On My Plate : Vikram Doctor

Sample these few juicy lines: This one protests about buffaloes being overlooked in favour of cows. Buffalo milk is the source of mozarella cheese. And inspite of having so many buffaloes in India, we are still importing from Italy. Dhikkaar!

I believe in buffaloes. Not so much in their existence, since they do a good job of existing whether or not anyone believes in them, but in their importance. I have lamented in the past in ET the prejudice that so many Indians, sadly even Mahatma Gandhi, have had for cows over buffaloes. The cultural and religious reasons usually advanced for this strike me as dubious , if not downright racist (or speciesist).

And then taste this, a narrative on the consumption of the humble banana in Germany (East, West and Unified):

Fruit at least was one thing they could buy, and that’s probably why so many bananas were bought in those first days. East Germans were soon eating double the amount of bananas than West Germans – whose consumption was already the highest in the EU. But bananas would also feature as the realities of reunification sunk in. West Germans patronisingly called East Germans ‘Bananen’, while Easterners accused the Westerners of practising patronising banana politics – one former Communist leader accused West German parties of handing out free bananas to lure voters in the 1990 elections.

Now, when one writes about food, it does not have to be about recipes or about cooking. It has to be about the place in culture and to use a Hindi word in the zahan of people. Finally, after much pleading, we have this blog by Vikram Doctor called On My Plate. Immediate bookmarking, adding RSS feeds to Google Reader, etc etc is recommended. And I believe Doc doesn’t mind the odd comment here and there, especially if there is a lead to another topic on food.

The i-blog from the i-become initiative

For last two years, I have been part of the development team of the i-become initiative. We are almost there and as part of the service have launched the i-blog. This blog will do three main tasks

1. Update all about activities and development of the i-become products and services.

2. Talk a little more about the i-become philosophy and initiative.

3. Highlight interesting research, writings and events around the world that relate to us.

For the moment, this blog will have two authors, Prasad and myself

You can also follow the @i_become twitter stream for latest updates.

Electoral Malpractices – 2008 Weblog Awards

Amit Varma who writes the highly popular India Uncut blog was nominated in two categories – Best Political Coverage and Best Asian Blog. 

In the Best Political Coverage category, there was FiveThirtyEight which won 56% of the 44,000+ votes that were polled. India Uncut picked up 1.6%, a decent show considering the Amit did not fancy his chances too much.

However, in the Best Asian Blog, there was a scandal. Till Sunday night, India Uncut was leading by at least 10 percentage points. However, as Amit narrates…

Regular voters would no doubt have noted that the healthy lead I’ve held from the start has now vanished. The manner in which this has happened—most of it disappeared in a two-hour spell a few hours ago—is befuddling, and Deepak Iyer points me to this message board entry that might provide some clues. I have no idea if cheating is actually going on, and will not make that assumption about anyone unless proof is there. That said, I am also taking the numbers up there right now with a pinch of salt.

The concerned blog was the Burmese blog Ashin Mettacara. It was later found that a number of votes were illegal – using a technique called “rinse and repeat“. This allows for multiple votes to be sent from the same machine inspite of the restrictions on the same. Over 500 votes were found to be illegal (and 60 votes of Amit as well)

In the end, Amit lost out by a mere 192 votes out of the 8,000+ polled.  The blog awards committee adjusted the votes. However, as the administrator says, both blog authors never wished for such methods to be used. They may have been some enthusiastic Burmese soul rallying round Ashin’s war cry to unify all Burmese around his cause. (with Obama as the copywriter).

Am sure, Amit, the Stoic that he is, will find a chin to take the loss.

1000 views

My WordPress version of my blog has now crossed the 1000 views mark. So a cause to celebrate in the knowledge that there are a few out there who find joy in my ramblings. Some interesting trivia about my blog (interesting from my point of view)

The three most popular posts as of today are

1. Harihareshwar & Shrivardhan: This was a post I had done on my blog when it was on Blogger. This is a log of my own trip to these places on the Konkan coast.

2. Lalbaghcha Raja: This was a post I made following a visit to the mandap. Obviously with the ten day Ganpati festival, this proved quite popular

3. Tied – Creating a revolution with vegetables and my memories of raan: The first one is on the famous story of Kaushalendra, an IIMA guy who started a vegetable retailing model using a refrigerated cart in Patna. The latter was my recollection of a dinner at Karim’s (the memories being triggered by a post on Jenny & Dave’s Our Delhi Struggle)

I wish to thank all you came and saw and read my posts. Please keep coming.

Nadal loses… but still wins

Some excerpts from Nadal’s last post on his blog on TimesOnline. For the record, Nadal lost to Andy Murray in a match that was interrupted by rain and was played over two days in different courts.

Andy played better than me both yesterday and today and he deserved to win. No excuses, no complaints.

Keeping it straight and simple. 

[...]

Tomorrow it will be his first Grand Slam final and I am happy for him. it will be difficult for him since Roger is still Roger. I remember when lots of people were saying he was finished. I always said that Roger deserved more respect, and that he is still there, the favourite always.

Note what he says about Roger Federer. When was the last time you heard something like this – a current world no. 1 on the previous one. 

[...]

Finally holidays. I left home on July 18th and played Toronto, Cincinnati, Olympics in Beijing and here in New York since then. I will play some golf, be with friends, family maybe fish a bit and not much more. Don’t have time for more. Then start practicing again to be ready for the Davis Cup.

This guy is the top tennis player in the world and all he gets is three days for himself.