Veera's Veg Biriyani

Vegetables
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1/2 cup of carrots
1/2 cup of beans beans
1 cup of cauliflower florets
1/4 cup of paes
1/2 cup of potatoes
1 big size onion sliced
1 tomato

To make paste
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1) Mint leaves - 10-15
2) Seeragam - 2 teaspoon
3) Sombu - 3 teasspoon
4) 20 black peppers
5) 1 inch ginger
6) 8 shallots garlic
7) 5 cashews
8) 6 spoons of coriander seeds
9) 5 green chillies

Rinse and Soak Biriyani Rice
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1) Wash rice
2) Soak 2 cups of rice in 3.5 cups of water for exactly 20 mins using timer (important step)
(time it so that vegetables should be cooked and ready by the time 20 mins of soaking is over)
(remaining half cup can be coconut milk or plain milk)

To Saute
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1. Add 2 spoons oil or ghee
2. Add 2-3 cloves (krambu)
3. Add 2 cardomon (elakai)
4. Add Pattai
5. Add 5 cashew
6. Add onion until brown
7. Add turmeric
8. Add sliced tomato and 4-5 leaves of mint
9. Saute for 4 mins
10. Add paste in lowered heat
11. Add Carrot, beans, potato (add needed salt)
12. Saute for 5-7 mins
13. Add 2-3 scoops of curd
14. Add cauli flower and peas
15. Saute for another 5 mins
16. Tase if salt is enough

Pressure cook biriyani (layering method)
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1) Apply 1 spoon of ghee in the botton of the cooker
2) Put half of the cooked vegetables and gravy
3) Put half of the rice
4) Put remaining half of the vegetables and gravy
5) Put remaining rice and the water
6) Pour half cup of coconut milk or plain milk
7) Close the cooker and set timer for 10 mins and switch off the stove exactly after 10 mins.
(do not put the cooker weight)

Hot biriyani is ready to server now.

PMI Conference 2012 - Chennai

Initially, I was bit hesitant to go since I was not sure what kind of value I would get by sacrificing almost 1 and half day. But then, after attending, I felt it was value for money and time. I liked the speech by a representative of dubbahwalahs, Kumar - GM Finance, Chennai Metro, Vittal Raj, an auditor, CTO of CTS and few others. I had a chance to meet Lakshmi Narayanan G, my ex-Colleague at Ramco systems. He explained briefly on what he is doing in his startup.

Business with Latin America

For the first time, I attended the Seminar on 'India and Latin America - Augmenting Synergies in the post-crisis world'. I got an invitation from the Indian ambassador for Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay Mr.R.Viswanathan, who was fondly called by the entrepreneurs, CII, Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of External Affairs as 'One Man Army of Latin America' as he has passion for Latin America to increase the trade between two regions (India and LatAm). I could see the meaning of this in him directly. It was very inspiring to watch him. There was a big queue of people who are already into the business waiting to talk to him to get his advice on various things. Mr. Viswanathan showcased one MSME entrepreneur (Ratnakumar) from Coimbatore who is doing business with LatAm region. I could see the happiness in the face of Ratnakumar and his family. I am sure Mr.Viswanathan will be able to inspire and motivate more people and take the trade volume and reach the targets earlier than planned. It was also very interesting to see the Columbian Ambassador Mr. Alejandro Pelaez trying to market for doing trade with his country. "You can come to me for any kind of help in doing business with Columbia and knowing the tax details etc free of cost. I am available always for you entrepreneurs. Take adavantage of me." These are the exact words Mr. Alejandro used to lure the entrepreneurs. Currently, India is doing $16 billion trade with LatAm and targetting to reach $30 billion by 2012 while China is already doing business worth $140 billion with LatAm. Come on India, we can do it and beat China!!

Business in the name of Olympiad

There were two circulars from my son's school asking for consent letter for participating in the computer science and science olympiad. (He is in standard two). Just like most of the parents, we simply consented for his participation each costing around Rs.150. He was also given a text book and work book by both the olympiads. We have been doing this for the second year and it is going to continue till he reached standard twelve. I googled for some of the related terms and figured out that there is only one olympiad which is international and supported by indian government which also yields good amount of scholarships internationally and nationally. All other olympiad seems to be misnomer and they are all purely business though kids will benefit learning cumputer science basics at the early age (may be too much at the age of 6 and 7). When I called up the founder of the olympiads 'International informatics olympiad' and 'Science olympiad foundation', I realized that they mean purely business. Following two links are the ones related to the international olympiad.
(1) http://olympiads.hbcse.tifr.res.in/subjects/mathematics/stages
(2) http://www.nbhm.dae.gov.in/about.html
To cinfirm my findings, I called up Professor K.N. Ranganathan (9600082365) who is the regional coordinator of the Maths Olympiad. He said that my findings are correct and olympiad word is not registered by any government or international body. So, it is not possible to control the wrong usage by various companies who are doing good business with the term 'Olympiad'.
Original Olympiad which is supported by Government has 6 subjects. They are Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Astronomy and Junior Science. Concept of this is to identify the best brains and give them the scholoarships. Students who are in XI and XII can take up this exam at regional level and move on to national level and 6 toppers from each country will be sent for the international level competition. Beware of Olympiad!!!!!!!!!

e-Governance - It wowed me.

Yes. Google is a great resource for every human being who knows to use computers. (My kid googles if he wants to know about anything. He is only 7 years old). But, when we want the authentic source of information, we really need to know who has the authority to give that authentic source and we should know the website of that authority. Recent days, I have been wanting to know many things for which Indian government is tha authority. I used http://www.india.gov.in/ to get to the authentic information. For ex, I wanted to know if the government has announced the 2010 central government holidays. I could locate that in few seconds. There are lots of information related to various minitries. All the required details are organized based on the ministry. If you start using the government websites, you will get used to the ministries where you can find what information. Another day, I wanted to know how many assembly seats are there in each state, I could get it from the same site. All latest tax related details, tender details and what not. I felt yes, we are really getting better in India. There may be still issues and flaws, but we are getting there.

World Statistics

Interesting website with world statistics on many things http://www.worldometers.info/.

Simple math on the age of mankind?

As per US Census Bureau, as of now, there are 6,775,377,28 people in the world. Assume we grew at the rate of 0.5% every year, there would have been only 5 people before 4217 years. Does it sound like a reasonable number? Is there anyway, we can get some material which has some proof to believe that mankind existed before 'y' years.

Calm and composed Dhoni

I knew that India would loose the match yesterday (2nd ODI against WI). It was 82/8 in 22 overs . But, Dhoni and RP singh put up a great show and frustrated WI bowlers by batting till 48 overs with a partnership of 101 runs. I thought RP singh would get out in few minutes and I would go to sleep. Man, RP simply listened to Dhoni and played the second fiddle role perfectly and he had faced 75 balls. Though we lost, Dhoni proved to be a great leader and that would have taught the Indian team a great lesson. May be this should be called as T20->T50 phobia wherein people find it tought to accustom to the T50 after playing T20 for 3 months.