Posts from November 2007

I think this has something to do with living on the fifth floor. My homeostatic regulatory mechanisms are striving to balance this unnatural elevation. The result is, I spend most of my time at home, on the floor. I don't have any desire to get a bed and I am quite happy sleeping on the floor. Apparently, the homeostatic powers have decided that this level of floor-loving is not enough. I now need to sit, read and work on the floor. So here I am, lusting after this oh-so-chic low table.




This would totally match the decor in my flat. I happen to have set of black drinking mugs. There are, however, some impediments to this homeostatic plan. The low table is a designer table and it's sold by a European outlet - both of which might shoot up the cost. But wait, maybe I should get this alternative:




How fortunate that I also happen to have set of chopsticks to grace this table, should I end up buying it. It's sold from Toronto, but the cost is still prohibitive, what with the Canadian dollar rousting the US of A dollar. Perhaps, I should go the authentic Japanese way and get a Kotatsu. I could then kill two birds with a single table. The table comes equipped with a space heater - to heat the space under the table so that your big toe doesn't ever freeze.




I might save big on accessories! I already own a laptop, a drinking bottle and a quilt.

Though the law of homeostasis demands that I get one of these tables, the law of penury demands that I ward off this urge and get back to the journal article that I am reading and finish it without making any more fuss about tables and floors. After all, what good is an unfrozen toe if the rest of the important parts of your body have gone through the freeze and thaw cycle several times already??

... for some plums to ripen. I bought them more than a month back at Guercio's. Usually, I just eat them, ripe or not. But I remembered Paul and James wax eloquent about the merits of ripened plums at the Garden Walk Party and I decided to give ripening a try. I got the special ripen-your-pear-plum-peach bag from Wegmans, kept the plums carefully in the bag and waited.

And waited... and waited and waited, till I could wait no longer.

Today, I checked them out and they had metamorphosed into shrivelled PRUNES!

I was somewhat hesitant to try them out but I am super-glad I did. They are just absolutely DELICIOUS! I am in Prune-Heaven!

Moral of the Story: Patience pays rich and rocking dividends!

Cheers!

Seeing as how video-responses and audio-responses and general responses-in-kind are the rage on the web, this is a pseudoscientific photoresponse to Paul's blog on pagers, posted yesterday. (@paul #41990).

Objective and Hypothesis:
Using the same model, setting and variables, I think a plausible answer to Paul's bewilderment at Roswell's persistence with seemingly outdated technology, is an unswerving commitment to fashion.

Study Design:
Observational, Cross-Sectional (a.k.a snapshot).
Controlled setting: Roswell Buildings
Controlled model (constant): @imk2
Variables: Accessories

Methods:
Apparatus: 3.2 Megapixel Fuji
Statistical Methods: Bivariate Prevarication

Results:

Pay special attention to the duplication of accessories, the "big and bold" theme and the evident delight of the Roswellian. After statistical testing, the following observations are seen to be statistically significant:

---

(a) "Big and bold" is beautiful. (p value*: 0.0008, CI: Big, Huge#)

(b) Like history, fashion trends repeat themselves. (p value*: 0.003, CI: Repeat twice, Repeat Six times^)

(c) Fashion might be directly associated with gratification, and thus happiness (no matter, how transient) (p value*: 0.04, CI: Smile, Maniacal Gurgling Laughter%)

(d) Good things come in doubles (p value*: 0.045)@

---

Legend:

• p-value: prevarication value

1. The Zero (or Null) being - "Normal" on a continuous scale from "Really tiny" to "Ginormous"

^The Zero (or Null) being - "Remains same" on a continuous scale from "Doesn't repeat at all" to "Repeats infinite times".

%The Zero (or Null) being - "A Neutral Look" on a continuous scale from "A Scowling frown" to "Maniacal Howling Laughter".

@Analysis included categories such as:
-- "Good things come in singles"
-- "Bad things don't come at all"
-- "Good things don't come at all"
-- "There is no such thing as a good or a bad thing (reference category)"


Discussion and Key Conclusions:
Roswell recognizes the fashion needs of its esteemed employees and thus results (a) and (b) are robustly matched by the institution in the form of old fashioned "big and bold" themed pagers. Though, results (c) and (d), barely reach statistical significance, Roswell goes an extra mile to ensure that even these "barely there" fashion needs are met by (i) forcing committed Roswellians to have a minimum of two pagers and (ii) putting them in situations where they are required to smile, no matter what the circumstance (or the weather).

Limitations:
Ha, this study is perfect. Stop looking for faults, you nitpicker!


Public Health Significance:
This study demonstrates the acute mental health needs of the estripper who authored this manuscript.

Conflict of Interest:
The author of this manuscript is the recipient of a bag of sweet sweet candy from one of the "constants" in the study, i.e. @imk2.

References:
Visco P. et. al. Text Pagers and the Wegmans Parking Lot . Estrip.org; (@paul #41990): 2007, Sep 05.

I just need to remember that it was beautiful here, once upon a summer.

Hope I don't fall off the make-my-own-lunch wagon this time around. It just takes 5 minutes, but it's so hard to get up 5 minutes early. Now that the extra hour has factored in, I am hoping to psychologically kid myself by not changing the clocks. Thus, theoretically I would wake up an hour ahead. Heheh, I love this little wicker gate to future insanity.

@libertad, you really just need a lunch box with a lid, like this one:


(My lunch last Friday.)

Thanks to @jbeatty in more senses than one...

All hail Lebanese cooking! Since this delightful little dish has an unpronounceable Arabic/Lebanese name, I decided to be more than a little inspired by beatty's book and blog.

... is my own! New and improved, with 75% less fat and 1000% more happiness.




Recipé:
Place a high fibre pita bread (available at wegmans) on a plate.
Layer with thinly sliced tomatoes.
Layer with chunks of cheese curd cheese (from Guercio's)
Layer with sliced red onions
Sprinkle with dried basil and oregano
Layer with a generous dose of red chillie powder
Layer with sliced capsicum/bell peppers.
Sprinkle a generous dose of salt.

Pop into microwave and cook on high for 10 minutes.
File this recipé under the generic classification of "relatively healthier fast food".

A view of the gorgeous skies, from my flat window!

My department had a spate of office moves recently and enough trash was generated to choke a small island off the coast of the Caribbean. On persistent prodding of the maintainence staff, secretaries and other people in power, I finally came to the most appalling conclusion that Roswell does not have a recycling plan!

Yes, all those recycle bins in your offices at Roswell are a psychological device for employees so that we can go on living in bliss and believe that we are recycling all those reams of paper, cardboard, plastic and glass!

For an institute battling cancer, this is most unacceptable behaviour. Worse is the deception of its employees by placing dummy recycle bins whose contents will be dumped into general trash when the employees go home.

I am going to make an official complaint to Dr.Trump. Can other concerned Roswellers please make the effort to make a complaint too? Your voice can be crucial to force the institute to be more environmentally responsible and stop polluting Buffalo's landfills with totally recycle-able trash.

Thanks!

I downloaded a bunch of recipes, packed them all together and uploaded them here:

I know. I know. I should probably have typed out the recipes. But hey, I am lazy. Deal with it. Besides, my recipes change everyday and the results are as varied as the tropical vegetation in the Amazon. I am also chronically challenged when I am asked to use butter/ghee/sugar in a recipe and have a lot of trouble bringing myself to accept the cold plain fact that things taste better with butter. I am against all "replacement" products so I end up not making the dish or taking the non-buttered bumpy highway.

Getting back to the point, the archive is in the .7z format. It opens and extracts with this OUTSTANDING opensource program: Ditch those stupid winzip/winrar programs; they are no good.

If you are having trouble figuring out what the hell the recipé³ are talking about, let me know. I have to admit that I haven't really tried all of them, but I did read through a few and they sounded fine.

Oh, and when they say "oil", it means PEANUT OIL (or in rare cases, Sesame oil). Don't ever use any of the other crazy oils out there for Indian cooking. They just don't make the cut. I can't emphasize this point enough. If you are thinking, "Oh, maybe I could substitute with vegetable/corn/canola/soybean/rape seed/olive, STOP. STRANGLE and KILL that thought right now. In fact, even if the recipé ³ays "vegetable oil", you will get infinitely better results cooking with Peanut oil. FYI, Peanut oil is called Groundnut oil in India.

As a general rule, you may want to tone down the butter and and the ghee and the sugar and the cream and the coconut. None of them are particularly good for you. You could subsitute butter for ghee, but you cannot substitute "I can't believe its not butter" or any non-belief short-changed product for any of the above.

Here is a lentil list for reference:

Happy Cooking! :)

PS: I also like this site: However, some of the recipé³ on there are non-traditional with equally unreliable results. Try with caution and use your discretion about the saturated fat content.