Swimming through swami troubles

There is a temple in Austin called Barsana Dham and it's a very beautiful temple. More like an ashram plus a north Indian temple. This temple holds a very special place in our family because this is pretty much the first place Ravi and I went to by ourselves, so I guess our first date, we got married here, we celebrated Maya's first b'rthday by sponsoring the lunch at the temple and then Anjali's first b'day by doing the same. So even though I'm not super religious this temple has always been a part of our major milestones.

If you were wondering where this is going, patience my child. Most of the people living in the ashram are westerners who found solace/escape/answers in the Hindu religion particulary the flavor and interpretation being practiced by the Swamiji who founded this temple. They are all extremely sweet people who honestly believe in this swamiji enough to leave their normal lives and live here. Over the years we have come to know a lot of the people living at the ashram.

The ashram holds a mela every year which is a blast irrespective of your religious beliefs. They have elephants and what not. This year I decided to invite some friends over to the mela so I sent out an email to about 20-30 friends(mostly parents of the 5 year old set) one month before the mela. The day before the mela this appears in the paper.

I sent an email out to all of my guests letting them know about the 'situation'. We did end up going to the mela but talking to Swamiji's devotees was very hard. They seemed in complete denial that allegations could be true at all. I feel indifferent to swamiji's fate but feel very sad for all the people who have completely dedicated their lives to him.

Tilburg and Frogs

It's been a while and lots has happened: we moved from Oz to the lowlands (aka the Netherlands), went from summer to winter and now to spring, bought a house, found jobs and daycare for Colwin, settled in, had lots of visitors. All in all: everything went fine and we start feeling at home in Tilburg. That doesn't mean that we don't miss Sydney, though.

The one person Colwin misses most is his friend Andre.



In a way, kids here are more boisterous than the kids Colwin had been hanging out with in Sydney. And he just needs to find his place in a group that has already been together for a while. But things are not all bad: Colwin's slowly finding his place at daycare, too. A couple of weeks ago, they were dressing up. This is the result:



I'm still not sure how they got Colwin to dress in this costume :) And it will haunt him until the end of his days...

Microsoft Word X-(

I have been using Microsoft Word as my primary authoring tool for years now. And the more I use it, the more passionately I hate it. Do the people who design this ever get feedback from users? Do they know how annoying it is to try and format a simple document without Word trying to read your mind and doing it for you?

And now, Word refuses to let me open a docx file someone sent over, as I don't have Office 2007. It prompts me to download and install the file converter. You would think this would fix my problem, but no, it still refuses to open the file!!!

Argggh!!!!!!

Basic curry recipe

This post is credited to Gail who made me remember that I need to put a simplified recipe for everyone :) So, here it goes...

Ingredients for curry (serves 6)

Heavybottom saucepan with lid
30 ml oil
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 bay leaves
4 cloves garlic and one finger of ginger (made into paste)
2 big onions chopped fairly fine
2 big tomatoes, chopped not very fine
1 teaspoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
3 teaspoon coriander powder
salt to taste

Mix chilli, turmeric and corainder powder and add about 40 ml of water. mix to form a thin paste.

heat oil in the pan and when hot, throw in the bay leaves and cumin seeds (in an even fashion). reduce the heat to 6 o'clock position and after 4-5 seconds in which the cumin seeds will become whitish, add the ginger-garlic paste, stir and about 10 seconds later add the onions. heat till the onions are brownish (which should be about 15 mins) stirring occasionally. increase heat to max and add the spice powder paste prepared earlier. stir continuously, add about 30 ml water again when the paste starts thickening and stir again. after about 30 seconds, add salt and tomato, reduce heat to 6 o'clock position and sitr occasionally for about 20 mins.

THAT'S YOUR BASIC CURRY - YAY!!

Now let's say we are adding chicken

turn heat to max, add the diced chicken (Don't add any water), cook for about 5 minutes keep turning the paste from the bottom of the pan (folding) so that the chicken cubes are sealed to keep moisture in them. put the lid on, turn the heat to 3 o'clock position and cook for 25 mins. DONE!!!!