A Bottle of Chocolate Syrup

Dear Readers,
It's been a long time since my previous post and this one is about something everyone likes. Chocolate. It feels like heaven when you let a drop of molten chocolate fall in your mouth. Or put it as a solid piece and let it melt. Is that what heaven is like? Chocolate waterfalls and chocolate rivers and everything you touch turns to candy or chocolate. That would be nice :)

Anyways, I got a taste of heaven when I was walking around Madurai's only mall with a couple of my friends and bumped into a bottle of Hershey's chocolate syrup. Bought it. :P

I went home, kept it in the fridge for a few days(2-3). I then decided to use it on everything I eat and experiment with it. I've taken photos of them. After all pictures are better than words.


It is simple to do all the following recipes. Just make your food the normal way and add plenty of chocolate on top :)

1. Chocolate on Bread:This was the first kind of food I tried the chocolate on. It was a success. Satisfied with it :)

2. Molten Chocolate on top of milk chocolate:What better thing to top chocolate with than chocolate. This was even better than number 1.

3. Chocolate on Egg Noodles:I did have doubts if this would work. Chocolate sauce on Noodles? really? yes. It didn't taste all that different, but not as good as chocolate on chocolate. So, number 2 tops the list now.

4. Chocolate on Piece of fried Bread and Butter:

4. Chocolate on top of Thirupathi laddu:
Now this was the best one. There was Thirupathi laddu at my place(got from relatives). What better work do i have than to try odd combinations? Hershey's chocolate syrup on Thirupathi laddu, is heavenly.

5. Chocolate on top of popcorn:
Chocolate on masala popcorn. Had the sweet and salty taste. Good for the movies but too expensive to dip every pop corn in chocolate.

6. Chocolate on top of Banana:Chocolate on banana :D This was like some sort of fruit salad ice-cream with chocolate. Banana Split? Delicious.


more to come...for now the "Best Food to try Chocolate Syrup on Award" goes to the Thirupathi Laddu :D

See ya later :)

Trip to Coimbatore: The sequel

Hi readers who have come here on your own and those asked by me to come,
This is a sequel to Trip to Coimbatore. Read it if you haven't.

Last time on Trip to Coimbatore...

It was the end of day one and it was time to go to bed. I went to my bed and found all my belongings gone. What?How??!!!

OK...I was looking at the wrong bed. My things were there, just where I left them. How stupid of me? !! ? I always do this :) Keep things in one place and look elsewhere.


Ok, it was day 2 of Kriya. It is uneventful from here on. The symposium events went on. We couldn't get anywhere after going to the second round. It was 4 pm and I was getting hungry. Manoj had gotten into the second round of some event. I decided to go out for an ice cream in that bakery outside. It started raining when I was having the nutty choco bar. I was waiting to cross the road to get back to the college. It took me 6 minutes and 24 seconds to cross it. That was when I realized how hard it was to cross a road. I was wet and the hair on my head was not standing as usual.

It was the grand quiz and I sat there in the auditorium. The questions were projected onto the wall and we were required to write the answers on a piece of paper. I couldn't find the answer to more than 2 or 3 questions out of 30. Nothing more to about that :P. Same with the sports and entertainment quiz the next day.


The rain stopped and we played box cricket with TSR and his hostel friends. I've never seen that before anywhere. There is a large box draw on the sand and we had to play inside it. You're out if you hit the ball outside the box directly, without touching the ground. There was a stall that sold books in the college. I bought a really old story book for Rs. 10 :) There was a chocolate fountain too!!♥

It was the night then and we were going to eat outside. We got into a city bus with the hostel friends and it lead us to a remote area outside town. Then we walked for over a kilometer and then I could see "SUBWAY". How come there is no Subway in Madurai?We each had a Submarine Sandwich. My first ever. We then headed back to the hostel. With tired legs, sleep was easy to come. In the morning we got our participation certificates, bade goodbye to TSR and PSG; left for the bus stand :)


We decided not to have lunch. So, we drank a glass of Watermelon juice and bought a pack of biscuits. This time it was better, the trip :) We sat next to an old man and there was no drunken man in the vicinity. It was not cold and the sun was shining. Not too much though. The bus journey was for four hours. I was reading the book I'd gotten for 2 hours and looking out the window for the other three :) We finally reached Madurai and that is it for now. The trip ended here :)

Trip To Coimbatore

Hi Readers who come here on your own and readers who are asked to come on here by me,

This post is about my trip to Coimbatore. My friend Manoj and I went there for a 3 day trip in the name of a Symposium called "Kriya". We had decided to go there cos our friend TSR Vinoth studied there and thought we'd catch up on old times.

It was Friday, Saturday and Sunday and we have holidays on all Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.
Manoj and I decided to meet up at 11:15 pm at the nearby bus stop. I carried my little backpack which was filled with clothes for 3 days and a pack of biscuits for the night in case we get hungry. We weren't even sure about staying for the whole 3 days cos we were said that it costed each person Rs.250 for food and accommodation. We were low on cash :P.

So, as I was walking to the bus stop with my little backpack on, in the deserted road at 11 pm which would be otherwise packed in the mornings with people of all kinds... Who says Madurai is the city that never sleeps? It sleeps like a bear during winter!!

I had to cross a tiny alleyway to reach that road where the bus stop was. It was really dark. That lane was just 2 feet in breadth. Just two normal sized people could walk side by side in that lane. I had a Swiss army knife in my pocket for protection :D When I was midway in that lane..a large black black dog appeared out of nowhere, it's eyes glowing in fluorescent green and ran past me rubbing it's fine hair against my Jeans. May be it was sleeping there in the shadows. May be it was Sirius Black. Who knows? My heart was racing. I was just absorbing what had just happened and I turned back to see if the huge dog was still there..I couldn't believe what I was just seeing!!!!..A man was standing there..his face was hideous..One eye was blue and the other one had an eye patch covering it..He was white and bald; had a hook for one hand and a machete in the other. He had an evil look on his face and all his yellow teeth were showing. As I looked down the huge black dog was standing there at his feet..I almost pissed my pants..My hands were shaking..!! my pocket knife was no match for that machete..My feet too..I was fixed to that spot; couldn't move from there..Suddenly a flash of lightning appeared in the sky followed by a loud thunder!!
AS this happened i snapped out of my day dream..I mean night dream..You know what I'm saying.. :)


Ok, I was waiting there sitting at the bus stop bench waiting for Manoj to come. Buses were scarce. He finally arrived and we decided to take a share auto. We were seated with complete strangers. The strangers were talking among themselves about the upcoming elections, the heavy rains that day, the traffic, their salaries and how they were not getting a raise. And we were on our way to Arapalayam bus stand. That's where we had to board our buses to Coimbatore.


We finally got there. We got a bus as soon as we reached Arapalayam. The only empty seats were in the last row. We sat there..Near the window. We talked for a while and then decided to sleep cos we had a big day ahead of us..finish registration for accommodation...take part in events..etc..
There was no support in front of me to hold on to when i slept. The bus ride was not smooth. It was throwing us up and down, left and right. Damn suspension and Indian roads!! I decided to sit in the seats infront of me, to the right..that guy was sleeping and when he woke up. He smelt horrible. He had eaten something stinky.Drugs may be..or cheap alcohol..The whole bus smelt of him. I was telling myself "Just five hours, just five hours". Don't ever travel by bus to Coimbatore. If you have to, at least don't make the mistake of going there by night.

I didn't sleep at all..May be for five minutes max. Coimbatore finally arrived and the breath of fresh air..Whew..It was 5:00 am when we finally reached Coimbatore. We got to the college campus around 6 am. We were a bit hungry, so drank some tea/coffee at this bakery which was open at 5:30 am near the college entrance. The roads there were wide and pleasant to look at, under the LED lights from the bridge that connected the College main campus and the Hostel.



We went to the hostel to do the accommodation. It was rs.100 per day for food and accommodation. We registered for all three days. We were shown to the dorm; a large hall with lots of mattress arranged in an array. Nice way to make money. It was warm and comfy though. Much better than the bus ride here. It was 6:30 am and the symposium would start in a few minutes. No time to sleep.


We then went to the main campus in the morning. Registration for the events there. Rs 100 for all events(except for workshops) plus a bag, notepad, & pen. Reasonable. As i was waiting for Manoj to bring back the bonafide certificate which he had forgotten in the hostel, I was watching the students of PSG as they were walking down the bridge;the girls especially. Most were having a book in their hands. Why did I come here??? There were some good-looking ones though.


It was then the opening ceremony at the main auditorium. It was an air-conditioned auditorium. You know what is gonna happen next..Yeah, all the college management people started talking one by one over the mic. Finally it was the turn of the chief guest to give his speech. He was an alumni of that college and the founder of something. He started his speech. Manoj was already asleep in his chair before he came, bending his head down and sleeping with his bag as a pillow.I started going lower and lower on my chair and I then closed my eyes. I was then woken up by Manoj. Everyone was clapping their hands. It was the best sleep I've had in a really long time. Thank You Mr. chief guest and the air-conditioned auditorium. My relative was there in the opening ceremonies. I was talking to her after coming out of the auditorium still asleep.


We then attended a few prelims of some quizzes. We got selected in the final rounds of a few events but just missed the prize in most of them. We then met TSR and had briyani lunch outside. I almost forgot about the breakfast we had in the mess. Unlimited bread, pongal, vada..it was tasty :) It was the end of day one and it was time to go to bed. I went to my bed and found all my belongings gone. What?How??!!!




thodarum....


Trip to Coimbatore: the sequel

The End of Days

Good day ladies and gentlemen ,
This topic might sound a little grim. The days are coming to an end. Some are glad and and some are not. The some which are glad, are glad because it's a life coming to an end..a life which did not go as planned. The some who are not glad are the ones who are going to miss this life. Miss all it's ups and downs, happiness and sorrows, their beloved ones and people they hate. Tears come to our eyes when we think of the end of days. No, I'm not talking about the apocalypse! I'm talking about college life coming to an end. With only a few weeks remaining, there is a lot of mixed feelings.



It was as if I joined college yesterday. Four years have gone past so quickly. I still remember the first day of college. It was after a very long holiday. I didn't want to do engineering or join in this college If I decided to do engineering, but I didn't have enough marks to do MBBS(the only two choices we have after school are to do MBBS and Engineering) or join in some other college and so I was put here.

Okay, back to the first day. All the parents were called for the orientation and after the boring speeches in the indoor stadium, we were given a tour of the different department buildings in the desert. My parents never came to college after that day. Not even once. I'm in the ECE department, and the ECE department had two classes, A and B. Each had around 60 students. A lot of new faces. I saw a few familiar faces. Those who came from my school. They were put in the first floor classroom and we were put in the dungeons in the ground floor. No lighting at all.

I then went to the other class after a couple of days, where I saw some familiar faces. New numbers were added in the phone directory. There was NSS period where we played football, basketball, volleyball, table tennis, shuttlecock,..That made a few bonds.

There were girls and there were boys, both separated by an imaginary wall in class. But the wall was broken down soon enough, through physics and Chemistry labs where we were put into groups, the Internet, borrowing stationery and assignments. We started to mingle slowly. Classes were fun. There wasn't any group in particular and all were united as far as our class was concerned.

We had tests for which we prepared reading line by line. CITs they were called. Centralized Internal tests. Everyone studied really hard and got 90 and more. And then came exams which we studied equally hard for. The performance declined as time passed by. Less importance was given to studies. More importance was given to the better things in life and exams were studied for before the day of the exam and some during that excruciating period of days called the study holidays.

Results come really late for us. We are under the control of Anna University Trichy. The results for a semester come out before a month the next semester ends. And we thought we were lazy. Results are usually unexpected. In a paper we were sure of failing, we'd pass it. God Bless the bloke who corrected our paper. And in a paper we thought did really well, the result was not satisfactory. Damn the bloke who corrected my paper!

Days passed quickly and it was the second semester. The classes were shuffled and were according to the alphabetical order of our names. Many strongly objected this. But nothing could be done. The strong bonds which were formed during the first year were broken down by management; for their work to become easy.

It was not all that bad. Some beautiful friendships were made. Some were separated. Groups were formed within the class. But that's life. We were now becoming close with the people whose names were alphabetically near ours. We had the Industrial Visit. We really enjoyed this. Wait, what? Visiting an industry is fun? No. We just spent half an hour of our one day joy trip at the industry :P

At first we went to Kodaikanal, then it was Pollachi and finally the much awaited 3 day tour to Kerela. It was so nice to be with our classmates for three whole days visiting water theme parks, temples, restaurants, waterfalls, .. etc.

Getting back to the topic...

The days are coming to an end. Some are glad and and some are not. The some which are glad, are glad because it's a life coming to an end..a life which did not go as planned. The some who are not glad are the ones who are going to miss this life. Miss all it's ups and downs, happiness and sorrows, their beloved ones and people they hate. Tears come to our eyes when we think of the end of days. No, I'm not talking about the apocalypse! I'm talking about college life coming to an end. With only a few weeks remaining, there is a lot of mixed feelings.

.....

three and a half years of college have passed so quickly and the remaining few weeks are going like lighting quick. There were petty fights and misunderstandings. It's time we forget about all that. It's time to move on and treasure the memories of little events that made us happy and carry it on into the future. Memories such as sitting in class, pretending to listen to what the teacher is saying, making fun of our friends and laughing along, sharing food, playing games, playing pranks, sitting in the CIT hall for the entire time and not cross a single page, getting additional sheets and writing crap, taking photographs, ....Will these days ever come back? Sadly No. Next year everyone will be gone in their separate ways. Work is calling. Full days will be spent in front of the computer screen and there won't be time to meet our college mates. Some people will be remembered and some forgotten. We really should have reunions. I request everyone to create facebook accounts so that we can organize reunions later on and everyone gets invited. But life has to move on. As these incoherent thoughts come out of my head and onto this page, my eyelids are getting droopy and i must sleep cos i have college tomorrow. I mean today.

dedicated to all the final years students of klnce..and to other colleges as well


bye :)

P.S this post was not checked for any errors except for the spell check of course

College Food

Hi Everyone,
This post is about the food served in the college I go to KLNCE (11 km from Madurai). I couldn't find anything to write about so I asked my friend for suggestions. He listed many and food was one of them and I decided to make it about the food in the college.

I'd like to divide the food into four main categories.
1. Food from home
2. Food in the old canteen
3. Food in the new canteen
4. Food in the hostel mess

1. Food from home:
Food from home is always the best, in my opinion. You can ask your mom to make you your favorite dish and all your friends can eat it :D The only problem is you have to carry it from home :(

Before going into 2 and 3, I must tell you this. The college canteen block is big and has two sections. One is the old canteen and the other is the new canteen.
The difference between them is the paint and the furniture.
Old Canteen: Old worn-out paint and as for the furniture, it has steel benches, tables and wooden tops for them.

New Canteen: Less worn-out paint and as for the furniture, the tables have steel legs and marble tops with lots of plastic chairs scattered here and there.

2. Food in the old canteen
Food in the old canteen is not much different from the new canteen. It has almost the same menu as the new canteen. The most frequently bought meal being the parottas and dosas.
Oh and one more thing, the kadala mitta is 50 paise each here. It's less when compared to the new canteen.

3. Food in the old canteen:
menu: Dosa, parotta, pongal, thayirsadam, tea, soft drinks, ice cream...
We also have the Mushroom soup. It's just extremely-hot murky water with some oil-fried corn flakes on top and all the coarse pepper-like-substance in the world to make the soup taste not bland. Nevertheless we still buy it almost every single day. And as for the kadala mittai, it is 1 rupee for one small piece. It's ridiculous, the price and we are even more ridiculous to buy them.


NOTE: Never go to the canteen during lunch time. It's worse than those stock market places where all the stock-brokers buy/sell shares everyday. And people you have never seen in your entire life time get a piece of your food.


4. Food in the hostel Mess:
If you really want to fill your stomachs go here. Each meal costs rs. 20 and it's unlimited. That's right, unlimited meals and you don't have to worry about leaving empty stomach. There's a catch to it though. You have to walk all the way to the hostel from the main block. That is like more than 150 meters away and there are no trees in the path.
Nothing in this life worth having come without having to work for it.

But there is nothing sweeter than bring a meal from home, sitting in the temple grounds(in college ) surrounded by trees*, sharing food with your friends and taking a nap after eating.



*the only few trees in our college have been cut down to make room for the girl's hostel.

Cricket World Cup 2011

Good Day to all the Readers,

This is my first post of 2011 and it's about Cricket. That's right. India is crazy about cricket and I'm a crazy Indian. I used to watch cricket. Still do. But not as crazy about Cricket, as I was before.

But it's world cup time. I stopped being a fanatic about cricket when I found out about football. But that's a whole other topic. Lets go to cricket now.

Ok, the cricket World Cup comes every 4 years. I have noticed that every time the world cup is played, some teams get added and some get dropped. Teams like the Netherlands, US, Canada, Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago..they come and go. I'm not exactly sure how many teams play in each world cup.

This time India is the strong favorite to bag the world cup. They are hosting it along with Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, which I recently discovered in a buzz post. So far they have won all their encounters. The first two warm up matches, one with the champions Australia and the other with the New Zealanders. The first match, against the host nation Bangladesh India made a very huge score of 370. It was no surprise and the match was very predictable. Some people are still mad at Sehwag cos he got Sachin, the God of Cricket out, even thought he made India win :P

Cricket is so popular in India that people stop doing all their work just to watch a game of cricket where India is playing. Today I went to the gym(yeah, i go the gym sometimes :D) and wondered where all the people were. In an always crowded gym where there are usually 15 people minimum, I found only 2 people including me. Then my friend came later on and told me India was playing. Now, why didn't I remember that??

Ok, so people waste their gym membership money to watch Bangladesh batting.

What is so great about cricket anyways? People pay thousands to go the stadium and watch an almost invisible ball from distance being hit by a piece of wood, and people waiting to catch it. Why can't they just watch it on TV where they can watch it close up? The atmosphere may be..to cheer on their favorites..Supporters are what makes games what they are.

Cricket I must say is more fun to play than to watch. But the fun lasts only during the batting and the bowling part. At other times, you just have to stand and stare, under the hot sun as the ball passes by you.

Coming back to the world cup....

I'm going to sleep. Keep you eyes fixed on the TV screen.(get a LED TV for the best experience)

Bye Bye..