Click here for a fun video ~ it seems to be a Japanese music video, very interesting.

I have been sick the past week or so.  It’s been freezing temperatures, ice on the roads, snowing steadily (although it has subsided now) since the end of what they called the winter storm weekend.  No one predicted that this week was going to be the worst of the winter (hopefully).  It was so horrible yesterday that it was a work-from-home day but being the silly me I am sometimes, I had left my laptop at work (don’t worry it was locked up), so I trudged against the cold, blasting wind to my car in the morning and drove perfectly to my workplace, and I was just turning into the parking lot and the curve it must have been slicker than I thought because the tires slid slightly and the passenger side of the car screeched and scraped against the curb.  I pulled into the parking space and I thought it was too cold to stand around and assess the damage (and I have put it off, still don’t know the status of it).

I knew that I was traveling for work sometime in January for awhile now.  Turns out it’s a northeast place, ok I thought, no qualms about it.  It is dead of winter there, bound to be like that.  Had no qualms about it until the location’s point of contact stated that there was a ski resort 30 miles from the office, and my manager at this point in conversation asked, why would we want to go skiing, to which the guy on the other end replied, ‘We just had 4 inches of fresh snow, it’s 13 degrees here!”

Yeah, just great, just what I wanted to hear!

Jaan

3:12 PM me: !

                   stranger

3:13 PM        call you tonight :D

3:15 PM Ruchi:ok!

                   i love you :)

          me:    i figured

                   :p

3:16 PM        i meant i figured you were busy

          Ruchi: ok g2g

          me:    k ta

          Ruchi: bye! :-*

          me:    lol

                   :-*

O those long gone, remember when's...
Jaan

One of my all-time favorite books that really shaped my taste and passion for reading is The Giver by Lois Lowry.  I picked the book in the Scholastic’s catalog sponsored by the school so nonchalantly and funny how life turns out.  I bought the book for myself in eight grade – a time of such intense turmoil while (re)discovering my true myself and understanding the new world around me (I moved to the US during this time).  I still remember my empathy for Jonas and his anguish, the frustration and joy of the loose ending.

Over time, I have enjoyed novels such as Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver Travels, George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and I have to thank my two high-school English teachers (in different cities) who were most influential in introducing me to Things Fall Apart by Chinua Acebe and my most dear copy of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

Brave New World was a fantastically written story and the depth and pain of cruelty in the life of and triumph (or not) of John the Savage, and it never ceases to amaze me.  I seem to gravitate towards utopian/dystopian novels but a good read is always satisfying for me.  I wish to complete these during this year:

Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

Plato’s Republic

Herman Hesse’s Siddartha

Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist

Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queen

and of course, JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows

Jaan

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to cook one dessert item every week and try new dishes as much as possible.  Keeping in mind, I baked cookies for the first time last night.  Twenty-four gooey chocolate chip pieces of deliciousness from the Tollhouse brand’s ‘slice and bake’ cookie dough.  For the first batch I used wax parchment paper for a cookie sheet.  Nine minutes into baking and the chocolate smell was wafting from the oven and pervading throughout my apartment.  It came out alright but the bottom of the cookie was a little browner than usual.  I should have taken the tray out of the oven after the timer went off; instead I just left the oven door open a little and turned off the oven.  I think the cookies continued to bake more, just sitting there. 

For the second batch of cookies, I gently applied a non-stick cooking spray on the tray and no cookie sheet this time.  I thought my chances of making the perfect cookies were slightly higher.  I turned the oven off sooner than the timer because of the extra heat from the previous batch.  These came a bit better but the corner pieces had browned just like the first batch.

Overall, not bad for a first time baker and planning on making mini sugar cookies later.  Next week, am going to try making an item from scratch.  Maybe cinnamon streusel, raspberry almond, lemon drop or vanilla bread…oh choices!  Pictures coming soon.

From the kitchen,

Jaan

OBSESSED with this song currently, so much so that it deserves a special post by itself.  Maybe it's just me, my mood, emotions, or whatever it is, this song just clicks with me...I love driving to this type of music especially on my weekend trips out of town...

"dil mein hai bas tu hi tu o jaane jana 
tune kiya hai mujhko sabse begaana
meri duniya mein jabse tu aayi
meri nazron pe bas tu hi chhayi
miit gayi meri saari tanhaai bairiya ve"

You can find it on various indian music sites like www.indiaglitz.com, www.musicindiaonline.com etc.  Here is the uploaded YouTube of the music video.  Of course, there are times the song is annoying especially the 'wassup' part but overall, I love you O Sayyoni I love you O Sayyoni koi sha-q...

Enjoy,
Jaan