The Power of excel

We have just started storing all our factory records electronically and to have some feeble sort of supply chain management system. I had started with evaluating SAP.. then came down to C++/Java with Access database... and now I am amazed at the power of Excel. With a tad programming I am able to automate our entire factory management system in an excel. It looks damn neat too! My father in law is impressed - that says something... doesn't it. Little things in life matter!

I am nursing a 3 month old baby at home and am unable to venture out for my weekly grocery shopping. Living in an IT city I believed I could have everything delivered at home. I have been surfing the net for the better part of the day and am unable to search a decent site to do my grocery shopping! eCityIndia is the closest that comes to the amazon WebVan. Unfortunately, they too shy away from grocery delivery at home.
An opportunity for me perhaps? :)

Vedant arrived today.

Back Home..

I am back home after a very long time. Yesterday morning when I stepped out of the plane the Kuantan musty sea smell hit me like a blast - sweet sweet home!

This time I am staying in mummy and papa's new house.. it is 2 doors away from the older one.. and though I miss my goldfish and the pond and my hammock I am not complaining.. this house has a full front view of the golf resort. To our complete joy, the golf course is now a jungle and every day creatures come tumbling out of it to our house. At breakfast there are friendly monkies who dangle their long arms in through the windows to coax my mom for over-ripe bananas. Then there are the birds... hundreds of them which flock to our veranda to gobble up the food grains which my mother leaves lovingly for them outside, complete with a mud bowl of cool water. And then, there are some new species! for me atleast! Yesterday my father introduced me to 2 families of "ghungaas".. they are super ugly brown colored blotches that live inside pristine white conch shells. Life is good here with them.

Also, the skies welcomed me with a double rainbow yesterday and streaming rains in the hot wet sun. Back home to Malaysia. :) :) :)

I have a thing against libraries. I always imagined that books are to be bought, wrapped in neat clear sheets, read diligently and then stacked high up in the home bookshelf for the next generation. You may disagree but there is a feminine fascination in owning stuff that is hard to deny. As a result, a large portion of my petty paycheck would be spent at Crosswords or Landmark monthly.... to an extent that it got fairly large. I also have a very bad habit of running through a book, as one would gobble up a piece of cake, so much that it takes me three to four days to devour a Salman Rushdie masterpiece.

A week ago I stumbled across a new age library - Just Books. I call it new age for a reason - it does not have issue cards, it does not smell of paper, it does not have books with yellow pages, it does not even have table and chairs to sit down and study and it certainly does not have a sixty year old librarian with a perpetual frown and hanging spectacles.

It does not house your science fiction and pulp classics. However, it does have the top of the charts flicks and the occasional Calvin and Tintin - so yes, it does serve the purpose! I am milking my Rs. 150 per month membership for all it is worth. I have already devored an Amitav Ghosh, a Tintin, a Dan Brown and a basics of accounting book.

Moonrakers

There are coastal cuisine restaurants and then there is Moonrakers!

Tucked in deep inside Mammallapuram, Moonrakers offers the most chilly, juicey, lip-smacking coastal cuisine. We went there a year back and we came out with charred tongues & satisfied souls. This year, I scheduled our annual vacation at Mahabs JUST SO THAT WE COULD GO AND EAT AT MOONRAKERS. And, eat we did! All meals for 2 whole days! And just when you are visualizing a varied cusine that will tantalize every taste bud that you possess hear this - they cook every dish in ONE DRAGON HOT RED CURRY!!

You can order squids, giant prawn, live lobster, snapper, mackerel, blue crab... just about anything.. You will get it smothered and fried in that same yummy brilliant red curry. And what a curry that is... Its sight is enough to get your stomach rumbling, fresh out of the frying pan as it splatters all around the table. You eat a morsel and you would be gulping down jugs of cold beer next (which they server in steel glasses since they do not have a alchocol license yet AND you need to hide the beer bottles under your chairs!). You would say out loud "Oh this is my last bite", licking those finger tips clean and then reach out for the snapper with it's eyes still embedded in it's sockets. An hour later you would be sweating and panting and thats when the waiter would come and ask "Ayoo Madam, Neutela pancake?".

Aha! and that brings me to the second reason why we go to Moonrakers. To be quite honest that neutela pancake is nothing to boast about. But, when you have just devoured a platter of squids, followed by a giant whole fish the neutela pancake is nothing short of genius. To bring things in persective here is a 'Before' and 'After' pic at Moonrakers.

Arghhhhhhhhhh!! This sick business is really getting to me. I have been down and out for the past 4 days. The thermometer is refusing to come down below 100 and the doctor is refusing to let me go to work. I tried feebly to work from home today. I failed miserably. And that is not even what I am angry about. I am completely frustrated with the pharmaceutical industry. #$%^&@#**%%$!
I mean these guys can create wonder pills then why not one that tastes atleast like boiled brocolli? The least repulsive one that I have tasted recently reminded me of my first experiment with cooking.

'nuff said! Alright, I am a jobless person today. Here is how i spent the day:
1) 1 cup steaming hot coffee with extra spoonfull of milk powder
2) half a soggy vada that i had attempted for breakfast
3) searched for the betty crocker chocolate brownie cake mix i had stashed away last month
4) logged on to check emails. replied. period.
5) saw the movie 'rat race'. Ok, i need to say something here. I could have forgiven the director for hanging a cow by its leg from a hot air balloon and squeezing milk out of its udders into the villians face... but then he had to get 'feed the earth' org in the end to lap up the prize money... just sleezy guys!
6) tried to do steaming with eucalyptus oil. apparently it opens up the nose. well, i don't know about that but the oily black heads seem less!
7) tried to sing and then laughed at the pain it inflicted on my throat
8) switched on mtv since the voices were far better than mine
9) typed on the keyoard with mt ees closed.
10) took a nap
11) googled for the price of necker island
12) perfected (a little more) my secret language
13) drank water (the doc said to do so)
14) searched again for the chocolate brownie mix
15) made a list of shopping items
16) contemplated what to cook for dinner and was surprised at 6:35pm by a chicken biryani from my neighbour. mwah! they are really nice people.
17) was alerted by a wheezing sound in my chest and called my doctor to find out if I finally got the swine flu. he said to call back if it gets any worse. does it mean i have it? huh? doc?

So, necker is still way.............out of line. I think i will e-mail richard branson and claim i won't stop until he calls me and invites me for a private vacation on his island.