sushil bajracharya's blog

Facilitating Internet-Scale Code Retrieval -- dissertation published

2010-10-11T10:47:00.000-07:00

I just got the nice news saying that my Ph.D. dissertation -- Facilitating Internet-Scale Code Retrieval -- is now published by ProQuest/UMI.

For those who are at institutions subscribed to ProQuest, here is the link to directly access the dissertation's PDF. And, here is the link that will land you to the page from where you can purchase the dissertation. You'll see a page that looks like the following..

securely sharing mouse/keyboard among multiple machines in mac osx using synergy

2010-02-18T18:40:00.000-08:00

synergy is a nice tool to control two computers in a TCP/IP network with a single keyboard/mouse. By default there is no built in mechanism in synergy for security and encryption. So, it is unreliable to be used in untrusted network (or over the Internet). However, you can encrypt the data being passed between the machines by forwarding all synergy data from client machines to server via SSH. The server here is the machine with mouse/keyboard and clients are the machines that you wish to control using the mouse/keyboard attached to the server.

Here are the steps you need to perform to establish a secure connection between synergy server and clients.

synergy comes with two executables synergy client (synergyc) and synergy server (synergys). In the instructions that follow, text inside '[' and ']', mean the following:

[server-host-name] is what the 'hostname' command returns for the machine where you are going to run the synergy server
[server] is the name of the machine running synergy server that you can use to SSH into it
[client-name] is any name you can use as a handle for your client machine, does not have to be a real machine name

STEPS.

0. create synergy confguration file; synergy.conf

section: screens
       [server-host-name]:
       [client-name]:
    end
    section: links
       [server-host-name]:
           right = [client-name]
       [client-name]:
           left = [server-host-name]
    end

1. start SSH server in [server]; in mac this means enable remote connection via SSH

2. forward synergy through SSH; execute this in client machine

ssh -f -N -L localhost:24800:[server]:24800 [server]

3. start synergy server in daemon mode; execute this in [server]

./synergys --config ~/synergy.conf

3.(alternate). start synergy server with low level debugging info; as in mac osx the daemon mode does not seem to work

./synergys -f --debug FATAL --config ~/synergy.conf

4. start synergy client in daemon mode

./synergyc --name [client-name] localhost

nimki (निम्की)

2010-01-01T13:21:00.000-08:00

Nimki (निम्की) is a flour cracker, a common nepali snack. I had a craving for Nimki last weekend and finally made it after getting the recipe from my sister. And, here it goes.

Prepare the dough: Mix some cumin seeds, salt, black salt, ajwain seeds in the flour. Put some butter ghee and make the dough with warm water.
Roll the dough as if you were making chapatis, fold into three layers and roll it again.
Slice the rolled dough into small pieces, the size of the cracker as you wish to make.
Deep fry the pieces in hot oil (at medium heat)
Take out the fried Nimkis, before they start turning brown

Let the Nimki sit for some time so that it gets crunchy, and its ready.

Although it seems simple enough, it does need some practice to make Nimki reach the desire crunchiness. Some of my batches were overcooked (brown) and some became soft from inside. I guess its the consistency of butter ghee, the right temperature of oil and the time you put the Nimki in the oil for frying that will give you the best result.

death of (my) mac(s)

2009-12-19T17:04:00.000-08:00

Its unfortunate that hardware failure has been hitting me hard! Last month I lost an important dataset that delayed my research. Now, my personal machine is almost dying. At least it happened after the NSF deadline. The only lesson I could learn from this is that I should have a handy backup strategy. Something like this (jump to section "Wrap Up and Conclusions" in the link).

The problem in my MBP seems to be due to a faulty chipset from NVIDIA, but that's not the only problem. Technicians found that the hard disk needs to be replaced too. But at least the machine is still workable so that I can run Timemachine. But, it is too damn slow. I disabled spotlight indexing, but still slow.

For a while I, decided to let go this whole Mac thing. All machines are the same no matter how beautiful the are. But, AppleCare stopped me from pulling the strings.

Now, for those who would like to see a Mac version of BSOD.. here are some.

From death of my mac

Go, back up now !

The key to collaboration

2009-11-05T10:44:00.000-08:00

First CTO Aneesh Chopra shares his view on key to collaboration - "sharing intellectual property not particular technology".

getting tab separated values from postgres query

2009-11-04T10:50:00.001-08:00

I keep forgetting this..

TUPLE MODE              #\t
DISABLE FIELD ALIGNMENT #\a
TAB AS DELIMITER        #\f '\t'
O/P TO FILE             #\o ~/out.txt
RUN QUERY               #select …

Inverting colors in PDF

2009-10-30T18:30:00.000-07:00

I am surprised that there does not seem to be an easy way to invert the colors in a PDF documents. Preview in mac allows to apply Quartz filters while doing a 'save as', but why inverting colors is not listed as one of the options? Adobe's reader allows you to substitute colors in Preferences but it does not work in a PDF that someone had tried to make prettier by putting strong colors as background.

The solution that worked for me was using mogrify. It uses ImageMagik for doing the magic. Basically you can execute something like this in the Terminal:

$ mogrify -negate badly-colored.pdf

But this did not fully solve the problem, I got a PDF whose background - out of the page's margin - was all black. The result looked as each page had thick black borders. Thanks to Preview this time, I was able to crop those margins out. First, make a rectangular selection, then select all PDFs in the thumbnail view, then apply crop. The end result was something workable.

melting and casting tables

2009-10-12T14:16:00.000-07:00

Hours after searching for how to do this in R, I finally found the right solution. The problem is, you have a table of counts like this

Item, Red, Blue, Green
----------------------------
Apple, 2, 3, 1
Ball, 0, 0, 3

I wanted to convert it to a table as follows

Item, Color, Count
------------------------
Apple, Red, 2
Apple, Blue, 3
Apple, Green, 1
Ball, Red, 0
Ball, Blue, 0
Ball, Green, 3

I had a hard time expressing this as a problem statement. What do I search for? I tried something like "converting variables to single column", "reversing contegency table" blah blah.. At the end, not sure with what query, I ended up here. How on earth should I know that a function called 'melt' could do what I want. So much for being metaphorical.

Snow Leopard + Java 1.5 + GWT

2009-09-03T12:09:00.000-07:00

Here is first of the major Snow Leopard hiccups; applies to developers using GWT. The update blatantly makes older JDKs as symbolic links to the default JDK that snow leopard ships with (1.6/64 bit) :o. While there had been quite a rant about Apple lagging behind with Java developments, this time it forgets to make it appropriately backward compatible. For folks using GWT, again for couple of idiosyncratic reasons they've mostly got to stick with 32 bit JDK 1.5. Apparently JDK 1.6 works in 32 bit mode with an argument. So, here are two alternatives to make GWT work with snow leopard Java update mess..

Making symlinks point to the correct JDKs
Hacking the 1.5 compatibility check in GWT

I resorted to the first one, but I kept on getting an annoying error in Eclipse saying "Installed JRE not found". I deleted old JRE entries and created new ones, this made the selected JRE in the Run configuration for my GWT app to disappear. The fix was to just select the new one I added. Also, I learnt that its wise to use execution environments instead JREs as selected runtimes that makes the project configuration more portable and less dependent on system specific installations of JREs.

patch/build/test field collapsing with solr

2009-09-02T15:52:00.000-07:00

This entry shows everything you need to path and build solr 1.3 with the field collapsing feature. To use the latest patch, do this:

wget --no-check-certificate https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/attachment/12417524/field-collapse-5.patch

svn co http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/lucene/solr/trunk/ ./apache-solr-trunk/

cd apache-solr-trunk/
 

patch -p0 <../field-collapse-5.patch 

ant example

Update: It seems the above patch on the trunk has no effect of field collapsing but the patch as suggested in the link with 1.3 works. Also don't forget to register the collapse component for all handlers you with to use, eg: standard and dismax.

Snow Leopard (Goodies)

2009-09-02T13:25:00.000-07:00

So far I have just encountered few goodies in Snow Leopard. Not a major difference from what I have been getting out of Leopard, but to justify paying 31$ more for this upgrade here is one nice feature: Screen Recording facility in the new upgraded Quicktime Movie Player. Given the fact that a good screen recording software for Mac can itself cost around 30$, having this feature is definitely neat!

I hope there are not any dark side to Snow Leopard. It already does not like Symantec Antivirus and Lotus Notes that I had to install while working for the Big Blue last summer.

Progressive Nation Live 2009

2009-08-31T11:27:00.000-07:00

What can I say, as always jaw dropping performance and something you can watch and listen until your eyes pop out and eardrums burst in zillion pieces...

How do you fulfill the following wishes in one go?
- buy a Frank Zappa t-shirt
- see Zappa plays Zappa live
- buy a ZPZ DVD
- see Dream Theater playing their new songs live
- get to see Steve Vai popping in to Jam with Dweezil and DT

And, at the same time get irritated by a big drunk wasted guy sitting behind making intermittent orgasmic moans after witnessing this all

Answer: go see Progressive Nation Live 2009 in Los Angeles. Well its over now, but you can do it next year.

ayurveda

2009-03-12T06:52:00.000-07:00

If you are in and around east coast, try to catch one of their gigs.

slip of the return key

2008-11-12T11:53:00.001-08:00

this should never happen..
even to your sworn enemies

million $ talk

2008-08-11T19:51:00.000-07:00

A sensible talk on how to make million $

&amp;amp;lt;div&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;a href='http://www.omnisio.com'&amp;amp;gt;Share and annotate your videos&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt; with Omnisio!&amp;amp;lt;/div&amp;amp;gt;

cupcake heaven

2008-07-15T21:57:00.000-07:00

From july NY 2008

After being disappointed with quite a few overrated places in NYC I ended up at Magnolia Bakery in West Village today. I went to the one at Bleecker street. This place has the best key lime ever ! And, their cup cakes are delicious. We got there around 8pm I think and it was not that crowded as I had imagined; that was a good thing. The neighborhood is decent.

I am waiting till tomorrow to finish up my Vanilla Cheesecake and Macadamia nuts cheesecake. They are worth dying for :)

You got to go to Magnolia if you are in the city!

guitar idol - vote for GG

2008-05-19T10:37:00.001-07:00

Please vote for an amazing guitarist Gustavo Guerra in the guitar idol contest. He is the best.
http://www.gtridol.com/gustavo-guerra

a picture of internet spam

2008-05-16T14:10:00.000-07:00

Its an interesting thought. What would a picture that represents spam on the internet look like ? Definitely not like this..

addresses: south indian, thai food

2008-05-14T20:56:00.000-07:00

Two addresses for future reference..

Dosa Place
13812 Redhill Avenue
Tustin, CA 92780
Ph 714 505 7777
(Close to I5, near Drug emporiun in Redhill Plaza)

Thai Cafe
4722 Clairemont Mesa Blvd
858 270 8303

Backpacking

2008-05-13T00:31:00.001-07:00

Lessons for first time backpackers
.. from a once first-time backpacker who suffered

never go on a backpacking hike without a good sleep the night before, or be prepare to get really sick
see how your sleeping bag is rated, and get one that would survive the night temperature
same goes for the extra inner/outer layers
rehearse your backpack fully loaded. All of those funny looking strips hanging out from your nice backpack are not fashion statements; they are there for purpose. You'll know when you carry a fully loaded pack and start to adjust them. Incorrect adjustments equals pain in unknown parts of your body
bring some hot chocolate mix
all those items that you think you would never have carried, are actually useful. Some pills of ibuprofen or tummy fixers do come handy, and of course first aid kit
REI has all you need and I don't get commission from them. They even rent out backpacks for 12$ a day if you need.. thats sweet

And, I don't think I need to tell that you'll need good pair of boots, tent etc etc..

ok.. time for pictures

Progressive Nation 2008

2008-05-04T19:25:00.000-07:00

.. arrived at the Universal City Walk right at 7:15pm even though we had left Irvine at 4:30. Yes, thanks to the I5 and 101 traffic that allowed us to get there right on time when the show started. I was almost starving by the time we arrived there and I thought I was not going to get out in the middle of the show to fill my empty stomach. So by the time we sat on our seats, the first band that played (three, have fun searching that number) had already finished. The venue was decently big. Once in, I realized you would not have to worry about getting in with an empty stomach (but not empty pocket).

Rest of the show was all worth it. I witnessed yet another epitome of dexterity, control and musical ingenuity delivered on stage by this North American Dream Squad. There were moments when I thought the sound could not have been produced live. How foolish of me? Well foolish enough to spend yet another 35 bucks on a crappy piece of cloth with a great imprint. I just wish the material is something I can wear everyday you know.

It was a pleasure to see Mikael and rest of the Opeth. He was plain honest, quite hilarious and performed well up to his claim that someone (DT) who would outperform them in every other way can not do so in one particular area. If you watch this video you'll know what he was talking about. And, yes, I definitely need to check out some of the sounds these guys are making, with a bit more attention.

color profile madness

2008-03-30T21:36:00.001-07:00

Color profiles are driving me nuts..

// (left image).. as viewed in Firefox // (right image).. as viewed in safari //

I was excited that I purchased Lightroom. So much for the excitement. After putting some effort in enhancing my images I ended up with this pain-in-the-neck issue of color profile madness. Even if I export image with sRGB profile, Firefox cannot render it as accurately as I wanted. Whereas Safari does it fine. Now not everyone who sees this image uses Safari. There seems to be no solution to this till FireFox 3 becomes widespread. So if I need to again export everything in gimp and then fix color so that it gets rendered as I wanted in Firefox, whats the point in spending the money in Lightroom ? I could have done that with UFRaw. Well, just found how someone is dealing with this issue, but it still bit more painful..

sarangi

2008-01-23T19:23:00.000-08:00

I have no where else to put this stuff.. this was residing in an older page of mine and I think it should belong somwhere else.. this might be the right place.. These are various articles I had collected about Sarangi and decided to shamelessly copy to one of my sites as I thought the original site where they came from are not that reliable in terms of having these articles there forever. Of course the credit goes to original authors that I have acknowledged well..

----

- few more words on the instrument that speaks the pain in the heart

...from Travellers Nepal

The Gandharvas & their Sarangi
by Nirjan Rai

Gandharvas, since time immemorial, have been recognised as the musician caste of Nepalese society. Long before television and radio came into existence, these people would travel around the villages playing music and spreading news, much in common to Europe’s wandering minstrels.

You’ve seen them on the busy streets of Thamel, playing this musical instrument that looks vaguely similar to a violin, following tourists through the crowd hoping that one of them would buy their instrument. And some of you probably have been influenced by them and at times even been irritated by their presence. But behind that simple facade is a man desperately fighting for survival, not only of his own against poverty but that of the Nepalese musical tradition against the influence of increasing western musical culture. Competing with the blaring Bob Marley on the stereo being played in the restaurants, these nomadic musicians of Nepal sing songs that belong to every heartbeat of the Nepalese. He is a Gandharva with his Sarangi.

Gandharvas, since time immemorial, have been recognised as the musician c aste of Nepalese society. Long before television and radio came into existence, these people would travel around the villages playing music and spreading news, much in common to Europe’s wandering minstrels. Intricately mingled with music, these Gandharvas would relate stories ranging from accounts of battles fought long these Gandharvas would relate stories ranging from accounts of battles fought long ago to passing on of local gossip. In a land where education was the prerogative of the favoured few, the Gandharvas had played an immense role in the preservation and propagation of Nepali folklore. Their contribution in matters of historical issues has also been significant.

King Prithvi Narayan Shah, who unified the various scattered kingdoms to form the Kingdom of Nepal, employed Gandharvas to sing the glory of the Shah Dynasty. They were used as a means of propaganda during the unification period and were sent to villages to sing in favour of a unified Nepal.

The Gandharvas learn to sing their unique songs and play the Sarangi in a traditional way – elders pass on their skills to younger generations. The Sarangi is a true Nepalese musical instrument. The name SARANGI is a combination of two words. ‘SA’ - the first note of music (parallel to DO as in DO, RE, ME ... ) and RANGI meaning colourful. So the instrument that colours up notes of music is called the Sarangi. Similar musical instrument can be found in other parts of the world. For example, the western violin. Sarinda, the Indian musical instrument probably is the closest in resemblance to the Sarangi. The method of making the Sarangi is unique to itself.

The Sarangi, a one-piece instrument having a neck and hollowed out body, is carved out from a very light wood, locally known as Khiro. The wood is cut into a length of about a foot. The body is carved into a hollow frame with two openings. The lower opening is then covered up with dried sheep-skin. The origin al strings were made out of sheep intestine. The village people allotted intestines of sheep, sacrificed during major festivals like Dasain, to the Gandharvas. The Gandharvas left the intestine in a pot for some days. Once the meat was fully rotten, it was pulled out, leaving behind the fine nerves of the intestine which were then woven to get the strings, which produced fine quality sound. However these days, readily available nylon and steel strings are more popular with Sarangi players as they do not have the time to prepare the traditional variety of strings. Wedge like keys are hammered on to the neck of the Sarangi to serve as screws for tightening the strings. Horse-tail hair was originally used for the bowstring of the Sarangi but these days nylon strings are preferred.

As a result of the wide exposure of our Nepalese society to the outside world and vice versa, over the past few decades, we have lost a lot of our traditional culture. The dominant western culture has slowly trickled into our society and hence everyday we seem to lose a little bit of our identity. For example, Harbaja, an instrument once popular among most of the old Gandharvas is not played anymore. The elders among the new generation Gandharvas recall the time ‘when fairies danced to the tune of the songs and the Harbaja played by the Gandharvas’.

The Sarangi could encounter the same fate as the Harbaja if nothing is done to preserve the tradition. Sadly, nothing is being done.

There is an organization started by a few of the Gandharvas themselves. It is here that these musicians by birth, spend their time playing the Sarangi, when they are not walking around the streets of Thamel trying to sell their Sarangis to foreigners who have been attracted to the sweet sound of the traditional Nepalese music.

Sad as it may seem, not many people, neither the tourists nor the Nepalese themselves, are aware of the plight of the Gandharvas and their Sarangi. As Nepal advances into the technological world, the Gandharvas appear to be losing the essence of their existence i.e,s their job of relating contemporary stories and news. The attractions of TV and radio appears to have made the Gandharvas more or less redundant.

Losing one’s culture doesn’t happen overnight, it takes years and years. One by one a little of what one has is lost and we don’t realize the value of what we had till it’s all gone. The existence of the Gandharvas dates back to the same time as the origins of Nepalese culture. Should they vanish, Nepal will be losing a big part of its culture and suffering a big dent in the national identity.

..from WAVE magazine

Almost Famous
Text by Tiku Gauchan
Photography by Trishna Gurung

He has no albums to promote, he has no public persona that he needs to project to a mass audience. He’s not a pop star who needs to explain himself to fans, although he can give most singers in Nepal a run for their money. He sings from his gut, from that somewhere deep inside, that artists aspire to sing from.

Rubeen Gandharva says he’s thirteen but he’s probably ten. He wears shoes that are two sizes too large for him. Maybe he needs to pretend he’s older to create that gumption to keep him plodding on around Kathmandu, a sarangi slung over his shoulders, and make a living for his family. He’s the breadwinner for his family, he’s an artist, he’s street-smart, he’s just a kid.

Rubeen wasn’t particularly excited about giving us an interview. Maybe he knew that the interview wouldn’t make one whit of a difference to who he was. He has no albums to promote, he has no public persona that he needs to project to a mass audience. He’s not a pop star who needs to explain himself to fans, although he can give most singers in Nepal a run for their money. And his songs’ got soul.

Rubeen is an urban minstrel. He’s like a traveling jukebox. He has a whole repertoire of songs in his head and he’ll keep weaving one song into the next. He’ll remix songs for you, he’ll take one bhaka and segue it into another. One minute he’s singing songs by his Gandharva forbears like Jhalakman Gandharva, and the next he’s latched on to a song by Khem Raj Gurung.

He sings Nepal. His songs reflect our lives— our loves and heartaches, our aspirations and even the bigger issues in the country like the palace massacre. In the choice of his songs, he runs the folk gamut. He’ll sing folk songs tinged with lovers’ sentiments (sometimes singing both the male and female parts) with lyrics like:

Timro jovan badhecha halakka kata kata lagdacha jhalak
Rakhe phalam pahelo khai lagcha, dekhda timilai laijauki jhai lagcha
Hongkong Malaya Hongkong Malaya
Mayale mai tadha bhayeni Chithi chalaya

And then there are satirical songs about how we live our lives caught up between family concerns and our need to be in with Kathmandu’s changing landscape. For example his choice of the Sindhu Malla and Naryan Rayamajhi song Lai Chayu Baisana could rile feathers of domestic bliss when he performs in people’s courtyards:

Aama baschin raat bhari bhancha ma
Choro hindcha disco ra danas ma
Lai chyau baisana
Chinna ni nasakne ai cha feshana..

When you hear Rubeen sing, you are witnessing Nepal unplugged in its raw essence. He sings from his gut, from that somewhere deep inside, that artists aspire to sing from. His voice is not modulated to have a sanitized “meetho swar”. He does not ape MTV stars or worse, MTV wannabe acts. Even though the muscles in his body may not be fully formed, his full-throated singing exhibits remarkable throat muscle control.

He’s a peculiar mix of a child and a grownup. During the interview he was constantly fidgeting and flipping through magazines. At one point while we were waiting for him to speak, he showed us a picture of a unicorn and asked, “Is this a flying horse?” But Rubeen also has street smarts on him. He’s confident about the way he carries himself—almost as if in reaction to the constant barbs he faces because of his grubby appearance and his gaine designation. He’s brusque with people who are rude to him and when people say things like, “Oh he’s so cute, bichara, singing like this”, he looks irritated. He probably knows that for him, unlike most middle-class kids, there is no point in his seeking approval from older people. He exists in their frame of reference for only about five minutes anyway; they’ll go back to their lives while he has to continue working to create his.

His usual working day is tough, to say the least. He lives with his parents in Balaju and sometimes sleeps over at his phupu’s quarters in Sitapaila. He wakes up at four to take a walk so that the cold air will sting him awake. His father who also used to be a singer, is now sick with a chest infection, and so stays at home. Rubeen travels by mini bus around town. He gets off at different toles and walks around singing. He says he likes bus drivers because most are nice to him. His favorite bus driver Raju dai, treats him like a younger brother. The bus parks are more profitable for him than most residential areas because he says that the villagers coming into Kathmandu are more appreciative of his music than city dwellers. He earns around 100 to 300 rupees a day. In most houses, he gets paid about five rupees for his effort. Some householders chase him away calling him a magne.

After the interview,while sipping tea with him in a restaurant, we could see the restaurant owners visibly uncomfortable with his presence among the clientele. It seemed that he was breaching some sort of restaurant-seating protocol by eating there. There were comments like “U pani tapaiharu sanga ho?” Later, while we were hanging out with him during the photo-shoot, we witnessed firsthand the sort of conversations that he has to carry out on a daily basis. An office worker walking by, after making small talk with us, turned to Rubeen and asked him “Tailay kamaeko paisa churot khaera udhauchas hoina? Pat came the retort “ Gaunay manche le churot khae bhane swor kharab huddaina, kasto kura gareko? It was heartening to see that spine in him, which he must have developed the hard way. Although he talks the talk of a working musician, his child-self still surfaces through the created persona. When we asked him if we could meet him later in the evening, he said that he was busy. He said that he had to give his puppy a bath.

----
The changing of the Gandharva guards

The Gandharvas, just like other migrant groups, have started to trickle into the Kathmandu valley from the villages of Nepal to make a better living. These minstrels, who have been wandering Nepal’s hills since pre-Prithvi Naryan Shah times, are now a visible sect in the city. Initially, they toured the neighboring villages around the valley, but in the last twenty years or so, some have started living in the Valley itself. Just like most new-comers to Kathmandu, they have had to adapt their working styles to the urban culture in order to survive.

The updated repertoire

The songs of these Nepali bards (who for centuries, have aptly portrayed the Nepali ethos like no other homebred musicians) have undergone transitions to accommodate the changing realities in the Valley. Before, they sang about the lahara that fluttered across a young man’s heart on seeing a Radha bloom; today their songs include lines like: Mugling narayan ghat/ Bhet bhayo mayalu samau dainay haat to convey more contemporary romance-situations. Modern day Gandharvas like Khadka Bahadur Gandharva, have produced albums with names like New Road Pipal Bot, Mugling Narayan Ghat and Banepama ma Parkhi Basyo and have adapted their lyrics to reflect the urbanization of the country.

The vanishing art of Gandharva originals

On the one hand, their ability to evolve with the changing times bodes well for these sensitive artists and may assure their future survival as musicians, but on the other hand, their willingness to cater to an audience that would rather hear renditions of radio-formatted folk songs has led to a decline in the output of original song compositions. In earlier times, the Gandharvas were as renowned for the poetic structure of their songs as well as their passionate singing. Today their lyricism is a dying art.

Living the blues—the curse of the Nepali artist castes

Today, there are around one hundred and fifty Gandharvas living in cheap rented rooms in Kathmandu. Some ply the roads singing for live audiences, some sell sarangis to tourists in Thamel, and a few record albums when possible. Most have been relegated to moonlighting as accompaniment musicians at dohori joints around town. Because they are not economically well-off, the Gandharvas cannot afford to set up shops to market musical instruments in expensive financial districts like Thamel—where most of their sarangi buyers hang out. Unfortunately, the government has done nothing to help these brilliant musicians considered Dalits or untouchables by our society.

upcoming shows i want to go to

2008-01-17T14:06:00.000-08:00

this weekend ..

---
and in few months..

nile
symphonyX
gigantour

linked back

2007-09-24T19:30:00.000-07:00

This is quite interesting. The restaurant created a pdf of one of my blog entries and put it up in their website as a review. This reminds me that I need to go there again, and let them know that I found the link that they linked from one of my links from this blog. May be i'll get some special culinary treatment for being an honest reviewer ;)

pressure cooking !

2007-09-22T01:41:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I got a pressure cooker now ! So, earlier tonight I made the first dish using this awesome invention. It turned out to be one of the best dishes I have made so far, especially the meat - tender and tasty as I had expected. Here are the details..

Beef Stew with Chayote Squash, tomates, red/green onions and shallot
( .. - Jhol bhako eskush masu tarkari )

//prepare //brown //pressure //done

Here's how I did it ..

Ingredients:

SET 0: (sorry I am a computer scientist)

- beef chuck short rib boneless 0.39lbs
- extra lean beef for stew 0.53lbs
- 2 pieces of chayote squash
- one large onion
- 2 bunches of green onion
- garlic
- ginger
- three medium sized tomatoes on vine

SET 1:

- bay leaves
- 2 cloves
- 1 cardamom
- 1 inch cinnamon stick
- few black pepper seeds
- cumin seed
- corriander seed
- 3 dried red chilli pepper

SET 2: - salt, turmeric powder, ground cumin, cayenne chilli powder, paprika powder,
SET 3: - garam masala, aestafieda powder,

I do not include the quantities of these spices used as I never measure them. I look at the amount of items I am cooking and make my best judgement based on that along with the color, fragrance and occassional tasting. Best, add them slowly. In any case use turmeric with control and garam masala/aestafieda sparingly.

Instructions:

Cut squash into small cubes and microwave for 5-8 minutes on high. You should see it giving out moisture but do not overcook them in microwave. (*see note below)
Wash the pressure cooker with mild soap water as its new ;) .. wipe dry
Heat few teaspoons of vegetable oil in the pressure cooker on medium heat
Add spices from SET 1 (do not burn them, as soon as you get a good aroma add next..)
add garlic, fry till golden
add red onions
Add spices from SET 2
(turn heat to high now)
time to brown the meat now.. add the meat and fry it
add spices from SET 3.. add a bit more turmeric powder and anything else from SET 2 if needed
Fry the meat till they turn out to be brown
Add the cubed squash and cook for 3-5 minutes
Add chopped green onions and tomato
For tomato I prefer sprinkling a pinch of garam masala more
mix well, add a glass of water (you can taste the soup base formed now to get an idea for adjustments). It should look lke this before you add water and cover the lid.
Cover the pressure cooker lid
Once you see the pressure build sign, lower heat slightly
Pressure Cooking starts!! (15 mins)
After 15 mins you'll hear the whistle
Take cooker off the stove and let cool down
After the inner pressure has been released open lid
.. now ready to devour

*Note: It seems both squash and the browned beef cubes takes same time in pressure cooking so you can skip microwaving if you want. But I did and the result was great.

.. Finally garnish with chopped cilantro and serve with a plate of steamed rice and a hint of achaar.

Cannot imagine how I have been cooking without pressure cooker so far..

Back to the Kitchen

2007-09-16T20:16:00.000-07:00

One of the few things I missed while I was away in Seattle for about 12 weeks was my kitchen. So this weekend, after I got back, I went on a cooking spree.

After having a scanty six piece MOMO plate at Annapurna cafe in Seattle, I was eagerly waiting to make as much as I wanted of my own. I also have been setting my mind on Lah Du Woh (Lentil Patties with Ground Meat) after seeing it here for a while now. In the kitchen I had an unopened bottle of Mustard Oil and a bag of Dark Brown Peas. So I set the course for a 2 day lunch/dinner that would get my hands on all of these.

On Saturday, I started out with Momo first as it would get the seasoned ground meat ready that I would be able to use for the Woh (Patties) next day. And, also the legumes (peas and lentils) need to be soaked overnight before you can cook them. One of the things I did new this time with momo was some variation in the meat; used a little less onions but more shallots, and used two different kinds of oil - toasted seasame and mustard instead of vegetable, and also added some deshi ghee. I thought this would add some juice to the 10% fat ground sirloin - back home the all natural fat or some bone marrow would have made it more succulent. I really have to find a place where I can buy some bone marrow. Overall the meat came out to be nice.

Momo + Grilled Tomato Sauce with a splash Fenugreek seeds fried over mustard oil.

A good plate of Momo almost gets its attitude with the achar (sauce) you serve with it. This time I tried the grilled version of Golbheda Achar. This is slightly different from the one I made before. This time I had a splash of Fenugreek seeds fried on hot mustard oil on the achar. I also used two kinds of pepper this time; powdered Cayenne and the dried full ones (will put the names later -- what're they called?) that I grilled along with the tomatoes. Use of the oven and the electric blender somewhat distort the original feel and flavour you get with roasting on fire and using a stone grinder, but you still can do a decent job in an American kitchen..

Recipe:

- preheat oven 450 degrees
- rub some mustard oil on an alumunium foil
- cover tomatoes on vine with some mustard oil
- put tomatoes on the foil to grill in the oven
- add cumin seeds, dry red chill pepper, serrano pepper (or thai) and chopped garlic
- grill at 450 degrees till the tomato skin start to tear
- take tomatoes out and put it in a blender
- add salt, cayenne pepper, cumin powder, bit of garam masala, chopped ginger, a bit of water
- blend to get a puree
- on a frying pan heat few teaspoon of mustard oil
- fry some fenugreek seeds till dark brown (or black if you prefer)
- pour the puree on the pan
- serve chilled/garnish with chopped cilantro (optional: small pieces of chopped onion)

Kalo Chana (Dark Brown Peas)

These are the dried dark brown peas that you can easily get in Indian groceries. You soak them in water overnight and cook the next day. You can either cook it with a soup base or fry it dry. I intended to go with frying but I went a bit wrong during post-preparation and used more salt than I had to so I had to make it kind of soupy; but it went well. This is the first time I tried this so no need to feel bad about it.

Recipe:

- Soak dark brown peas overnight in water
- Next day, boil the soaked peas in water with salt added to taste for (30 - 45 mins)

...till the peas are softene

- drain the peas
- meanwhile, prepare these

- chopped garlic
- finely chopped ginger
- thinly sliced red onion
- slices of tomatoes on vine

- heat some vegetable oil on a frying pan
- put some bay leaves
- fry chopped garlic
- add onion, add a splash of turmeric till onions become yellowish
- add the peas to the pan
- add salt, cumin powder
- fry for few minutes till the spices blend in
- add tomatoes and sprinkle a bit of garam masala
- mix tomatoes gently
- add some water
- cook for few minutes
- serve either hot or cold

Serving Suggestion: Kalo Chana goes prefect witih Chiura (Beaten Rice), and unfortunately you cannot get a real good Chiura here. So to compensate you can get those thin puffy 'poha' and then heat it lightly with butter ghee. That would do some justice to pair it up with the Chana.

La Du Woh (Black Lentil Patty with Meat)

Well this is the same stuff as the one I made before; but it has a meat filling this time. So recipes are same for the lentil puree and the ground meat. However this time I used the mustard oil for frying, and it adds a subtle difference in aroma and flavor.

Although the patties turned out to be as expected, I still have to find a right way to cook these especially to overcome three limitations I have here:

using the electric blender makes the puree very fine so the patties tends to get 'spongy'; probably some of the setting might give the puree the stone-crushed consistency I desire
seems like using the 'thin' frying pan instead of the thick 'tawa' has some wierd heat transfer issue. So it is hard to get the Woh in the right form after cooked (crispiness/well cooked inside-out)
.. already forgot what this was

The Woh should not look like an ihop pan cake when its done.. thats just wrong texture

La Du Kheyn Woh (Triple Triple Lentil Ground Beef Egg Patty :) )

Ok. So, I messed this one.. The deal is you break an egg on top of the patty while cooking and flip it with great care. When its done you should have the patty well cooked with the sunny side egg up. Then you can take a spoon and make a suture in the egg so that the delicious yolk flows into the patty and surrenders itself as a sauce for your pleasure.

I was not able to maintain the yolk in its liquid form but I did manage to flip it in one single piece. Next time I'll make it perfect.

braggadocio

2007-06-10T22:24:00.000-07:00

# 1 in google.. lets see for how long ;)

.. in the video

2007-05-17T21:00:00.000-07:00

.. more and complete

another lazy man's dish

2007-04-01T21:50:00.000-07:00

here you go I am showing off some really quick-to-make items here today. This is "Fried Shrimp Thai Gyoza in a Sweet And Sour Sauce".

Heat some oil in pan and on medium heat fry the frozen gyoza's for 4-5 minutes till all sides seem to be softened and with slight brownish stains
pour about 3/4th cup of water and cover the pan so that the steam softens and cooks the inside of the gyoza further, again do this on light heat
you can add chopped super-hot thai chillies on top
after the water evaporates, which will in just few minutes, see if you need to add more water and repeat the process (if you think the gyoza is still uncooked)
then at the end when its quite done, pour a moderate amount of Sweet and Sour Sauce (pic later) so that it just covers the gyoza (do not use too much of it)
serve in a while,, ye toss some chopped cilantro

I tried this with a chilean Cab, for me, they went quite very well together. On hindsight, after doing a six-tub full of laundry, it couldn't have been better..

new office

2007-04-01T21:43:00.000-07:00

\\ old space \\ packing \\ unpacking \\ new space \\ start working already \\ almost ready

Finally we got to move to a new office in the nice and newly constructed ICS 3 Building (also called the Bren Hall). The nicest thing about the move is that we get to arrange our own office. So, there are couple of things I like about this place.

.. umm too many posts for today, lets wait for more ..

cold sake

2007-04-01T21:31:00.000-07:00

\\ cold sake \\ ? \\ sushi\sashimi assortments

We made another trip to Hokkaido, this time for dinner. It does not seem to have any difference between dinner or lunch so I don't think the extra money for dinner is worth it. This time I got to try few more items. One of them were 'cold sake'. I usually take sake warm, but for a warm spring sunny califorina day, a treat of cold sake also is just right. Too bad I could not picture the bottle it came in, it was quite attractive.

Another item on plate that was interesting was what they labeled as 'iranian sushi' - now that is quite interesting isn't it. But, sushi be better be good Japenese. And, of course, Hakkaido is not a place to go try out good sushi. there are other nicer (and expensive of course) places for that.

lazy man's orange chicken

2007-04-01T21:21:00.000-07:00

With the readymade Mandarin Orange Chef Sauce, its easy to make a delicious orange chicken or other variants at home. Really easy procedure, mix the sauce while you cook the meat. Here is my version:

some base seasonings on meat: turmeric, chilli powder, salt and ground cumin
some vegetables to mix: microwaved slightly peeled and cube-cut potatoes, chopped onions, green bell pepper, tomatoes : stir fry all these on finely chopped garlic
cook the chicken quite thoroughly on medium heat (I tossed it over little oil)
when chicken seems to be cooked, mix the vegetables and orange chef sauce
serve over a bed of rice, garnished with cilantros of course

I noticed that you need to cook the chicken fairly well before you put the sauce in it. Next time I'm going to try to grill the chicken first

shake shack: the date shake

2007-04-01T20:07:00.000-07:00

If you are driving by PCH and in OC and want a break, this is a nice place to stop by.

Crystal Cove Shake Shack
7408 N Coast Hwy, Laguna Beach
949-497-9666

Check out their date shake. The hot dogs are not the greatest but you can see the pacific as you gobble them up. They say you see dolphins sometimes. Anyway, its a nice small spot to hang out for a break.

soya-vadi with pork chops

2007-04-01T20:03:00.000-07:00

Here is the first implementation of the design that I had for making a nutri-nuggets (soya-vadi) dish. It turned out to be pretty well. A note for future is to have enough tomatoes so that the nuggets get covered in a thick tomato gravy. But this was not bad either.

Preparing the pork chops: its quite quick and easy with thinly sliced pork chops from Trader Joe's. Slightly marinate with turmeric, chilli pwder, salt, some garam masala and cover with chopped garlic and ginger. Then pan fry with very little oil. Flip on each side for 2-3 minutes until you see its cooked and get a nice smell in the kitchen
Making the nuggets ready: as mentioned here, after the nuggets are softened in water due to soaking. Fry them thoroughly with our desired condiments: again the same nepali formula - garlic, ginger, corriander seeds, cumin seeds, salt, chilli powder. You can taste it once it seems its ready. It should be pretty much in a good taste by now. I like them slightly brownish.
Mixing together: Fry some onions, then mix the nuggets, sliced tomatoes, and finely cut cooked chops. Add water, and more seasoning if desired. I put some more sliced garlic, and some garam masala for the tomatoes. Bring it to boil.
After a consistent gravy base if formed and the nuggests seems to have absorbed enough juice it is ready.

I had some hard time making this exactly right as I added more water than required and I did not have enough tomato. But it turned out to be fine as my base was very good. It cannot go wrong with that set of magic condiments added with delicious juice from the chops.

Actually, it seems that this nugget formula will go better with this version of 'Golbheda Achar', and, yes if you can use dried fish with this it'd be awesome. But where the hell I get that particular version of drid fish I am talking about ? I might get it in some chinese/asian store. For sure it has a very nasty smell. So I guess it'll be hard to find.

the great g3

2007-04-01T19:34:00.000-07:00

it took me quite a while to write about this, but here we go.. first some snaps of some of the rarest individuals on the face of the planet.

more here, and couple of bad sounding videos.

Theater

Orpheum turned out to be a nice theater. It is quite small as opposed to what appears in the pictures in its web site. May be we had better seats and were close to the stage so it appeared smaller. Anyways, mezzanine happens to be a good enough spot/level to enjoy the show. Even better if you can get the middle seats unlike the ones in the corner we got. We were to the right side so I could see Petrucci doing all his finger breaking tricks as he chose to be on the left side (his) if the stage. PG played in the middle of the stage and sometimes we would just see his back as he would face to the left (to his right) while doing stuffs like his teeth-grinding licks. Satriani chose his spot to be right (of his side) so he was the farthest. But he was jumping around. If there is any other show going on at Orpheum that I am interested in, I would definitely go, and will not pick anything else except orchestra/boxes/mezzanine.

There seemed to be a tight security. Nobody was 'allowed' to bring in even water, but only if you don;t say you are not bringing any..

Usually you are not allowed to take pictures but there were many flashes going around. I had an experience once where the guards checked all the bags for cameras, so I left mine in the car. That was a blunder. But I managed to learn and use a friend's camera, whose battery unfortunately died before I could shoot the last jam session. The sound was too loud for the poor camera's mic to handle so the video shots sound all distorted. Well you should be getting a DVD anyway if you really want to see them in action, shouldn't you ?

Sound

The sound was the largest of I have heard in any show. The notes were literally shaking my seats and pounding my chest. I felt the presence of the greatness of the music as Petrucci struck the upper two strings in the very beginning as he started. Those are the notes that can shake you and reach your soul. PG was just pure fun. Its amazing how he delivers such dexterity with such ease and comfort. I was hoping to hear 'Searching' but Satriani did not had that in mind apparently. But I have not heard 'cool # 9' was that cool before. He does magic with the sound. i don't know where they come from.

Audience

The audience was great. It seemed everyone of them was there were for the show, and they cared for the music above everything else. (Not like bunch of morons I was surrounded with when I went see this disaster-in-the-name-of-a-concert). Lucky are those bastards who get to hang out with girlfriends who enjoy and appreciate this stuff. There were young kids constantly cheering up, even in dark, to get a sight of the flawless players in front. That reminds me, the future is still not dark yet. Just behind those kids were old men, in grey hair enjoying the show.

Songs

I do not remember all of the songs now. But They pretty much played the standard set. What was interesting was to see who each of the three played with. I was not much aware of the individual line up, so it was definitely a pleasure to see Poltroy accompanying petrucci. He is a one hell of a drummer for sure. Technically, Poltroy and Petrucci were impeccable. And, even the crowd seem to acknowledge that. I could see a gesture of respect as they finished up. Everyone in the audience stood up for a long applause.

PG was the one who seemed to be having the most of the fun. Going nuts with his crazy expressions. He kicks ass anyway. He bought his RacerX crew on board, so got to hear some old PG style neoclassical style riffs.

Satriani, was a real crowd chanter. He literally made the crowd sing along with Crowd Chant. It worked out quite well. I had not been so observant before how much he keeps on jumping on the stage.

At the end they played bunch of Hendrix and Stones along with others.

I could not resist myself from spending some more extra $$ in buying this T-shirt. The print is real crappy, but how can I stop myself ?

Long Live G3 !!!

Injera all over

2007-03-14T00:37:00.000-07:00

I tried Ethiopian food for the first time. Unfortunately it did not meet up to my excitement or what I was hoping for. It was not terrible experience though. In fact the food reminds me of some dishes back home.

Injera seems to be their equivalent of Nepali rice or Indian roti in a meal. A spongy bread that is comparable to Dosa on size, has the similarity of making of Dosa or 'Chatamari', but has a distinct feel and taste.

On the menu of the restaurant, they described Ethiopian eating style as an erotic form, where each partner feed one another with a piece of Injera wrapped with rest of the food on the plate. Well the sharing of the single dish on which the food is served (actually a layer of dish itself is Injera) definitely portrays some affection, but I find it hard to characterize it as an erotic idiom. Well, they did not say if you were supposed to do that without (or with special) clothes, may be that might have made some difference?

I ordered some kind of specially prepared meat, forgot the name. It basically was form of dried meat processed with special herbs and cooked in purified Ethiopian butter. The description sounded a lot like the 'sukuti' (a form of naturally dried meat popular in nepal) hanging in grandma's 'dhukuti' (kitchen store).

I took the risk of ordering it. Risk in a sense that I lost the opportunity to try something else, probably more exciting. A friend ordered a dish with mixed vegetables.

They took an insane amount of time to prepare the food and when it finally arrived it was quite a disappointment. It did nothing to surprise or titillate my taste buds, that I expect whenever I try a new variety of dish. What was noticeable was almost 80% of the dish was all Injera! The food was served on Injera, with a side basket full of rolled Injera, my dish was wrapped inside Injera, and what was inside was nothing but shredded Injera with tiny bits of what appeared to be meat pieces.

On the plate were peas, mustard greens (or lettuce), cabbage and some lentils. Peas reminded me of some kind of 'kegu kwa' served in our newari feast. It was almost exactly the same stuff. Cabbage was nothing special, same stuff mom would cook when she would be absolutely lazy to cook anything interesting. Green stuff was little bit sour, otherwise it was the same 'saag' (a dry variant that is again popular in newari 'bhoj'). I am not sure what the lentils were but they were a bit better than those that you get in pouches that you cut and microwave.

Ahh, there was another interesting order. Tej - Ethiopian honey wine. And, let me tell you besides being served on a wine glass, I think it did not have any characteristics of wine. As a friend (quite a wine nerd) says very well, "anything that is not made of grapes is not wine". Well, I am not saying that the beverage was inferior or I did not enjoy it, Its just that you cannot possibly say its wine. It looks like wine though, and when served in a wine glass, and when rest of the world know it as Ethiopian wine, one could argue its really a wine. Ok, fair enough. Looks and names aside, as soon as I had a sip of that beverage, I said "this feels so much like a good THO:", a sweet rice beverage again very popular in newari community. So, if the color was milky, and served in big glasses, probably I could say it definitely is THO:

Overall the very interesting looking meal did not excite me much once I tried it. May be the restaurant did not do a good job, may be I ordered a wrong dish. So, I would still give it one more try if given a chance, before I finally close the doors to explore Ethiopian food.

off to Santa Clara

2007-03-01T20:22:00.000-08:00

I'll be in Santa Clara, from March 4 - March 8 attending this. Silicon Valley seems to be as boring as Irvine, but at least they have light rail and trains there. Planning to rush to San Fransisco on Monday for few hours, lets see if we can beat the traffic ..

my blog != spam blog

2007-03-01T19:41:00.000-08:00

blogger picked my blog as as spam blog !!

I am annoyed.

ok here is what they say about a spam blog:

Blogs engaged in this behavior are called spam blogs, and can be recognized by their irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site.

now, where do i have:
- repetitive non sensical text ?
- large number of links ? (parse the real entries !!)
- what site all my links are pointing to ?

I guess this might be because I have many feeds embedded in my front page: pandora, google reader, flickr.. Otherwise I can see no reason why my blog would be considered a machine generated pile of pig crap !

Blogger folks, please use more juices from your smart brains to tame your dumb machines to do better statistics. On that note, apology will be accepted once I am able to post this entry.

g3 after three years

2007-03-01T19:33:00.000-08:00

Hell Yeah ! .. finally after 3 years of being here, I am going to make it this time..

see all of you flying dogs and the extremists in the dream theatre !

for those who don't know what they're going to see or hear.. P G, J P, J S
and, this is how they JAM !

you'll hear sound that you have not heard before..
your money will be well spent
i cannot wait more ..

masyuara..

2007-02-17T16:55:00.000-08:00

I have never tried cooking 'masyaura' till now. Its probably dried nuggets of soybean paste. I found this one at 'wholesome choice' and its from India, they call it soya-wadi. I asked for some help back home and my sister sent me an abstract design snippet to cook masyaura. Although being deliberately confusing and non-to-the-point, the beauty of this snippet is that you can possibly create several instantiations from it. i'll post them as they come, but here is the snippet - for more experimentally oriented ones

- soak that masyaura stuff in water till it becomes soft
-- may be 15-20 mins
- or, u can also boil it in very little water
- then squeeze that after soaked up in water and fry it

- if u r adding masaura in alu tarkari add those fried ones in the tarkari
- or, u can try out the masaura chowela also

- u need to fry till it becomes brown

- then make a golbheda achar and mix that fried masyura in it
- add dhaniya and finely chopped onions

snow snow snow

2007-02-05T01:10:00.000-08:00

I spend last five days in snow mountain ranch at denver attending HCIC. Too tired to complete this post for now, but needed to start to not to skip it later..

she wants to fire an OSS developer

2007-01-28T18:02:00.000-08:00

read on...

basantapur

2007-01-18T00:45:00.000-08:00

-- from phitar

again i did not take this. Seems like I am just refering to other people's stuffs today..

anyay, you see those blue doors ?

when i was a kid, there used to be a guy who would hang comics all over that door and rent them out. I used to go there and pay him 25 paisa and sit on the floor under the sun to read a comic..

thats quite a memory

25 paisa = 1 quarter Rs
70 Rs ~ 1 US $

I remember these:

NAAGRAAJ (the snakeman)
CROOKBOND (jamesbond crooked up)
RAM AUR RAHIM
CHACHA CHAUDHARI

Yes, they were all hindi and indian comics. And, they kicked ass. hehe..

क्रुक बान्ड का कुत्ता राबात याद आ गया ।

lens luster

2007-01-17T23:20:00.000-08:00

you should always say, "Thats one fine lens you have got".
Wait, don't say that to me, as its not my lens.

// mine // his //

=>

// antediluvian // avant-garde (sorry haven't found the pics for the lenses and the tripod yet)

// vague // vivid

// slipshod // conscientious

// -- from sushilbajra // -- from B_N_S

=>

// poor grad student // a smart working engineer

streamripper

2007-01-07T13:19:00.000-08:00

Shoutcast has tons of stations.. there are couple of those that are perfect match to my taste or mood.. for example:

- InsideJazz: perfect station for my evenings and dinner
- Swiss Internet Radio - RadioCrazy Classical: for midnight coding
- Storyville (Standard Jazz): as the name suggests, standard Jazz
- hathormusicradio.com PRESENTS: Metal : for old-school 80's metal
- .. and list goes on

This post is not about my shoutcast bookmarks though. Its about how can you ripp those streams into mp3s in your desktop. You'll need:

- Streamtuner : makes it easy to find, tune-in, and bookmark station
- Streamripper : the real-deal, this rips the stream
- XMMS (well not required actually to rip, but a nice player anyway)

Rest is too easy shown than written, see the pic below and check out the notes in the pic in flickr..

1. Get Streamtuner
2. get Streamripper
3. Select the station of your choice
4. You are tuned into your station
5. Press 'Record' to start recording.
6. Clicking 'Record' will start Streamripper
7. By default, files will be saved in your home folder under the name of the radio station as the parent folder for the mp3s

migration

2007-01-05T01:34:00.000-08:00

YAY!

I switched to a mac at work. This is awesome. So far the migration is smooth. Although I am suspicious about mac's so called out-of-this-world font rendering and anti-aliasing. It is not getting close to font smoothing that I have in my gentoo box. I know there are things to be discovered yet so I will shut up for now..

pc pain

2007-01-05T00:39:00.000-08:00

not so merry christmas for me.. this all went back to the store. read on..

I have been longing so long to upgrade my workstation at home. I am tired of windows (for more than a zillion reasons may be). In fact, I gave it up long ago to the ever cool gentoo that runs in my now near obselete latitude d600. After spending couple of sleepless nights researching for PC components to build my own, one eager evening I stopped by Fry's. I saw two good deals, seagate 400 gig for around 120$ and evga geforce 7900 256mb for around 180$. I thought this might help cut down my expenses a bit, I dragged a cart, dumped rest of the blocks.. intel DG965WH, core 2 duo, 2 gig ram etc. One fine guy at Frys helped prepare the quote and even after adding a finely built Gateway 22inch monitor it showed some 1400 in the total. I was in heaven. Man, I just got the finest deal, I thought.

I reached the counter, and then the seemingly new cashier confusingly kept on checking items and he said there were two items missing in the quote. Then after making quite few trips for reconfirming the order, the cashier prepared a new invoice it came out to be 1800 something. Well, I said, not so good deal. But, hey, at last I have the piece of mind. I am building this long awaitened machine, will be working from a fine 22inch display, running unbeatable gentoo and all those fancy gnome gizmos they have now.. ok..

at home, I started assembling the components very carefully (unlike what I use to do with my components at home in kathmandu - I would have been sued by the humane organization for sensitieve electronics if they had caught me back then). Well, I connected the power supply and turned on the power. The green led goes on. CPU fan rotates. But nothing in the display. No power from usb ports. Quite disappointing.

A bit more research and careful look at the products I got revealed few things. I got a motherboard that was openbox, that's why a special 10 something$ discount. I got 500~ mhz ram instead of 633 that I asked for (not sure how that happened). I saw 633 costed 90$ per gig and these 500~ were more than 100 each. Ok, the best guess so far - core2 duo support in intel motherboards needs some tweaking - mostly a bios update. Well, when the label in the box says for 'core 2 duo' shouldn't it work out of box ? who knows ? why would intel care ? then core2 duo also needs a proper ram pairing, who knows this pair of ram i got is ok. Yes, you would need to enter the wierd numbers from the chips and find it out yourself. if they don't work then bad luck - go back to store. who told you to build your own anyway.

I was trying the video ouput using the onboard video so far. I inserted the seemingly amazing dual dvi evga (am I going to buy another monitor BTW?) and then tried to hookup the monitor (that doesnot come with a DVI cable BTW. Hello Gateway ?) to that card. But the only available outlet from the back of the awesome Antec nine hundred casing providing access to the pci-express puts the dvi port from the card so further up to the casing that it was impossible to insert the cable there. Sure the casing had to go back too. Few interesting points about this casing though. It came with 4 fans that would have cooled down a chicken being roasted on top of the firing cpu and gpus. I wonder why instead of having a connector from the fans that goes into an ATX motherboard they came with a manually adjustable switch. They want to run the fans high all the time and not control them using some stupid software ? Well if yes why have a switch then ? Antec would know better.

For all the trouble of configuring the components, and getting tortured waiting, I wouldnot pay 1800. I am impatient, god damn it. And I don't have any more time to invest in this. If I am to wait till I get this thing up and running with everything configured may be I would even finish my school.

I open the manuals I read only about support for windows (Vista Ready! Screw that, Do you care about non windows users at all?). However, if you ever open the instruction manual for this intel motherboard, you'll see a picture of a nice fellow installing linux software (with the nice pengium pic) into the computer. I would have to applaud the good sense of humour those folks have who drafted that manual.

I have another option. I can buy a mac. Its a beautiful machine that runs UNIX. For 1800 I can get quite a machine. That'll buy me piece of mind. But again, the kind of config I want will go upto 2700. Well if I settle down on screen size, I can get a decent one at 2000. So why should I even bother matching 16 digit numbers in the ram chip with the 12 digit number under the barcode of the box of the motherboard ? Well, the only answer is because I want peace of mind at last. Imagine sitting in front of a self-built linux box running on the latest and greatest hardware with custom compiled software exclusively for you machine from the SCRATCH. But not at the price I have to pay for now.

So, I had to return all the things I bought - that would have been a nice christmas gift - to the store the next day. Well, Fry's was nice to take back all those things. After all I had not done anything bad. But, they put another tag in the motherboard and sent it back to the rack in the store. Come on, that mob must have been fried way before the customer earlier than me bought it (remember open-box?). And, I do not understand why the customers have to wait till they pack all the parts and send them back. Cannot they just check if they are ok and then let us go ?

My impression is, the assembled PC market seems to be just favouring gamers running windows. I don't play games, I don't need dual sli or ATI crossfire. I definitely cannot afford a truckful of liquid nitrogen waiting in my backyard to cool my GPUs. I just need a decent machine running core 2 and just enough ram so that I can keep both Eclipse and Dr Scheme open and running without eclipse senselessly highlighting all my code in yellow or Dr scheme going nuts. Maybe I should stick with vi on the terminal. So, it'll take some more time for me to complete this project of building a nice solid machine at home running linux. till then, back to my 14inch window to the world at home and remote desktoping to more powerful beasts in office that I cannot afford for myself.

Actually. the moral of the story is you should not have a good or the greatest computer at home at all. As you should not be doing anything else except surfing or checking mails from home. If you need to work, go to the office. Thats where people go for working!

monrovia canyon park trail

2006-12-02T02:47:00.000-08:00

1200 N. Canyon Blvd. Monrovia
CA 91016

You'll drive through the nice looking town of monrovia. The city has quite a warm feel, it looks quite old. There are two trails available, one leading to a waterfall (1.7miles, elevation 1800' with gain of 720ft from the starting point). Another one is the 'Historic Ben Overturff Trail' (7 miles, elevation 2800', gain 1720 ft). The main trail was half-way close but we took the 'private BSA road' that hits the dirt road, that leads towards closer end of 'Bill Cull Trail'.
[need to upload the map]

Overall, the best hikes so far. You'll see some water, and more importantly hear it! That adds a nice ambience to the hike. The weather was perfect, quite chilly under the shade and woods. The spring water that was flowing was quite clear and reminded me a lot about walking through woods and shades back in Nepal. We would probably go to see the waterfall next time, as the old dude in the gate told us: "its definitely worth it man!"

laughing buddha

2006-11-27T20:33:00.000-08:00

a friend of mine opened a store in Seattle that sells some cool items from Nepal. It feels like a shop in thamel, but located couple of blocks away from university of washington.

you can checkout the store's site for more info.

I remember this as he has sarangi's, more of showpieces than sturdy playable ones.. but nevertheless better than the one that were eaten by the damn termites.

Off North..

2006-10-15T21:39:00.000-07:00

I'll be in portland for about a week and in Seattle for about a day next week.

.. details here

silverado trail to overlook and towards bedford peak

2006-10-07T23:28:00.000-07:00

[this needs further editing]

4.6m RT/2.5hrs/1500ft (ref) upto the overlook

While the book said it was 2.5hrs round trip, we were shooting to go beyond silverado and reach bedford. After passing the highest powerlines we hiked up towards bedford and reached seemingly the highest peak, that seemed too early for us to be at bedford.. while another peak in vicinity was too far off to be bedford. anyway, we made to a nice peak and got a great view. No other way to figure out where bedford would have been unless I see a picture of some landmark of that place

- very scenic, nice drive through the silverado canyon road
- feel of a lush green mini countryside as you drive
- start from the end of silverado canyon road, take the foot trail to the left
- get right up ready for nice scenery
- moderate but constant steepness
- tough but not the toughest hike up
- nice view of the city and surrounding hills from the peak
- actually caught sight of a rattlesnake

- area map
- flickr set
- lessons for next hike
-- get breakfast at home
-- never go to ihop again for a breakfast

off to san francisco

2006-09-22T17:28:00.000-07:00

I am off to San Francisco again for this weekend! yeah.. !! Anyone who reads this will be there ? contact me, I am there till monday afternoon.

recent indian movies

2006-09-18T03:25:00.000-07:00

some recent indian movies I think worth watching

just 3? I thought I had more..

----
images from

http://www.rajatkapoor.com/img/Raghu-Romeo-1.jpg
http://www.shemaroo.com/online/images/vcd_blow/antarmahal_bengali_mvcd_246x250.jpg
http://i.indiafm.com/posters/movies/05/mmpaw/still6.jpg

vegetables in broth

2006-09-18T02:27:00.000-07:00

//ingredients //broth soup //cabbage //raddish

at home my favourite 'tarkaris' (तरकारी) used to be those cooked with meat. I have never tried to make myself until recently, and I found a very easy and excellent way to cook some. This specially goes best with vegetables that can aborb the broth very well, such as raddish and cabbage (unlike potato that is much dense).

the technique:

- boil pork loins (or beef) in water with ginger pieces, salt, garlic if you like
- boil till fully cooked
- keep aside the meat and broth (the water makes an excellent broth)
- for raddish microwave pieces for about 20 minutes

- fry bay leaves, cumin seeds, minced garlic/ginger
- add onions, turmeric, chilli powder, salt
- add sliced bell peppers if you are using cabbage
- add the vegetable (raddish or cabbage)
- add some more turmeric and garam masala (sparingly)
- stir fry till cabbage is semi-soft/half-cooked (for raddish its already cook, just stir a while)
- for cabbage can add chopped tomatoes
- slice the meat, add to the vegetable (stir few mins)
- add the broth, some more water to cover all the vegetables, cover and simmer on lowheat
- let some water evaporate (depends on how thick you want your soup/broth in the vegetable)
- enjoy with rice and lentils (दाल भात)

toxic taro

2006-09-18T01:26:00.000-07:00

Elephant Ears root, thats one of the ingredients used in making that super-slippery black-lentil soup that would just make a handful of rice slurp down through your throat without even giving any extra effort to your jugular muscles for chewing. I have been long yearning for that experience. Finally I caught sight of those - dried ones - in an Indian grocery and brought them home.

//taro roots //peeled //black lentils with taro

One night I got all ready, preapared all other items to go along with - rice and nice 'tarkari' - then started to peel this root. Went ok, then washed it and kept aside. In a moment my palms start to itch like hell - all of sudden. I did not had a clue of what was going on. I might have washed my hands with soap for about 5 times already but the irritation persisted.. Rubbed some salvon antiseptic*, that calmed things down a bit. Somewhere in distant memory I find this connection of 'itch' and 'elephant ears' so I suspect that might be the cause. Now I don't even know what the hell this root is called (did not even know the plant was Elephant Ears). I randomly started googling for things like 'skin irritant root itch' etc.. After a bit of optimizing my query I came across pictures and knew that this nasty little piece is called Taro.

Not just it is a major skin irritant, it is toxic in its raw form!

All the itch and the time spent searching already had spoilt all my preparations for that 'slurpy' bulk of rice with black lentils. Already not sure whether I was supposed to use dried root for that exact recipe, I dared to go for this toxic skin irritant - sliced that bastard into pieces and boiled it to death. But the damage had already been done, after such a mess you cannot have a perfect cooking. Afterall, you need some serenity for good cooking. The end result was not-as-slippery darker-than-required almost-bitterish black lentil, that I managed to make at least tolerable by jhoiking it.

So, this was quite a discovery and encounter with this toxic tuber.

In grade 9 or 10 one of the stories in 'My English Reader' (the textbook) was about how it would have been to those who discovered various kinds of food in nature for the first time. For the first time when they tried tomatoes before, how would they know if it was not just a big red poisonous berry ? This post is in the memory of those who first put their hand on those nasty tubers and had to survive unbearable nasty itch.

* rubbing alcohol is recommended in some sources

whiting wilderness hike

2006-09-17T17:28:00.000-07:00

argghhh.. don't have the original map we followed with me here, based on these maps I found here is the most likely list of trails we completed in about 3.5 hours.

== START ==
Live Oak Trail
1 of (Serrano Road + Serrano cow) OR Line Shack Road
Whitting Road
== Four Corners ==
Mustard Road
Red Rock Canyon
Billy Goat Trail
== Four Corners/water tank ? ==
Cactus Hill Trail
Sleepy Hollow
Serrano Cow
Serrano Road
Live Oak
== END ==

Caught a sight of a deer on way back, but not anything else. BTW cactus hill trail was the place where a human was attacked and killed by a mountain lion (see the map above). But nothing much to worry - they say statistically its more probable that you'll die because of a lightning strike rather than being killed by a mountain lion on one of these trails. But you never know your fate do you?

Some lessons learnt:

- leave early (we started around 11 and ended up baking ourselves under the 12.pm sun)
- get a damn good pair of shoes (thankfully I had just got one)
- in case, prepare some emergency kits
- may be its better to eat something either before starting or midway, I was getting sick when we came back to the car
- have a good night sleep the night before, I took two intermittent naps of about 3 hrs each and ended up with a migraine after the descent
- I am still strong to climb a hill (we conquered Billy Goat at least)

here is the flickr set for the snaps from this hike

rescued

2006-09-15T16:12:00.000-07:00

at last Flickr helped me restore the yahoo account, but I am not going to use the old yahoo account anymore. Somehow I have lost my confidence in using electronic accounts. I want to go back to 1940s.. give me a key and a vault

yahoo account: sushil_kb hacked

2006-09-13T18:40:00.000-07:00

I am insanely furious, but this is something all my contacts should know. In case I missed to email anyone..

Dear All,

This is to inform you that my Yahoo Account with Id: sushil_kb has been recently hacked and I cannot access it anymore. Please take any emails coming from that account as junk (and not coming from me), you should also remove sushil_kb from your yahoo messenger if you have it.

Unfortunately sushil_kb is associated with my flickr account, which also is linked and used in my blog extensively. I am waiting for some response from Flickr to see if it can be recovered. But if you see any objectionable picture in my Flickr, probably it has been taken over by the hacker too and i'll have to disown it.

Thanks,

झिकुचा झ्वाई - jhoik'd

2006-09-05T00:21:00.000-07:00

its been a while i got a small pack of झिकुचा: - jhikucha from a friend who brought it from kathmandu. Since then the whole range of my recent cookings has been "jhoiked" (you'll not find this in the dictionary - its like saying add a hot splash of butter, may be someone will point me to the right word).

This is how you jhoik it, and get that special newari (i guess others use it too) splash - total homestyle : Fry jhikucha on toasted sesame oil (a substitute for mustard oil), along with accessories like garlic, ginger and fenugreek seeds as your will. Pour that fried-mixture on top of whatever dish you want to jhoik.

// jhikuca fry // lentils // black eyed beans // boiled potato // tomato 'achar'

I would not jhoik every other dish I make. Recommendations are for lentils and dishes that you boil to cook.. such as boiled potates, boiled chowaela etc. Works great on golbheda achar too..

(I might put some recipes for above items here..)

Unfortunately this is not going to last long as I am running out of Jhikuca and I have no freaking idea what is it called in English, or in Hindi or in chinese or vietnamese. Those are the names you gotta know if you need to get it here. Someone help me out here. Where can I buy Jhikucha here in southern California ?

awesome

2006-08-27T03:58:00.000-07:00

This is world class! totally awesome. Had always been one of my favourites and the greatest climax is on youtube. By the way I am discovering other awesome stuffs, I might put some more here..

गाजर को हलूवा (gazar halwa)

2006-07-28T02:52:00.000-07:00

finally after such a long time I have been thinking of making this, its finally here - gazar halwa. Well, its was not me who really cooked it, but I watched it being cooked so next time I can make it. Follow the link to the Flickr for the recipe.

washing machine test

2006-07-07T04:53:00.000-07:00

All my undergrad friends must remember the course 'Computer Organization'. Really mysterious one when we were studying for many many reasons. One of the reasons probably is the infamous "coca cola test" for mouse.

We have just discovered similar one, not for computers or peripherals but for a not less important device. It is the "washing machine test" for wrist watches.

The procedure:

1) pile up a huge laundry to do, should be really really dirty
2) find a cloth with a pocket
3) put the watch in the pocket
4) stuff all the clothes with the one with the pocket with the watch - of course - in the washer
5) select HOT wash
6) take out all clothes, tranfer them to dryer, heat for extra long time in HIGHEST setting
7) take your time and don't bother to rush in to take out the watch
8) eventually you'll get the watch out of the pocket
9) if the watch is still working, it passed the waching machine test
10) if not, sorry, it failed

BTW as most of the great scientific discoveries, this was accidental too.

jazzmandu

2006-07-07T04:11:00.000-07:00

Continued playback of some of my favourites in late night VH1 triggered my conversation with Bunti about musical milestones I have experienced so far.. This post is not be about them, but it reminded me to put some pics of Jazzmandu T-shirts..

//new// //old//

The Tshirts never are available in good quality clothes, but the graphics are appealing. The older one was lot better and it was the first yellow Tshirt I ever put on (just for the sake of it). These days I won't care abou the color if it feels good ;)

Well, seems like this actually is quite related to the milestones I was talking about.. First, both of the T-shirts were gifts from our BVU. Definitely the one who brought the third turn in my musical taste - mostly by making me listen to SRV for the very first tome, and then broadening my like for blues.. then later Bob दाई came, where I went further than he was. This was the third major addition to my musical taste. Second, the T-shirt is about JazzMandu, the only major international JAzz festival in Nepal. One hell of a show but not all are accessible due to their ticket prices. Thanks to them, at least some shows are cheap and few free.. And, Jazz has been the latest - the fourth foray - so far (well not so late).

What are the earlier three? If you have been careful it should be 2 right? But remember people like me count from 0. (i = 0) . I'll save those for some other time

रन्जना सोडा - ranjana soda

2006-07-07T03:48:00.000-07:00

in the hottest of summer what better it can be than a cool refreshing soda from the alley of phasikeba (ranjana galli). The all famous रन्जना सोडा (ranjana soda).. Millions miles away from that alley, I miss that drink.

When we say soda back home it can only be carbonized water. First bottled inside Fanta bottles for those who would mix it in vodka whisky or hero number one and what not. But that one is out of context here. The second one is what I am talking about. Sealed in thick glass bottles with marble (गुच्चा) seals, primarily hanging in the carts of those soda sellers wandering around the city... I was not allowed to drink from them anyway for the sake of hygiene... Indeed it is tempting: a block of ice, scrapped it into ice crumbs, pop-down the marble with a really big pop sound.., squeezed lime (confused with lemons), black salt wooh.. But, all this fun with a bit more assuring hygiene and one trusted name was - Ranjana Soda!

I ran across some sparkling drinks at Trader's Joe.. and thought, well this has carbonated water and lime or lemon already inside. I have ice and black salt at home. Will this fake our all favourite Ranjana Soda? .. Well, to some extent, it did a pretty good job. Lime or lemon quite resembles the plain soda, and grapefruit feels like one of those exotic colored soda..

And, its only in US I learnt, Coke - pepsi - Mountain Dew everything is SODA. Such an elnightment. Back home Coke usually has a higher status and more ubiquitous than the poor less desirable SODA. But there is no other drink like the real रन्जना सोडा.

the faces of nepal

2006-06-06T14:55:00.000-07:00

"Where are you from India?", "Are you from India?".. questions I often get. Its interesting Manoj even got this one, "Nepal? Is it in USA ?" but that was in China. Anway, I am not going to ramble on this.. The point of bringing this up was to say something about this entry. I am trying to show, in Nepal you'll see all sort of faces (need to add more pics). That means unless you are WHITE or BLACK, no body really has to ask you, "are you from china/japan/korea/pakistan/bangladesh..." you could just be from the mountains or from the plains.. and, its another story that when we were kids every white guy was 'amrikan'..

no plagiarism

2006-05-22T14:42:00.000-07:00

I found out this post

Now this is exactly the same post I had made couple of days ago. This blog seems to be a machine generated one that fetches snippets from blogs and puts them up as its own post. Smart ass palgiarism! Who should I sue for this ?

hmm ok just found out that it actually makes a link to the original post too.. so at least it acknowledges the original author. Thus, no plagiarism

waterproof sound

2006-05-18T14:53:00.000-07:00

I was thinking summer is here, I will start swimming soon.. Lately I have been wearing headphones as a natural extension to my ears. Hmm, so won't it be cool to go swimming with my headphones on? crazy ? no see this . But I love ear canals, how can you make an ear canal water prrof so that I can have them in while swimming ?

After googling up a bit I found more. Again, how stupid I am to think these things won't already exist. Feels like I am not ready for the postmodern world yet. Still living in my ancient past - in the stone ages!! Come on make one for my iAudio X5 too..

die smoking

2006-05-13T20:52:00.000-07:00

quoted from here..

Tobacco, and especially cigarettes is a highly taxed commodity. Our view to the Government has always been that if we have a moderate increase in duty, or even no increase in duty, the collection could be better. Last year, the duty did not go up much. Therefore, the market expanded. People were able to upgrade from plain cigarette to regular size filter and king size filter cigarette. Therefore, the government was able to collect 15% more duty than the previous year. As I had mentioned earlier 6% of the governments revenue comes from cigarettes. Hence this increased collection was good for the government. And this year too, we represented to the government stating that "if we keep the duty moderate, we may, if everything else remains the same, be able to collect more revenue". But unfortunately our representation was not heard. The government has increased the duty by nearly 9%. We feel that the collection of duty in the coming year will not be as much as it was last year as the market will shrink.

So this implies you want the goverment to make policies that make the subjects smoke more ? I need to go see 'thank you for smoking' now.

kathmandu in flickr

2006-05-06T18:24:00.000-07:00

a bagful of all socio-techie stuff -> (cluster, metadata, tag, people, web 2.0) -> flickr -> KATH MAN DU, just an example of what people can build .. and what machines can process .

indian food with looks

2006-05-06T04:34:00.000-07:00

i have not experienced indian food being served in a style like this. I don't know how to feel about this actually. Is it more fun to eat that kabab from karahi or is it more fun to enjoy gazar-halwa wrapped inside some kind of wrappers in a fashionable way. And, with this alteration in style also comes the variation of spicyness suited to the taste of western tongue. For me most spicy is normal, for others normal is too hot. Are my buds dead or abused or overexposed?

wai wai variations

2006-05-06T04:32:00.001-07:00

Probably for the people in Nepal, wai wai is the king of instant noodles. The noodle that took over the country and made it to the tiffin boxes, breakfast table, restaurants (it means something else in nepal).. anyway, again this is something that cannot go wrong. I have a simple process for this, boil water - put noodles - fresh greens in bowl - fry some mushrooms and onions may be with tomato and cashew nuts in pan - put everything in bowl now - add some extra spice (trader's joe 20~ spice mix rocks on this) - pour boiling water - cover. Meanwhile, prepare a plain omlette (with salt, ginger garlic paste, cumin) - it should be thin. Once ready slice the omlette into strips as in pic. Mix it with noodles and enjoy. A full bowl of noodle soup. I also use some fish/soy/oyster sauce.

Again the soupless or fried version can be made with same process. Just put boiling water on noodles w/o anything, after few minutes drain and then stir fry noodles with rest of the above ingredients. And, you are done ! Another version 'waiwai-patpata' is yet drier, just noodles straight out of the box with freshly chopped onions, tomato, chillies, cilantro and sprinkle of lemon. Picture may be next time..

haku choewala again

2006-05-06T04:32:00.000-07:00

Arguably one of the best choices to get along with a bottle of nice beer. Every time I try making it, it gets better. The formula is getting the meat black (hence Haku) by putting it directly over fire. For a nice laid back friday night with a bottle of beer and chiura (of course you get lazy to turn the ricecooker on after working meticuloulsy in painting the meat black over fire) and bhujiya this thing just rocks.

shake

2006-05-06T04:31:00.000-07:00

There is an undeniable freshness in fruits. As I am again back in the track of yet again trying to be regular in melting some fat in the gym, I need something quick, fast and energetic when I get back. A glass of fruit-shake is perfect. Since I foil the freshness with more fat producing items, I am not sure whether the pain my muscles have to endure will be productive. There is much freedom in what you can use in making a glass of shake, so it seems like tantamount to deciding what filling to choose in terms of the degree of freedom you have - and yet not getting it wrong.

sandwich

2006-05-06T04:30:00.000-07:00

I have not yet ventured the subltle territories of sandwiches, but for sure its fun to experiment with the fillings. It can hardly go wrong. This time I saw some peculiar looking cheese my roomate bought from a latin market. I could not resist to borrow some to make a sandwich out of it. A regular side item I like with a sandwich is an egg fried till the yolk is till liquid, and of course you can put some green and sprinkle it with bundi (its made of gram flour)

unsuccessful attempt

2006-05-06T03:07:00.000-07:00

unsuccessful attempt to palak paneer
(spinach and indian cottage cheese)

everything went quite wrong with my first attempt to cook palak paneer. Got a repice somewhere from the net and it was like boil the spinach with ginger-garlic paste, make puree with onions and chillies added, of course with salt and some garam masala. then add that puree to already fried paneer. I had too little spinach and lots of paneer - so this ended up being a spinach dip for fried cottage cheese. Next time I'm gonna get ya.. I think more interesting thing that came out of this is the pic at left..

yeti buddha

2006-04-08T22:35:00.000-07:00

I have never seen a buddhist stupa with a Yeti in it. And, wow there is a Yeti MANDIR too. Is this stupidity or a parody of others culture.

Ok its all fictional but what are the kids (bigger ones too) who are going into these fancy simulated excursions going to think. People in Nepal worship yeti ? And, the last thing you would find in everest would be a tibetian place that sells tongba with this poster. Well this is not impossible imagining if someone from south migrated up there. But this stupa is an absolute mythical hack.

chiya paoroti (tea bread)

2006-04-08T07:04:00.000-07:00

Here is something awesomely simple and simply awesome, before I prepare myself to wake up tomorrow to realize again that I am out of bread so cannot have it..

spring break, rainy day, chilly - then what? - MOMO: story

2006-04-08T06:10:00.000-07:00

well the break is far gone.. but i was quite busy to put everything down. But, this happened few weeks back --

it was spring break, raining, cold, quite vacant neighbourhood. alone in office, didn't felt like spending another night in office. For just an idea poped up - in this weather - I would rather do nothing, but go to Maru, or new road, or just next door to Kalu dai - and get a hot plate of momo. Now I cannot do that here. So, my legs involuntarily took me to the grocery, my hands picked up ground beef, then all other stuffs one by one - and the only thing that was aware inside me remembered that I had bought a MOMO KHO: (steamer), that I had promised myself I would use to throw a momo party among my friends. It was already 9 in the night, so no ad-hoc party. Here you need to send invitation and RSVP and all those blah-blah, its not like "o muzi momo khana ayeja".. anyway.

Even though I had to walk to two different stores to get everything, and decided to go even more hardcore, I managed to finish everything by 1 am. I finished making the essential "Golbheda-Dhaniya achar" (cross between tomato sauce/soup) too. I was involuntarily daring to make my own wrapper from ground up so bought a bag of flour but after reaching home I got back some sanity to not to do that. Otherwise I would have been wrapping MOMOs six am in the morning.

\ steamer \ golbheda achar (tomato sauce-soup) \ wrapping \ momo ready \

Sorry neighbours for good smell at bad times.

Now, whats interesting? The deal about making momos on your own is that you always end up making more than you can can eat. So unless you make a lot so that you can have them for the next few days for breakfast, lunch and dinner - fried, heated, cold in all forms - you cannot really say you really actually did made momos:. But, even after steaming a full stack, I couldnot finish the meat. Too much wrapping!! It gets boring doing that alone for about an hour.. Well, I thought the next day I'll fry that meat and cook some patties -- hmm patties. I thought, what if I soak this black lentil I had bought for so long overnight and try to make WOH: out of it too, well I just soaked them anyway.

\ woh (lentil patty) \ momo (steamed) \ momo (fried \

The next day, Tuesday I guess, it rained again.. better, freshness, chilly again.. now this time it was early enough so that I could at least ad-hocly call some of them I would call. One unfortunate fella didnot even pick, another more unfortunate one had too much work so he had to cancel his coming in one hour, finally one fortunate soul could make it - and with his family - so, once we get more hands it got more fun wrapping the momos:. There was this soaked lentils too. Once you soak it you can easily take out the black cover from the seeds. After grinding those lentils with some essential spices - ginger the main (other you can use anything depending on your taste) and few others, I finally believed that they would really finally become WOH's. Friend's wife helped fry them as we were busy wrapping.

At the other side, I could make the dough but, I didnot have anything that I could use to make wrappers - no rollers (bay-loon) no nothing. Too bad. I just remember those 'fuccheys' in 'akash bhairab momo' who would just make a wrapper one per second w/o anything just using their hands. Remembering them does no good, after packing some of my own shitty momo's I ran to the grocery again to get those super-thin wrappers, not best to go but workable ones.

After that, the story is as could be imagined - eat as much as you can, with Sappharo that the friend brought, and save rest for tomorrow. The day before I had too much meat remaining. That second day I had whole bulk of dough remaining with, less meat. So what next? yeah.. for the next day, I thought lets go for KEEMA PARATHA (bread with meat fillings). But, I have to go get buy the roller thingy to make bread. Obviously the next day I couldn't go anywhere as I am handicapped without four wheels. And, I just had to use an ingenious tool - a universal roller to make the bread. Surprsingly the flour was someting strange, it had strange elasticity to it, it would strech like a rubber. But anyway, what matters is what came out of it. I am not even going to write any further as the sun has rose already and the birds are singing before i hit the bed, and i hate being in this situation.

\universal roller \keema(meat) on the paratha(bread) \keema-paratha ready

search reigns

2006-02-22T23:01:00.000-08:00

I have looked at pandora before, and trying it out now again. I searched for John Zorn, it didn't find it exactly at first but played 'Jamaica Farewell' by the 'Art Ensemble of Chicago' at second, and got 'The Fire Book' by JZ at the fourth.. quite interesting.

Well, haven't I seen this before, say in Yahoo LanuchCast that plays music of my taste? But I feel this is different. I will have to play around with this more. Especially the description of the selection, which specifies its detailed musical characterisitcs, is interesting.

here is what they say about the kind that characterizes Fiona Apple's style (she's awesome by the way)

.. mellow rock instrumentation, string section beds, a breathy female lead vocalist, mallet percussion..

At large, this is yet another search application based on fine-grained characteristics of the artifact being searched. But how it classifies, where it gets it content, and how it constantly make itself more accurate - all this - is the essence.

loop { Explore - refine - Explore }

Actually I did produced something along this line with a friend. Look here. And, yes, its not as mundane.

nana

2006-02-22T21:54:00.000-08:00

Does this seem original, by nana himself?

Putting up a personal blog for a movie's publicity seems wierd to me. Considering the lifespan of a movie (the time during which it would actually make sense to publiize it) and the lifespan of one's blog, it seems to me that blogs the are supposedly created by actors for a movie's sake is like publishing a weekly newsletter to talk about this (and only this - like feb 25th) weekend's plan. It is funny to read the comments on the blogs where people are talking about how these blogs are fake and they'll boycott the movie as they put up a fake blog hehe.. the price they want the moviemakers to pay for insulting the art of blogging.. here is an example:

..I call upon all of you to stage an international boycott on Dec 2, against the forthcoming film APAHARAN made by conman Prakash Jha who has insulted the spirit of blogging by fooling gullible public into thinking they are reading the real blogs of film folks, when the reality is that this is just a advertising scam to promote the film and nothing else.. [more]

Well, I just read that nana is a damn good cook and he used to cook secretly for his co-workers. Now how can I dislike anyone who cooks good and feeds others?

don't see this early in the morning

2006-02-04T10:22:00.000-08:00

The last thing I needed to see early in the morning, hungry, and planning what to cook today - on my birthday - was this set of pics. Now I better have a set of mine to beat that. Well, I'm no google chef, bo I get some consideration, nevertheless, my posts will be coming soon (after working like a robot for past one week) after some silence ..

min dai?

2006-01-30T20:23:00.000-08:00

I wonder if this is Min Dai? always shooting, but with his camera. As far as I can tell, it is him.

CNN, don't publish crap!

2006-01-29T17:30:00.000-08:00

They say Manisha's father is Girija and the King made Girija the prime minister after powergrab. What the hell is going on with CNN. What was that moron smoking when he/she wrote this ?

Gyanendra appointed Koirala's father, Girija Prasad Koirala, as a Cabinet minister in the royal government after the power grab.

etiquette

2006-01-22T15:58:00.000-08:00

use-hands,
originally uploaded by sushilbajra.

I came up with some universal rules of bhat (भात) eating - nepali style. Read the notes in flickr.

a little help for audio freaks from being anti-social

2006-01-09T08:30:00.000-08:00

I have posted about my experiences with my Shure E4Cs earlier. How it is so great but as a downside how it cuts you off from rest of the world by making you deaf from outside, you just hear music and nothing else. You end up being some kind of wierdo who does not know if someone is saying 'excuse me' from behind or who speaks too low when goes to a cashier with headphones on. Now, my iAudio X5 has a pretty decent microphone, so I was thinking, just thinking what if they can upgrade the firmware so that I can press a button for a while and enable the mic when I need it. That way I'll hear what others are saying, at least that won't make you take off those ear canals when you have to talk to someone. Trust me, unless you become very used to it, you won't like to take ir off once you have managed to fit it perfectly in your ear.

But here it goes. Shure, but not Cowon (iAudio manufacturer), surely heard my wish and released this new product (push-to-hear, shown left) with again an enviable set of new headphones. The new stuff is an attachment that has a button which enables a built in mic that sends the outside sound to your ears along with music. But, thats another 60$. Why cannot Cowon update their firmware so that I can do the same thing with my player without having to spend extra 60 $. CowOn did make an excellent sound producing device. But, in rest of the things it just sucks. UI, Software, no DRM support yet.. no wonder why iPod rules with its mediocore sound quality (compared to iAudio's) and its excellent design. Not everyone cares about the decent sound. Its amazing how people can spend 300$ in a good player and end up playing music through a set of crappy headphones like the normal iPod buds. Its like buying a nice german car with suspension and seats from vikram tempo, or may be bajaj tempo. Surprisingly I got a pic that shows both of these earbuds, I mean tempos.

=

extra precautions in the kitchen

2006-01-07T17:28:00.000-08:00

Nice lesson for those who forget to take extra care while in the kitchen.

discovering sushi

2006-01-06T01:19:00.000-08:00

I had earlier written about my disappointment with Japense food. Today, I checked out a really good Sushi place and now I have changed my opinion about Japense food - Sushi in particular. For sure this now adds a new item in my list to explore, all various sorts of Sushi out there. (Surprisingly I got a comment that leads to a good tutorial for beginners.)

shrimp_garlic

salmon

with_eel_sauce

One obvious resentment towards Sushi from newbies comes from the fact that it is raw fish. I had that same feeling too. Especially when I saw sashimi, I felt it was a nice bulk of fish freshly cut out and given to you as a token of barbaric chef-d'oeuvre. But, the first time I tried Sushi, I made a too early decison to turn it down. I think if you are like me, and want to see whether Sushi really is worth trying, you need to go to a nice Sushi bar. Sit by the chef, see as you prepare them. Ask him from wrong combination of sauces, and see how he won't allow you to have them. Then ask for something that goes together well, and trust his decision and enjoy what he gives. Another, interesting thing that add to the pleasure of enjoying Sushi is to offer the chef the drink you bought, we got some Sapharro Reserve, and drank with him together as he prepared our fish. Thats what I do while cooking good food, drink nice beer. Also, the occassional 'shouts' of waiters and chefs. I think they are saying 'Thank you' as people leave. Thats adds to the warmth of being close to the people who serve you food. Furthermore, you never get Sushi in big amounts. Always served in an aesthetically pleasing way. Its always good to go there with some friends, so that you can check out more varieties.

But, the most important part for me that makes me like Sushi is that it stands on its own. I mean you go to a Sushi place, there is nothing else besides sushi, but still you have so may options. And, bottomline its just fish, it takes something to turn that into a culinary pleasure that tastes good and looks better. (well there are zillion of fish I guess)

Sliced Ginger, Washabi, Eel Sauce and Soy sauce: First, I didn't know what was that paper thin thing, i tried it and I tasted ginger. Though its one of the necessary igredients in my own cooking, it turns out that its there to clean your palate, from switching from one fish to another. Just what cheese or salami does for wine. Wasahbi, damn! I have been fooled before by this.

My first encounter with Wasabi was when I tried a pack of Wasabi peas in my apartment that my old roomate left for me. Hmm, this looks like our चना (chana, roasted peas) and I put a handful of them in my mouth. I got a 440 volts of electric shock. I went to the toilet and cleaned my mouth. I thought that dude left some expired peas for me. Went to store again, saw wasabi peas again, bought them home, thinking these are not expired. Again put a handful of them in my mouth, again rushed to the bathroom. Then I realized what Wasabi is. Now, I rarely use it, and very sparingly. I will have to know the right pairings that goes good with this devil paste to enjoy it fully.

My friend asked for some eel sauce, his favourite, and James the chef refused (although he was willing to hook us with one of the girls and kick any of the guys that were with them out from the bar). So he prepared something that has eel sauce in it -- was awesome.

Bottomline, find a partner to go to a sushi bar, drink with the chef, and trust his recommendation unless you grow up to make your own.

computers at home

2006-01-05T14:56:00.001-08:00

Guess what this is? An underground DataCenter? An ISP? A secret hi-performance computing facility? No, its a basement of a hitec house that controls everything in it. Lets see if I want something like this. At least want the music system, the kitchen, theatre may be, why leave bed/bath and living ? Does that include everything now? I do not need TV anywhere except may be the kitchen and theatre. TV Screens in bathroom might prevent you from pausing the movie when you have to get up and go pee while others stay in the room, so that sounds reasonable HaHa. Moreover, I guess, I would cram every gadget I like there in an apartment. But, a house is not bad either when you have a family. Now, will I be able to play the music as loud as I want or do I have to worry about neighbours calling cops for residential disturance? I hope the walls are soundproof.

अालु चिउरा (alu chiura )

2006-01-04T04:28:00.000-08:00

IMG_2475
Originally uploaded by sushilbajra.

potato definitely is the most widely used vegetable in Nepali meals. As popular as potato is beaten rice (or, rice puffs/flakes) which we call चिउरा (chiura). Its been about 2 years I have not had chiura. Finally got a chance to get a bag from an indian store. They called it poha or chiuda, but, indian poha is not as good as those we have in Kathmandu as per my taste. I prefer thick and crispy. Indian ones are thin and soft. So, I just microwave it for a while and it becomes more suitable to my taste.

This version of potato is a typical one, actually very common in many eating places (hotels - yes, they are hotels - cheap canteens). Depending on how you vary the cooking or ingredients you an actually produce lots of version of this stuff. I like 3 versions of it. Here is the recipe for this one.

- Boil a potato till it fully cooks
- peel off, cut into medium pieces and set aside
- chop off a piece of garlic
- peel about 1/4 inch of ginger root (can be little more in amount that the garlic), chop it
- chop a red thai chilly (freaking good hot)
- chop a bulb of red onion into small but not tiny pieces, (it should cover the potato cubes around the surface when ready)
- heat tablespoon of oil (i used olive)
- first fry onions, sprinkle some turmeric
- medium heat, so things don't burn and don't stick
- some salt
- add some fenugreek seed
- throw in garlic, cumin seeds, corriander seeds
- some more salt if required
- chop some green onions
- throw in potatoes (and some more turmeric powder if you like), ginger, and after a while green onions
- keep on moving all the ingredients so that they donot stick, don't add water
- add the thai chillies
- add a chopped tomato
- after you see that tomato is mixed with rest of the spices and kind of forms a thick paste like sauce, you are done
- garnish with cilantro
- Done.

I mixed some indian bhujiya with the chiura but DONOT do this if you really want to get an original taste. So, this was my new years celebration - having a good अालु चिउरा after 2 years. Kind of boring too to celebrate it alone.. Rest, I also advanced to my beerquest 4. So, still need to post an entry about Beerquest 3. (here are entries about beerquest 1 and 2)

voice chatting from everest

2005-12-18T10:01:00.000-08:00

i hate to do this, copying and pasting from other sites. But, i think this might not be available in the original site after some time so I am putting it here. I got it from skype's site.

"Well, Skype has just solved the latest of the many challenges I have had getting voice to and from Sherpas on the slopes of Mount Everest in Nepal. My most recent conversation with Tsering Gyaltsen at 13,000 feet up in Namche, Nepal, was an hour long, clear as a bell and loud as when we were together up there a year ago, using newly installed Skype. Tsering did the download and installation himself, while muttering to himself in Nepalese. "
... click on comments below to read the full story. This is too long so I moved it as a third comment there.

toilet graffiti

2005-12-16T00:10:00.000-08:00

toilet graffiti
Originally uploaded by sushilbajra.

This is a picture I took inside a bar in San Francisco. Reminds me of Snowman Cafe at FreakStreet, Kathmandu.

Just checking out bloggin from flickr. I still need to write an entry about San Franciso. The place just kicks ass.

Here is an article that talks about snowman.

he still has to go for the better ones

2005-12-13T01:24:00.000-08:00

this guy (got the link from Chancal'sblog) definitely stole my idea of writing all about local nepali food.. Man, he collected whole buncha items from sekuwa to tongba.. that was in my top TODO list after I get back home.. holy crap.. now I'll have to really have to look what this guy missed.. I guess he definitely has not tried, patan's "alu kawaf" and "woh" with "tho"..

the list of food this japenese dude lists: mo mo, chowmein, dinner set, thukpa, alu-paratha, sekuwa, puri-tarkari, fried-rice?, buff-chilly, choweala, alu-tareko, choupsey, lakha-mari, naan-tandoori, chana-matar, makai-poleko (grilled corn), tangba

.. phew that was painful to embed all those links.

Now going through his 17 items, I realized this dude has not really checked out some of the hardcore nepali (or precisely Kathmandu) food. But, even though, I am amazed that this dude really made a wonderful collection.

You would get the real taste and authentic recipes only in the real homes, for example in festivals and home-parties (bhoj bhater). imagine an equivalent of thanksgiving dinner. And, that beats any restaurant in town. (This thanksgiving equivalence is not correct, but i see this is the only similar thing I find in terms of celebration and cooking here. This is worth a topic in itself)

Some of the food in the list above are deceivingly similar looking to food foreigners might have seen or heard. Like momo looks like a chinese dumpling (dimsum) which DOES NOT taste like dimsum (way better) at all. Chowmein again is improvisation of a chinese item.

Dinner set is typical nepali meal. And, that picture does not look like it would taste like the one you would get at our home for sure. It reminds me of those hotels (where you just stop to eat) in Muglim bazaar. Man, stopping there and having a dinner is one experience. Thukpa, is of tibetian descent, similar to noodle soup but again very differnt in taste.

There is a huge influence from southern side (india) in terms of food too. I would not consider naan-tandoori an original one, but I would not alienate it either. Ok you can say it is one of the food in KTM outings. But, i bet if you want a naan-tandoori, you better go check out some Punjabi Dhaba in an Indian Highway (which I have not done and it in once in my lifetime TODO list). Same goes for alu-paratha, its a typical indian food. But, by far my mom cooks the best alu-paratha than any other alu-paratha's I have had out in restaurants.

Sekuwa. I take this as an original item. But WTF dude. Seems like he did not go to airport! So, if thats the case, he has not had the real ones. Puri-Tarkari, again indian descent. So far, so good. No complains about deep fried dishes. But, you would not go to Thamel to get puri tarkari man (thats what he did). You can at least go to some place in newroad. Like, fuck, I forgot that name.. Paro dai's favourite.. (now it seems people are really going to accuse me of getting polluted, forgetting these names.. shit).

I don't know where fried rice came from. That is something that seems not to exist and still everywhere. You can always get the rice, and well, you just fry it. We are hard-ass rice eaters. So, I do not recall any fried-rice spot in KTM that I would tag it as to go for. Or, even, I never feel like "lets have fried rice today". Ending up with fried rice as a meal is always accidental for me. Its like, you just fry yesterdays leftovers the next morning, and voila, you got fired rice.

So, Buff chilly. Mysterious in origin. But this would be something eligible to be tagged as somethihng to check out. So, where would I go for a nice buff chilly ? No idea.

choweala. Just two words. Read This.

Alu-tareko. Hmm. This is something that you would have a better one if you go out for it. Way better than french fries though. Its an everyday rice supplement, and yet you can elevate it as a good appetizer. Lets say, this is another typical KTM outing food.

Choupsey! hah. I think the name should be changed. I used to like the 'American Choupsey' at Naglo Bakery, New Road and the some another restaurant in thapathali, near the bridge (dallay, whats the name of that place). Well, I used to just imagine. This is American choupsey. So they must would make it so much better in America. If I go there, I'll eat it everyday. But man, there is no sign of American Coupsey anywhere I have been to in america. I have found Choupsey both in Vietnamese and Chinese palces, but they are too different. The most similar to this item is the Vietnamese Crispy Noodles, but that comes with sauted toppings (mostly seafood). Bottomline, American Choupsey should be renamed as something else, some nepali name, like 'kurkuray jaali'. About the taste, I love it and I would just tag it as another KTM food to check out, but it is definitely of northern descent I guess.

lakha Mari. Now this is what you call a Nepali Food item. But wait. I just found a similar looking thing in a vietnamese store. And, they like it as a snack. But, lakhamari feels different and tastes sweeter.

chana-matar: again go to 'Aarati' for that. (Yeah! I remembered the name. the place in newroad i was talking about).

Makai-poleko; well there is nothing so special about this. I think this is one of the earliest ways of eating corn ever known to mankind. But, still, just look the picture. And, just for the sake of it. This is a typical Nepali food. You have to buy it off the street and chew it as you walk. Bite the corn grains off the stick. Thats makes it special.

What a great item to end this list with. Tangba!!! This is an awesome drink. And, I do not want anybody else to claim as their food. So this is an authentic Nepali drink.

Ok, besides this unbelievably long analysis of that poor chaps encounter with too-easy-to-find dishes. i really wish he visits those places around Maru, ChikanMungal, Patan, Kirtipur and yes BHAKTAPUR !! he has been missing all those amazing things. Especially, it seems he hung around thamel and ended up with chowmein and momo (which are not bad either). He needs to pollute himself by eating more of the 'thulo khasi' stuffs..

नेपाली तारेको कुखुरा

2005-12-12T03:00:00.000-08:00

Its quite difficult to get the right nepali taste when cooking chicken. At least for me. Mostly because, I adulterate the recipe with packaged spices and extra vegetables (tomato). This is necessary for me, as so far I have not been able to reporduce the impeccable taste, thus I compensate with artificial adornments.

But, today I tried to follow the recipe exact and it was quite a success. I removed the skin but did used the bones though. Chicken skin is somewhat mysterious. There have been occasions when I have had delicious chicken dishes with skin, but most of the times its just ugly - both in looks and taste. But, again, cooking chicken with the precleaned-precut-packs is no thrill. The taste is just dull, like cotton. It feels like eating cotton balls dipped in spices. So, this time I tried using bones, and did not bother removing much fat, tendons or whatever is in there. The result was awesome. Since I am not a good photographer, here is an aweful pic of awesomely tasting nepali styled fried chicken. Don't be fooled by the name 'fried chicken'. This ain't soul food.

--- PS ---

really interesting. As I was using, gnome-blog to post this entry and I tried to attach pic.. the tool suddenly disappeared saying blogger doesnot support image uplodaing. I was so frustrated of having lost one entry and needing to type it again, and i did it again. When I checked my blog.. the entry was already there, which I am putting here. Its interesting to see how the same writeup differs when you do it again. Here goes the eariler one..

नेपाली कुखुरा

There is some difficulty in achieving the right taste of homely nepali chicken. Well there are quite a few ways of cooking them, and thus there are various forms of chicken. Second, use of packaged spices kind sometimes of takes away the essence. Also, I never follow the recipe as it is suggested so my desire to get extra taste of tomato or chicken masala sometimes adulterates the authentic taste. This is necessary because without these forced adornments I cannot make it taste good, just with the right ingredients.

Today, I decided to try a recipe as it is. And, it indeed was much closer to taste as I was expecting. There are few changes though, I removed the skin but i did not removed the bones. So far I have been using bonesless meat while trying out these recipes, but the extra touch of taste you get with bones, fat and whatever there is inside it is too good to be wasted. As I am a bad photographer (sorry min dai), here is a not so good looking picture of awesomely tasting भुतेको कुखुरा (fried chicken). Don't get confused with the name, its no soul food!

नेपालीनक्स - nepalinux

2005-12-07T02:53:00.000-08:00

finally I get to see the first snap of NepaLinux. Project led by our own great Paro dai (not the son of the god ok). I guess I'll give it a shot once its available. Nice work Paro Dai and team !!

The logo is supercool too. The Debian logo really blends with ने, great work Bivek.

This has come just at the time when, the news about the release of nepalese version of Microsoft Office and XP (and its extravagant celebration) has been bugging me a lot. This has been so overrated.

Technically there is not much meat in it. You take a bunch of strings that has been defined to be externalized in the OS, and map them with equivalent Unicode strings. So one reserves the greatest convention center in the country, invites the chief of RONAST (NASA of nepal), makes him log into windows, plays an orchestra with 128 instruments, and of course puts garlands on the picture of their majesties - all to celebrate this. I don't get it. Furthermore, you become the "Bhisma Pitamah" (a great character from epic Mahabharat, in short this means you are the greatest grand daddy) of nepali computer industry for doing things like this. Ridiculous. I would say you are the "gatekeeper#1" in "serial 74, scene 23" of "the mahabharat", definitely not the "Pitamah". Its enabling yet another unicode mapping in XP, not inventing a Quantum Processor, for Pitamah's sake.

the jazz of food

2005-12-07T01:33:00.000-08:00

It has been long I wanted to post about Vietnamese Food. Probably being able to checkout lots of Vietnamese Food is one of the only few good things about Orange County. Having lived here for 2 years, I have bene to quite few interesting Vietnamese restaurants. Especially Westminister and Santa Ana has tons of Vietnamese places all over.

I feel like Vietnamese food is like Jazz. It mixes things. I get unexpected things in strange ways, and still it ends up good. For instance check out their drinks. Sweet cold drink made out of BEANS? I could not imagine that. And, using dried plums and lemons in drinks, makes me feel like having the Ranjana soda in Kathmandu. (just the feeling, tastes different).

----

PHO HOA BIN
3839 West First Street, Suit 811
Santa Ana, CA 92703

/1.soup / 2.crispy noodles / 3.lentil pudding / 4.Egg Rolls

So, I guess the first thing that comes to anybody's mind when talking about Vietnamese food is the Pho (sorry no accents). You can see it looks like noodles, and it is, but it would be an insult to call it just noodles. You get a plate of green herbs to go with. A bowl of hothot water with noodles. Now you can make it as you want. Dip a thinly sliced RAW beef in the hot water, and as you are tasting the noodles, let the beef cook itself inside water. Then yes, you can enjoy the noodles with water. (I have not tried raw one yet). So same stuff, but when it comes with a menagerie of seafood, its again different. And, thus with these various variations you can have with a dish, you actually see them as different items in the menu. So, no wonder why they end up with 300 items in the menu. They have a solid architecture to produce good variations.

See the crispy Noodles above, its again is Pho. But this is a different kind. One of the primary ingredient has changed. the noodle. Its not in boiling water, but its crispy fried. PHO HOA BIN has the best kind of this as far as I have tried.

Another example of improvisation. The lentil food above, is a sweet. Its a desert made of some kind of lentils. How about having some daal as your dessert? Well, this one is good. And, again the egg rolls are far better than plain chinese egg rolls. The chinese version, is like some oily paper wrappings that covers uneatable cabbage. The vietnamese version - you roll the entire thing with a lettuce, dip it in a typical tangy-sweety sauce and feel the good fillings inside.
----

THAN MY
9553 Bolsa Ave, Westminster
CA 92683
714 531 9540

/ 5.crispy /6.Frog Thighs / 7.Soup looks like Pho /8.Lamb Curry

So 5.crispy is another form of crispy pho. This was not as good 2. Out of excitement I tried the deep fried Frog Legs. Its like chicken washed very hard in water so that it takes off all the flavour, so you end up with a taste of some kind of dull meat treated with evaporated fish sauce. The taste is kinda dull. Not worth 13$ for a plate. Now, the soups are hard to distinguish from Pho in looks. But this one was amazing. All good seafood boiled with green herbs, with no oil and hard spices. How healthy it can be? The lamb curry was interesting. I donot know if this is an authentic dish. But it definitely doesnot taste like indian/spiced curry. Also it is quite different from thai curry. So, I guess the only similarity is the typical lamb smell (which i hate if there is too much of it) and thick gravy mixed with good fat form the meat. I cannot recall the taste correctly, but I would try this again to see how it was like.
----

Quan Hy Restaurant
9727 Bolsa Ave
Westminster, CA 92683
(714) 775-7179

/9.? /10. ? /11.? /12.?

Hah. here comes the JAZZ ! 9.? is some sort of deepfried thing with rice-gum-like-thing on top. Too good. Rest are cool drinks. The middle one tastes like you just grinded some seaweed, may bee too healthy thats why the taste sucks. Anything too healthy has to be bad in taste, and things that taste better are more detrimental.

/13.? /14.? /15.Spring Rolls

I forgot if 13 and 14 are some variant of Pho. I think they are, noodles but without the soup. Notice the crackers on top of it. These crackers are very similar to chinese 'prawn' crackers that is very popular in Kathmandu as an appetizer. But, again, these vietnamese crackers are not fried. Originally they are cooked on burning coal. But, they can be microwaved too. 15 is regular shrimp spring rolls.

/16. Chicken Fried Rice /17.Pho /18.Transparent Dumplings

These are pictures I took when I visited Quan Hy with two Nepalese friends. As we are भाते (rice gobblers), we ordered this rice dish. Nothing special with rice, and chicken was kind of similar to chinese fried chicken. Not a dish to try out. 17 is just another Pho. The dumpling was interesting. Especially the skin, its made out of rice and is transparent. I guess, this skin has the same properties as the 'chatamari', a newari rice-flour dish.

----

NUOC MIA, VIEN-TAY
Westminster

Q/ 19.Dried Fruits,candies /20.sweets

When I first saw Vietnamese sweets I had a mixed feeling of familarity and novelty. I have seen dried plum as a popular tangy-candy (तितौरा) in Katmandu. But when I entered some of the vietnamese candy shop, man, it was like bombardment of dried stuffs. It was surprising to see dried candy made out of familiar items like plum and lemons and, kept together with dried jerkys made out of deer meat to squid. They all seem to fall under same category. Imagine going to a store to buy sukuti (nepali-buff-jerky) and titaura (tangy-dreid-fruit candies) at the same time. Strange combination huh. Another noticable thing is the packaging of some of these candies. They remind me of मसला-पो (masala-po, bag of sweets and spices), that we often use in Bhai-Tika or Marriages. Going to the store in the pic above felt like going to one of the shops in Ason during Tihar to do some Masala-Po shopping.

---Phew its over---

So bottomline Vietnamese food seems to me a lot of improvisation, where they left out all those things the are detrimental to health like, excess sugar, oil etc. Its definitely worth trying out.

this is jazz

2005-12-06T14:02:00.000-08:00

i am listening to this again after quite a while, I had not noticed how good this album is before. I am listening to 'Minor Meeting' right now. Great brass screeches, followed by equally complementing bass pulls and drum rollings.. this is jazz, as I like it.

It is a sweet coincidence, I got a bunch of other John Zorn's stuffs few months ago. This guy is crazy, that means he is awesome. If you are in the right mood, his stuffs are the greatest things you can enjoy listening to. I hear punk, metal, blues, noise, .. man I hear everything.. and, from the start to end, i do not get bored a moment.

service beats sound

2005-11-22T15:03:00.000-08:00

When I got my iAudio, I was all over it. Appreciating how it kicks iPod's ass in terms of sound and blah blah. Now, in general, I think these players cannot beat iPod. How difficult would it be for cowon (manufacturers of iAudio) and competitors to provides services like this ?

literature survey

2005-11-15T16:26:00.000-08:00

its quite amusing that I found this survey. Just last night, I was discussing with a vietnamese friend something related. How one is able to appreciate more the beauty of a writing, if one is more familiar with the language it is written in.

alu tikki

2005-11-12T22:22:00.000-08:00

chanaMasala + tikki = alu tikki chat

+ =

This really turned out to be a great cook of the week indeed. Thanks to those indian stores that import all the spices needed in cooking these stuffs and make it available to poor soul like me, out in never never land. No matter what you say about India, sometimes the overrated bitterness towards it from us Nepalese, the fact is, I cannot imagine my life without some of the awesome stuffs we have because of India. Especially food.

Ok, something about Alu Tikki Chat (आलु तिक्की चाट) now. It is potato patties lightly fried in butter ghee and served over chana masala (चना मसला, chick peas cooked with spices). There are some ingredients that makes this thing special. First, the spices of course - I used chana masala and pao bhaji masala for potatoes. Well I am not that crazy yet to go collect and grind these spices myself which obssessed fanatics would do. Second, two must have garnish for me - raw onions and cilantro, dressed over with yogurt and, finally a sprinkle of black salt (बिरे नुन).

So, far this has been the dish whose taste I was able to replicate exactly as I expected. If I had been back home, this would just have been a 15 minutes walk to Newroad, go look for that tikki guy, either in Makhan Galli or Bishal Bazar - hiding from the metro cops, and, just mere 10 Rs. (7 plates for 1$ !) Here, it was 2 days of cooking, first day cook chana, second day rest of the stuffs. Well, it does not takes 2 days, and, the joy of cooking it yourself is different.

I know someone must be salivating by now looking at the pics. Sorry partners, we are not in NewRoad, so I had to enjoy these alone.