more about it in Wikipedia.

One last snippet for the cook in me:
Basil is originally from India, though it is more used in Italian cuisine.

Castillian Hot Chocolate

In my last post about Sorrento, I mentioned about my hot chocolate which is even better than the Caffe Positano hot chocolate we had. It is extremely easy and tastes like heaven. 

There was a time when my daily news came from Times of India and that carried a weekly foodline column. When ever I found any interesting recipe in that, I cut and kept them. My Chocolate pudding cake recipe came from there, so did this Castillian Hot Chocolate. Times of India stopped foodline quite some time back and I stopped reading Times of India around 6 months back. But these recipes are gonna stay with me forever.

Castillian Hot Chocolate 

Milk                 - one litre

Cocoa powder - 55gms

Sugar               - 180gms (reduce it by 20-25gms if you like it less sweet)

Corn flour        - 25gms
water                - 120ml

Take the corn flour in a heavy bottomed pan. Add the water little by little and mix it without lumps. Add the sugar and cocoa powder and mix it. Pour in the milk stirring continuously. Heat it till it boils and simmer it for 10 minutes till the mixture has thickened and looks glossy.

I usually half the recipe and make and it yields 3 cups, but serves only 2 as I can't really stop at one cup. Try it, if you are a chocoholic, you would love it.