Solid Smoke

I get this SMS from a confused soul one day: "Assume you are my brother. Then what is your wife to me? Is it sister in law or brother in law?" For those in my office, no points for guessing who sent this message ;-) Anyway, in case you know The Right Answer™, then have you heard the term co-brother ? PS: Yeah, I did think of replying: "neither, it's 'bhabhi'". But then again, he wouldn't understand that either! PPS: Just discovered: doing a Google image search for 'bhabhi' brings up all sorts of 'interesting' images!

"Kabab - Taste of Arabia " - how can any honest glutton ignore a signboard like that? And so we (me, Sandeep & Adarsh) decided to pay a visit to this restaurant at Pattom (opposite to LIC/Railway/BSNL building) for dinner yesterday. Kababs, Kababs and more Kababs! but.... As the restaurant's name goes, there are several Kababs on the menu. We were confused by the choice that was offered. Having come here for the first time (and for no other reason, honest!), we decided to go for variety and ordered 'half' servings of three different Kababs - Malai Kabab, Kalimirch Kabab & Arabian Kabab (whatever that is). When the dishes were served, all confusions (about choice) vanished. They all looked exactly the same! We asked the waiter boy to point out and he did his random 'this is that, and that is this' routine. Anyway, it didn't matter much because they all tasted the same. Absolutely no difference at all (or perhaps our taste buds are not sensiti...

Had dinner at the 'Rain Forest' restaurant in Vazhuthacaud, Thiruvananthapuram. It's on the right hand side (when coming from Vellayambalam), after the SriMulam Club Junction. The place is not 'on' the road side and hence it's silent, comfy and of course clean. We (me, Kurian & Ashik ) ordered chicken noodles, Spaghetti Bolognaise (or Bolognese), Sandwich (ലൈറ്റായിട്ട്!), chilly chicken etc. as the main course. This was of course preceded by a generous serving of soup and starters: fish fingers and chicken gold coin (it doesn't look as yummy as in that link). The verdict The fish fingers were awesome. Some of the best we've ever had. Highly recommended. Chicken gold coins, unfortunately, were terrible. Drenched in oil, these were no fun at all! Spaghetti Bolognaise was quite good and the noodles was not bad either. The chilly chicken, again, was burnt and was a let down. Overall, this place is quite cool; but not all dishes are up to the mark. Lov...

The 'À la carte' restaurant has been running (it better be, away!) at Kesavadasapuram, opposite to M.G. College. It's in the infamous 'Pazhoor Plaza' building (infamous only because of the computer shop: Pazhoor Ideal Systems). Had dinner there today, with my father. The ambience was better than I expected and had some class. But all was lost when the food was served. It's pretty bad. We had chilly chicken, mushroom masala, chilly gobi & roti. Except for the roti, everything else was quite terrible. The dishes are somewhat pricey too. I wasn't very excited to see Rs.30 for the grape juice, but it turned out to be the best part of my dinner. So, if you've spotted this restaurant and have been thinking about paying a visit, you can safely let that feeling pass. There are far better ways of spending those Rs.100 notes, and you'll get much better food in return too. ------------ PS: In case you didn't know, À la carte is a French phrase meaning...

I've a Windows-Linux dual boot setup. I've retained my Windows installation mainly for my mother who keeps resisting the transition to Linux (by 'Linux', I do definitely mean 'GNU/Linux'). Anyway, after Outlook Express choked on her mailbox (full of funny photos and PowerPoint presentations, baby snaps and all those valuable info emails), I have succeeded in porting her to Mozilla Thunderbird. Hoorray! Anyway, that's not the purpose of this post. I've been using POP to fetch my email (both from Yahoo and GMail) with Thunderbird. I'd like to use my email system from both Windows and Linux. So, I've been using a handy Thunderbird setup for the past few years. So, I thought of documenting it in case anybody finds it useful. This page says - 'Mozilla applications store your personal settings, added extensions and themes, and user data such as bookmarks, passwords, cookies and mail in a "profile"' . So, the trick in having your mai...

Just got back home from 'Kaminey'. I was tempted to give it a go after I heard Rajeev Masand on CNN-IBN had given it a 4/5 rating, and called it a 'MUFT-WATCH' (the protagonist in this movie has a speech impairment - he says F for S!). I say, IT IS NOT! The good It's different. The regular 'judwa bhai' formulae of Bollywood are not found here. So, regular viewers of Bollywood junk might quite like this one (I guess that's where the "awesome" reviews come from!) The casting and acting is great. Every single actor has done his/her job rather neatly. Shahid Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra have done really well. Even the other less important roles have been done pretty well. I liked the actor who played the drug lord 'Tashi'. The dialogues are very refined and provoke laughter without trying too hard. I couldn't notice and gangster slang (bc/mc) that's so typical of Hindi movies these days. The film is technically superb too - the visua...

കവിയുടെ ആശയം ഗ്രഹിച്ച് കാവ്യം രസിക്കാന്‍ കഴിയുന്നവനാണ് 'സഹൃദയന്‍' - ശബ്ദതാരാവലി എല്ലാ കഥകള്‍ക്കും ഒരു ഗുണപാഠമുണ്ടോ? പണ്ട് സ്കൂളില്‍ പഠിപ്പിച്ചിരുന്ന മിക്ക കഥകള്‍ക്കും ഒരു positive moral lesson ഉണ്ടായിരുന്നതായി തോന്നുന്നു. ഒരു പക്ഷേ ആ കഥകള്‍ പാഠപുസ്തകത്തില്‍ ഉള്‍പ്പെടുത്തേണ്ടുന്നതിനായ ഒരു അനിവാര്യതയായിരിക്കാം. പരീക്ഷകളില്‍, 'കഥ മെനയാനുള്ള' ചോദ്യങ്ങള്‍ക്ക് കഥയുടെ അവസാനം ഒരു ഗുണപാഠം (moral of the story) കൂടി എഴുതിയാല്‍ കൂടുതല്‍ മാര്‍ക്കുകിട്ടും എന്ന് അദ്ധ്യാപകര്‍ പറഞ്ഞുതന്നിരുന്നു. ഒരു കഥക്ക് ഒരു inference ആവശ്യമാണ് എന്ന് ഇത് സൂചിപ്പിക്കുന്നു. ഞാന്‍ ഈയടുത്തായി കുറേ വായിക്കാന്‍ തുടങ്ങി . മലയാളം ക്ലാസ്സിക്കുകളായിരുന്നു ഏറെയും. പോരാതെ, ഒരുപാടു സിനിമകള്‍ കാണുന്ന കൂട്ടത്തിലാണ് ഞാന്‍. ഇപ്പോള്‍ എനിക്കൊരു സംശയം. എന്താണ് വായനക്കാരനില്‍ നിന്നും എഴുത്തുകാരന്‍ (*കാരന്‍ / *കാരി) പ്രതീക്ഷിക്കുന്നത്? അല്ലെങ്കില്‍ ഒരു കഥ വായിച്ചു കഴിയുമ്പോള്‍, അതില്‍ നിന്ന് ഒരു പാഠം ഉള്‍ക്കൊള്ളണമെന്നോ, ഒരു നിഗമനത്തില്‍ എത്തിച്ചേരണമെന്നോ ഉണ്ടോ? ഇല്ല എന്നെനിക്കിപ്പോള്‍ തോന്നുന്നു. ഉദാഹരണത്തിന്, ഈയടുത്തിറങ്ങ...