Cooking something you have never seen before !! ( III )

"there........ i can surely write a blog about this" ........... the most expensive item in the entire grocery store (not really !!) and I am throwing it away. It has't gone bad neither did i cook it badly, it said "Green Beans" so i thought that it would add a bit of "Fibrous content" to my diet apart from all the "maida" bread !
But when i opened the packet, its smell was bitter :( and so bitter that i decided to cook it for long time so that it would lose its bad smell but it tasted the same. So....... i was back to noodles.
This reminds me of one caution that vegetarians should take while purchasing noodles, some noodles are chicken flavoured or beef flavoured but do not contain any chiciken or beef product in the main ingredient list but the ingredient list for the "seasoning" has non-vegetarian products in them so be careful.
that's why i purchased the "oriental flavour" which had no undesirable products in it.
Also be aware that some of the breads do not have eggs in them so you can try them too!!
It took me nearly 3 hours to read the ingredients of all the products in the store and deciding which of them are worth buying !!
anyways................. the difference between the urban life in india and the so called "developed countries", as i realized, is narrowing as the days pass by. Similar kind of shopping experience can be had in mumbai, delhi, chandigarh, banglore etc. even in Udaipur (Rajasthan), my home town. But I feel that its better to buy original fresh eatables rather than the canned and preserved ones as they loose their wonderful taste.

Its not all about creativity! ( II )

When we arrived here in US, i noticed that these guys have made huge roads and have planted grass all over the place. They have sidewalks for people on foot and the bicycle riders. There are no stairs anywhere, whenever the height changes, it gently slopes down. Other than this they have put wood scrapings near the plants where there is no grass, it looks quite cool!
I noticed that all the buildings or all the apartments in an apartment complex are painted with same kind of style which makes them look very good. They all have been made in the shapes of huts or wood houses!
The trash cans and all the trees , plants are grown in a trendy fashion here which makes it pleasurable to roam around. There are good benches to sit on and study and most impressive is that people do that here!!
they are made out of wood and all!!
I noticed that all the labels had trendy looking dots below them, i was wondering that's cool too but i soon noticed that all the nameplates and instructions had them , then i realized that it was all braile!!
also, the wood scrapings near the tree plantations was because the soil here is very sandy, it would spread all over the roads if there was wind !! so to keep the roads clean, they use the wood scrapings.
I also noticed that all the places are wheelchair accessible! that's quite impressive, so finally it was not all about creativity!!
I wonder that the time would come when we, in india would give this much importance to all human beings !!

Where is everyone?? ( I )

I thought to write this series of expriences that i come across each day here in America. I entered in the states on friday, 4th August 2006. Initially i did not feel that there was much of difference between Mumbai and Frankfurt Airport (where i changed a plane) of Gainesville, Florida. ( where my college is) but later when i went out alone i realized that even though the area of Gainesville might be same as mumbai but the no of buildings were not even one fourth of mumbai, neither of them were more than 5 floors! It appeared as if the construction company forgot to build 3 buildings in between every two. There is so much open space here that even if you walk from one building to the next or one Apartment Complex to the next, it takes quite some time!
Since I reached there on a weekend, i did not have anything to do. So i decided to look around the city. I thought that i would see how the people there lived or i might go to a park where many people would be there and i may talk to them to know the country!
But to my surprize, i did not find anyone on the streets.... there were no pedestrians!
I saw empty roads within the apartment complexes and only cars cruising at high speeds. This made me remember how i could see so many people in the streets roaming around back in india. There was a big wood cutting factory but it appeared as if the workers had ran away and so many cars were lying all over the places in the small parking areas that it appeared as if their drivers just left them there , it looked like they all just vanished in thin air!!
Then seniors told me that it was all because of weekend ......... ahhh! that gave me some hope of seeing " real people" and not just machines in the states!!