Rocca (n.): The silent creeping realization that one has gone onto chats with office friends replete with expletives and wry humor WHILST still connected to NetMeeting at work, thereby broadcasting arbit conversations to a bewildered Aussie colleague. Word can be used as a replacement for ‘blooper’, ‘boo-boo’, ’shit-creek’ or even ‘mammoth screw-up’.

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Honest to blog?

:) best jargon spew in a long time. Source: Juno

Seriously. Unscrew you and unscrew all that you are doing. Unscrew the bloody stress and unscrew all those who want to shout ’screw you’ at whosoever else.

Unscrew you.

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I usually don’t blog about food or my foodie outings, but this Saturday was an exception. A fricking mindblowing stomach gratifying monster of an exception.

Let me put things in perspective. A week of ok-ish food, and a very early and miniscule dinner on Friday evening left me with a craving for a good meal, desi-style on Saturday morning. (North-Indian, South-Indian, whatever-Indian. Doesn’t matter). And when two of my friends made a plan to go restaurant-hopping in Little India in search for a good meal, I was already smacking my lips and heading right to nearest taxi stand.

After a mistaken try at a shabby restaurant named Gokul (not worth going into details, let me jump to the more important parts here), we sauntered into this quiet south Indian place named Madras Woodlands. Not too much of a groundbreaking name, I’d say, but the food was oh-my-gawd awesome! All of us hungry souls straightaway went for the unlimited meals, and we were in session.

A tangy start with a vettha-kozhambu (spicy and hot sambar variety), with veggies, appalams (popadams) and steaming rice to boot, followed by the mullangi (radish) sambar cooked to the right tenderness; then came the fragrant rasam and more mounds of rice. The grand finale was when after a nice bowl of payasam I was just digging into my curd rice, and the waiter came and dropped mor-moloagais (chilli peppers soaked in buttermilk, dried and then fried). By god, that was a stroke of genius! and I’m totally sold on the restaurant.

After the humongous lunch, we all had to go back and rest for the afternoon. The food had gotten the better of us, and we all woke up and decided to meet for, wait for it, here it comes, a dinner meal :D

This time it was Gult food at Sankranti. The restaurant had opened only two weeks before, and since the four of us were in mood for experimentation, we repeated the sauntering and ordering of four unlimited meals. And this time, it was full steam, hot and spicy Andhra fare, no holds barred. Each one of us topped about seven courses: Masala rice, followed by Gongura, Allam, Podi (Gunpowder plus ghee), Pappu (dal), Charu (Andhra rasam), Perugannam (curd rice). After stacking empty plates and cups, we polished the meal off with a mango and left the poor waiter and manager in wide eyed bewilderment. (I’m lovin it!)

Even though none of us had the energy nor the inclination to even move after that meal, the experience was worth every morsel of rice that we demolished. To those who planned to have pizza / noodles / chinese indian / naan sabji on that day, can please go sit on their respective thumbs and watch us dig into another mound of rice. Or join in.

Next weekend, destination Mumbai Makaan and its steaming vadapavs. Yum!

p.s: Also caught a gult movie after the double meal ordeal (just for the heck of it), which was called Vivaha Bhojanam (Marriage Food) and hence the title of this post. Quite a befitting end to the day, I say!

[image source: www.sailusfood.com]

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What happens when you take an established dimension of looking at videos (featured, rated, comments, views) and then completely twist it on its head? What if enough videos and features now exist on all those many subjects that one can look at the unfolding of the events related to each and every subject, happening, or person in chronological order?

You get TimeTube.

Particularly interesting if you are reading about a person or event. It helps you chart the impact, pre and post reactions and what the whole world has to say about that particular experience, as time passes. Pretty darn interesting.

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Alexandra (n.): The Christmas-morningy kind of feel one gets while opening one’s inbox after a long time. Can also refer to the feeling one experiences whilst opening new presents. (Example: I just felt an Alexandra, dude. Yippee! New email! Someone loves me in the world!)

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Chanced upon a video of a talk by Hector Ruiz, CEO of AMD. It was a talk about a program started by AMD called 50*15, where they aim to connect 50% of the world’s population to the internet by the year 2015.

It is a fantastic overarching theme to have as a vision, something that will set direction for the computing giant for the coming years, and more so because it involves other companies, even competitors in delivering a stretch goal that will benefit all of them, and the part of the world that is still hungry for information and enlightenment.

But what struck me most, was Hector’s relationship with his father and the way the old man egged his young son to perform better, in all aspects of life.

“For a civilization to progress, every generation has to perform better than the previous one.

A seemingly simple statement, but with great impact on young Hector’s mind. In his teenage years, the importance of this did not hit him, but when he set out on his way to a great career, his father reminded him of this one statement, coaching him that it’s not a job that he has set out to do, it’s a transformation, at an individual and societal level. Hector’s father again repeated the same mantra on the day of his marriage, reminding him that he had to be a better husband than his dad, and again, on the day Hector had his first child, reminding him that he had to be a better father too.

For a civilization to progress, every generation has to perform better than the previous one. In every aspect of humanity. In understanding, in treating fellow human beings, and in living as a whole.

Touche.

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I have posted some videos from TED before, and this one is another of those brilliant talks that could actually, change the world.

This one’s about how humans are leaving a footprint on the planet more devastating than ever before, and is spoken through the language of pictures, leaving a lasting impact on how urgent and awe-inspiring this situation is. And then begins the China revelation: pictures that show how unbelievably fast and incredibly sudden, the change is: in urban landscapes, in mass geno-shift, in the sheer scale of what is happening.

Edward Burtynsky won the TED prize for 2005, and left a lasting impression of me, even 3 years after the talk was delivered. And as they say, one has to see it to believe it, when it comes to China. Here you go.

Accepting his 2005 TED Prize, photographer Edward Burtynsky makes a wish: that his images — stunning landscapes that document humanity’s impact on the world — help persuade millions to join a global conversation on sustainability. Burtynsky presents a riveting slideshow of his photographs, which show vividly how industrial development is altering the Earth’s natural landscape. From mountains of tires to rivers of bright orange waste from a nickel mine, his images are simultaneously beautiful and horrifying.

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The most poignant stories, songs, movies, have been written about two things: love and war. Come to think of it, these are the same emotion in its two extremes. Passion, hate, enthusiasm, admiration, adoration, loathe; all just different names for that singular emotion; that we all run out of adjectives trying to describe.