Sunday, August 19, 2007

Recipe: Shrimp Curry

I loved this curry as soon as I made it. Although I got this recipe from a friend of mine and also from the website (http://www.jamaicans.com/cooking/fish/curryshrimp.shtml), I had customized it to my taste.

So here goes:

Ingridients:

Shrimp: 1 lb
Onion: 1 (large) or 2 med
Tomato: 1 (medium)
Ginger Garlic Paste: 1 tbsp
Olive Oil / Vegetable Oil
Lemon/Lime juice
Curry powder
Red chilli powder
Coconut powder
Fish masala, or kitchen king+pani puri masala

RECIPE

1. Thaw shrimp (1lb) in hot water for 10mins.
2. Add pani puri masala and kitchen king masala (1 tbsp each) along with lemon/lime juice and mix thoroughly. Let it stand for 15-30 mins. Use fish curry masala if available.
3. Meanwhile, finely chop one onion, one tomato and green peppers (if you need a spicy curry).
4. Heat some olive oil in a pan.
5. Add the shrimp mix and fry for 8 mins, or till a light golden brown color is attained.
6. Transfer the fried shrimp into a bowl and let it stand.
7. Fry the chopped onions and tomatoes in olive oil. Add one tbsp of ginger garlic paste and fry till the onions turn golden brown.
8. Add some more masala: 1tbsp each of tandoori masala, garam masala, red chilli powder, turmeric powder, kitchen king masala and pani puri masala.
9. After mixing thoroughly, add the fried shrimp.
10. Let it fry for 8 mins with closed top, constantly stirring every 2-3 mins.
11. Add coconut powder and 1/2 cup water (to get a curry texture). Stir well.
12. Let the curry fry for 8 mins with closed top, stirring occassionally.
13. Walla! Curry's read :)

Thursday, August 9, 2007

The big Mac

Although I am not a techie by profession (not even close), I do like to keep myself abreast with the techno advances. My fav gadget as of now is my iPhone. It seems just perfect. It just draws me to buy an iMac. 

An iMac seems perfect too: a robust computer with just a monitor, keyboard and a mouse, with the CPU built into the monitor. But more than the external looks, the internal OS is what attracts me the most. It looks good, works good, feels good. It must really be good! I do want the upcoming Leopard OS for my desktop, which is currently a HP with AMD 2GHz processor, 2 GB RAM, 160GB HDD and a flat screen LCD monitor. The price tag on this after rebates was a mere 750$. The same configuration on a Mac would be more than 1300$. And the accessories are so damn expensive, even their wired keyboard (redesigned) costs 50$!!!! Most consumers would definitely NOT go for a Mac just because of the price tag. And same here.

So why doesn't Apple release the wonderful OS for the rest of the world just like Microsoft, on license basis? I would buy it even for 200$ and install it on my PC and work on it using some kind of dual boot. Wouldn't that fulfill Job's dream on OSX everywhere? How much could Apple loose in $ just because of following this strategy? Wouldn't they sell ginormous amounts of Mac OS CDs and thereby make profits anyways?

Apart from the apparent financial and licensure analysis that has to be done to carry out Mac OSX CD's out to the market, I don't really know the intent of Apple anymore. Their hardware market would keep increasing, purely pertaining to the fact that in general computer sales increase through years. But will Apple to able to gain a greater marketshare, more than say 10%? I seriously doubt this if they continue to sell just the iMacs without the standalone option for a PC guy to buy the OSX CDs.

And what do business' think about adapting a Mac? Just like Apple is a business, trying to make as much profit as possible, other companies that might potentially adopt Mac are also business' trying to make a profit. Apple isn't willing to sacrifice their capital by selling cheaper Macs or selling standalone OSX software, neither are the companies willing to spend their capital to buy the expensive lineup of Macs for their daily use. I can consider the point that companies would buy Macs (to improve productivity in certain departments like graphics), but they would never EVER replace PCs in this case. I bet that every Mac owner in a company has a PC beside it too!

Apple will have to sellout the OSX software to work on PCs in the near future to take some real marketshare from Windows. Otherwise, Apple will just keep doing what it's doing right now: create newer Macs, that will just be the sidekicks of iPods (because many people today are choosing a Mac just because they like their iPod/iPhone so much).

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Supersonic

I need to be myself
I can't be no one else
I'm feeling supersonic
Give me gin and tonic
You can have it all but how much do you want it?
You make me laugh
Give me your autograph
Can I ride with you in your B.M.W ?
You can sail with me in my yellow submarine

You need to find out
'Cos no one's gonna tell you what I'm on about
You need to find a way for what you want to say
But before tomorrow

'Cos my friend said he'd take you home
He sits in a corner all alone
He lives under a waterfall
No body can see him
No body can ever hear him call

-Oasis

Now that's what my blog's all about: pure "supersonic" B.S.