Oops I dropped my spoon!

The traditional south Indian cuisine consists of food placed on a cut banana leaf and people generally have their meals sitting on the ground and eating the food with their Hands.



To this day, most people even at offices and homes eat with their hands, though the banana leaves are gone. Only really formal and city bred folk use spoons and even then, forks and knives are just not needed for our diet which mainly consists of rice.

As I moved to Canada, the difference in dining table etiquette did hit me but not to a great extent. I was constantly in a student community and the university free food was generally pizza which we conveniently gobbled up with our hands. I mostly visited Indian/Thai restaurants and my student budget barely allowed me to visit the posh places. Basically I never cared much about table manners of the western world and conveniently cruised through life without paying great attention to it.



Then I came to the Netherlands. Enter - Formal dinners, office colleagues, people eating pizza with fork and knife situations. God, was I in a mess. The first formal dinner at TU/e will perhaps haunt me for few years. I was as it is nervous, as I always am in such formal places and I was new to the place and barely knew anybody. I was dreading how I was to get through the night, when they served me with spaghetti. I nervously announced that I am not particularly handy with the knife and fork. That perhaps was not the smartest thing to do. I could instantly feel all the eyes on me. My Italian colleague kindly explained to me how one is supposed to tame the wild noodly things. Well, all I can say is that I somehow survived.

The European way I believe is to have the fork in the left hand, the knife in the right and use the left hand to actually eat.I am not so strong with my left hand so I generally do a zig-zag of cutting with the knife on my right and fork on the left and then place the knife down and switch the fork back to the right to eat. Phew! Why does it have to be so complicated? I lose my appetite in the tension of switching it the right way without looking too awkward. With time, I am getting better. But I still have a long way to go to eat a formal dinner without actually thinking about it.

But for heaven sake, at least eat the pizza with your hands. Trust me, it tastes much better that way! :)

P.S - Obviously I am no big artist. But my feeble attempt at cartooning..:)

Picture Courtesy - http://www.tourismofkerala.com

Unexpected friend

I was traveling to Amsterdam to meet a friend last Saturday. It is almost embarrassing to admit that I have not traveled on my own on the trains here. When ever I travel to an unknown place I make sure to ask for directions a dozen times and even then I get lost! :D

This time, after asking the service desk people at the railway station in Eindhoven and one of the officer's at the platform about the next train, as I was sitting and waiting for the train I yet again had the compulsion to ask the person sitting next to me if I was at the right place. This Portuguese girl probably sensed I was having travel jitters and politely said she was going to Amsterdam as well and she would tell me when to board which train.

And thats how it began. We boarded the train together and ended up talking as if we had known each other since kids :). It is such a weird feeling to suddenly start talking to a literal stranger especially since I never do it. She seemed to have traveled all over Europe and motivated me to travel as well. We talked, giggled and gossiped non stop on every possible random topic and we complained a lot about the Dutch..hehe..:). The train that day was taking a longer route because of construction work and it ended up taking almost double the time it was supposed to take. I was losing hope that my friend would be waiting for me at the station as I was almost an hour late! My Portuguese friend waited with me for a while and she even suggested that I should come with her to look around Amsterdam. But I decided to stick around for some more time. We shared our contact details and split up.

In the end I did meet my friend who had almost given up and was just about to leave. We walked around the streets of Amsterdam, had dinner at the "Gandhi" restaurant and then I came back home.

A couple of pictures I took while in Amsterdam -




On my way back, I actually did get lost a bit, but some how managed to find my way home. :).

Iran - what does the future hold?

As I meet people from different countries I begin to understand their culture and relate to them in a better way. As a Master's student in Canada, I interacted with several Persians in my department. I have immense respect for their sense of togetherness and camaraderie, and the fierce love that they have for their homeland.

The Iranian elections were held on June 12, with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir-Hossein Mousavi being the fore runners. With 2/3rd of the population being under 30, ready for a radical change and after the entire world saw the antics of the former president Ahmadinejad, it seemed quite obvious who the next president would be. But apparently not. Ahmedinejad won the elections with a 63% majority. With their religious Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declaring the elections to be fair, the peaceful protests have turned into a revolution of sorts. The protests run so wide and deep that now no body knows who is on whose side.

What really amazes me is the involvement of the people and their struggle for their fundamental right - to express themselves freely and get a fair vote. Persians from home and all around the world are making sure that the world hears their voice this time. With severe restrictions on journalists, the people themselves are reporting on the situation through Facebook, Twitter and the like, putting their lives in peril in return. I remember a Persian lab mate explain to me how the Iranians living abroad operate in unity and attack websites together to bring severs down. Incredible! What was even more impressive to me was the sheer courage of the young women who are a part of the protests.

I don't know what the future holds for them, but the ball has been set in motion; when it will stop and where it will stop remains to be seen.

Picture Courtesy - http://www.latimes.com