Kedar’s log 2008..

The Very Good Taste site created a list called the Omnivore Hundred and challenged people to post it to their blogs and bold the things they’ve eaten. I saw this on a friend’s blog and thought I might post it on mine too.

I won’t rate myself an Omnivore by any standards.. although I sometimes might say that. So I know I am going to score pretty low - 1. because I am not quite adventurous when it comes to food,  2. because I am 75% of the times vegetarian and my non-vegetarianism is limited to Chicken, Fish (Shrimp, and a few decent fish, lobster in its unrecognizable form, crab only once in its original form and crab cakes), Lamb (very rarely), Hot Dogs (sometimes), Pork Sausages (verrry rarely) and Venison once and, 3. I don’t drink and smoke… but still, for the fun of it, I will give it a shot.

Legend:
Bold: all the items you’ve eaten.
Cross out: any items that you would never consider eating.

So, here goes - btw, I scored 16 / 100

1. Venison : On a flight to India, loved the taste, unfortunately I got horribly sick afterwards
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile: yikes!
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi : have eaten hundreds and thousands of times
15. Hot dog from a street cart : New York and elsewhere
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream : Several times when I was a kid
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries : Many times when I was a kid
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans : have eaten hundreds and thousands of times
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava : Very tasty.. never miss it
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi : Awesome!
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat : Yep, sometimes
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat?s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala : Well, what can I say, I am an Indian!
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut : I mean who doesn’t like these?
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer : Yeah right.. I am an Indian!
55. McDonald?s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S?mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frog legs: I know a couple of my friends who ate these and they tell me it tastes almost like Chicken. Yeah sure!
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain : Tasty
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail : No way, slimy things are not for me!
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake : Never, Never, Never, Never, Never, Never, Never, Never, Never, Never, Never, Never, Never, Never!

A post on a blog gets old just like the events in one’s life.. They slowly get pushed outside the main page and go into the archives. I just feel helpless thinking that with this or my next post, the saddest post on my blog will move off of my blog’s main page. It is sort of symbolic and terribly sad at the same time.

People die, and time, like some river water gushing over the rocks on the riverbed, just passes over them and keeps pushing the rest of us ahead without giving any choice. It is a strange feeling to keep going without the people who mattered to you a lot. Not exactly easy to put it in words. From time to time, there is this strange realization that you keep shedding off your past and there is really nothing that you can hold on to.

Although I don’t believe such a thing exists on a scientific level, here are some symptoms I can imagine.

Consider yourself in a mid-life crisis if -

• You are getting nostalgic about the past lately
• You think cutting your hair short makes you look younger
• You think tight T-shirts suit you better
• You get unusually happy when you buy from Forever-21 or American Eagle or Hollister or Abercombie.
• You start believing in stories of young girls dating married old men
• You say you don’t remember your age on your birthday
• You start becoming ambiguous about your age in general - you prefer to use floor() instead of round() on your age. You fight with all your liar’s might to stay below 40.
• …..

My friend Troy has contributed more to this list… his list follows:

• You just bought a motorcycle
• You start working out, because you think it might be your last chance to actually be fit
• You are more motivated to finish your projects before your mental faculties deteriorate or you get too lazy
• You find sites like Facebook annoying because you don’t want to keep up with the latest tech fads all the time
• You realize you’re closer to 40 than to 30 and are momentarily disturbed by that thought

Thanks Troy for your contribution!

Yesterday I saw a really horrible video about how pigs get tortured on one pig farm. It was just outrageous the way those people treated the poor animals. I am not any animal activist or any kind of activist really. But to see this kind of behavior makes me think about my own non-vegetarianism.

An extreme effect of seeing something like this is really thinking about whether or not, the fact of me being a non-vegetarian, sort of encourages such practices. After all, it is for people like me that those animals get there to be slaughtered, even if not always tortured. I understand the dynamics of mass production and all kinds of practices which could also be considered as cruel to animals even though they legally may not be so. Setting those aside, however, certainly just the high demand should not cause this kind of treatment of animals? What kind of a person gets pleasure out of torturing helpless beings for nothing?

I know I am not in my kindergarten. And I know there are a lot of sick people out there in the world, and you hear about them in the news all the time. You keep ignoring because you can’t do much about it anyway. One also understands as one gets older that no matter what books or our religious leaders might say, life is NEVER fair. Not everybody pays for what he inflicts on someone else. In fact, the laws of modern society treat the guilty more humanely than how the their victims got treated. And I think this imbalance is hopelessly going to grow - the crimes get worse and more horrifying, and the society continues to become more and more considerate to people who committed those crimes rather than being considerate to the people who mercilessly suffered at the hands of these criminals.

Where does that leave animals? At the lowest end of the justice system I guess. Nature allows killing, but for survival and food, not for sadistic pleasure. We are told from our childhood that God is watching over whatever you do.. and in your adult life, you realize that that’s not so true, God is not a policeman.. ‘coz if He was one, such things would never happen. There are clever arguments to counter this conclusion when people say everybody gets what he is destined to get or that this could be the result of their actions in the past life. If you ask me, that is simply not true…

I am sure the justice in this case will be less than 1% fair to what those animals went through. And there is nothing that can change it. Call that destiny if you wish…

One of my most favorite scenes in a movie is the animated sequence in ‘Time Machine’ where the whole world changes around the house - from this point in time to millions of years in the future. You see the house getting older, then collapsing and things just keep happening around it, wars get fought, climates change, landscapes change, new people appear, all kinds of things happen.. all at the same location.

It kinda’ puts certain things in perspective in my opinion. The things we are so passionate about.. I am this, I am that, this is my house, my car, this is where I belong, this land is mine, .. is so short lived. Nobody even knows you existed at that location on earth in a few years. If one just thinks about it, all the great people in the history, walked the same earth that we are walking on now which was walked on by Dinosaurs some millions of years ago. I mean, where does that leave a single human being?

This is bad! I don’t like it. With all the intelligence and arrogance in the world, individually, we are a nobody……. until we learn how to time travel!

I have a proud father moment to share!!

It has been in the works for a long time.. I and my wife have waited and worked for this long enough to appreciate its importance.. my son’s future depended on it.. our peace of mind depended on it.. and also the overall quality of living for all of us depended on it.. This is once in a lifetime thing to start.. and it stays with you all through your life.. it is something you have gotta learn and not something you are born with..

………… POTTY TRAINING!!! My Son is now fully potty trained!!!!!!!! YAY!

God knows how much I have prayed for this to happen, and how many techniques we have used to achieve this end result. I have been a strict father sometimes, a kind adviser some other times, have bribed my son, have punished him by taking his Thomas Train toy engines away, have used everything from cops to dinosaurs to stop him from insisting on a diaper, have tried hard not to laugh when he was trying to show me that he was *trying*, have tried hard not to show any mercy when he cried seeing his toys being taken away one by one…

..all of it is history now.. history to be fondly remembered in the bright future that lies ahead! It was a great celebration when it actually happened! Everybody hurrayed, there were chocolates, there was clapping, hugging, and a surprise return of the toys back to their owner (!!), suddenly the dinosaurs and cops were my son’s good friends (!) and my son was all basking in the glory of his wonderful achievement!

So, “No more diapers for us” - I proclaim to the Targets, Costcos and Walmarts of this world! No more of those nasty smelling diaper bags in my house and in my trash. We are tasting the first breath of fresh air in our freedom from diapers.. the air smells good, I can tell you that. We have crossed this seemingly impossible event horizon to come out of this black hole and out into a new world.

And that’s the reason I wanted to celebrate this milestone with a separate post of its own. Way to go Son!!

When I read news on the web (which is almost every day), it sometimes disturbs me to read the readers’ comments right below the news story. Internet, by its obvious *almost near-secretive* nature, allows the true emotions and thoughts of people to come out in the open. And it is scary, to say the least, to read what people really think, how much ignorant and yet self-confident in their opinions they are, and how much of all this garbage is all around us in people that we come across every day.

I believe, somewhere, all these unspoken thoughts matter and have an effect on the society. The fact that one cannot be so openly rude and vile, when he is out there in the society, does not really help the society. I don’t see the society getting any better when it comes to the real controversial matters.. it is just getting better at hiding the bad stuff and using a polished facade. That is really disturbing.

The fact that we have laws, rules and best practices to guide us indicates that we do not trust our minds to do that job. One may argue that practicing laws and rules in this manner might instill these values in us. But I doubt it.. a disturbed mind can easily throw this equilibrium into anarchy and the world is getting better at creating disturbances even more so now than before.

Maybe I am just being too pessimistic but really, I am only optimistic about technology these days and not human mind. And the technology is a beast in itself if used improperly.

Like many people from my homeland, I came to the US, seeking opportunities. At least that’s what I kinda’ like to think. If you ask me, I don’t really know why I came here.. back in those days, there wasn’t a great deal going on in the IT world back home - yes back in the last century - the year 1999. For a youngster, waiting desperately to break free, going away from home and the homeland, made perfect sense! I was already living in Dubai, working in the IT arm of a successful airline. I flew all over the world. Dubai is a small place and after 4 years I outgrew it. I wanted to continue my journey outward - away from my homeland. So I consciously looked towards the West.

It was great.. I had a big country to explore, big cars, lots of do, see and experience. Part of being here was to ensure some stability, brought about by the permanent resident card - ubiquitously known as the Green Card! Sure, I wanted to get that.. it was the legal way of staying here for longer than the 6 years that H1B initially offered. So I talked to my employer and started my long journey towards this goal… Memories have already started fading and before I forget, I want to document everything I went through to get this done..

…only thing is, it is not done yet.. Every time I hit a snag (even though every date is current for me at this time), I laugh because I am immune to it now.. after having spent 7+ years trying to get this done. Here is the timeline for the continuing ordeal.

• Mar 8, 2001: First blood.. filed for the first stage - Labor Certification (LC) receipt received from VEC (Virginia Employment Commision)
• Jun 2001: First trip to India - 15 days vacation - Had to renew my passport and get the visa stamped. Spend 10 days doing ONLY that. With last minute visa stamping!
• Nov 2001: Renewed my H1B upto Sep 2003
• ~2001 end: Big layoffs at job.. LC application pulled back since company can’t justify filing for GC when it is laying off employees
• ~6 months of wait, advertisements etc for my position
• Sep 2002: Second blood.. filed again for LC
• Sep 2003: Renewed H1B till Dec 2004
• Oct 2004: End of official 6 year H1B period. I have to renew my H1B on a yearly basis now. If I get laid off, and can’t find a job within a month or so, I am out of this country.
• Dec 2004: Renewed H1B till Mar 2006 for the last time in my 6 yr H1B period.
• Feb 2005: LC goes to Backlog Elimination Center
• April 2005: H1B stamped at Halifax, Canada.
• Mar 2006: H1B renewal upto Mar 2007 - premium processing, stamped at Mumbai. I had not sent the documents to the embassy in advance. So they cancel my appointment while I am on vacation! I had to extend my vacation and I somehow manage to get an emergency appointment for the stamping. I submit everything and wait. Nothing happens till the day I am supposed to travel! I go to the embassy and they tell me my DD did not go through since the bank that issued the DD had an employee strike! I postpone my return date by 5 days. Everybody who had come to see me off at the airport that day had to go home.. I then scramble to get a new DD drawn on a different bank so that I can get the visa stamped. I finally get it and return back to the US
• Aug 14, 2006: LC got approved!! Yay! Apply for EAD/AP for both me and my wife
• Sep 13, 2006: I-140 Immigrant Petition filed
• Oct 26, 2006: I-140 approved! Wow!
• ..waiting for my priority date to get current so that they can file my Adjustment of Status (AOS)..
• Dec 2006: Medical tests and reports. Collect necessary documents.
• Jan 22, 2007: AOS filed. Notice received
• Feb 10 2007: First Biometrics appointment (fingerprints)
• Feb 26 2007: FBI requests for second Fingerprinting, only for me.. They could not read my fingerprints - fingers too dry, broken lines, etc..
• Mar 2007:H1B renewed till Mar 2008
• Mar 2, 2007: Second fingerprinting appointment for me. I apply lots of cold cream on my hands in the hopes that the fingerprints will come out well.
• Mar 2007: We get EADs..
• Mar 20, 2007: Second fingerprints were illegible too!! USCIS asking me for police clearance from every city/town where I have resided during the past 5 years!
• Apr 11, 2007: I get police clearance from Fairfax, Herndon and Loudoun county since I stayed in all these places during the last 5 years
• Dec 2007: EADs/APs renewed for another year
• Jan-Mar 2008: India trip. We come back on AP. No issues there.
• April 2008: India trip again.. father expires. I come back on AP.
• April 2008: Lawyers file an inquiry since everything is current for me, but no processing is being done. They are told, that the city I had mentioned on the AOS is not the official city for my zip code. (although post office uses it) So that may be why they are delaying my application! But not sure..
• May 8th, 2008: AOS application transfered to National Benefits center for further processing. “The case has been sent for a standard interview”. Apparently, this does not happen to everyone, but I am special!
• May 29th, 2008: An “update” that the case is now pending at National Benefits Center.
• June 16th, 2008: A request for biometrics again since it has been a year since that was done last! The appointment is on June 24th..
• June 24th, 2008: 2nd Biometrics round - Second for my wife, Third for me.
• July 11th, 2008: FBI was unable to process my fingerprints yet again! I am some unique individual for sure! So a fourth appointment for me on July 26th now. I am sure it is of no use. I will need to get a second police clearance after they are unable to process these repeat fingerprints.
• July 21st: I hear from the lawyers that I am supposed to attend the interview at USCIS on Aug 25th. While it is not required for employment based GCs, I somehow got it.
• July 26th: I take my 4th biometrics appointment which I am positive will give the same negative result. Just waiting for USCIS to let me know that I need to get police clearance now!
• Aug 25th: I go for the interview. Everything goes smoothly. They tell me this is because of the fingerprints. The lady officer is very nice and courteous. She tells me I need to get an updated police clearance and if I can get it by 3pm, I will get my passport stamped (which means my Green card will be approved right that day). Bingo! I am almost there! I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel finally. I take the day off, rush to the sheriff’s office all the way, get the police clearance by noon, go back to USCIS by 2:30pm. She is happy, says she has everything she needs, off she goes to get our visa….. comes back after some time and says, - somehow the state department system is not giving her visa numbers - even though they are available for my date! She sends an email and tells us to wait for half an hour to see if she gets a reply.. she is really trying to be helpful. Half an hour later, she comes back and says “no luck”.. not sure what happened but it seems this is not happening today! We will have to wait again.. She was nice enough to say that she will call me if she hears anything. And that’s it…!
• The immigration officer was really nice enough to call me the next day to let me know that they had received a memo that she wasn’t aware of - that the visa numbers for that year had already been used. New ones will be available in October 2008. So another month of wait..
• Waiting…

I just updated my annoyances list. But I think it deserves a separate page now! So I am promoting my annoyances from being in a Post to being on a Page of their own!

Bill Gates stepped down last week from day to day operations at Microsoft. During the last 10 years or so, several people in the world have developed a love-hate relationship with him - for various reasons, maybe the strong monopoly he has enjoyed for so many years, maybe the riches he has earned, maybe they really see some real unbiased problems with whatever comes out of Redmond - who knows? I was never a Microsoft employee nor do I idolize Bill Gates (although there is nothing wrong in that if I would), so what I say here is my *fair* assessment of the whole “I-hate-Microsoft-and-Bill-Gates” syndrome I have observed in the tech community.

I have gone from being a 100% Windows user on the personal front, with Unix (System V + Solaris) and Windows personality at work, to, still being a, Windows and now Mac OS X person with shades of Linux on the personal front and a Linux+Mac OS X personality at work. I have completely switched over to Mac at work mostly because I wanted a change and I had heard Mac users boasting about Mac all the time and Linux isn’t so much of a day-to-day OS IMHO. I did like Mac for its style, quicker startup/shutdown times and its closeness to Unix. And I do understand, that many of the ideas everyone got used to, in Windows, came from Mac.

Having clearly stated my background, now let me say what I think about Bill Gates..

A person like Bill Gates, who works really hard when the other boys were partying, who thinks about his vision of the world ahead of everyone else, takes up challenges, tackles all kinds of problems, believes in his ideas and opinions, creates something and manages to be successful like no other in the world.. In the process, he brings about an explosive growth in the personal computing world - which I might dare say, is largely responsible for people being able to take interest in the work done by others to compete with Microsoft - such as Linux. It is sad that the world of competition, business and law, taints your success in this manner. And suddenly you become that person who everybody loves to hate. Sure, one would argue that it’s a price you pay when you become the world’s richest man.

I know people have used and liked OS’s such as Unix even before Microsoft. But needless to say, those OS’s never got mainstream. It may be hard to admit, but one has to acknowledge that computing is not and cannot afford to be a privileged activity of a handful of techies. If Microsoft dumbed your ‘oh-so-intriguing’ OS, then so be it. One has to appreciate the fact that it really brought computers to everyone’s doorstep in a way that they could use them without needing to be computer geeks.

I am a big fan of Unix and I have worked with Unix since 1990. Having been a computer programmer for at least 18 years and running, and having done my Bachelors and Masters studies in the same field, I can still see the value that Windows brought to the consumer. Yes, Unix is stable like a rock, has better command line interface, bla bla bla.. but give it to a non-geek, and I have seen it makes no sense to him. And it is not as simple as just having a GUI for it - because most Unix flavors have that interface now. It is simply not as intuitive nor it is easy to understand nor is it usable to that extent.

My point is, I have found faults and stupidities in EVERY OS I have worked with - be it Unix, Linux or Mac OS X. I have seen people ignoring or justifying idiosyncrasies of their favorite OS while being nit-picky with Windows.. What with people arguing about how it is stupid to be able to resize a window using any edge like Windows does, and how it makes *total sense* to be able to resize a window ONLY using ONE CORNER of the window like Mac OS!! I have actually found forums where people say this confidently! I find it completely insane, a bias of highest degree!

One of the main reasons I believe you find more faults in Windows, is because it is more widely used and (hence) abused. You know too much familiarity brings disrespect? Compare that with how many people really understand Mac or Unix or Linux. Put those OS’s in front of those many people, and they will get hacked into and finally ridiculed just like Windows.

I don’t dispute the monopolistic business practices of Microsoft - from Internet Explorer to Windows Media Player - all because they controlled the OS market like no other. And if I was the owner of these competing products, it would make me really mad. But think of it this way, I create an OS and start thinking that it’s my platform, my world and I can do whatever I want in it. This is a typical techie attitude. I will throw in an Internet Explorer in there, throw in a firewall, a media player… and I think I am providing everything that my users can get outside right here in MY environment. Now suddenly the world cries foul! Because my environment, over time, just became this open-to-all platform where I am not allowed to promote my own products. Sure, I can not be naive when I am running a multi-billion dollar business and I should understand these dynamics. I can just see how a techie would work in such a scenario.

Also, my objection is only with the whole bias thing. I think Bill Gates should get the respect he deserves and so does Microsoft. I have cursed Windows many times, when it crashes or if it gets slow, or when it does something really stupid. But I know I have had just as many reasons to do the same with other OS’s I have worked with. In the computer land, I don’t think anybody is a clear winner.

I think Bill Gates left a great legacy at Microsoft - one they should be proud of. A great success story does not happen because the man is one of a kind, it happens because the efforts are one of a kind. Leaving aside the legalities and technicalities, I just think the man wasn’t a gambler, he was a techie and even the possibility of any monopoly was created out of his efforts and not out of luck. He is surely not “Good riddance” as some of the internet pundits have proclaimed.. to say the least.