Get-together ... a complete success !!!

As I mentioned in my previous post, we had been planning on organising a get-together (potluck sort of) for MS (Microsoft) Indians from Bombay (Mumbai :) ) since a week now ... It was today @ 6 pm .. I just came back from there ... It was a huge huge success !! I had so much fun !!!



The menu included 'Misal Pav', 'Vada Pav', 'Kande Pohe', Dhokala' & 'Kadak Cutting Chai' ... Yes ! You missed it :P .. It was sooo awesome ! I could not believe the enthusiasm everyone showed ... 70 ppl had RSVPed .. Out of them, 42 showed up for the event ... And what a potluck !! ... man ! 5 different types of misal, 3 different types of Wadas .. 4 different Kande Pohe & 2 different dhokalas ... more than enough food for 42 ppl !! It was a feast really !! :) ...


The MS cafe where we had arranged this get-together, had a speaker system .. so we played Hindi/ Marathi/ Pop music in the background while we enjoyed the food ! And then after the dinner, we all sang songs !! well ... not only songs and parodies of songs but also old advertizements (remember BTex, Humara Bajaj ads & Mile Sur Mera Tumhaara ?? ) Yes !! The best thing was though we were all meeting each other for the first time, we gelled with each other sooo well !! There was no awkwardness .. no hesitations .. It was just fantastic ... The group had bachelors, families, families with kids ... everyone really ! And still it was never a boring party at any point !!

(Yep ! Thats me in Kurta ! :) )

(Song Session - post dinner)

Can you believe this whole thing started with a single email from a girl craving for Misal pav !! Within a short preparation time span of merely a week, this event turned out to be sooo good !! Unbelievable !! I am soo happy for being able to organize such an event ... Made lott of new friends, acquaintances .. Hopefully this will continue & we will keep meeting each other regularly ... we planned to arrange something of this sort for Ganesh festival as well .. so lets see how that goes .. I am already looking forward to that one ..

Project open-the-tight-lid !

Well, day before yesterday I bought this 'Gorkari' pickle from 'Mayuri' - Indian grocery store. (SImilar to the one shown in the image) I really really like this achar ... its perfect ! As the name suggests its from Kairi (Raw Mango) and its Gor (sweet)... Just the right one for me !

So anyway, last two days, I was struggling to open the lid of the bottle. Every meal, I would try to open it for a couple of minutes and afterwards feel too hungry to try further .. but tonight I came home and decided that whatever happens, I am gonna open this damn lid today ! I think I started working on this open-the-tight-lid project at night around 9-ish. Tried it every possible way - with hands, with knife, with spoon ... everything ! But by 9.30 all I had was a few red-ish marks on my hands .. nothing else ! Ok, so the software engineer in me woke up and he thought that many people must have had this problem before and a few might have put up a better solution online ! who knows ! So he went and looked up on google, 'open a tight lid' and guess what ... as usual a few hits showed up ! a few suggested that you need to tie a rubber band around it and give yourself better grip and hence friction ! Well, I didnt have rubber but I had tried similar ways and they had not worked ... so I ignored that one ! The other remedy was to use a nutcracker ! Well, I didnt have that one either ! Apart from these two things, basically there werent any releavent results ! ... My roommate said, lets take the bottle to the same Indian store and get it opened from them ! But I was not ready to accept defeat just like that ... defeated by a lid ??? shame on you I said to myself !

So the frurstrated software engineer gave one last push on the lid with all the strength and this time it opened !! Around 10 O'clock ... it opened !! Can you imagine ? 1 hr wasted on opening one damn lid !!! But I was sooo damn happy, as if I had climbed mount everest !! I jumped in joy ... did bhangda !! what not ... it was my victory !! yes ! victory over a stubborn non-opening lid !! It meant more than anything at that point ...

Setting goals for yourself and achieving them gives hell lot of pleasure ... hai na ?