Show me the money!!

So, I checked my bank balance today. And of course I have no money. No seriously. Every time I go to the ATM, I'm filled with dread :D If I add up all the numbers in my head, it sounds atrocious, the amount of money I've spent. At first, when the guy who'd gone for the same exchange last year had told me the amount of money I should expect to spend, I'd laughed. I was so sure I could live in less than that. But now, I know what he meant :D

This post is more about how I've spent my money. Very happily I should tell you. Richmond Row, Loblaws and Starbucks stole all my money! Every time I go grocery shopping, I start thinking about recipes, and I end up buying more than my share of extra peppercorn goat cheese or Chorizo sausage! I thought I'd be a lazy cook and just cook dal rice or vegetables and sandwiches every day. As we all know, that is emphatically not the case! I'm taking full advantage of the fact that I get such different ingredients here, and Loblaws (my closest grocery store) is taking advantage of my debit card. But then, when I cook up some stuffed mushrooms or some chicken stir fry, I feel great! Cooking is indeed a joy!

Eating!! After a couple of months of Jack's and Ceeps overdose, it was time to explore good food in London (ON). And you know, it hasn't really disappointed me! Some excellent European food (I don't know if the Europeans agree with me :D ) exists in places like Garlics, Bertoldi's and the Tasting Room. Sugar freaks like me will love London too- Marble Slab and Cold Stone Creamery, Jack Astor's (the world's smallest brownie is amazing), Cafe One (Oreo Brownie Cheesecake) and the latest I discovered- Hey, Cupcake! A small stand-alone bakery that only serves cupcakes and gourmet cookies, Stefania, Therese and I had a great hour or so eating huge delicious cupcakes and great coffee. Yum! Everywhere I've gone, I've never underestimated the importance of food in travel. A good meal can make any crappy day suddenly better! More than Chemical Engineering, my knowledge of food has grown exponentially here :)

The fact that I'm on my fourth cup of coffee for the day demonstrates how I've spent my money on caffeine over the past four months. Oh, and I owe Greyhound some credit for the dents in my bank balance too! Overall, I may have spent ridiculous amounts of money in Canada, but I'm a richer person than the one who arrived here four months ago :)

In the end, we all fruit!

Anyone who's seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding will remember this line at the end of the movie, where the obsessively Greek dad finally accepts that people are similar (and acceptable) irrespective of where they come from. Over the past four months, I only find myself agreeing with him.

As an exchange student, I've spent my fair share of time discussing cultural differences, having a million conversations that begin with "So how do you say this in (insert language)..?" But once you get past all of that, once you start discussing childhoods, families and lives, you start connecting with people. I'm the last one to seek friends exactly like me; however, we all love our parents, our hometowns, our siblings. All of us have an idea of where we want to go and none of how to get there. Our hopes and dreams may differ in details; but when I start talking about them, I can see that the eyes of my friends light up too. I grew up in Pune, but with the same family values as Stefania. I may be an engineer, but I have political views I can discuss with Therese. Cultural differences start conversations; it is the food, drink, Disney movies, boys, music, philosophy and embarrassing stories that sustain friendships.

I love the differences between our countries! And at the same time, I celebrate the similarities. It's a mix of the two that makes study nights very unproductive because of the long talks. I don't care though. It's totally worth it! This is what exchange is about :)

Jingle Bell rock!

Holiday season is here! Red and green lights everywhere :)

I think I'm mentally compensating for the fact that I missed Diwali this year by attaching more importance to Christmas and Thanksgiving here. The holiday season officially begins after American Thanksgiving (which was on the weekend of 24th and 25th November) and all the malls, lawns were lit up! Even our hospital has a huge decked up tree. Either I'm imagining it, or the general mood is really upbeat. The radio stations are playing Christmas specials: I find myself wanting to curl up with a book and mug of white chocolate! And I'm not even here for Christmas :( But then, Christmas is a time for family, and irrespective of location, I'm happy I'll be spending it with mine :)

Apart from missing Diwali, which is pretty much official Indian holiday season, there are couple of other things that have put me in a holiday mood. Last weekend, I crossed the border to spend Thanksgiving in Troy, MI. A family friend lives there, and I had a great weekend - lots of turkey, cosy recliners and two adorable bitches. I've met Sidney before - she ate all my Belgian chocolates three years ago, and was fine (dogs are NOT supposed to eat chocolate) but Hops was new for me, and very excited to meet a new person. The malls played Christmas tunes (I remember getting sick of them three years ago, because that's all they play for about two months) I had amazing Ghirardelli hot chocolate and there was pumpkin pie, date coffee cake and rum cake in the house, at the same time :D I was quite sad to leave the warmth of the house and travel back to London for pretty much the last time. But I met Rohit in Windsor twice :)

It snowed, finally!! I'm not a huge fan of the snow (I dread trudging through it to 8:30 class :D) but I woke up one morning, and it was all white and oh so pretty! It wasn't terribly cold either, about 0 or -1, so it was alright to walk around taking photos :) Also, last evening, Shruti and I attended Global Cafe. Global Cafe is this thing every other thursday for international and local students to mingle and have coffee with yum cookies. So the deal with this whole international student shindig is that I'm slightly tired of meeting new people and just discussing how exotic Indians are. Most of my close international friends know that by now :P Hence we'd never gone to Global Cafe till now. But this week's Global Cafe had us decorating gingerbread houses! Now, that was a great way to make a few new friends :) We obviously made the prettiest house, with cinnamon roll bushes and sparkly trees. The music for yesterday's Cafe was, of course, Let it snow and Rocking around the Christmas Tree! Also, I got some food from home last evening! No wonder I'm in a good mood!

Since Thanksgiving was just last weekend, I'm going to list a few things I'm thankful for, specifically for this Canadian semester-

1. My friends here- Shruti, Pooja and Kanu for making me not miss India, and Therese, Stefania and everyone else in Lambton for making this a truly international experience :)

2. Anshul Bhide, Nandan Gokhale and Gauri Joshi - for being in my life :)

3. Radio here- According to me, listening to the local radio makes you feel like part of the city (London is hardly a city) and BOB fm plays great music

4. Food

5. Starbucks Gingerbread Latte and Peppermint Mocha - This is the holiday spirit again

6. the Ottawa people :)

7. Megabus - made travelling everywhere more comfortable and affordable

8. Western Libraries

And that's all I can think of right now. Happy Holidays to everyone :)

Gimme the white hat!

Fooooood. Not so much a passion than a way of life. All my greatest memories seem to have food linked to them. Growing up, I was a nitpicky eater, I admit it. I used to hate ghee (still do), anything that looked gooey or  mushy or not made of chocolate. But I still loved eating. My mom will always tell stories of how I ate 20 jalebis once, or how I finished off all the besan ke laddoo before Diwali. I spent most of my money on eating out; there's hardly a place in Pune that serves food and I haven't tasted it.

However, till this September, it was only about the eating. But moving 3000 miles away (that's just a number, I have no idea how far Canada is from India) does put you in new situations. Here I was, September 7th, in an apartment with a kitchen, some cooking apparatus, masaale and scant knowledge of how to make dal-rice. It took me a total of three days of eating all my meals outside to realize that hell, I have to cook! Thereby followed grocery shopping, chopping, measurement and internet recipe searches. Suddenly, cooking was fun! I love it! And not in a I'm-too-bored-and-broke-to-eat-out way (that too, slightly) but genuinely. There is some magic in taking a bunch of things from your refrigerator and making something entirely tasty out of them! It took some time to get the proportions of water and salt right, and I'm still not great with the salt, but I can safely say that I can satisfactorily feed myself everyday, along with a couple of people if necessary. Not to brag, but I can make great chicken curry from scratch now :D It is possibly the biggest achievement of my semester here; a year ago, if anyone had told me I would be able to cook, the response would have been a lot of laughter and disbelief. I now look forward to my grocery visits, checking the deli section for the meat I'd want to cook with this week, and the cheeses I'd like to have at home. Till now, herbed goat cheese is my favourite to work with: not too fatty, yet great taste. Also, I don't have a microwave here. So heating things up is almost as much effort as cooking every time. Hence I cook. :P The fact that I'm here precludes me from owning a handmixer and the like, hence baking is a little far off, but I'll make anything else. I've even become a regular on epicurious.com! And thanks to my sister, I have a wonderful book about Italian cooking :) In principle, I'm against fast and/or frozen food, so I even make my own pasta sauce!

I've been fortunate that I've met fellow foodies here :) Everyone loves Indian food so during Diwali we hosted our own little Indian food night :) breaking all norms, we cooked Chicken of course :D The spices did give our foreign friends some heat, but I'm happy to say that they loved it :) And in Montreal, the amount of great food I've eaten shows in my weight :D

As you can see, I've become addicted to cooking. So much so that when I'm bored, I cook :P As a result, my refrigerator currently overflows. :D I don't know how long this obsession will last (I have been known to get bored of things pretty quickly) but I have a feeling this will stick. If I gave up the noble pursuit of engineering, I think that's what I'd do. Besides writing of course. Makes me sound like Eat Pray Love. And cooler than an engineer.

You can't be unhappy as long as there is good food on your table.

:)

Of friendship, bunkbeds and cheesecake!

"Prachi, we've eaten way too much. We can't have dessert."

"Anisha, we can't have individual dessert."

"You're right! So do you want to split one between everyone?"

"Let's split it between both of us."

"Yay!! I want this one!"

This sort of dialogue repeated itself several times over a weekend of food, friends and what currently seems like a million photos on facebook! Perhaps it's time to write about the weekend in a city I was told is a must on any visit to Canada- Montreal, QC! A city once known to me only as the home of the Canadian Grand Prix, I think now of it with fond memories. But then, I get ahead of myself.

The Montreal plan was atleast two months in the making; Anisha and I had been fixing dates since we left Toronto Orientation. So when the pseudo French weekend finally arrived, we were quite excited! (our bbm statuses bear witness to that) A momentous 8 hour journey of Greyhound, Megabus and STM (Montreal Metro) later, we were at Bonaventure, where Anisha, Rashida and Manoti met us. Hugging ensued :P Also, Shruti had succeeded in teaching Therese (origin:Sweden) a few chosen swearwords. Hence, Manoti was greeted as "Moti R****" by a white person. (no racism intended) :D

It was 11 pm by the time we got to our first meal in Montreal (trust me, the food was very important) and thankfully, downtown is awake till 4 am (unlike most of North America). We headed to a trattoria (of course) and ordered large amounts of excellent food. We were eating for about two hours, at the end of which the aforementioned dessert banter occurred.

Saturday, we headed to old Montreal, after a hearty brunch obviously. Not very old compared to Indian standards (just about 300 years), but you could see a marked boundary where glass and shiny were replaced by facades and cobblestones. The original BMO building, the Courts and the Notre Dame! I know, not the original, but magnificent nonetheless. I left most of the pretty building photography to the dhatting camera (Nikita) so most of my photos are food and funny people :D The sky was overcast and the air was chilly, but nothing stopped us from wonderful and immature walks along the waterfront. I say immature because there were performances of "There was a girl" and "Rin tin tin" along the way, as well as very sincere efforts to get jumping photos :P Across the water, we saw an extremely odd structure, something that looked like someone had stacked LEGO blocks with gaps in the middle. Later of course i found out that was Habitat 67. Talk about uninformed!

It was 8 pm by the time we got to the next meal: Pino! I haven't had too much canneloni in my life, but this was fabulous! I have a thing for European food. Or food in general.

And to top it all, for dessert, we had Bailey's Irish Cream Cheesecake. Yes, I kid you not. It was unbelievable. Absolutely.

I must say, it looked like everyone was going to drop dead by 10 pm. Everyone was tired, and with much effort we got the bracelets for this party at Altitude 737. The surprise arrival of Anisha's roommate though, spurred her (and as a result, us) up, and in full enthusiasm we dressed up for a party we knew not much about. When we finally got there, it was about midnight and the place was ALIVE! First of all, the club was on like the 37th or 50th or some floor like that. Then, it had a huge terrace which opened out into a view of Montreal. I called it "the very awesome place". The music was great and we danced for almost three hours straight. The atmosphere got everyone high! They played traditional party, salsa, hip hop and even Mundiyan :D And no grinding :D The very end was marred by the wallet incidents, but Ruchi and Nikita took it in good spirit :) <3

The night went on till almost 6 am, and finally we were out and ready by about 10 30 on Sunday morning. A steaming hot chocolate and some delicious blueberry cheesecake later (Anisha still owes me some of that) later, Olympic stadium! Very touristy that we were, we went up the tower, some people went to the Biodome while a few others went to the Bubble (Biosphere). The view from the top of the Tower was beautiful; we had seen Montreal by night, and now by day. We had great plans of reaching the Bubble after that, but we just went to a very cool Art Cafe and chilled instead. Chilling is awesome, as was the coffee, croissant and whatever Rashida had. Delectable.

The weekend was short, but great, to say the least. It was perfectly relaxed and much needed. Splendid company, a feast for the eyes, stomach and brain and the best Canadian weekend I've had. I love all you guys <3

Let the randomness and joy of travel continue! :)

Something must be done, he said,

Something I can be proud of in retrospect,

I do not need the admiration of others

Just need to do something worth respect.

I do not know what I cannot specify why,

My self esteem needs to go from small to tall;

In this age of awards, top 10s and prizes,

It is my own opinion that matters most of all.

In this search, this need to do something worthwhile,

I will find what I want and who I am;

I will never claim to be complete,

But in my eyes, I will be a better man.

There is no sleep here

Tis true. College = no sleep. Let me give you an example-

Pooja and I were done gymming (at 11 pm), and both of us knew there is a lot of work (studying/assignments) at home to do, yet both of us along with Kanu sat in Spoke and finished a plate of Nacho Fries. Nacho fries are the only way I like french fries- under lots of sour cream and salsa :D The night doesn't end here. We come back to Pooja's place and since it's raining outside, decide to have chai :D Now finally at 2 am, I am back home, and all set to begin studying for tomorrow morning's Staged Operations quiz. As I said, sleep has no place here :)