Gold and Beautiful

There is this amazing reality show on Food Network that I try to catch whenever possible. It is called Ace of Cakes and is about this bakery called Charm City Cakes in Baltimore, Maryland. The owner of this bakery is chef Duff who is an insane baker.......He has a team of equally talented bakers/engineers (yes...they make these amazing structures as cakes). First of all he makes all sorts of wacko cakes, along with the regular, beautiful, 7 tiered ones. The wacko ones are of course more fun to watch. I have seen them make all sorts of things from baseball fields, a military tank, a bar, a go-granny convertible with the granny in it.....People send them their stories and they make cakes that sort of capture the sentiment. Its pretty kool. Check out their cake designs at Charm City Cakes

The Last Comic Standing is one of my favorite shows. Stand up comedy has always been something that I enjoyed. Even when I was in India I remember having a ball of a time at Shirish Kanekar's "Majhi Fillumbaaji".... I still remember all those amazing jokes about gajar ka halwa and baingan ka bharta.....And of course he was not the only one, Johnny Lever was probably an all time star when it came to stand up or Live Comedy as we call it back home. And the more recent addition Raju Shrivastav. I sort of just caught a glimpse of his performance but he managed to me make me laugh........Of course coming to the US meant expanding my horizons in all fields whatsoever and I have thoroughly enjoyed the numerous options in stand up that we have here. My favorite : Eddie Izzard (although he is a Brit). Check out his "Dressed to Kill". He is amazing......hilarious and intelligent. Comedy Central and shows like LCS are too kool to miss. I was following LCS's this seaso...

I love my new mac, but unfortunately some applications either don't support mac at all or are not tested for it. For example, when I type a post for my blog I cannot format it. The formatting toolbar does not show on Safari. blogspot has been tested only on IE and Firefox. Of course there are other round about options, but all the things that I was so used to and always took for granted are now not that simple. Have to look for alternate browsers, alternate media players etc......Finally I had to download Firefox to get the formatting options....

I recently saw this ad on TV, one that the govt airs for public awareness. It said "Talk to your kids about sex. Ask them to wait till they get married." Hmmmmm..... Did I hear correctly? And they said India is 50 years behind the west!!!! Looks like someone is coming a full circle.....

It is very hard for me to see someone making a mistake and not say anything. Especially when it comes to my students. There are always a few in the class who just never understand.......These are somebody else's kids and my heart bleeds to see them do all these things that they are going to repent later. Wonder what will I do when I have my own????? When I was growing up, I was never questioned, especially if I managed to maintain my grades. But I never forgot that I had more freedom and more opportunities than others around me. My parents made innumerable sacrifices for me and my sister. Even today whenever I am doing something I always think about my parents. And even if we don't agree, at least we try to communicate and listen to each other. Not sure if it is nature or nurture!!!

This weekend I went hiking to Tallulah Gorge State Park, a couple hours drive from my place. Luckily (unluckily for some) for us (I went with a bunch of friends and friends' roommates) the water release was scheduled on the same day. So nobody could swim, but we got to see an amazing waterfall. Most people usually use the steps and go down to the gorge and then climb the steps all the way up to different overlooks. Of course we did that...but before doing that we decided to hike and complete a loop. So we trekked 5 miles to a beautiful lake, enjoyed the breeze and the serenity and then trekked back another 5 miles. Of course, some of our friends were tired by the time we reached the lake, so they decided to hitch a ride with some nice country men fishing in the lake. Although not everyone could stick to the plan and enjoy the woods, some of us managed to do it. I guess, since we planned on going to the gorge at the end, that sort of was a motivator for us......I can sit at places l...

Today I realized there was another advantage to living alone....I always try differnt recipes from the Internet. As Raymond's mom would say I am not a "real" cook, because real cooks don't need recipes :-). Anyways, so whenever my trials failed I would feel terrible about wasting food and/or putting my roomies through the whole terrifying experience of eating it.... But now I don't have to worry. If my experiment fails, I don't have to feel guilty, as I am the only person eating it and the quantity is so little that if I end up wasting it I don't have to feel guilty thinking about hungry kids in another part of the world, although that never escapes my mind (thanx to my dad...). Life is getting better and better :-)