What inspires you?

Although I do play the occasional freecell or websudoku at work (are you smirking? ok...not so occasional then), I do consider myself a sincere worker. But my boss, believe it or not never seems to do anything else except work and right when I am at the crucial moment of filling in the last cell in sudoku, 'PING' comes an email (well...that could be the sound of my guilty conscience as well) from the boss, with the link to the interesting idea that I didn't have the misfortune to think about.

I absolutely revere my boss. Both back in India and here I have had the good fortune to work with some freakishly intelligent people. They think two steps ahead of you, have the most crazy ideas that, amazingly work and are...well at least for the most part-humble.

So last week when I got a chance to do an experiment with him (he usually is so busy that it is difficult to get him down to the lab) I jumped for joy. He thinks on his feet and to watch him work is like watching a form of art taking shape. According to him, doing an experiment is not the most important part, but rather thinking how to do it, is. And this guy just thinks of everything humanly possible that could go wrong and, surprise,surprise comes up with an answer....

I think it would suffice to say that he definitely inspires me to look forward to going back to work everyday. And for the most part keeps me away from too much orkutting, blogging, sudokuing and any other google product designed with the sole intent of testing your concentration at work.

I am humbled

I was never great shakes at cooking (I know, I know.... the S(outh) I(ndian) M(arriageability) index just slid down several notches). Have I mentioned that I am pretty impatient (probably several times) as well? Anything that takes longer than 5 whole minutes to accomplish, sorely tests me. That combination does not bode well in a south Indian kitchen.

So, as a self-improvement project I decided to make 'dosa' a couple of weekends ago (for those who have absolutely no idea what a dosa is, I suggest you read this ). The most difficult part is making the batter. Since I was doing this the first time in my life, I thought I will make it easier on myself. So I went to the Indian store and purchased a jar of ready-made, refrigerated dosa mix.

Technically, the most difficult part was over (but little did I know, that in another couple of hours I would be doubting the very validity of my PhD). I started by testing the consistency of the batter and it didn't feel at all like what Mom had in her kitchen. I steadied my wildly thumping heart and said to myself 'It's not a big deal, I'll just add some water'- basic dilution, bring down the molarity and so forth, whipped it a little and began making the first dosa (for someone who can whip up recipes for making nanostructured metal oxides, this was a totally new realm). After about five minutes of panicked praying, it remained a resolute whitish shade of yellow on the pan, shriveled up a little around the edges and looked as unlike a dosa as ever. I assured myself saying 'It should to be like this, this is your first time'. Several tense minutes and 4 dosas later, I realized I simply was not built for this. By this time, I was feeling pretty hungry, and I didn't even have my regular lunch standby (cereal) at home. Feeling desperate, I steeled myself, settled down on soft ground (what if I took a bite and keeled right over) and tasted my first dosa. Well, the truth was that it didn't taste that bad but the texture was all wrong (felt more like cardboard). Thankfully I belong to that category of people who even though can't cook well, are not blessed with that epicurean love for food. I didn't have the patience to do a complete failure analysis and calling Mom at that time meant probably a few well chosen words about the time of day. So I decided to wait it out and in the meantime finished up the rest of my handiwork while wondering whether there was a specific gene that bestowed you with chef-like cooking abilities. I mean, come on, my mother is a Doctor, she sings, dances, is an amazing cook. If even one of those nanometer sized nucleic acids had transferred to me, I would not have this blog entry.

Anyways, I called my mom the next day, and she did have a few well-chosen words for me, about how I never hung out in the kitchen and all, but I carefully steered the conversation to the problem at hand, laid out the facts and asked her what had gone wrong. "The batter must not have had enough 'venthayam', pat came the answer. Apparently that is the stuff that makes the dosa all soft and unlike cardboard. Who knew?

I could now go back to blaming the batter, curse the Indian store heartily, and not worry about the genes that were still dormant in me. I mean I am only 26, still plenty of time left right?